Answering Questions Not Asked

Written by craig

 This afternoon an older woman (my age) I had not yet met called to cancel an appointment. The doc had seen her a couple of weeks ago and she said she was feeling fine and didn't need any therapy. I, of course, agreed with her completely. 

Still, I promised that, should she come by, I would have a pot of fresh-ground hazelnut coffee ready and would give her answers to questions she didn't even know she had. She'll be by in a couple of days.

I've done this before, a lot, and it's kind of like shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel. "Why?" you may ask. 'Simple! People seem to always start with the wrong assumptions. We live in a society that insists on telling us that if we are depressed, it has to be someone else's fault. Our mother/father/uncle/dog/ourselves did some unforgivable things, and if we can only resolve the conflicts from our past, all will be well with the world.

The questions that follow usually pertain to how one begins to repair the "damage," taking responsibility for one's own healing and working through the myriad of issues that led to the breakdown. Of course, if we meet regularly with our therapist and do our homework but still don't get better, then we did something wrong or maybe didn't try hard enough. 

'Change the assumptions, and you change the questions. In fact, don't make any assumptions at all until you look at what science has learned about depression and how to treat it. You see, I begin by giving people information about the research, the accumulated evidence about what's really going on. Then they start asking new questions, lots of them, and I help them find the answers.

As I said, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.