out and started screaming at the top of my lungs.” I thought for a moment and gave Natalie a chance to compose herself. Even in the telling of the story, she was clearly agitated.
“It sounds like it was a very uncomfortable and embarrassing moment,” I said.
She nodded, feeling understood. I paused for a moment.
“Natalie, do you have any memories of sexual abuse?” The blood drained from her face, and she slowly nodded. “I can’t help but wonder if this has to do with everything that is happening to you.”
“But I am so frustrated! All I have are these vague memories—I tell myself that it didn’t happen. But maybe it was my grandfather. My parents were also members of this weird swingers group; about every two weeks or so they would go down into the basement with other couples.” She sighed heavily, a long world-weary, hopeless exhalation. “I don’t know . . .” She trailed off and looked at me bewildered. Then suddenly, she teared up. Natalie sat up instantly in her chair, agitated. “I just want it to all go away. Is there some way you can hypnotize me and just make it all go away?”
“I’m sorry, Natalie. I wish I could. It’s not quite that simple.” I said.
“But if I can’t remember it, how can I ever get over it?” she said, her voice cracking, an octave higher.
“Well, there is good news. Some of the techniques I use can be very helpful in resolving these issues, even if we don’t have a specific memory to work from.”
Her chin down, her eyes tilted up, hopefully. “I just feel like I am going crazy.”
“I don’t think so. I actually think you are getting better.”
“What?” asked Natalie, incredulously.
“I think that evil you felt in you wasn’t some kind of dark spirit. I think it is more likely that it is the rage that has been pent up in you for years.”
As I continued to go through her family history with Natalie, she talked at length about her parents, who were largely absent. Her dad worked all the time and was rarely seen, except to dole out criticism and punishment. Her mother, Natalie reported, rarely even cooked dinner for the family and took root on the couch every night. Many nights Natalie went to the refrigerator only to find it empty. “I might as well have been invisible for all they cared.”
“Do you ever get upset with your husband John? Are you afraid he doesn’t see you?” I asked.
“Oh, all the time! He is a great guy, and I know he loves me, but he can get so wrapped up in his job or a football game that I think he forgets that I am in the house.”
“Given your childhood, can you see why that would upset you?”
“Yes, of course . . . but John really does see me and cares about me. He is different from my parents. But he says I am overly dramatic about everything. Maybe he is right. What’s wrong with me? He probably doesn’t deserve that I am so hard on him sometimes.”
“Maybe not,” I said gently. “But I can certainly see why it would be touchy for you.”
At eleven years old, Natalie moved in with her Aunt Billie and things got much better.
“She was the mother I never had.”
“I am glad that you found some respite from your parents and the swingers. When you were little, what do you think would have happened if you had gotten angry at your parents?”
“Are you kidding me? They would have just made fun of me. Mom probably would have hit me. It would have made everything even worse.”
In a subsequent session, we used a Brainspotting technique to desensitize the “fire in the belly” anxiety that had plagued Natalie for months. (We will explore brainspotting at length in Chapter Seven.) As we worked, I asked her to notice what was happening in her body physically. She reported an energy, almost nauseatingly sick, that wanted to come up, while another energy in her fought to keep it down.
“I HATE this part! I wish it would go away!” she growled, her eyes tearing up.
“How far back has this battle inside you been going on?” I asked.
“As long as I can remember!”
“What would happen if you let this energy out?”
“It would be awful, terrible, something evil would happen,” Natalie revealed in horrified tones.
“Like what?”
“Someone will get hurt,” she said menacingly. “I just want to kill myself.”
“Why?” I questioned.
“Because, I am so evil!” Natalie was utterly convinced.
“What if you are not evil? What if you are just angry?”
Natalie couldn’t answer that, but by the end of the extended session, the pain and intensity of the fire were dramatically reduced. Natalie said the emotions were all still there, but the physical discomfort had been cut in half. She felt better for the first time in months. I told her that there was still more work to do, but I thought it was likely that she would feel even better when the emotions settled down and she got a good night’s sleep. In my experience, there can be a raw quality to more intense therapy sessions when they were immediately finished that fades within a few hours. But on the off chance that she needed me, I gave her my cell phone number and told her to call me.
That Friday afternoon, I had no idea how glad I would be that Natalie had my cell phone number.
I was halfway through cooking one of my famous Saturday morning homemade omelets, when the phone rang. It was Natalie. “Oh my God! It’s back. The evil is back! John was teasing Donny and playing “tickle monster,” and when he came after Donny, I just freaked out. I mean, Donny was smiling, he wasn’t upset . . . but all of a sudden I wanted to kill someone when I saw that . . . and then I wanted to kill myself!”
I tried to think on my feet, wishing I had put an extra scoop of French Roast in the coffeepot. I was in Chef Gregg breakfast mode, not quite ready to staff the suicide prevention hotline. But reaching into my psyche’s closet, I managed to grasp my therapist ball cap and snap it firmly on my head.
“Natalie, take a deep breath,” I said, taking one myself. “I am so sorry. I know this is frightening.” I could hear her exhale. I needed to take her temperature. “Do you really think that you will kill someone?”
She paused thoughtfully.
“No, I mean . . . I would never kill anybody. It’s more like I am AFRAID that I am going to kill someone, and then I just want to die. Does that even make sense?”
“Perfect sense,” I replied.
“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice choking. I could hear the sheer panic in her expression. “Do I need to go to the hospital?”
“No, I don’t think so, but I think we need to meet as soon as possible,” I said. “Is John there?” I asked,
