As anyone who has been paying attention, it must be obvious, I have been doing a lot of therapy lately. Well, maybe not a lot-lot. I don’t want to parse words, I think it depends on what an average persons definition of therapy is and what going to see a therapist a lot of times would be. I know some people who have never in their lives been to therapy, and I know some people who go daily. Either of those examples would have a skewed definition of a lot.
Plus, the therapist I have been seeing, Dr. Benzo Meesvian, only requires one visit. I have seen him 3 times, not that once was not enough, it was probably about 40 minutes too much on that initial visit. The last two visits have been for the magazines. I show up early, sit in the waiting room and catch on Us Weekly, People Magazine, Sports Illustrated and I read the cartoons in The New Yorker. I’ll be honest with you, even when I have the time, I rarely read the articles in the New Yorker, I am not sure why.
The second time I went to see Dr. Meesvian he was actually surprised to see me in his waiting room. “Catching up on your readings I see,” he said to me as a way of introduction and then he saw it was me and he said, “hey, it’s you.”
We went back to his office and he again explained the fundamental aspects of his therapeutic approach, that is since he has yet to invent a time machine, anything in the past can not be fixed, can’t go back and kill the molesting uncle or the roofie using frat boy or the mom who just could not show enough affection, so “forget about the bullshit of yesteryear.” That’s what he says.
The rest of that initial hour is generally spent talking about baseball. Dr. Meesvian is much more than a fan of the game, he is an addict. He is a big stats guy, knows scores, team averages and even travels to games in distant cities to watch games he finds of importance. I found this disturbing, but he is the therapist, I am just a guy who likes to read magazines.
During my second session we talked basketball. Dr. Meesvian hates Labron James with a passion I found a little disturbing. I don’t care one way or another. After about 40 minutes of talking about basketball, the good doctor looked at his clock, said something about how it looks like we need to call it a session, hoped that everything would be OK and took down all my insurance information and validated my parking. As he walked into the waiting room, he greeted the young woman sitting there reading People Magazine with “Catching up the your reading I see.”
I once dated a woman in Los Angeles who could have used hours and hours of intensive therapy, for she was burdened with all sorts of demons, from a drunken mother who honestly hated her, to a brother who found her sexually compatible. Some of these things could never have been dealt with in an hour of Dr. Meesvian’s office and she was one of those people who smiled a lot and said she just did not believe in therapy. In retrospect I laugh at people like her, kind of like people who don’t believe the world is round. Why?
If she could just avoid therapy, avoid confronting those demons and working around the damage inflicted by family and others, she could continue that plastic smile and a life filled with false relationships and a search for emptiness. I know a few people like this, waddle through life and pretend that the muck that is slowing them down is not muck at all, or it is the muck everyone else is waddling through, even when it is painfully obvious it is not.
Then again, I know the polar opposites too. I have a friend who seeks therapy in offices, at group sessions and at AA meetings, even though she has been “clean” for over a decade. At this point, while I am sure she considers herself still under the spell of the evil disease of alcoholism, what I think she really likes to do is talk about herself. Her new addiction is talking about every aspect of the minutia of her life and since her life is all about therapy and meetings, it’s not all that interesting, so when I do bother to meet her for a dinner or something, I am almost always bored because her story has become one long drawn out soap opera of therapeutic poop, dumped onto whatever plate I happen to be eating off of.
Which is the other reason I enjoy the sessions with Dr. Meesvian. Sure, the magazines are what draw me in, but it is also the reality that the past really is the past, and without that damn time machine, it remains unassailable. What I have often found remarkable and ironic in my life is that someone like friend one who could use almost 24 hour a day therapy to remove herself from a childhood of neglect and abuse, but finds a smile and an attitude of moving forward more convenient as a coping mechanism. On the other hand, friend two spends a portion of her daily existence in either therapy or therapeutic meetings discussing the minutia of her very existence with such glee and a lack of honesty that it is almost certainly not having its intended affect, which only makes me shake my head, pick up the issue of People Magazines Sexiest man alive and forget the reason I am once again the waiting room of Dr. Meesvian, brain healer and shoe salesman.
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