Now for the Words--Deepest, Darkest, Part 1

Deep, dark

Does this mean I have to tell you a secret?
In my professional life, I get told secrets all the time. I regard it as an honor to be the repository of people’s secrets and for some it is an important part of the treatment. I believe that many, or even all of us, feel that we carry these terrible skeletons in our closets that will drive away anyone who knows of them. These skeletons rarely are actual skeletons. To date, no one has confessed a murder to me, thank heaven.
Some people tell me of things they actually did that they find shameful; others are more ashamed of a thought, feeling or fantasy. The common theme is the shame.
The whole issue of secrets is a tricky one in therapy. I think that secrets are a necessary and often healthy part of life. But some people feel that they are obligated to tell me their secrets and it puts them in a bind. I will explain to them that they never need to rush something like this. A forced revelation is often too traumatizing. I also tell people that if anything is truly important we will get to it in the future, so there is no hurry.
What is so important about these secrets? Secrets are part of a question that people carry inside them which is whether they are truly likeable and loveable. As long as they hold back a secret or two or three, they can continue to believe that no one truly knows them for who they really are. It is a Catch 22—the secret holds them hostage to their belief that they are unacceptably ugly inside, but the secret is too shameful to be told. Amazingly, most of the secrets I am told are pretty easy to accept. There have been a few exceptions but I have never stopped respecting and liking someone because they told me a “deep, dark secret.”
In a way, I think this is because the capacity for guilt means the person has qualities that I can empathize with. Once many years ago, I treated a man for a medical condition who had been imprisoned for two murders. I found I couldn’t feel a genuine physician-patient relationship with him. He scared me and he was a thief and manipulator while in the hospital. We would diagnose such a person with anti-social personality disorder. People with this diagnosis rarely seek out therapy.
Even the few kids I see with severe behavior problems, what psychiatrists call Conduct Disorder, have the potential to improve. So I try my best to give them a fair chance, although on occasion I have had to call it a day if the lack of honesty and cooperation is too extreme. I don't think I'd ever want to treat antisocial adults. It is just not in my ability to invest enough of myself in this personality type.
I’m not sure if this essay isn’t too frank to post on my blog so I am going to save it for another day. Maybe one day it will lead somewhere.

Addendum: Obviously I decided to post it after all. The comments on my previous post suggested that I should go ahead and stick my neck out a little. We'll have to see how it goes.

Wordless Wednesday

Moody Monday--Indecent

Given my resolution to never post anything my kids will kill me for later, I thought I did not have a photo for this meme. Yesterday I was taking photos of some lovely homes on Michigan Avenue on the south side of Chicago and saw this advertisement on the bus stop. It was in such poor taste that I couldn't resist photographing it. I didn't realize it fit the meme until just now. Eddie Murphy, shame on you for stooping so low!

One Warbler Warbling

I was in my front yard today when I heard a bird singing its little heart out. The song was clearly coming from the tree in front of the neighbor's house but I didn't have my glasses on. The robin nearby in the tree I could see but I knew it wasn't singing this particular song. I recruited my husband who is a better birder than I and he brought the binos.
Even I know that it is hard to identify warblers. This bird was quite obliging. He continued to sing on the same branch while I got my camera and tried for a few shots. He next allowed me to go upstairs, remove the screen from the window, lean out and locate him, set up my tripod and take his picture a few more times before he flew away. The extra steadiness my tripod gives me allowed me to enlarge the photo a few times so I can actually see the bird.
My husband thinks he might be a juvenile. I think he's cute. I wish I could have recorded the song which was quite complex and "warbling."
If I keep up all this bird photography I know I'm going to start salivating over a zoom lens before long. I have plenty to learn with the lenses and technology I have before I do any more shopping.

Deep, Dark 2

This is my second version of deep, dark, (this week's Sunday Scribblings prompt), the one which does not refer to secrets except perhaps as a childlike metaphor. The first draft I wrote was about secrets and my profession and I wasn’t sure if I should post it. I didn’t reveal anything confidential but I’m learning that when I get too “shrinky” my posts may distress a few people.
During my childhood, we moved frequently. I calculated once, I had around 16 homes in my first 16 years. I wasn’t a military child, but my parents divorced when I was 6 and there was a bit of downward mobility afterward as well as the inevitable weekend and holiday visitation with my father, the non-custodial parent.
There was one house we lived in that had a special meaning for me. It was the house we owned from when I was around 4 or 5 years old until after my parents divorced and my mother sold the house and moved us to the first of many apartments. This house was built on the side of a hill at the base of a deep ravine. We literally could look up and see a bridge passing overhead far above us. The hill was so steep that both the ground floor and the basement had full length windows on one side.
Our house had a grass yard, a vegetable garden (there is a picture of me and my father next to some gigantic sunflowers), and a stream in the back. I spent hours wading in the stream, attempting to dam it, exploring up and downstream. There was a deeper bit that passed through pipes under the road. I think I went through the pipes a few times but I was scared of the crawfish in the deeper parts. Some kid once told me that they would bite my toes off.
The hillside above our house was forested and had a cave that we called the “bat cave.” It was a small, dirt cave leading into the hill. This cave fascinated me, of course. I had been warned never to enter it due to the risk of cave-ins. This time, as many times later in life, my good sense overcame my spirit of adventure and I never did go in. I’ll never know now what treasure it contained or if bats did indeed roost there. It probably was a dirty, stinky hole that didn’t lead anywhere but in my memory it leads to a part of my past that will never be forgotten.
I miss that house. I’ve driven the bridge over the ravine a number of times since I’ve been an adult but I haven’t yet taken the side roads to see if it is still there. Perhaps it is the deep, dark cave I am not allowed to enter. But I hold out hope that one day I will knock on someone’s door and say, I used to live here back in the 1960’s. I hope they will give me a tour. Perhaps I’ll check out the bat cave too. If that is still there, there probably wasn’t much risk of cave-in after all.

Google product in Beta

If you haven't seen this product you should check it out. Go to the following link, http://www.google.com/tisp/ and read the information. And no I'm not setting you up to download a virus or Trojan Horse or anything malignant.

2 photos

OK, photo number one is for the See It Sunday theme--cool. This is an example of my "drive by shooting" series, i.e. taken from the car while stopped at a stop light.



Photo number 2 comes with a request. Does anyone know what kind of a spider this is? I've never seen one with a body like this. First I thought it was a seed (the end looks like one). It also reminds me a bit of a hermit crab with all the colored legs clustered at one end. Snail--don't let me down.