Pissed Off
The other day someone came to see me and my session with him
left me with a bag of mixed emotions that I’m still trying to swim my way
through and decipher.
The first thing he told me when he came in was that he was covered
by Blue Cross. I informed him that how it works with Blue Cross is that clients
pay me directly, then they submit their receipt for
reimbursement.
His face fell. It was obvious he didn’t have the funds but it
was also obvious he wasn’t in a very good place emotionally.
“Have a seat,” I said. “We will go ahead anyway.”
I saw him for 1.5 hours and eventually I was able to calm
him down enough so he could talk but it was difficult to get information from
him. He was experiencing a lot of fear and anxiety and jumped from one thing to
another never finishing what he had started saying, leaving me to fill in the
blanks and connect the dots. But, eventually pieces of the puzzle started to
drop into place and it soon became evident that the client I was dealing with
was a perpetrator.
My mind flashed back to my training when we were asked,
“What kind of clients do you know you won’t be able to work with?” My answer - someone
who commits sexual crimes.
Now that person was sitting in my office, in the safe space
I had created for him so he could trust me enough to open up and I was sitting
with the knowledge that I would have to tell him I wasn’t the right person to
help him. I wondered how I would do that when I didn’t have much to offer him
to reach out for and grab on to because there was no where to send him to get the
immediate and long term help he needed.
A strange mixture of anger, frustration and a deep
compassion mixed with a desperate need to understand and make sense of things
was bubbling up inside me. I was filled with a combination of opposites each
fighting to hold their ground and come out on top.
My brain was trying hard to understand and make sense of how
a person can do to others what others did to them, mixed with a genuine
compassion for this man’s pain as he sat in the chair in front of me nervously
running his hand back and forth through his hair, trying hard to hold back the
tears escaping from his eyes and to hide the pain written all over his face.
I wanted to hold the 12-year-old boy who had been sent to a
someone who would teach him a lesson and make him tow the line and who sexually
assaulted him to make sure he learnt the lesson well. I congratulated the adult
for having survived, for having come this far, and for seeking help now and I
encouraged him not to give up. But I was pissed too!
Pissed at the gall-damn abuse and the cycle it often
perpetuates, the hurt and harm it causes, and the many lives left drowning in a
slew of guilt, shame and inner turmoil.
Pissed that it sometimes takes years and
years to reach out for help from something that should never have happened in
the first place.
And pissed that unless a person has enough money to pay for
services themselves, they fall through the cracks because centers like PACE and
Mental Health are too full, employees are over worked and over scheduled, and the
waiting period is often months and months long.
And, when a person finally does
get in, they will likely get bounced around from one person to the next every
time they go in.
Yet, I knew I wouldn’t be the best person to help him. I
could receive his pain in the moment, but I had to refer him on, encourage him
to not give up in reaching out and pray that he would find the help he needed.
That the journey to healing can be so difficult and that it causes so much pain to a person and to others along the
way also pisses me off and leaves me reeling with a mixture of emotions.
Life can
be hard sometimes.
