The Choice

by Edith Eger

  Viktor Frankl writes, Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life … This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning. When we abdicate taking responsibility for ourselves, we are giving up our ability to create and discover meaning. In other words, we give up on life.

  CHAPTER 21

  The Girl Without Hands

  THE SECOND STEP in the dance of freedom is learning how to take risks that are necessary to true self-realization. The biggest risk I took on that journey was to return to Auschwitz. There were people on the outside—Marianne’s host family, the clerk at the Polish embassy—telling me not to go. And there was my internal gatekeeper, the part of me that wanted to be safe more than I wanted to be free. But the night I lay awake in Goebbels’s bed, I intuited the truth that I wouldn’t be a complete person until I went back, that for my own health I needed to be in that place again. Taking risks doesn’t mean throwing ourselves blindly into danger. But it means embracing our fears so that we aren’t imprisoned by them.

  Carlos began to work with me when he was a high school sophomore, struggling with social anxiety and self-acceptance. He was so afraid of being rejected by his peers that he wouldn’t risk initiating friendships or relationships. One day I asked him to tell me about the ten most popular girls at his school. And then I gave him an assignment. He was to ask each of these girls out on a date. He told me that was impossible, that he would be committing social suicide, that they would never go out with him, that he would be laughed at for the rest of his high school days for having been so pathetic. I told him, yes, it’s true, you might not get what you want—but even if you don’t, you’ll still be better off than you were before, because you’ll know where you stand, you’ll have more information, and you’ll be seeing what’s actually real instead of a reality created by your fear. Finally, he agreed to the assignment. And to his surprise, four of the most popular girls accepted! He’d already made up his mind about his worth, he’d already rejected himself five hundred times in his own head, and that fear had been coming through in his body language—in eyes that were hooded and averted instead of sparkling, connecting. He had made himself unavailable for joy. Once he embraced his fear and his choices and took a risk, he discovered possibilities that he hadn’t known existed.

  A few years later, on an autumn day in 2007, Carlos called me from his college dorm room. Anxiety pinched his voice. “I need help,” he said. Now he was a sophomore at a Big Ten university in the Midwest. When I heard from him out of the blue, I thought that perhaps his social anxieties had again become overwhelming.

  “Tell me what’s happening,” I said.

  It was pledge week on campus, he said. I already knew that it had been his dream since he was in high school to belong to a fraternity. Once he began college, the dream had become even more important to him, he told me. Greek life was a significant piece of his university’s social fabric, and all of his friends were pledging, so being in a frat seemed necessary to his social survival. He had heard rumors about inappropriate hazing rituals at other fraternities, but he had chosen his fraternity carefully. He liked the racial diversity of the members and the fraternity’s emphasis on social service. It seemed like a perfect fit. While many of his friends were anxious about the hazing process, Carlos wasn’t worried about it. He believed that hazing had a purpose, that it helped the young men to bond more quickly, as long as it wasn’t over the top.

  But pledge week was not turning out as Carlos had imagined.

  “What’s different?” I asked.

  “My pledge master’s on a power trip.” He told me that the pledge master was incredibly aggressive, seeking out every pledge’s weak spots and pushing hard on them. He called one young man’s taste in music “gay.” During a pledge meeting, he looked at Carlos and said, “You look like a guy who should be mowing my lawn.”

  “How did you feel when he said that?”

  “I was so mad. I wanted to punch him in the face.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. He was just trying to get me worked up. I didn’t react.”

  “What happened next?”

  Carlos told me that that morning, the pledge master ordered him and the other pledges to clean the frat house, assigning them different jobs. He handed Carlos a toilet brush and a bottle of cleaner. Then he gave Carlos a huge sombrero. “You’re going to wear this while you scrub the toilets. You’re going to wear this when you leave and go to class. And the only words you’re allowed to say all day are, ‘Sí, señor.’” It was a public shaming, an appalling act of racism, but if Carlos wanted to join the fraternity, he would have to force himself to endure it.

  “I felt like I couldn’t say no,” Carlos told me. His voice shook. “It was awful. But I did it. I didn’t want to lose my spot just because the pledge master’s an asshole. I didn’t want to let him win.”

  “I can hear how angry you are.”

  “I’m furious. And embarrassed. And confused. I feel like I should have been able to take it without it upsetting me.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “I know it’s not the same at all, but while I was scrubbing toilets in the sombrero, I thought about that story you told me about when you were at the death camp, when you were forced to dance. I remember you said that you were scared, and you were in prison, but you felt free. That the guards were more imprisoned than you. I know the pledge master’s an idiot. Why can’t I just do what he wants me to do and still feel free inside? You’ve always told me it’s not what’s happening outside that matters, it’s what’s inside. I’m proud of my Mexican identity. Why should his bullshit matter to me? Why can’t I just rise above it?”

  It was a beautiful question. Where does our power reside? Is it enough to find our inner strength, our inner truth, or does empowerment also require that we take action on the outside? I do believe it’s what’s happening inside that matters most. I also believe in the necessity of living in congruence with our values and ideals—with our moral selves. I believe in the importance of defending what is right and defying what is unjust and inhumane. And I believe in choices. Freedom lies in examining the choices available to us and examining the consequences of those choices. “The more choices you have,” I said, “the less you’re going to feel like a victim. Let’s talk about your choices.”

  We made a list. One choice was for Carlos to wear the sombrero around campus the rest of the day, saying only, “Sí, señor.” He could agree to submit to whatever other humiliations his pledge master devised.

  Another choice was to object. He could tell the pledge master he refused to comply.

  Or he could withdraw his application to the fraternity. He could put down the sombrero and the scrub brush and walk away.

  Carlos didn’t like the consequences of any of these choices. He didn’t like the shame and powerlessness he felt in capitulating to a bully, especially when the humiliations were racist. He felt he couldn’t continue to play the racist caricature without eroding his self-respect—if he continued giving in to a bully, he would make the bully stronger and himself weaker. But outright defiance of the pledge master could be physically dangerous and socially isolating. Carlos was afraid of being assaulted—and of responding in kind. He didn’t want to get swallowed by violent urges, he didn’t want to fall into the pledge master’s trap of trying to rile him, he didn’t want to participate in a public showdown. He was also afraid of being ostracized by the fraternity and the other pledges—the very community whose acceptance he was trying to court. The third choice—to walk away—wasn’t any better. He would have to give up his dream, give up his desire of belonging, and he wasn’t willing to do that.

  In sifting through the available options, Carlos discovered a fourth choice. Instead of confronting the pledge master directly in what he feared would become a violent fight, he could file a complaint with someone
who had more authority. Carlos decided that the best person to approach was the fraternity president. He knew he could bring the issue higher up the ladder, to a university dean, if necessary, but he preferred to keep the conversation more local at first. We practiced what he was going to say, and how he would say it. It was hard for him to remain calm while he rehearsed, but he knew from our years of work together that when you lose your temper, you might feel strong in the moment, but really you are handing your power over. Strength isn’t reacting, it’s responding—feeling your feelings, thinking them over, and planning an effective action to bring you closer to your goal.

  Carlos and I also talked about the possible consequences of his conversation. It was possible that the fraternity president would tell Carlos that the pledge master’s behavior was acceptable, and that Carlos could take it or leave it.

  “If that’s how the president sees it, I guess I’d rather know than not know,” Carlos said.

  Carlos called me after his meeting with the fraternity president.

  “I did it!” His voice rang with triumph. “I told him what was happening, and he said it was disgusting and he wouldn’t tolerate it. He’s forcing the pledge master to stop the racist hazing.”

  Of course I was happy that Carlos was being validated and supported, and happy that he did not have to give up his dream. But I believe it would have been a triumphant encounter no matter the fraternity president’s response. Carlos had embraced his power to stand up and speak his truth at the risk of being excluded and criticized. He had chosen not to be a victim. And he had taken a moral stand. He had acted in alignment with a higher purpose: to combat racism, to protect human dignity. In defending his own humanity, he protected everyone’s. He paved a way for all of us to live in keeping with our moral truth and ideals. Doing what is right is rarely the same as doing what is safe.

  I think that a certain amount of risk is always inseparable from healing. It was true for Beatrice, a sad woman when I met her, her brown eyes distant, closed off, her face pale. Her clothes were loose and formless, her posture slumping and hunched over. I immediately recognized that Beatrice had no idea how beautiful she was.

  She stared straight ahead, trying hard not to look at me. But she couldn’t stop herself from shooting me quick glances that seemed to probe me for secrets. She had recently heard me give a talk about forgiveness. For more than twenty years, she had believed that there was no way to achieve forgiveness over her stolen childhood. But my speech about my own journey of forgiveness had sparked questions for her. Should I forgive? Can I forgive? Now she assessed me carefully, as though trying to discover if I was real, or just an image. When you’re listening to someone up on a stage tell a story about healing, it can seem too good to be true. And to some extent, it is. In the hard work of healing, there’s no catharsis when forty-five minutes are up. There’s no magic wand. Change happens slowly, sometimes disappointingly slowly. Is your story of freedom genuine? her darting glances seemed to ask. Is there any hope for me?

  Because she had been referred to me by another psychologist—a dear friend of mine, the same person who had encouraged Beatrice to come hear me speak—I already knew some of Beatrice’s history. When did your childhood end? I often ask my patients. Beatrice’s childhood had ended almost as soon as it began. Her parents had been extremely neglectful of her and her siblings, sending them to school unwashed and unfed. The nuns at Beatrice’s school spoke sharply to her and blamed her for her unkempt appearance, scolding her to clean up and eat breakfast before she came to school. Beatrice internalized the message that her parents’ neglect was her fault.

  Then, when she was eight, one of her parents’ friends began molesting her. The molestations continued, though she tried to resist. She also tried to tell her parents what was happening, but they accused her of making it up. On her tenth birthday, her parents let their friend, who by then had been touching her inappropriately for two years, take her on a “date” to the movies. After the movie he took her to his home and raped her in the shower. When Beatrice began her treatment with me, at age thirty-five, the smell of popcorn still triggered flashbacks.

  At age eighteen Beatrice had married a recovering addict who was emotionally and physically cruel to her. She had escaped her family drama only to re-enact it, reinforcing her belief that being loved meant being hurt. Beatrice was eventually able to divorce her husband and had been finding a way forward in her life, with a new career and a new relationship, when she was raped on a trip to Mexico. She came home devastated.

  At the insistence of her girlfriend, Beatrice began therapy with my colleague. She was ridden with anxiety and phobias and could hardly get out of bed. She felt a constant heavy, oppressive dread, and lived on high alert, afraid to leave her house for fear of being assaulted again, and afraid of the smells and associations that triggered debilitating flashbacks.

  In her first sessions with my colleague, Beatrice agreed to get up every morning, take a shower, make her bed, and then sit on a stationary bike in her living room for fifteen minutes with the TV on for comfort. Beatrice wasn’t in denial about her trauma, as I had once been. She had been able to talk about the past and to process it intellectually. But she hadn’t yet grieved for her interrupted life. Over time, on the exercise bike, Beatrice learned to sit with the emptiness, to trust that grief is not an illness (though it can feel like one), and understand that when we anesthetize our feelings, with eating or alcohol or other compulsive behaviors, we just prolong our suffering. At first, during the fifteen minutes a day on the exercise bike, Beatrice didn’t pedal. She just sat. A minute or two into her sit she would begin to cry. She cried until the timer rang. As the weeks passed, she spent a little longer on the bike—twenty minutes, then twenty-five. By the time she was sitting for thirty-minute stretches, she started to move the pedals. And little by little, day by day, she bicycled her way into her body’s caches of pain.

  By the time I met Beatrice, she had already done a tremendous amount of work in the service of her healing. Her grief work had diminished her depression and anxiety. She felt much better. But after hearing my speech at the community center event, she had wondered if there was more she could do to free herself from the pain of her trauma. The possibility of forgiveness had taken root.

  “Forgiveness isn’t you forgiving your molester for what he did to you,” I told her. “It’s you forgiving the part of yourself that was victimized and letting go of all blame. If you are willing, I can help guide you to your freedom. It will be like going over a bridge. It’s scary to look down below. But I’ll be right here with you. What do you think? Do you want to continue?”

  A dim light sparked in her brown eyes. She nodded her head.

  Several months after she began therapy with me, Beatrice was ready to take me mentally into her father’s study, where the molestations had occurred. This is an extremely vulnerable stage in the therapeutic process, and there is an ongoing debate in the psychology and neuroscience communities about how useful or harmful it is for a patient to mentally relive a traumatic situation, or physically return to a site of trauma. When I received my training, I learned to use hypnosis in order to help survivors re-experience the traumatic event in order to stop being hostage to it. In more recent years, studies have shown that putting someone mentally back in a traumatic experience can be dangerous—psychologically reliving a painful event can actually retraumatize a survivor. For example, after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, it was discovered that the more times people saw the image of the towers going down on TV, the more trauma they had years later. Repeated encounters with a past event can reinforce rather than release the fearful and painful feelings. In my practice and in my own experience, I have seen the effectiveness of mentally reliving a traumatic episode, but it must be done with absolute safety, and with a well-trained professional who can give the patient control over how long and how deeply he or she stays in the past. Even then, it isn’t the best practice for all pati
ents or all therapists.

  For Beatrice, it was essential to her healing. To free herself from her trauma, she needed permission to feel what she hadn’t been allowed to feel when the abuse was taking place, or in the three decades since. Until she could experience those feelings, they would scream for her attention, and the more she tried to suppress them, the more violently they would beg to be acknowledged, and the more terrifying they would be to confront. Over many weeks, I guided Beatrice gently, slowly, to get closer to those feelings. Not to be swallowed by them. To see they are just feelings.

  As Beatrice had learned from doing the grief work, finally allowing herself to feel her immense sorrow had given her some relief from the depression, stress, and fear that had imprisoned her in her bed. But she hadn’t yet allowed herself to feel her anger about the past. There is no forgiveness without rage.

  As Beatrice described the small room, the way the door squeaked when her father’s friend closed it, the dark plaid curtains he would make her draw shut, I watched her body language, ready to bring her back to shore if she was in distress.

  Beatrice stiffened as she mentally closed the curtains in her father’s study. As she sealed herself in the room with her attacker.

  “Stop there, honey,” I said.

  She sighed. She kept her eyes closed.

  “Is there a chair in the room?”

  She nodded.

  “What does it look like?”

  “It’s an armchair. Rust colored.”

  “I want you to put your father in that chair.”

  She grimaced.

  “Can you see him sitting there?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “He has his glasses on. He’s reading a newspaper.”

  “What is he wearing?”

  “A blue sweater. Gray pants.”