Daphne Merkin describes overcoming a fear of boring her therapists:
My father, who had married at 42 and was more of a distant bystander than an engaged parent, barely took me in at all. My mother was mercurial and easily distracted, brisk rather than lingering in her affections. I learned early on not to take anyone’s interest for granted and was in the habit of checking whether people were actually attending to me — “Are you listening?” I would ask, interrupting whatever I was saying; “Are you really listening?” — or just going through the motions, their thoughts elsewhere. I suffered, you might say, from the anxiety of insignificance — my own insignificance — and assuaged it by developing a dramatic raconteur’s voice, primed with ironic asides meant to keep my audience with me. …
And then came the moment several years ago when I stopped trying to be an entertainer and took the risk of narrating my life more straightforwardly, in all its mundane details and interludes of stuckness, with the broken-record aspects left in, rather than edited out for a smoother delivery. I did so because I was growing older and more desperate for relief and it seemed to me I had found a therapist who wasn’t interested in being charmed by me so much as he was focused on helping me. I did so in the full knowledge that I might end up boring him to tears, even though he was paid to be attentive.
It was just this possibility, of course, that I had always feared and endeavored to avoid. In doing so, it now seems to me, I was denying myself one of the things therapy allows for, which is precisely the repetitive nature of a person’s inner life, the constant regurgitation of ancient grievances and conflicts.
(Photo by Karen Apricot)
The Dish 