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Meanwhile, in my therapy work with college students, clients with similar experiences were presenting themselves. The following two young women came in for counseling around this same time. And my work with them was an essential part of the development of these ideas for disentangling. Several days after I saw Elizabeth, Anne, Charlotte, and Mark, I saw these students for therapy.
Lindsey
Lindsey is a nineteen-year-old college junior with beautiful blonde hair and a long, tall figure. She has excellent grades and a full scholarship to college. She told me in her intake session that she has a history of bulimia, for which she was hospitalized in high school. She is not bulimic now, but does have a tendency to over-exercise. She also tends toward obsessive thinking. She seems to have a lot of insight and motivation to work in therapy.
When she first came to see me several weeks ago, she explained that she was feeling “really unfocused . . . pulled in all directions.” Fairly quickly on the heels of this she told me, “This summer I realized that my mother is alcoholic.” Her mother denies that she has a problem with alcohol. Her mother is divorced from Lindsey’s father and lives on her own. Her mother can be emotional and dependent on Lindsey for advice and support. She can also be very critical of Lindsey.
Today Lindsey is feeling a lot of confusion about how to handle this relationship with her mother, even though it is long-distance. Breaks from college find her spending her time at home with her mother. Financially, she is still dependent on her as well. And at a more basic level, Lindsey would simply like to have a good relationship with her mother.
She is quite torn and confused. Like Charlotte, Lindsey is pulled in different directions. On one hand, she wants very much to help her mother in whatever ways are needed. She wants very much for her mother to be happy, saying, “If she was happy, I’d be happier.” On the other hand, Lindsey says, “She’s crazy, and she makes me feel like I’m crazy.” Lindsey states that her mother’s negative views about things “rub off on me.”
No wonder that Lindsey feels “pulled in all directions.”
Her personal goals include becoming more self-aware and less confused without feeling like she’s “abandoning my family.”
Trish
Later in the afternoon on this same day, Trish comes for her fifth appointment with me. Trish is an eighteen-year-old college freshman. She is a petite young woman with short, bouncy hair. She has a sweet smile and a very tentative way of speaking and presenting her self. She acknowledges being shy and having a history of being picked on and teased.
Trish entered therapy because of adjustment problems to college life. She described feeling both anxious and depressed since starting college. In our initial session, she described having trouble breathing at times and feeling “so dark inside.” Many of her issues seemed to focus around peer relationships. She described her self as worrying a great deal about the question “Do people like me?” She said she had this problem in high school, but it had gotten better. “This insecurity thing came back when I got to college. . . . I’m afraid that if people really know me, they won’t like me.”
As part of her history, Trish has told me about a difficult relationship with her father. Trish’s mother and father divorced when she was eleven, and she has had regular visitation with her father. She describes him as demanding and controlling. Trish has tried for years to feel like she is pleasing him but believes she is “never good enough.” Trish has said to me that she still hopes that “maybe I’ll get him to really like me.”
Today, however, Trish wants to talk about her attachment to a peer on her campus, an attachment that is making her feel obsessed and frustrated. Trish describes an intense interest in this person who lives near her. The person parties a lot, studies very little, and comes to Trish’s room to borrow her things. Trish is aware that this is a “bad relationship” for her in that it leaves her feeling inadequate and not okay. She states that she tries hard to “conform” to what she thinks this other person wants her to be. She states, “I’m hooked. . . . I have no life outside of her.” Trish is aware of all of these thoughts and feelings but expresses an inability to do anything different. Her healthy self states that one of her therapy goals is to find her own identity, to be able to say, “This is me, and I’m okay with me.”
And then there are also teenagers working on these same issues in counseling. Many have surfaced over the years in my private practice work, but one case in particular has been with me through the development of this disentangling work and is rich in details of lostness and growth.
Rebecca
Rebecca is a sixteen-year-old sophomore in high school. She is a pretty, petite young woman who is bright and articulate. We have been working together for two years. Rebecca first came to see me after being raped by an acquaintance while on a beach vacation with her parents. She was very depressed and convinced that “it was all my fault.” She was being “harsh” on her self about what happened to her. She was tearful, moody, and having some flashbacks from the rape. Just prior to our first appointment, she made a suicidal gesture of cutting on her wrist with a razor. I facilitated her hospitalization, which stabilized her in a matter of days, and she returned to our community and began her therapy work with me.
Rebecca’s work over these two years has helped her greatly with exploring and starting to form her identity. She has become more stable in her moods and more accepting of her self. She continues to work on relationships, particularly intimacy. She knows she has a tendency to jump in with both feet really fast, and in so doing scares others away. She can be too open, allowing her self to be vulnerable often to the wrong people. She has come to know that she can too easily “self-sabotage.”
And she often describes her self as “an extremist,” meaning that she goes from one extreme to the other, and that she is all-or-nothing no matter what the situation or relationship may be. “Extreme in everything I do,” she says. “My grades have to be perfect, and everything has to be up to my standards of everything-is-under-control. I can’t stand to not be understood or for there to be a problem. I have to solve things immediately.”
Today Rebecca is struggling with the ending of her relationship with her first real boyfriend. She has been with Ben for a year and a half. The relationship has been relatively stable and supportive, tender, and kind. This fall, however, Ben moved with his family to their new home about four hours away. After one month there, his relationship with Rebecca began to fall apart as their lives took different directions. Over the month of November, they have been struggling with what to do with their relationship now. Ben has expressed his wanting to end it; Rebecca wants to keep it.
Today Rebecca tells me she has received a letter from Ben saying, “I’ve fallen out of love with you. . . . Give me some space.”
Rebecca is distraught. “He never loved me. I’m absolutely baffled with life. I haven’t even grasped it. It hurts like a bitch!”
She is depressed and consumed with this problem. “I missed the PSATs on Saturday because I was arguing with him. I’ve missed lots of classes and am behind on my work. And I don’t want to get high, but I’m weak now and probably will.”
And she goes further: “I can’t deal with this. I feel like I have no control. I never realized how obsessive I am. My thoughts always drift to ‘it’s not worth it.’ I get in these fits. If I had
