“No matter how many times I display anxiety, my therapist doesn’t reassure me”

Hello Black Tuesday,

I have been seeing a psychoanalyst for two years now. That’s good, it makes me wonder about a lot of things, but there’s something that bothers me. I am a very anxious person and I can see that I call on him a little for help during the session.

No matter how many times I display anxiety, it doesn’t reassure me, it sends me back to myself, to my solutions. It might be stupid, but sometimes I just wish she would reassure me or give me a solution. I find myself a little helpless and I sometimes resent him for not helping me more. What do you say about it?

Thomas

Cher Thomas,

That’s a good question! How many times have I dreamed, a few years ago, that my therapist would lull me with sweet words to counter my sadness and anxiety, and she never did it. On the other hand, she quite often punctuated sentences like “you will find”, “you are going to invent something to counter this state of distress”or even “it might be time to go see a psychiatrist to help yourself a little chemically”.

The one I’ve been seeing for a year, even though I’m doing pretty well, sometimes shows that I’ve taken a step forward, or reinforces a choice I’ve made. Well, it’s not very complicated since I’m not doing so badly and I’m pretty much clear about what I’m doing, but all the same, she doubles my speech with a sign of acquiescence. She is more likely to say «oui» what to say «mmm»and in his “yes”, there is a whole story. She can make it a little compassionate if I say something sad, or a good one when she judges that I am on the right track. So I dare to hope that your psychologist does not leave you completely in the dark.

That doesn’t seem to be the case, since you mention that she intervenes to make you hear what you’re saying. So I understand that sometimes it leaves you a little behind. I haven’t always been so alert about the discreet interventions of my psychologists. Sometimes you just want a good sentence dripping with support. It may be a relief at the time, but in the long term, I’m not sure it will have much effect.

All this leads me to draw a parallel with phobia and generalized anxiety. I suffered from a phobia for a long time, the phobia of vomiting – those who have been reading me for a few years now know this. My big thing was to ask my mom if I was going to throw up. Over and over again, she answered me in the negative. I could, in the middle of a crisis, ask him several times in a row, every five minutes and every five minutes, the answer was no. And I never threw up.

But ultimately, it was an infinite loop of requests to be reassured which only had a very limited effect over time and which took on a tyrannical tinge. I bullied my mother with my questions and her answers bullied me. Ultimately, all of this had no real weight: the whole point lay in asking and obtaining an answer, in this case, the one that reassured me the most at the moment.

I wondered, in these moments of anguish and sadness, the effect that a seemingly reassuring word from my therapist would have. No doubt that would have opened the way to an incessant demand to be consoled and reassured, to take a shot of soothing words, but without ever allowing me to find my solution. Well shit, dear Thomas, now I sound like your shrink!

Ultimately, what is reassuring about a psychologist is their presence, unwavering most of the time. There may be vacations, sick leave, pregnancies, but in the idea, the psychoanalyst is there. It accompanies and supports an utterance and for that, it must be a minimum of distance, so that the subject who consults it has the opportunity to understand themselves.

Afterwards, there are styles. Some psychologists talk more than others, it also depends on who is opposite, but talking does not equate to direct reassurance. Sometimes, it’s true, we would just like to be rocked and told that it’s going to be okay, by receiving little comforting caresses. If we don’t pay, it’s because our mother is doing this and we’re going to pay for it one way or another, by being invaded and overwhelmed. And if we pay, well, it’s not the same job.

To go further

• The Messiah (“The Messiah” in French), series produced by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, available on Arte.tv. In a few words, it’s the story of a mother and her two eldest children, adrift until she meets a man who takes her into a delirious family lockup where she ends up having all her implication, since this woman becomes the guru of this family sect. In the alienating genre, it’s hard to do better. The whole challenge is to escape this maternal influence which has reassuring virtues (even if totally violent and tyrannical). What this fabulous story teaches us is that emancipation never comes without a certain cost, a certain emptiness and a good dose of uncertainty. Watching this series, we all see a little of our mother in the figure of Montserrat (the main character). It may be hell, but it touches a place where, all the same, it’s true that we are comfortable in this maternal fold, even when we suffer there. It is an incessant series of suffering, but in which we do not have to find our own solutions. For the protagonists who choose to do otherwise, the solutions found are exceptionally accurate and moving, far from the ideal of a somewhat stupid happy ending. To have!
• Our need for consolation is impossible to satisfya story by Stig Dagerman from 1952. It’s all in the title, right? The idea that this author ended his life is not happy but this essay, if you are not as melancholic as him, has the merit of saying the terms. Dagerman’s solution is radical to say the least: I remind my dear readers that there are infinite other possibilities. In short, it remains a major story about dependence, freedom and otherness.