“ And I should have been a better husband,” Alonzo chimes in.* * *“My depression is my own damn fault,” Rachel says.* * *“I’m not even worth that much of a damn,” Randy says.These people talk about guilt, but what do they reallymean? For a
minute, think like an analyst. Who brought up the issue of anything being
anybody’s fault in the first place?
The analysts also noticed that sometimes depressed people use their
suffering as an emotional bludgeon.
The I Don’t Mean to Be a Burden Explosion
The phone rings just as you’re going out the door. It’s Rachel,
crying.
“I’m really sorry, Rachel,” you say, “but I don’t have time
to talk now, I’ve got to get to the bank before it closes.”
“It’s okay,” Rachel says. “I don’t mean to be a burden.”You don’t have to be an analyst to realize that your unavailability is
notokay with Rachel, and, for that matter, that you’re not particularly sorry
you can’t talk with her. Each of you is too worried about the other’s feel-
ings to say what you really mean. You may not even know what you really
mean. One minute you’re irritated at Rachel for being manipulative, the
next, you’re beating yourself up for having uncharitable thoughts about
someone who is obviously in pain.
Rachel herself is undoubtedly doing something similar. Back and
forth your emotions go, between guilt and resentment. Just two short sen-
tences spoken, but this explosion can reverberate inside both your heads
for days. The fact that it’s all in your imagination, and you know it, does
nothing to decrease its power to depress.
If you’ve ever experienced a situation like this, you can understand
what the analysts meant about emotions being expressed as their opposites.
182 ❧Explosions into Sadness