CHAPTER 16The Choice
My joyous optimism, my sense of professional accomplishment, my
feeling that I was reaching a full embodiment and expression of myself
all withered when I established my private practice and met my ĕrst
patient. I visited him in the hospital where he had been living for a
month, awaiting diagnosis and undergoing treatment for what turned
out to be stomach cancer. He was terriĕed. He felt betrayed by his
body, threatened by his mortality, overwhelmed by the uncertainty
and loneliness of illness. And I couldn’t reach him where he was. All
of my skill in establishing a climate of warmth and trust, in building a
bridge between me and my patient, had disappeared. I felt like a child
dressed up in a doctor’s white coat. A fake. My expectations of myself
were so high, my fear of failure so toppling, that I couldn’t see past my
own self-absorption to reach the man who was asking for my help and
my love. “Will I ever be healthy again?” he asked, and my mind
Ęipped like a Rolodex, spinning through theories and techniques, my
eyes pointed at the wall, trying to mask how nervous and scared I was.
I was of no help to him. He didn’t invite me back. I realized, as I had
when I met Tom, the paraplegic veteran, that my professional success
had to come from a deeper place within me—not from the little girl
trying to please others and win approval but from my whole and
authentic self, the one who was vulnerable and curious, who was
accepting of herself and ready to grow.
In other words, I began to formulate a new relationship with my