I Decided to See a Therapist at 72—My Guilt Was a Driving Factor

At the age of 72, I decided I needed to see a shrink for the first time in my adult life.

I was motivated by numerous factors, not the least of which was my wife’s death a few months earlier. While dealing with grief may have been the catalyst, I was also grappling with years of neurotic guilt that had built up like tartar on un-flossed teeth.

I never did anything to make the world a better place—volunteering in a soup kitchen, reducing my carbon footprint—I didn’t fulfill my promise to my wife to renovate our Formica-themed kitchen—I failed to write the novel I thought I was destined to write.

Until my wife’s death, I could rationalize away my guilt. Afterwards, my deep sadness combined with my guilt to create a toxic reaction. I’ve always been a happy neurotic, a term that probably isn’t in the Myers-Briggs psychological testing lexicon. I may fret a lot, but I’m not consumed by existential dread.

Until recently, that is. Thus, my therapy search.

I began my search by typing the name of my town, therapy and grief. I might as well have done a search for “nearby restaurants”. Hundreds of therapists popped up. Surprisingly, many of them were clustered in group practices with names that sounded straight out of a satirical novel: Couch Clarity, Blossoming Hope Counseling, Through the Woods Therapy.

Each group’s website featured therapist profiles. Some specialized in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy while others favored positive psychology. Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, coaches and other more esoteric specialists added to the variety. They name-dropped Freud, Jung, Adler, Perls, Rogers and Maslow.

I was bewildered. After scanning various websites and sifting through therapist bios, I found a social worker who seemed promising and her office was only a few blocks from my home.

Unfortunately, she didn’t accept Medicare. When she emailed me this news, I was tempted to email back that she had done irreparable psychological damage with her ageist rejection but I refrained.

My search resumed. I found a psychologist who seemed perfect. First, his educational credentials were stellar—Ivy League undergraduate, a top Ph.D. program, an internship at a famous psychiatric facility. Second, he was an old Jewish guy like me.

I called his practice’s number and talked to a factotum who told me that the therapist didn’t have any openings for ten months.

Fortunately, I talked to my internist about this search, and he recommended a practice nearby that he knew accepted Medicare patients and had good therapists. I emailed, and they assigned me a therapist.

The day came for our first session, and I entered the office with low expectations. When Dr. V came into the reception area and introduced herself, I immediately thought she was too young to understand anything about me—she must have been 30 years my junior.

We sat down, and one of her first questions was, “Did you watch the Super Bowl?”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. Was this a trick question? If I said no, would she think I was so depressed that I couldn’t muster the energy to watch? If I said yes, would she believe that I was seeking escapist entertainment to avoid feeling my feelings?

Sometimes, though, a banana is just a banana. We had a normal conversation about the game, and then Dr. V explained that this first session was more informational than anything else. She asked questions about my work, my family, my friends, my hobbies, and I felt like I was profiling the most boring man in the universe.

As we drew close to the end of the session, we had not discussed the elephant in the room—my deceased wife. I dreaded this discussion. I didn’t want to become a blubbering fool, my voice shaking with emotion as I poured out my anguish.

But we still had some time left, and that’s when Dr. V asked, “Would you like to tell me anything about Diane?”

Maybe it was Dr. V’s hesitant manner or empathetic smile. Maybe it was because she let me decide if I wanted to talk about it.

Whatever the reason, I said okay. I didn’t emote and dissolve into a teary blob. Instead, I focused on communicating who Diane was—how she could always make me laugh with her sarcastic observations, how she was so logical and commonsensical, how she didn’t suffer fools gladly, including me when I acted foolishly.

Dr. V somehow conveyed that she got it. When I left the office, I felt better. But why? I’d always thought that therapists performed psychological surgery, probing the brains of patients for the source of their depression, rage, guilt and so on. And then, they’d offer some startling insight that would catalyze an epiphany that would heal old wounds and voila, cured!

Maybe, though, the truth is that old people like me need therapy more than we think. Studies show that many baby boomers have eschewed therapy—more than younger generations, at least—and we’re not good a dealing with loss. The loss of our youth, our loved ones, our memory. Verbalizing this regret helps—or at least it has helped me.

I continue to see Dr. V once a week, and I’ve told her more than she can possibly want to hear—about being a deeply shy adolescent, about my Formica kitchen guilt, about my irrational fears including air travel and undercooked meat. I imagine that after our sessions, Dr. V writes in her case notes that “Patient B is a raging neurotic who obsesses about first world stuff. If he indulges in one more nostalgic story about protesting the Vietnam War, I might have to shoot myself.”

I’m not sure how long I’ll continue with therapy—I suspect I’ll reach a tipping point where my old happy neurotic self will regain dominance—but I’m sure I’ll keep going for a while longer or until I drive Dr. V insane.

Bruce Wexler has worked as a ghostwriter/editor of books for 30 years, having helped produce over 200 of them, many published by the major houses like Simon & Schuster, Little Brown and HarperCollins. He has also written for The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and Newsweek’s My Turn column. Before becoming a ghostwriter, he was a journalist who wrote for The Chicago Reader, an alternative newspaper, and received a Peter Lisagor Award for feature writing. He have a masters degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

All views expressed are the author’s own.

Do you have a unique experience or personal story to share? See our Reader Submissions Guide and then email the My Turn team at [email protected].

This post was originally published on this site