Aren’t Therapists Crazy?
Of course we are, too.
By Gretchen Winterkorn, LCSW, Psychoanalyst, Human Being
Crazy Quilt circa 1900
“How could you be cleaning this at 9:05 AM?!” I yelled at my wife as I handed her our 4 month old daughter. I threw the baby chick waterer she had been rinsing in the sink out our kitchen door. It jumped and rolled next to our 3 year old son playing in the rain with our babysitter who had just arrived. They moved to another part of the yard.
“I wasn’t thinking,” she said. She stayed calm and nodded, holding our daughter.
I went on, “You weren’t thinking about me but I ALWAYS think of you! I was getting her to sleep so you didn’t have to struggle with me gone today! I was late for work and at 9:05 that’s when YOU thought it was a great idea to come in, turn the water on gushing and dump chick poop all over our dishes?!”
“There wasn’t poop on it, I cleaned it already in the barn,” she replied.
“Oh - that’s when you thought – hey now’s a good time to make this chick feeder SPARKLING clean?! When my wife is late to work rocking our daughter to sleep in the stroller?! ” I continued. “I’m allergic to them!” I shouted.
“Well this is what we’ve been doing, she started defensively and then more softly, “ I know, I wasn’t thinking of you.”
My daughter laughed and smiled. I stopped to say, “Hi baby, I’m sorry Mommy is yelling. It’s not about you, I’m very stressed out.” Then I turned to my wife, “I pumped for her and then fed her and got her to sleep. No one got me water! The chicks needed sparkling clean water but I don’t get water after all I did this morning? My first day back at work! You didn’t even get my computer charger you said you’d get!” I yelled. It continued this way for a bit, I went on to threaten our marriage, suggest we each take a child and separate, circled back around to how my wife isn’t there for me when I most need her – in fact that’s when she is most triggering me. She mostly nodded calmly and eventually said she thought I was making the issue way bigger than it was, as I always do. “I don’t think it’s helping.” she emphasized.
“Oh, I’m so sorry I’m not HELPING you right now.” I replied sarcastically.
“No, I don’t think it’s helping YOU,” she said.
I stopped. Jolted. “You’re right,” I’m so sorry.” The storm broke, and I started to pack my bag and left to start my day in the office as a therapist.
A therapist? No! You must be one of those crazy therapists. Like on tv… No I’m not a crazy therapist. I’m a human therapist. I’m a human who decided to become a therapist which means I’m someone who became obsessed with what’s in the minds and feelings of others. Which usually speaks to some form of relational trauma – you know, the everyday relational traumas that you have too, the ones you talk to your therapist about? In fact, being somewhat fascinated with humans and a human myself who has worked really hard to understand and know my impact makes me an excellent therapist. You want a crazy therapist. You need a crazy therapist. Why? Because you need someone leading you out of a place that knows the roads out of town. That has been here before, over and over and over again. Because it’s less important to not be crazy than to be able to handle your crazy, work with your crazy, know your crazy and own your crazy. Because then it doesn’t need to become anyone else’s.
I’m making an “Uncrazy Quilt” to work on this in my family. Crazy quilts were popular back when fabric was a precious resource, before they invented Old Navy - in the 1800s in America. You saved all your scraps, even the tiniest ones, and sewed them into patch squares that then became a large quilt. I’m really into them - they make “crazy” something everyday, and combine a scary thought “crazy” with a comforting one “quilt.” They also are contained craziness – which is exactly what crazy needs – containment. Quilts are also heirlooms, in a way a “Crazy Quilt” is a physical object that exemplifies intergenerational transmission of trauma. Your mom has breast cancer here, you were molested there, you were bullied over here and they all add up to your “Crazy Quilt” - the ways in which your trauma in relationships create a space in you that feels and/or acts “crazy.” We all have a “Crazy Quilt” in us, and this quilt can be pulled out by events that are close enough to our original traumas. So in this scene I’m presenting above of my beautiful crazy, most of my quilt is on full display. See here the patch where my father left our home next to the patch of my baby sister crying who was only about 4 months old at the time next to the patch of my mother lying in bed with her hair falling out under a bandana battling breast cancer. Fast forward 34 years, I’m a Mom leaving her 4 month old daughter for the first time after a maternity leave, maybe worried about how my son and wife will fare when I leave the home to go work and care for others. Maybe worried about all the creatures I have to care for - a daughter, a son, a bevy of patients, 12 baby chicks and a dog. Hysterically overwhelmed about how much care I give and fearful there is no one caring for me. Do you see how it broke immediately when I could take in the fact that my wife was concerned with my wellbeing? She was worried I was yelling and that wasn’t good for me. I didn’t get much of that growing up - people able to take in or worry about my experience - in fact it was shocking when she said it - so shocking it shocked me right into the present.
So I’m making a “Uncrazy Quilt” for my daughter. Remember her – the one I was yelling at my wife in front of? I’ve asked family members to share scraps of fabric from meaningful pieces or that symbolize positive blessings for her. My mom is sharing fabric from the dresses she wore to my wedding. I believe in the symbolic ritual of this act, of taking the good pieces of my life and family and passing it down to my daughter. When I went to my first therapist, at 18, I said to him – I’m here for my daughter, so the pain of my family doesn’t get passed down to her. I had hoped that meant, as most patients do entering therapy, that I would become “completely healed” and could be a “completely good mother” to her. That I wouldn’t have moments of stress or crazy in front of her or with her. Now I know that it’s more realistic progress that I am very clear when I am having moments of stress or crazy, that I am very clear that it is mine, that I have walked into a room of my own past, my own relational trauma, where I feel erased, abandoned and hurt holding a mountain of burdens. Knowing this and owning it allows it to be mine, she doesn’t have to carry what I carry. Tonight when we review her day at bedtime, I will say, “And this morning I was yelling and upset and talking to Mama. That probably didn’t feel good – it wasn’t about you, it was me being stressed about something Mama did.” And in doing this, I plant a seed of an idea, that the hard experience was hard but not fully merged – not her’s to carry forward. Maybe at 18 she will go to her therapist and say, “I had a mom who got hysterical sometimes. It was annoying and stressful.” And that, my friends, to me would be deep progress. Because she could be going to a therapist at 18 and saying, “I’m bad. What’s wrong with me? I stressed my Mom out and she was always yelling.” Like I did.
Of course I’m also deeply embarrassed of this part of me. I worry about how this part of me affects me, my marriage and my children. But I actually think that having crazy parts is highly normal. In fact, it’s what I work on with most patients, privately. And privately I know my patients appreciate when I reference my humanness and my challenges. Do I paint a colorful scene like the above – no, rarely if ever. But I believe they can feel that I am approaching their challenges and their pain as someone who understands it from the inside, not from above. Like all of us - they need to know that what they struggle with is okay, and something that can be worked on and understood, accepted in a way. They need to know they aren’t BAD for struggling.
People love the idea of a crazy therapist - mostly because I think we think therapists are positioning themselves as “not crazy.” Kimmy Schmidt’s drunk therapist Andrea Bayden played by Tina Fey, Nicole Kidman as Masha in ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ and Jean Holloway, in ‘Gypsy’ are some recent examples of many. We relish seeing the human side of therapists. Therapists make people NERVOUS because somehow we think of them as above-human or human judges. I stopped telling people at parties I was a therapist because people would get uncomfortable or start self-analyzing themselves in front of me. In one party where we’d been talking about our addiction to the show “House Hunters” people asked me, “Oh, what would you say if someone came to your office and said, I’m addicted to house hunter?!” “I’d say - me too!” I said. Because I’m a therapist, I don’t get addicted to tv shows? Because I’m a therapist, I don’t yell at my wife in front of my kids?”. Because I’m a therapist I’m no longer human?” Come on. In my opinion I’m a good therapist BECAUSE I’m willing to be human. Being willing to own my “crazy” in the room with patients is often the most precious part of their healing. Do you know how important it is for patients when I say I’m wrong, I messed up about something or misunderstood or showed my anger too much or asked them to hold something I shouldn’t have? It’s worth its weight in gold. One of the hardest things we do in our relationships is recognizing and validating our impact on others. It hurts, it’s embarrassing and we have a million defenses against it. It takes a lot of core strength in one’s self esteem to say – I did a monstrous thing but I’m not a monster. I hurt you, I see that. I’m so sorry, I’m going to really work on that part of myself.
Why am I sharing this, you may think? I think that too. I think, Gretchen, really you don’t need to go on stage with this. You don’t need to prove anything to the world about your rawness – it’s bad for business. People won’t come to see you anymore. It feels a little dangerous to be revealing my most crazy moments as a therapist. But then I think – it’s more dangerous to continue on in this other way, with this ridiculous façade of “well people” therapists treating “ill people” patients – a black and white division of the human experience that is leading everyone to shamefully lick their wounds in private hoping they too will one day join the ranks of happy people. I have that fantasy too.
Sometimes my patients will wonder with me about “happy normal people.” Do you think they exist? they’ll ask me in a whisper, sometimes with figures from their lives as examples. “I really don’t know,” I say, they don’t come to me, and we don’t hang out.” What I’ve learned the longer I do this work called psychotherapy is that everyday trauma is such a common and normal part of the human experience, I don’t know that there are people without parts that act “crazy” in some way in some part of their lives. Certainly challenges with mental health are on a continuum and can be so very very debilitating - at times making it hard to impossible to lead a functional life. But what I don’t think is true is that there are “crazy” people over there with mental health problems and the rest of society over here, the “happy normal people.” We all have “crazy” parts, even therapists (especially therapists?) and its really just a matter of how much attention, care, concern and help managing them we’ve all been able to find for ourselves.