I'm back.

I'm starting to write about new things.  The past was prologue.  

I'm putting some test drafts here for the 20 of your to read.  I have not done anything to broaden the readership of this blog, but that may happen.  We'll see.

Something’s Happening Here

1. Realization

Way back In the Spring of 2012 I was sitting across across from  Carrie, an attractive, articulate, sixteen year-old young woman.  She had come to me because she was having panic attacks. These attacks often came when she was studying for exams at school.  She said sometimes she felt as if her head was going to explode, and at other times that she couldn’t breathe.  Carrie spoke in a very animated fashion about how difficult it was for her to maintain her excellent grades and still keep up with the constant influx from her social connections.  As she spoke her voice cracked a little and her dark hair fell in front of her dark eyes that would fill, but not overflow with tears.  Her parents, Sandra and Joyce, were sitting in my waiting room, while her friends, many of them, were wondering where she was and why she was not answering their text messages that were making her phone ping every thirty seconds.

I have been a psychotherapist for over forty years and have been closely involved in thousands of people’s lives, yet that was the memorable moment when it became undeniably obvious to me that I was living in a new world; a world that is not only creating changes in how we all live, it is creating changes in who we all are. Changes that will alter the basic make-up of our species,.

The changes are technological, environmental, genetic, and societal.  The most powerful changes are the result of how all of those factors interact.  This new world will increasingly require  people to learn different skills in order to adapt and succeed.  Many of the ways of thinking and acting that were adaptive and helpful two or three generations ago, are no longer useful; others are now counter-productive. The time and effort that our ancestors needed to learn how to hunt or to grow for food has been replaced by knowing how to talk to Siri or an Amazon Echo.

Our grandparents lived in a world that was very different from the one that their grandparents lived in.  The early twentieth century was a time of change, especially compared to the early nineteenth century. It was a time of significant industrial and mechanical advances. The pace of that change has continued to increase so that now, in the early twenty-first century, we live with constant change.  We expect it to continue. But as we are changing the world, the world is changing us. 

For thousands of years the personalities, beliefs, and behaviors of all people have been shaped by the same basic forces: our genetics, then our families, then our communities, and we are all also limited or enhanced by our general health.

Who we all are, as individuals, begins with our own genetic structure, 99.9% of which we share with every other member of our homo sapiens family. We are all the product of millions of years of evolution. All human babies are born with the genetic scripts that have been passed from generation to generation, with occasional mutations, for two-hundred thousand years. 

Next, we are all plunked into a family grouping, whatever shape  takes:  two parents, a tribe, a refugee camp, a single parent, a mother and a sperm donor, whatever.  This “family” immediately begins to teach us their version of how the world works.  We all quickly begin to understand how we are expected to behave in order to get what we need.. We have to adapt to that specific environment to survive.  Babies are very dependent so we all had to learn fast.

The third powerful influence on our behavior is the community, the subculture in which we find ourselves as we emerge into the world.  This consists of our friends, our school, our church, our neighborhood, our diet, the climate,  and all of the experiences that we find outside of our family, which now, of course, includes all of the Internet and social media.

These three factors interact with each other to shape us all. To this mix of influences we have to add our health.  If we are strong and robust we can partake in much of what we wish.  If we have a major illness or deformity, our lives will be different, not worse necessarily, but different. If we are obviously different in some way it will cause many people to react to us differently. Most people will be kind and helpful, but others will be mean, many will just look away.  We, in turn, will react to their reactions to us. Everything interacts.

Combined, these influences shape what we  believe, and how we think, feel and act.  It has been this way since our ancestors first walked upright and formed groups.

To me, Carrie is the symbol of how these basic, long-standing forces are beginning to change. The pace of these changes will only increase.  Carrie was conceived in a petri dish.  An egg was taken from one of her mothers and fertilized with sperm from an anonymous man who was selected from a profile in a data base.  Her parents were not allowed to be married at the time, but they were living together. As soon as the law was changed they got married. Carrie has a little brother now, and they all live in a happy, caring family.  The community in which Carrie lives accepts her family without question. These are circumstances that her grandparents would not have believed possible.

The visit with Carrie happened in 2012, and already so much from that time seems out of date. This is mainly due to new technologies, and to the new scientific knowledge that these technologies have helped us acquire.  The aspects of Carrie’s life that seemed unusual then are commonplace and well accepted now. In just the past few years there  have been changes in all of the basic powerful forces.  There has been constant scientific advances in our understanding our own genetics., many new variations in the definition of a family; major shifts in demographics and composition of societies around the world, and significant advances in medicine.

All of these changes have affected the expectations of how Carrie will live her life. The skills she is learning, and how she learns them, are changing.   Her life will be vastly different than the life I lived, growing up in the middle of the twentieth century.  All of these things are not only changing how people behave, they are changing our DNA, our bodies and our minds.  Some of it is intentional; most of it is not.  The more we all are aware of what is happening to us, the better prepared we will be to make good use of the changes we feel are beneficial.  We also need to stay vigilant,so that we can avoid the ones we don’t wish to have thrust upon us.

Questions:

1. Do you know anyone who has two mothers or two fathers?

What do think of it?  How old are you?

Are there some kinds of family combinations that would make you uncomfortable?

Polygamy?  Three fathers with six children?

2, Take a look at yourself in a mirror.

Are you White?  Do you realize how that has affected your life?

Are you tall?  Well endowed? Have a symmetrical face?

3, How close are you to the members of your family?

Do you feel you have absorbed their values, or have you explicitly rejected them?

4.  What is your favorite piece of digital equipment?

How long have you had it?

When will you need to replace it?

Did you think you needed it before you learned there was one?

The End is Coming!! At least for me

It’s getting near the end for me as a hands-on clinician.  It’s been a long trip.  I feel almost very good about all I’ve done.  I find it interesting that I still feel very haunted by the people who baffled and frustrated me.  I also feel very gratified by the people who have done well and gone on to better lives.  This is especially true for almost all of the final group of people, I’m seeing, especially the ones I saw today.  The are all ending well.

I still hope to be productive.  I still feel there is so much to be done and that the methods most mental health people use, while very helpful, are also very limited and not really up to the task of meeting the needs of our society.

We are beginning to do better with many physical diseases and disabilities, but psychological and emotional problems are so much more complex.  They rarely, if ever, have just one cause.

We are also living during a very strange and stressful time of transition. Yes, the world has always been stressful, and  for the last hundred years there have been major, dramatic changes in the lives of people all over the world, ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution.  But now the pace of change is accelerating, and the rules of life are changing.  The skills people need to do well and prosper are very different than the ones that were required for me to make a living and raise a family.  Things were much more predictable then.

So many of my patents now live with so much stress because of work and finances.  Companies are being bought every day.  Companies that never make the news, but they are bought and most of the people are let go.  New companies start, but most of them don’t make it.  There is a great deal of loyalty to employees in the beginning, but it can disappear with one bad quarter, or if the company does so well that it gets bought, a few people get rich and the rest get unemployment.

I am thankful my kids seem to be stable and skillful, at least for now.  Even they have a different outlook on the world than I did.  They know that things can change, and they would have no control over it.

My grandchildren are beautiful, charming, creative, brilliant and having fun.  The oldest is 5 1/2.  What will ten years do to her?  Will the stress of school, competition, change, college, social networks, constant media in-put, and robots become overwhelming?  Or will our families, societies, governments and business learn to adjust in ways that make life interesting, meaningful  and fun?

I don’t know.  I think that is the uncertainty that is driving so much of this angry, confusing election cycle.

Will we be scared, mistrustful and selfish, just to save ourselves? Or will we finally overcome some of those interpersonal barriers and use all of our new technologies to make things better for all of us?  

I think we will know a little more in a few months, but the change and the chaos still have a few years before more is figured out.  

In many ways it is a relief for me to become more of an observer and commenter, than to have to try to help everyone navigate through all the uncertainties. 

Keep your eyes open.  Think about what’s coming.  Think about what you want to do.  Think about what you should do after that.  It takes an effort to make sure we take the time to reflect and not just react, especially when things seem to be different than they were ten minutes ago.

ReDesigning People -- 1

Hey, where have you been.  I've been working on some new stuff.  It's taken a while but now I'm pretty far along.  Maybe I'll keep posting stuff here.  But I've said that before.

Anyway, here's an

Introduction:

In the Spring of 2012 I was  sitting with Carrie, an attractive, articulate sixteen year-old young woman.  She had come to me because she was having panic attacks.  She said sometimes she thought her head was going to explode, and at times that she couldn’t breathe.  These attacks often came when she was studying for exams at school  Carrie spoke in a very animated fashion about how difficult it was for her to maintain her excellent grades and still keep up with the constant influx from her social connections.  As she spoke her voice cracked a little and her dark hair fell in front of her dark eyes that would fill, but not overflow with tears.  Her parents, Sandra and Carol, were sitting in my waiting room, while her friends, many of them, were wondering where she was and why she was not answering their text messages that were making her phone ping every thirty seconds.

I have been a psychotherapist for over forty years and have been closely involved in thousands of people’s lives, yet that was the moment it became undeniably obvious to me that I was living in a new world; a world that is not only creating changes in how we all live, it is creating changes in who we all are. Changes that will alter the basic make-up of our species,.

The changes are technological, environmental, scientific and societal.  The most powerful changes are the result of how all of those factors interact.  This new world requires  different skills in order to adapt and succeed.  Many of the ways of thinking and acting that were adaptive and helpful two or three generations ago, are no longer useful; others have become counter-productive.

Our grandparents and great grandparents lived in a world that was very different from the one that their great-grandparents lived in.  The early twentieth century was a time of change, especially compared to the early nineteenth century. It was a time of significant industrial and mechanical advances. The pace of that change has continued to increase so that now, in the early twenty-first century, we live with constant change.  We expect it to continue. But as we are changing the world, the world is changing us. 

Until the mid-Twentieth Century our species has been Designing People in basically the same way for a few millennia. There have always been three basic interacting forces that designed who we become.  First there is evolution. The genetic scripts of who we are pass from generation to generation, with occasional mutations, some of which survive. Second, the family grouping, whatever shape that has taken, exerts its influence.  The third powerful designer of our behavior is the community, the subculture in which we find ourselves as we emerge into the world.  Combined, these influences shape what we  believe, and how we think, feel and act.  It has been this way since our ancestors walked upright. 

To me, Carrie is the symbol of how these basic designing influences are changing.  Carrie was conceived in a petri dish.  An egg was taken from one of her mothers and fertilized with sperm from an anonymous man who was selected from a profile in a book.  Her parents were not allowed to be married at the time, but they were living together and as soon as the law was change d they got married. Carrie has a little brother now, and they all live in a happy, caring family.  The community in which Carrie lives accepts her family without question. These are circumstances that her grandparents would not have believed possible.

The visit with Carrie happened in 2012, and since then things have continued to change rapidly in our society. This is mainly due to new technologies, and to the new scientific knowledge that these technologies have helped us acquire.  The aspects of Carrie’s life that seemed unusual then are commonplace and well accepted now. In just the past few years there are even newer methods of creating children, more diverse blending of families, and different variations of societies that are all having a strong influence on everyone’s life. The expectations of how Carrie should behave, the skills she will need to learn, and how she will learn them, are also different.   All of these things are vastly different than what was expected of me, growing up in the middle of the twentieth century.  All of these things are not only changing how people behave, they are changing their bodies and minds.  They are ReDesigning People.

New information about who we are, what we want, how we behave, and how we communicate, comes pouring in in huge waves, every moment of the day. It affects us whether we realize it or not. Many people spend hours a day sitting in front of a screen gathering and dispensing information while things beep and pop up, pictures and videos appear and disappear, quickly replaced by others, with very little time for reflection.

We have devised new ways of mixing stands of DNA in a petri dish to create new people, and now newer, faster, more direct ways of splicing and reconnecting those genes in order to alter who that person will be.  

The evolution of machines  has progressed much faster than the evolution of people.  Many of the daily tasks that for centuries required manual labor are now done by machines, even the task of building those machines.  We also use machines to calculate, and then to find patterns, make predictions, and develop protocols about what we should eat, what medicines we should take, what we will buy, and who we will marry.  These machine generate algorithms which influence many of the decisions we make, mostly without our realizing that it is happening.

The climate we live in, including the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, all contain chemicals, viruses, bacteria, and proteins that have either been locked away in environments that never had contact with people until recently, or have been created in laboratories to either help us stay healthy or make us buy food that will make us fat.

These are changes that will affect the way Carrie lives her life, and they will have a more profound effect on her children. Her generation will also experience a continued growth in how medicine is developed, designed and delivered.  The hope is that people will be able to live longer and healthier lives. However, it may just be that as diseases are treated, other aspects of our lives fall apart. Will our brains last as long as our healthy bodies?  Will earth be covered with centenarians who need their diapers changed?  Will our air become too warm or too polluted for people to breathe easily?

Societies are changing also. To the horror of some and the delight of others, people from every part of the world are moving to every other part of the world. Marriages are occurring, babies are being born and cultures are mixing in ways that has never happened before.  Many of the old institutions that helped people define their values and guided them towards certain behaviors are being questioned or ignored.  This is a disrupting transition that is creating a great deal of conflict between those who feel the old ways are still the best, and those who feel that old traditions and rituals are antiquated and irrelevant.  While it is presently unclear how those arguments will be settled, it is clear that societies are changing dramatically, and people will think and believe differently than they do now.

The effect of all of these changes is that we are ReDesigning People, in part by design, in part due to unintended consequences.   As a psychotherapist I have spent years helping people to redesign their lives.  In many cases I felt successful, but in many others I felt there were too many factors  over which I had no control that were more powerful than anything I could do in my office. I could do little about the person’s genetic make-up, their economic resources, the extent to which they were subjected to racial prejudice or the toxic environments had shaped their lives. 

In many ways Carrie is a very fortunate young woman.  From her background we can assume that her genetic structure is close to flawless.  The egg and the sperm that were used to create her were specifically selected because they came from people who were strong, healthy, smart and attractive.  While she was in utero her DNA was tested and screened for many possible genetic defects. She is being raised by a happy couple, who have financial resources, in an accepting neighborhood with a good school system and a diverse population. Given all of this her prospects for a good life are high.

Sadly, she is suffering for the overarching malady of this new world, anxiety.  Anxiety often is the result of having feelings of little or no control of what will happen.  The feeling of living with constant change, and the uncertainty of what that change will produce has instilled a feeling of anxiety into almost everyone who has electricity, a computer, a cell phone and wi-fi.  There is too much information, too much traffic, too many demands, too little time, and not enough stability.  It is impossible to name any company, any city, any government , any medicine or any institution that won’t be radically different in fifty years.

This creates anxiety.  Anxiety creates stress on our bodies, brains and minds.  It changes our functioning down at the cellular level.  All of these forces, some of them very favorable, but many of them very unpredictable, are changing the nature of who we are.  We are ReDesigning People.

In this series of essay I will describe this process and some of its possible consequences in greater detail.  I certainly welcome any comments.

Holiday Season is Mixed

'Tis the Holiday Season again, as we all know.

We are less than two weeks away from the Solstice, at which time we will begin to get our light returned to us on this side of the globe.  It is spending its allotted time down on the Southern Hemisphere right now.

Last week, to kick off the holiday season, David Brooks, the esteemed columnist of the NY Times wrote a piece explaining why it is not good for anyone to commit suicide.  A cheery topic, and I'm not quite sure why he picked it, except that some statistics came out showing that suicide rate around the world seem to be increasing.

Mr. Brooks said it's a bad idea because most people who attempt suicide and somehow fail, later to report that they are able to reach a point at which they are happy to be alive.  Also, he said, suicide is selfish, and it hurts the people who are still alive.  This is often, although not always, true also.

Now, I'm not for suicide, except perhaps if you (perhaps me) get old, are in great pain, can hardly remember who you are, and have no chance of improvement except to take huge amounts of drugs which will made your pain less but your awarenes of self negligible.

I have spent lots of time convincing people to stay alive another day or two, just to see if they feel better, or see some other option.  I generally feel that we all will be dead for a really long time, and that we are only alive for a short time, so we should see what happens with the time we have.

But I appreciate that some people spend the time they have in misery and desperation, and despite the wisdom of others, it often feels like the stress, the pain, the losses, the agony, just isn't worth hanging around for.

I spent an hour with Alice (not her real name, and not the exact details) last week.

She is now almost sixty, and looks about eighty.  Her pain began as soon as her mother decided that Alice looked too much like her father.  Soon after Alice's birth her mother stopped liking the father, and Alice along with him.  Because of this resemblance, the mother rejected Alice.  She would beat her, demean her, scream at her and lock her in a room.  The mother did this to half of her six children. The other half she favored.

Alice survived because of an aunt and her older sister who both tried to protect her.  But her life was never smooth.  When she was fourteen her brother brought some of his friends home so they could rape her.  She broke three of her brother's ribs with a candle stick, and sent one of his friends' to the hospital with a concussion.  That got her into a "girls' school.'

Her one real love relationship died of an overdose.  Her other attempts to be with a man were much less than successful.  These relationships were often violent.  Alice was in many fights, had many rages when she almost killed someone, and was often badly beaten herself.

From the ages of 17 to 53 she drank very heavily.  Then she stopped.

Now she is calmer, sober, but alone and in great pain.  Her father has been dead a long time but her mother, almost ninety live on, with a sister, and still swears at Alice.  Alice and that sister are the only two of the six who are still alive. Two died of cancer, one in a motorcycle accident and one was murdered.

Now Alice needs a new hip. She walks with great difficulty. Her wrists are so bad that she can't open her car door without a great deal of pain.  She is probably brain damaged a bit from all the fights and alcohol.  Every joint hurts.  She trusts no one.

She said that she often wishes she was dead.  She won't kill herself because,... because that's not what she does.  She is a survivor.

So we talk about what we can try to do to make her life a bit better.  She isn't religious.  She didn't think God was on her side.  She doesn't believe in love.  She hardly believes in "like."
But when she takes a couple of Percocets, she can get comfortable enough to be curious about what will happen next.

I hope your holidays bring you closer to someone who you can like and trust.

Christmas Again

Christmas is rapidly fading into the darkness.  We drove around looking for lights here in colonial New England.  For the most part people are traditional, a candle (electric) in the window, with some lights, mostly white, around a tree in front.  This year Home Depot, in addition to selling those wire reindeer  must have put out strings of blue, green and purple lights, they seem to have caught on around here.

We came around a curve on one of the more traditional colonial neighborhoods and were suddenly rewarded by a four story house with what must be at least 30,000 lights.  Not just lights, characters, ornaments, shapes and trees, and the best part was that each segment blinked on and off in some kind of random, blinding pattern that added to the celebratory chaos.

A quarter of my clients spend Christmas by themselves.  Another 40% have to deal with difficult family situations, either choosing to see father or mother, or just plain old fashioned tension, due to constant criticism, rejection or something worse. But that leaves 35% who want to go home for the holiday.  They see their parents and siblings and they feel refreshed, sustained, welcome and happy.

As you may have figured out by now, I am not the biggest fan of the religious aspects of anything. But I don't want to get into that now; just ask Michelle Bachmann and think the opposite.  But I do believe that any occasion that makes people think for at least a minute about Peace, Love and Understanding is worth celebrating.

I hope everyone celebrated happily, and in their own way.  I hope everyone got what they wanted from Sanity Clause.

Sometimes the Extremes are Real

I deal with a lot of shit that goes on in people's lives: illness, trauma, loss, loneliness, conflict, stress, and more things that don't really fall into categories,  just the amazing things that people mange to do to each other. Most of that stuff gets worse over time, as it continually takes up more space in people's minds.

But sometimes awful things happen out side of their mind; just plain awful things that they then have to deal with.  Most often it happens to people who already have had awful things happen to them.

This week's example is Marla, a woman I have been seeing for a long time.  I began a few years a go with Marla because she had a terrible drinking problem.  Her family, who helped create the problem by having a mother who would often promise her that she would amount to nothing, and a father who would occasionally get drunk and try to fondle her.

Marla found that when she drank she didn't feel so bad.  Her parents, realizing she had a problem with alcohol, responding by going to court and taking custody of her son.  They presented a huge, elaborately exaggerated case, mostly so they could get the child support checks that came for the boy.  Marla was send out to find her own way to sobriety and self-reliance.

Once away from her family however, Marla has begun to do quite well.  She has been sober for two years and she is now back in college, doing well.  Fighting to maintain her low self-esteem she tells me that she knows she is not smart, but she has this quirky thing she does:  If she reads the books and goes to class, she does very well on tests.  She can't explain it.

Having grown up learning to distrust the people whom you should be able to trust the most, it is not surprising that she has few friends and generally stays away from people.  But, over time she met a guy at her all night job, and they became involved. This relationship was in-place when I met her, and it had been going on for years. He seemed to be genuinely caring and committed to her, despite his being married to someone else, and the father to children whom he also cared about.  But when Marla was upset he would call me to alert me, or he would bring her to my office when he felt she was in danger of becoming too depressed and isolated.

After years of this, this man, whom we shall call Harvey, began to have an increasing amount of trouble in his own family.  His affair with Marla had been known and tolerated, but as his kids grew-up the tensions with them and the rest of the family, and probably others, all seemed to mount.  Harvey had once called me but we agreed that since I was Marla's therapist it would be better if he had his own. So I never knew the real details of the stress he was under.

Two weeks ago Marla came to my office, and after talking about her visits with her son she became even more silent then usual.  When pushed, she said she had heard from Harvey and he had said that it seemed a good time for them to not see each other for a while.  She said that when she questioned him, he then said he was just having a bad day, and things would be fine.  But she had not heard from him for four days now and didn't know if she should call him.  She knew he was stressed out and she didn't want to bother him, and make his life even more difficult.

Yesterday Marla showed up, a day before he scheduled appointment.  The appointment I was waiting for  was late so Marla came in, sat down and stared at the floor. "You're not going to believe this."she said.
"Harvey is dead. He was dead last week, that's why he never called.  He was dead three hours after I spoke to him."

"How did he die?"

No one is saying. My son is the one who found it in the paper.  The obituary only said that he died suddenly.

That can mean all kinds of things.  It certainly makes one wonder, but I don't actually know.

Marla said that she knew his father had died early of a heart attack.  Maybe that was it.

Maybe.

Marla left the office.  She said she was going for a long walk.  She has been known to walk twenty- seven miles to deal with her depression.

She called in today to say she was OK.  Going to walk in the other direction.

Enjoy the Season!

I hope you all had a warm and wonderful Thanksgiving. Mine went pretty well, we had friends, family and fun, and I did a lot of cooking.

Families can be the source of great pride, warmth and comfort. They can be nurturing, encouraging and/or just plain fun.

Of course there can be the other moments: if you younger sister is sleeping with your older sister's husband, or when Uncle Ben enters in his usual inebriated state and throws up on the turkey, or Mom gets offended when you spill the cranberry sauce on the table cloth so she runs crying to her room and stays there for three days. Did you miss cousin Rick because he's back in the slammer, and now you have to take care of his three totally undisciplined kids for three to ix years? Did your thin cousin mock your fat cousin mercilessly, until pudgy dumped four pounds of macaroni and cheese on slim's head. Or, when everyone raised a toast to say what they are thankful for, did Uncle Ray use the occasion to announce that he finally has the balls to leave Aunty Beth, after 27 years of a miserable marriage.

Feel free to join in on the chorus....

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Ring-ting-a-ling

Well it sure is holiday time. Many of my clients were out there last Friday at 5 AM ready and eager to spend money they don't have. At least no one was trampled to death in my area. That is kind of sick, don'tcha think? That shoppers have rally gotten that desperate.

This is always one of the busiest times for me. Some family gatherings are really great and nurturing and communal. Everyone gathers and buys gifts to show heir love and appreciation for each other. The warmth and love is what chases away the cold of the long winter nights. I actually see some people who have a family like that. The family has grand-parents who had eight kids and they all have kids, many of whom have kids, and they all get together for Christmas and share good tiding.

I actually have two members of that family who see me, and they give me very different views of what goes on, and who really likes whom, and what the underlying tensions and rivalries are. But at least everyone manages to pull it off for a day.

Most of my clients dread the holidays. I see about four Elanor Rigbys who will be alone unless a fourth cousin has some compassion, or the old man on the third floor invites them in. But if he serves wine they get nervous about his intentions and make sure they keep their knees tightly held together.

For many it is the guilt that brings families together. A mother can squeeze feelings of guilt an inadequacy out of a child for fifty years if she has the talent. And many do.

I also have two families in which one sister is now married to the former husband of another sister. That can make things a bit tense, unless families are rally into sharing.

So, if you have a therapist, make your appointments early. Therapy times fill up quickly around the holidays. Many of us therapists fill up many hours with appointments. It's better than being with our cousins.

another angry client

I have been seeing Mary for a long time. She doesn't drink much anymore and she hasn't been in a fight for a long time, but she is still an angry woman.

Almost two years ago I began to see another woman, Kate. Kate had led an interesting but pretty difficult life: Her mother was a drunk and her father walked out on the mother and three young children. But Kate had survived this, and several other terrible times, with humor, persistence and the hope of a decent life.

About a month ago Kate left the man she had been living with for the past fifteen years. She realized that she had spent all that time waiting on him, spending money on him, listening to his complaints about the world, and protecting him from the consequences of his own actions.

Two weeks ago Mary came in to her session roaring at me. How could I do this? Do I ruin every one's life? Who can believe that therapy does any good anyway?

It turns out that the man Kate left is Mary's brother. Mary took that as an affront to her whole family -- although she had always said that the members of her family where selfish, useless, and dishonest.

What Mary is really angry at is that she knows that Kate will have a better life. Things will still be tough for Mary, and now her brother will be looking to her to help do all those things that Kate has always done for him.

Some guys are like that.