Shrinking Your Shrink’s Office
“That Psychotherapy Office!”
as seen from a patient’s perspective..
You walk into your shrink’s office and you find the office has sent you off on another reverie…
The room said to you, “Sit down in your chair.”
While you remember the meeting with you employer
That put a knot in you stomach,
As you look at the pile of journals waiting on the file cabinet.
And try not to hear them talking to you.
Telling you that your therapist works so hard–
There is no time to get to those journals,
Or maybe they’ve been read and deemed important to keep.
And if those journals were taken away,
Would you be able to remember the knot in your stomach?
Or would you think of something else?
The flirtatious smile you caught on the bus on your way here…
And how it infused you with a new sense of your attractiveness.
And where had that sense gone, that you need to be infused?
And should you take that same bus again to try to get another smile…
Or should you focus on the tax forms you were supposed to file?
And how you always do things at the last minute,
Because your anxiety cripples you.
For that’s why you’re here after all,
To work on that anxiety.
Speaking of which, that phallic sculpture in the relationship corner – the far right corner of the office…
Who’s getting it? Who wants it? Who’s giving it? Is it any of your business? That’s not what you’re hear to discuss.
Maybe in ten more years you’ll be able to make mention of it in passing, like “that’s such fine glass…”
Maybe.
You realize you’re being interrupted, and had been for you don’t know how long,
By the sound of the therapist’s voice. What?
Your body doesn’t want to lift its sutured gaze from the journals which anchor and hold you in your reverie.
Something gets lost, feels bad to the body, when you turn and look at the face of the therapist and beyond–
To the explosive print on the wall of a red, yellow, and purple flowers so ready for a bee to come to them.
Like the beautiful living room makeover in that show you watch on Monday nights when the football season is over was waiting for the owners to come home and see how spectacular it was!
But your father called during that episode, wondering when you were going to visit;
And you had a facile answer which could not stop the guilt you felt for not visiting as often as your sister does.
Which puzzles you because you’re really close to your father, closer than your sister is.
Maybe she’s trying to…
That noise – the therapist has asked you something–
Your eyes dart to her face, hoping the text of what she’s said till now will be available to read across her forehead,
So you can give some cogent response.
You try to buy time by taking a drink from your water bottle that is perched on the small table which is home to an enormous plant you try not to get caught in as you reach for the bottle.
Next time you’ll bring a smaller bottle so the plant doesn’t hang down over it like it does now.
Sitting smack dab in the children/creativity area which makes you wonder whose kid or creativity has dominion here – yours or the therapist’s.
Sibling rivalry with a plant?! Geez, you’re in bad shape.
Should you say something about this plant?
Oh, god! You’re half way through your session and you’ve not tracked a word the therapist has said.
Your gaze lands across the room to allow some air between your eyes and their target, hoping for some mental silence in which to regroup.
You notice the color of the wall seems different at this time of day than when you usually come…
© 2006 Katherine Grace Morris, PhD