The Choice

opportunities for revelation and change.
“I wonder if you can help me,” I ĕnally said. is is an approach I
sometimes take with a reluctant patient, a tough customer. I take the
attention away from the patient’s problem. I become the one with the
problem. I appeal to the patient’s sympathy. I wanted Jason to feel like
he was the one with strength and solutions, and I was just a person,
curious and somewhat desperate, asking to be helped. “I really want to
know how you want to spend your time here with me. You’re a young
man, a soldier. I’m just a grandmother. Could you help me out?”
He started to speak, but then his throat clotted up with emotion
and he shook his head. How could I help him to stay with whatever
external or internal turmoil existed without running away or shutting
down?
“I wonder if you could help me understand a little better how I
could be useful to you. I’d like to be your sounding board. Would you
please help me a little?”
His eyes cinched up as though he was reacting to a bright light. Or
clenching back tears. “My wife,” he ĕnally said, his throat closing
down again around the words.
I didn’t ask in what way his wife was troubling him. I didn’t ask for
the facts. I went straight for the feeling under his words. I wanted him
to take me directly, deeply, to the truth in his heart. I wanted him to
be the person I trusted he was capable of being—a person who could
unfreeze and feel. You can’t heal what you can’t feel. I had learned
this the hard way, aer decades of choosing to be frozen and numb.
Like Jason, I had bottled my feelings, I had put on a mask.
What was under Jason’s mask, his frozenness? Loss? Fear?
“It looks like you’re sad about something,” I said. I was guessing,
suggesting. Either I was right, or he would correct me.
“I’m not sad,” he muttered. “I’m mad. I’m mad as hell. I could kill
her!”