CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR
2004- Patterns & Signs
That breakthrough I had in Group spurred the recovery team to ramp up my one-on-one sessions. My case manager invited me to a formal meeting and walked me through the revised treatment plan. Apparently, all the good work I’d be doing in Group led the review team to feel I was ready for some deeper work.
“This is a hugely positive sign, Eula!” my case manager told me. “You’ve made fantastic progress!”
I was game, I guess.
They assigned me a primary therapist, Dr. Gwen Rosenbaum, a motherly looking lady in her mid 60s. Definitely a New Yorker- can’t hide that accent! During our initial meeting, the first thing I wanted to ask her was Yankees or Mets, but I decided to keep my defensive jokes to myself and meet her on fresh footing.
Dr. Rosenbaum (“call me Gwen”) was really good at figuring out my patterns and signs- the things I did over and over again and what triggered me to repeat the negative behavior. I kinda hated to think that I was that easy to figure out, but at the same time relieved that someone actually could.
We spent the first two sessions going over my entire life history from my first childhood memory (age three, crying because my ice cream cone wasn’t big enough- I swear to god) all the way through saying good-bye to my brother at the rehab intake desk.
Gwen patiently listened to it all, taking extensive notes. Every so often she’d interject a clarifying question (“how did that make you feel?”) or a request for me to revisit a memory and examine it from a different angle (“if you had to live that moment right now, is there anything you’d do differently?”), but for the most part it was just me talking and her quiet presence and calming energy sitting across from me.
I am not a therapy person but from the first session, I really felt that Gwen knew what she was doing. With her, I was willing to “trust the process.” She was motherly, but nothing like my mother. Which was a good thing.
I knew Gwen saw through the way I spun my tales – my love of banter, my self-deprecation. But for the first few sessions, she allowed me to just be me, completely and without comment. Eventually she raised the notion that perhaps my way of positioning myself, my offensive defense, was not the most effective way of making sure my needs were met.
I left every session with my head spinning, but also feeling like my insides had been steam cleaned. As soon as I it was time for me to take an “activity break,” I immediately hit the pool to grind out as many laps as possible.
