Two Bouquets
The doorbell rang around 6 PM one evening in October. Since humans don’t visit these days, I assumed it was a delivery. Although I couldn’t recall ordering anything specific, random Amazon boxes find their way to my doorstep regularly, filled with mundane household necessities formerly purchased in stores. I peeked out to the front porch and curiously spied a long, slender box. I opened the door and read the letters on the box: The Bouqs. Flowers? For me? Who could have sent them?
When my feelings of despair, doubt and anxiety didn’t resolve after a few months, I realized I needed to seek psychological care. I made a difficult commitment to leave my boys home with Acklima and drive to New York City once a week to attend group therapy. As I didn’t have the luxury of time to waste, I planned to address my issues directly and openly with the random group of individuals who gathered weekly to discuss their struggles in relationships and daily living. I wasn’t there to be smart, helpful, charming or insightful. I was there to experience the group members as mirrors, reflecting back to me the aspects of myself that caused me to struggle. Was I selfish? Inconsiderate? An inadequate mother? A likable friend? The truth would be revealed in the 90 minutes I spent each week squeezed next to relative strangers in a New York City therapist’s office.
I opened the box and found a beautiful bouquet of flowers. Checking for a card that would quell my curiosity as to the generous sender, I found that a second side of the box contained an identical bouquet of flowers. Two bouquets? I ran through the possibilities in my mind as I looked for evidence of a note. After a few minutes of unsuccessful searching, I hurried to my computer to contact The Bouqs. Soon I had my answer in the form of a message from a former patient. She wrote that as she watched her son play soccer on a warm October evening, she felt grounded and grateful for the life she had created for herself. She wanted to share her excitement and joy with me. In her note, she invited me to “share the love.” The extra bouquet was meant for me to gift to another person.
Wow was the first word that came to my mind. I was overcome with gratitude for the incredibly generous gesture and deeply moved by the awareness that a human being’s life had been permanently and positively impacted by her choice to courageously engage in a long-term therapy that challenged her thoughts, habits, beliefs, attitudes, emotional reactivity and lifestyle. She felt so full that she wanted to share her bounty with me and beyond that, for me to extend the beautiful gift to another.
The therapeutic path that led this patient to that moment on the soccer field and to the sentiments that inspired the flowers was not a smooth one. In fact, it was rocky, bumpy and meandering. One of the bumps hit us both so hard that I wasn’t sure the therapeutic relationship would recover. I want to share that experience with you, knowing that this woman’s life is full of love, joy and meaning today because she found the courage to overcome the obstacles that were preventing her from finding the authentic and intimate interpersonal relationships she desired.
When I first met Alexa*, she had just initiated the process of divorcing her husband, the father of her young children. She was angry, frustrated and distracted by a desire to find a more fulfilling love relationship. In therapy, we explored her firmly held belief system that she would never find a healthy or satisfying connection with a man. Her intense emotions ruled her life, dragging her on a roller coaster of highs and lows that were contingent upon her perceptions of how other people responded to her. If the guy texted her, she was high. If her friend didn’t respond to an invitation, she was low. She took everything personally and was unable to maintain stability in her own mood or sense of self because the waves of other people’s words and actions rocked her boat incessantly.
As her therapist, I guided her gently to return to center when she was thrown off by an interpersonal interaction. As a human being, I related to her interpersonal sensitivity. Among many other approaches I took with Alexa, I shared my own personal strategy of pretending there was an invisible ink tattoo on the inside of my forearm reading, “It’s not about you.” Although she liked the idea in theory, she maintained her entrenched belief that the circumstances she described and experienced were painful evidence of her unworthiness.
Slowly but surely, Alexa gained some distance from her self-limiting beliefs. She started working in an industry she loved, settled confidently into her life as a single mother and was moving in the direction of finding men who were more emotionally available to her. Our therapeutic relationship continued to provide a source of support and exploration for the moments when Alexa felt thrown off by the perceived slights by others. That was, until we hit the big bump.
It started off innocently enough. I have a weekly patient schedule that I adhere to almost rigidly. For some reason, that day I needed some flexibility in order to accommodate another patient or, probably more likely, one of my children. I had texted Alexa to ask if she could adjust her appointment time by 30 minutes. She responded that she couldn’t. I offered another option that would require her to adjust in a different direction. She responded by saying she would just skip the week. When I replied by offering to maintain her original time, she declined. Despite the invisible tattoo on my arm, I felt the subtle sting of rejection. I decided to address the interaction in my next session with Alexa.
I entered the conversation hoping to use the therapeutic relationship to explore a concept that Alexa struggled with: how simple interpersonal interactions can induce feelings of hurt. I intended to use the interaction between us to work in an immediate and deep way with the issues Alexa regularly brought to therapy. The session did not unfold the way I had hoped it would. As soon as I described the feelings of subtle hurt I had experienced during our process of trying to reschedule, Alexa became overwhelmed. I had underestimated the degree to which my direct expression of painful emotion would rock her boat.
At the time, Alexa was unable to tolerate the mirror reflection I held up when I took her role as the injured party in our relationship. She was shocked and reluctant to consider the possibility that she could have said or done anything that could be received as hurtful by another person. She left therapy that day confused and upset. She later sent me an email expressing her desire to “take a break.” Throughout the next few weeks, I offered Alexa every opportunity I could think of to work through the bump in our therapy. She always responded to me, which I greatly appreciated. However, her responses indicated that she was not ready to discuss the interaction and preferred to discontinue therapy.
Professionally, I understood that the therapeutic work Alexa needed to do was right there between us. I knew that seeing my interpersonal sensitivity as her own would cultivate empathy towards me and others. I sensed that if she could tolerate the shame associated with hurting my feelings, she would be able to see that other people don’t intend to hurt her, just as she didn’t intend to hurt me. I recognized that my seeming therapeutic “mistake” had placed us in the ideal therapeutic realm to profoundly shift her perspective and change her patterns of reactivity.
Personally, however, I was devastated. I felt ashamed that my own personal sensitivity had caused me to disrupt a working therapeutic relationship. I berated myself for taking the risk of speaking honestly about my own feelings in a therapy session. Despite recognizing that the intervention was accidentally and yet perfectly positioned to initiate meaningful transformation, I felt embarrassed and remorseful that my clinical judgment had caused Alexa to leave therapy. Back and forth I went, between shame and awareness, for weeks.
Finally, in her own time, Alexa contacted me with a willingness to explore what had transpired between us. I expressed my genuine gratitude, which I feel deeply to this day, that she was willing to give our relationship another chance. Gently, slowly, we entered the waters of shame and sensitivity together.
We started the conversation by focusing on how hard it had been for Alexa to hear the feedback that I had been mildly upset by her texts. The very notion that she could have upset me, even in the slightest bit, was intolerable to her, causing her to become overwhelmed with feelings of shame. In this state of overwhelming shame, Alexa was unable to comprehend how the tone of her texts, as well as the content, had affected me personally.
As Alexa explored the discomfort she had felt when I told her about my hurt, she was able to see that she had run from our relationship to avoid painful feelings and negative beliefs about herself that would have come up in the conversation. In the process of returning to therapy and directly addressing the source of her discomfort, Alexa recognized that even if she was feeling hurt, there was another person in the relationship who also might be feeling something valid.
Alexa developed the resilience necessary to participate fully and genuinely in complex human relationships. Through life experience and therapy, she learned to navigate the murky waters of interpersonal connections in which people often feel hurt or rejected even when the offending other never had any intention or awareness of inflicting pain. Most importantly, she learned that thriving in an emotionally intimate relationship requires the capacity to tolerate hearing how her words and actions impact the other person as well as the ability to express her own feelings in a clear and compassionate way.
In case you’re curious and appreciate a happy ending, Alexa found what she desired in a loving and devoted relationship.
As for me, I learned more from the “mistake” I made with Alexa than I have from hundreds of therapeutic encounters that have gone smoothly and positively. I remain humbled by the experience and by the awareness of how fragile human relationships can be. I am grateful for the reminder from my invisible tattoo to consider that on the other side of any relationship is a feeling, vulnerable being who, just like me, is trying their best to brave the waters of human connection.
I shared the second bouquet with a friend who had just lost her mother and who, coincidentally (or maybe not …), I had found my way back to after a conflict a few years ago. I took a picture of the flowers Alexa sent me and you can see their beauty and vibrancy at the top of this article. This is my way of sharing them with you, in the hopes that this story will inspire you to find your way back to a relationship that feels difficult but that you know, in your heart, will help you move towards a life full of love, a life to be grateful for.
* Alexa is not the real name of my former patient. This article was written and made public with express permission from the actual patient.