The T-word

If I was paying any attention to my to-do list, I’d be researching therapists right now to see if I could find someone new, now that my insurance says I’ve had enough of my old one. But I felt like blogging about it would sort of be like thinking about a new one, so here we are.

That said, it does feel like the world is telling me to get this done. Having worked full-time in this den for almost two years now, but without the benefit of a cleaning service (I may or may not have discouraged people from doing any cleaning in here), I finally snapped at the volume of dust in this room this weekend and took everything off the desk so I could wipe things down once. That, I would argue, was therapeutic in and of itself. However, during the process I found a piece of paper given to us by the undertaker at Colin’s funeral, of all people, listing various self-help groups and therapists working here in Germany. That seemed like a sign. Then this blog I follow just came up with the headline about how to know when it’s time to switch therapists. Like, I get it, Mr Universe.

Oh, but I’m unmotivated. I don’t know if Colin (the therapist) was the perfect person for me, but it worked. I generally felt better after our sessions. It was good having someone who wasn’t in my circle of friends or family to whom I could just complain or vent. And now I’m not allowed to see him any more. But ick, if I’m going to have to find a new therapist, I might as well also start speed dating. Or going through rush on a university campus. I’ve never done either, but neither experience seems particularly edifying.

I did make a try a month or two ago. Feeling lazy, I contacted the therapist who’s only a few blocks away, the one who said he couldn’t work with me because he has a kid about Colin’s age (my child, not the therapist) and hearing about Colin’s case would depress him too much. I figured that would still be the company line, but I thought maybe he’d forgotten and then I could worm my way in and he’d find that I was his wittiest and most charming patient, so he’d keep me on despite all the depression. But no, there was no getting past him. He called pretty quickly to say he wouldn’t be able to work for me. As icing on the cake, he called on my birthday.

And I suppose I still have the men’s group at the hospice, and I should give it a chance. My appearances there went off the rails when the pandemic sent everyone home. I haven’t quite gotten back into the habit either. Of the two times I’ve made it this year, I was the only person the one time and the other time three of the guys, who seem to have known each other for a long time, spent most of the session talking about one guy’s broken car. Which is important, I admit, it just doesn’t really help me. Add in my fear of talking to strangers and groups of people and then always feeling a tiny bit (OK, a lot) intellectually cramped trying to fit all the thoughts in my head into the German language, I wonder sometimes if it’s the right thing for me.

Which brings me back to my need to find a new person. But, like I said, ick. There are websites listing all the people in Berlin and I go through them, but find myself critiquing them by their photos, because I have no idea what the professional qualifications mean. He specializes in systemic therapy? That’s nice, but do I want to spend time with a guy who does that to his hair? It’s shallow, I know, but I think picking a therapist out of a catalogue is kind of shallow as well.

I think I’m being so blase about this because I’m not convinced therapy can actually help me. It feels good if I’ve got a good partner, but that’s fleeting. It’s not going to end the long-term feeling that the bottom of my world – maybe it hasn’t quite fallen out, but it’s leaking a little. It’s not going to explain why I find myself working in the garden and then freeze because, out of the blue, I wonder how much he really understood of the stories we read to him the last few months in the hospice. It’s not going to explain why we pulled up a Youtube clip of the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics and, as the audience, cheered, my first reaction was to cry for five seconds. I fear the underlying causes are deeper than any therapy.

Maybe it’s because, what I really want, is to have a session with God every now and then and just sporadically snap ‘The hell was that all about?” And it’s not as if I’ve stopped believing or praying, but it has made the relationship with God trickier. Like, I have an acquaintance who told me once that he believed God helped him get parking spaces if he prayed hard enough. And I guess clearing up a parking space is a lot easier than making a tumor go away, but it makes prayer seem so much smaller if you’re only allowed to ask for things that probably would have happened anyways. And that’s not really what I believe, but prayer is hard, because it clearly didn’t work for Colin. It makes the world feel more arbitrary, knowing that.

And because the world likes to mess with my head, Joan Osborne’s “One Of Us” came on just as I was writing this. So, thanks for that, world.

And that’s what I’ve got today. I suppose, on some level, it was therapeutic. Tomorrow, I’ll try to hit the websites again.