Psycho Dynamics
Twenty years ago – Minnesota in my accent, California fresh on my driver’s license. My head’s hung low over my graduate psychology book, peeking at the other students from in between my bangs. While I stammer and flail like the other students, they twirl skills like batons in front of the class, leave chatting with the professor, read Klein and Bion like it’s Dr. Seuss.
I reason that their ease with the therapy skills on the back of my note cards make them ripe for best friendship. They see me rocking, shushing and bouncing my loneliness and invite me to hang out. Ravenous for connection, I pounce on the contract for their friendship, skimming over the fine print.
“We soul collage once a week,” she informs you. Soul Collaging is the act of muddying a giant tag board with pictures of your goals and dreams. Participants might choose a glossy advertisement featuring women hiking and punctuate it with the word “athletic.” You fervently cut and paste other people’s lives onto a wish board that you’ll take home and put in the top drawer of your nightstand, in place of a Bible.
She is throwing a party with curated conditions for spontaneity. The all-therapist guest list receives, in lieu of a gift bag, stipulations. Conversations are outlawed. Instead, she instructs, “Go around the room and describe yourself using three adjectives.” Now it’s your turn. You draw a breath that on its exhalation will concretize all you’ve experienced in your twenty-five years. Three words for your trauma, sorrow, struggles, dreams. You choose: earnest, sensitive and evolving. There will be no follow-up.
They’ve moved on from the Myers-Briggs and discovered The Enneagram. Now your existence can be summarized by a number instead of letters. They’re Heart Types. They are emotional intellectuals with deep, authentic emotions. Scroll down to the third paragraph where it says so. You’re a 2, they’re sure of it. They read to you about you from the book that has knowledge that only it can know, about you.
They branch out and suggest a Latin dance club. The partners switch, and you are paired with their therapist friend Jason who uses dance to diagnose inter-relational problems in his clients. It’s your first time, and you accidentally rush ahead of the music. “You struggle with patience in your daily life,” Jason, whom you’ve never met, shouts above the music. “You’re leading me instead of letting me lead you. I expect you don’t have an equanimous relationship with your partner.” You sit the next song out. Jason pops over to tell you that you have an avoidant personality style.
You wonder if they want to go to a concert at The Greek, a new restaurant in The City, or an exhibit at SFMOMA. They don’t. They opt for a horizon-expanding postcard game. In their 500-square-foot apartment, you’re handed a postcard featuring a rose; you hold it to your nose. Next, a postcard of the ocean. You close your eyes, hoping for the sound of the surf. Finally, a postcard of The City skyline. You saw it in your rearview mirror as you drove to her place.
You’re invited over for tea. You stop for black coffee on the way. Thoughts about an impending decision pound in your brain in the silence she has requested. You begin to speak, but she grabs your almost empty mug, swirling it in her hand. She reads the tea leaves.
Assuming they’re self-actualized you lie on the couch three days a week to catch up. Instead of catching up, you catch on. Ignoring their calls, you call your therapist for an extra session.
Kimberly Sweeney has over a decade of experience as a Marriage and Family Therapist and is currently working on a memoir about living with PTSD. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her husband and their two daughters. When she isn't writing Kimberly can be found power lifting at the gym, enjoying beginners drum lessons or miscalculating a recipe from her large stash of cookbooks. This is her first published piece of writing.