I was stunned, as was Tim, at the hard-line stance taken by this gentle man. Clearly Dr. Padgett meant business. There was no doubt in either of our minds that the doctor would follow through on everything he said if he felt it were necessary. White-faced and shaking, I tried to open my mouth and say something, to cry, to protest—anything. But nothing came out.
“This isn't cruelty, Rachel,” Dr. Padgett said, maintaining his firm edge. “You might think that it is. But it isn't a punishment, and I'm not abandoning you. The more you lose control, the worse it gets. You're playing with fire here. Therapy isn't a luxury for you. It is a matter of life or death.”
His voice softened a bit. “I care about you very much,” he said. “I think I've shown you that. I'll do whatever I have to do, no matter how harsh it might seem to you right now, to act in your best interests, to protect you and your family from your biggest threat—yourself. I'm not going to sugarcoat or play games with this. This is your life we're talking about here. I made a promise to stay with you through the worst of times. And I'm keeping it.”
Dr. Padgett made his points compellingly and transformed the course of our therapy in a single consultation that lasted less than thirty minutes. It would be years until I fully comprehended the courage that his stand had entailed. It had been a tremendous risk on his part, given my erratic state of mind at the time. I could have chosen that abbreviated but shocking session as the catalyst for suicide or as a reason to terminate therapy completely—dumping him before he dumped me first (which I was convinced was inevitable).
However, it worked. Many more moments of suicidal ideation would come, many more angry rages. Through all of them, however, I would somehow manage to maintain at least some contact with reality, albeit with only a precarious link at times.
That single abbreviated session, nearly four months after our first meeting, was when the real work of psychoanalysis began in earnest.
Inherent in our work together was delving into the issues of childhood. Still, it was difficult for me to look past the airbrushed portrait of my childhood. I clung to it in desperation to avoid the hell it had really been. I had invented my own version and repeated it so frequently that it had become my truth. I had been the favored child, the precious baby of the family. Daddy's little girl, the highest achiever, the one my parents were most proud of.
Mine had been a fortunate childhood, wanting for nothing. I'd had the advantage of the best private schools. Dad took care of everything for us kids. I'd always perceived myself as lucky. I'd been convinced that any internal anguish I might have felt was because I was somehow born defective. It was the only way I could explain living amid all this richness and love yet being unable to fully appreciate it.
Okay, so maybe Dad had pulled out the belt here and there. He'd raised his voice, said some things, lost his temper. But he'd been an important man, providing well for us and dealing with the daily stresses of a successful business. I'd been proud of him. He'd been strict, maybe sometimes a little too strict, but he'd done so with the best of intentions, not wanting us to grow to be “too big for our britches.” He hadn't hit me as much as he did the others. I was Daddy's little girl.
And yes, Mom had gotten upset a lot too. Her strikes hadn't been as powerful as Dad's, so she'd thrown things. Sometimes she had hysterical tirades and tearful fits that didn't seem to make sense. But once again, these had been directed more frequently at my older siblings than me. There had been lots of feigned illnesses. Lots of times she'd enlisted Dad to take over and mete out the punishment. I hadn't thought too much of this. That was just the way Mom had been. She was weak, perhaps, but harmless. And often I'd been in the position, as the youngest child, for her to confide in me about the great pain caused to her by my older brothers and sisters. This role that had made me feel special and strong. She'd needed me.
Case closed, Dr. Padgett. My childhood wasn't perfect, but whose was?
Dr. Padgett, however, knew that there was much more to my childhood than I would dare recall. He also knew that if I didn't face the truth, I would never be free.
It was a difficult task indeed, as my loyalties, by then, were divided. I'd grown to depend on Dr. Padgett as much as I had depended on my parents. I felt as if, somehow, I was being forced to choose. It was a painful dilemma.
“I love them, Dr. Padgett,” I told him, “and I know they love me. How could I feel that way still if it had been so horrible back then?”
Whereupon, he told me the duck-test story.
“Some scientists were conducting an experiment,” he said, “trying to gauge the impact of abuse on children. Ducks, like people, develop bonds between mother and young. They call it imprinting. So the scientists set out to test how that imprint bond would be affected by abuse.
“The control group was a real mother duck and her ducklings. For the experimental group, the scientist used a mechanical duck they had created—feathers, sound, and all—which would, at timed intervals, peck the ducklings with its mechanical beak. A painful peck, one a real duck would not give. They varied these groups. Each group was pecked with a different level of frequency. And then they watched the ducklings grow and imprint bond with their mother.
“Over time,” he went on, “the ducklings in the control group would waddle along behind their mother. But as they grew, there would be more distance between them. They'd wander and explore.
“The ducklings with the pecking mechanical mother, though, followed much more closely. Even the scientists were stunned to discover that the group that bonded and followed most closely was the one that had been pecked repeatedly with the greatest frequency. The more the ducklings were pecked and abused, the more closely they followed. The scientists repeated the experiment and got the same results.”
It was a compelling story that resonated within me. Even I had to admit the possibility that my fierce loyalty to my parents may not have been because I wasn't abused, but because I had been. It was frightening. My airbrushed memories of the past hid a reality I'd spent a lifetime avoiding, a truth so painful that I had considered death to be a preferable option to facing it. My father hadn't spared me because I was Daddy's little girl. It was because he worked such long hours and because I had witnessed so much I had become adept at avoiding him. Often his explosive violence had been irrational and triggered by the slightest provocation: a facial expression he found disrespectful, tears he didn't want to see, any expression of emotion he didn't have patience for. And the rules changed all the time. Something that could bring him to smile or laugh one day could provoke him to angrily pull off his belt a few days or hours later.
In truth I'd been unable to completely avoid his explosive temper either. I had just become a master of concealing emotion, making myself virtually invisible when I thought I saw an explosion coming. I blamed my own inadequacies when I failed to escape.
Dad had been far harsher on his daughters than his sons, particularly verbally. To a man who coveted control and saw any emotion, particularly tears, as weakness, his daughters could provoke the worst in him. In his mind women were weak, manipulative, overemotional, and inferior. The special bond I'd felt with him was not as Daddy's little girl, but as my best attempt at being Daddy's little boy. This realization helped explain why I had always hated being female.
Adopting the hatred of femininity from my father, I'd viewed my mother this way as well. Granted, she could be nurturing at times, and sometimes I could feel great love for her. But I could not recall having ever respected her. I'd seen her as everything negative Dad claimed was inherent in being female. And I'd vowed to be nothing at all like her.
It was hardest of all to admit that my mother had a great impact on my life, which continued to affect me years after I'd left home. She'd given the appearance that Dad was in control when all the while she'd been a matriarch in her own right, a more powerful figure than I'd cared to admit. Highly dependent upon my father for many of the simplest tasks or crises, she didn't want to share him
with any of us. So she took the role of gatekeeper, a medium of sorts, listening to the things we wanted to tell him, the feelings we wanted to share, and responded by telling us her own rendition of “how Dad felt,” as if Dad could not speak for himself. She'd created distorted or fictitious stories, twisting our words to Dad so that he would come home and discipline us upon her command. She'd helped plant the seeds for my airbrushed portrait of life as it had been, repeating the mantras so often I believed them to be true.
It had been critical to her to get as much of Dad's time as was possible with his workaholic lifestyle. Thus she had feigned illnesses and twisted events that had occurred before his arrival home to become terrible things “we had done to her.” Then she quietly left the room as Daddy pulled off the belt—the knight in shining armor rushing to the aid of the damsel in distress. She'd done the same thing with me and my siblings, pitting one against the other, endlessly comparing and contrasting and playing upon the natural rivalries until we were a family of brothers and sisters who seldom associated with each other. She'd made herself the center of it all. She, too, had shared Dad's view of the inherent inferiority of females and thus had openly favored her sons; she viewed her daughters as competition for Dad's affection.
Dreams and fantasies smashed to pieces. Violent and angry defenses turned to seemingly inconsolable sorrow. Why had Dr. Padgett insisted upon opening this box? So what if it was the truth? What purpose had it served? Why couldn't he have left well enough alone?
Now I was not just filled with self-loathing and anger, but also despair. The bubble had been irrevocably burst, and I feared my vulnerability. I began to wonder if any feelings or beliefs I had were genuine or if everything was an illusion.
One day during this period I was lying in bed and began to examine my thighs. They appeared huge, dimpled, and growing. Fat. Soft. Weak. Like Mom. How had I lost track of this? When had I lost self-control? Filled with disgust, I vowed that this, at least, was one thing about myself I could change. Dad had despised fat daughters, and I knew that Dr. Padgett must secretly harbor the same disgust. Thus a little before the Thanksgiving holiday, my diet began.
At five feet, six inches, and 140 pounds, I knew I needed to lose at least ten of them. Perhaps fifteen or twenty. I'd been cautious about diets ever since the adolescent episode when my weight had plunged to a skeletal 75 pounds. I had managed to lose the “baby fat” after childbirth successfully without going to extremes. I was convinced that this time I would be able to manage as well.
Chapter 6
Early winter was a time of hard work. To help dig our way out of the financial hole, I did as much freelance accounting work as I could. I stepped up my volunteer activities in the church. For once the house was immaculate. I purchased several of the latest exercise videos and faithfully worked out to them each day, often doing two or more workouts in succession.
This same fierce motivation and drive became a part of therapy. Determined to make the most effective use of every session, I'd stopped arguing with Dr. Padgett. I worked hard to reveal my thoughts and fears, explore the past, and understand the insights offered by the doctor and myself.
The work of therapy was not confined to sessions. Nearly each day I would write for hours, reflecting and analyzing even further. I would often stay up until one or two in the morning preparing for therapy by reading psychoanalytic books and becoming well-versed in its terminology.
On the diet front, the scale was moving in the right direction. I was losing weight and was filled with drive, energy, and a sense of control. Everything was coming together. I could feel the “old me” returning, the “can-do” me. Transformed and confident, I was determined I would overcome my problems. I had the will.
In sessions Dr. Padgett began to rehash old terms, introduce new ones, and point out examples each time one occurred. Old academic terminology started making sense.
“Transference” was happening when I made Dr. Padgett a substitute for someone else in my life—an important person from my early years when I'd been afraid to respond. By uncovering these buried feelings, we could explore them more closely.
The “blank screen” explained why Dr. Padgett maintained relative anonymity and lacked emotional reactions. The less he revealed about himself, the more transference was fostered.
“Black-and-white thinking” was based on absolute extremes—natural in very young children but unsettling in adult relationships. I saw people as either good or evil. When they were “good,” I vaulted them to the top of a pedestal. They could do no wrong, and I loved them with all of my being. When they were “bad,” they became objects of scorn and revenge.
In relationships with those closest to me, the “good” and “bad” assessments could alternate wildly, sometimes from one hour to the next. The unrealistic expectations of perfection that came with the good-guy pedestal were destined to be unfulfilled, which led to disappointment and a sense of betrayal.
“All-or-nothing thinking” and “splitting” came in tandem with black-and-white thinking. Every strong feeling was not only absolute, but eternal. It didn't matter if a person close to me had occupied the pedestal ten minutes ago and been the object of my abundant love. When the emotions changed, it was as if that love had never existed and the hatred I felt today would be the way I felt forever. The means by which I coped with these alternating extremes was called splitting. If I couldn't get what I needed or expected from either Tim or Dr. Padgett because I was in the throes of bitter anger at one of them, I would turn to the other one in his stead. It was the only way I could bear such wildly vacillating emotions about the people to whom I was closest and expected the most.
“Projection” occurred when I assumed my thoughts were their thoughts, my motivations their motivations. If I angrily accused Dr. Padgett of hating me and wishing I'd just “snap out of it,” it was because I hated myself and wished I could snap out of it. I was most likely to project my deepest fears and feelings of self-hatred because they were simply too disturbing to acknowledge within myself.
When a person close to me fell off the good-guy pedestal, my initial reaction (through the clouded eyes of my impossible expectations) was rage and betrayal. I felt the horrifying fear of abandonment. Dr. Padgett described the anger coupled with the desperate clinging as “I hate you, don't leave me.”
All of these theoretical terms made sense. I became adept at pointing them out and expounding upon them with intellectual ease. I was a prized pupil aiming to please. If I could grasp all the terminology and processes, I could intellectually conquer my problems.
Thinking came easily to me. But it also kept me at an emotional distance. It was as if I were watching a play, discussing the plot, finding the meaning, but forgetting that I was the central character, and that it was real.
This strategy was not lost on Dr. Padgett, who began to mention that the intellectualizing was actually a form of defense. I didn't want to feel. I was using a barricade of jargon to repress all of the childhood feelings and hide behind a facade of sophisticated adulthood.
By the time I'd reached my goal of 120 pounds, I knew that my “diet” wasn't like the two I'd successfully managed after childbirth. Instead it was an echo from my anorexia of 1978: the isolation, obsession, and the detachment from relationships in favor of frenetic activity. The number on the scale told me it was time to begin eating regularly again. Yet the mere sight of a plateful of a nondiet meal filled me with nausea. I couldn't bring myself to eat it, or I would just sample a small portion and shove the plate away, claiming I was full. Eating a candy bar would lead to hours of unbearable self-recrimination as I watched my thighs “expand” before my very eyes. The only relief came with skipping the next meal and doing a triple workout. It was a penance of sorts. Only a scale reading the same or lower granted me absolution.
Tim, aware of my adolescent history and postbaby diets, was concerned. He began to ask if I was taking this one too far. So I began lying, dumping platefuls of mashed
potatoes in the trash when he wasn't looking, carefully obscuring it behind a paper towel or discarded cereal box. I'd claim I had the flu or a big snack right before dinner. Lies.
I didn't need a psychiatrist to tell me what this was. I wasn't in denial. I was aware of it but was unable to control it.
Feeling in the grips of something beyond my control, I continued my pattern of openness with Dr. Padgett and filled him in on my discovery.
“Dr. Padgett,” I said, “I know I'm at a normal weight right now. I don't look like I'm emaciated or anything. But I'm anorexic, and I know it. I can remember it so clearly from back then, and this is the exact same thing. What do I do?” Humble penitent to the confessor again, I was turning myself in. I expected my father's threatening reaction, my friends' nagging, or Tim's fear.
Perhaps Dr. Padgett knew how I would react to any of these—see the threats as persecution, ignore the nagging or invest it with ill motives, or revel in the fear. So he didn't respond as I had expected. He didn't tell me that I, of all people, should know better and demand that I “better snap to reality and start eating.”
Instead he saw the re-emergence of anorexia as evidence that I was, indeed, repressing a child within. And that the child was reacting vehemently. The solution to this most recent problem was not to give lectures on eating habits, but to explore the emotions of my inner child. This anorexic episode was not a coincidence, but just the latest form of defense. Not wanting to eat was linked to not wanting to feel. “Think of your buried fears and irrational feelings as being like those little roly-poly bugs,” he said. “You know, the ones that crawl around under rocks. When you turn a rock over and expose them to light, they quickly form a little hard-shell ball. When the threat of exposure is gone, they quickly run under the closest rock.
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