My Agreeably Unknowable Therapist
I have what I like to think is a very healthy relationship with my therapist. I’ve been seeing her for years at this point and we have a sturdy dynamic in our weekly sessions. I talk and she listens.
My wife, who is a therapist herself, sometimes asks me what kind of advice she gives me and I always reply that that’s not the kind of dynamic we have.
I talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and in the process of talking about my life and my many, many problems I come to better understand myself and my issues. If I’m fortunate or particularly focused I’ll talk until I have a little epiphany that helps me survive this vast, terrifying and wonderful thing called life.
Because of the nature of our relationship my therapist knows just about everything about me, or everything that I want her to know and I know almost nothing about her.
I know my therapist’s name and that she’s Southern and that is legitimately about it. That makes sense. It would, after all, be more than a little weird if she went on and on and on about herself.
But human beings are curious creatures. When I went to a therapist in person back when I lived in Chicago I got all sorts of information about what my old therapist did when she wasn’t listening to me talk about my problems.
Framed pictures of her husband and children let me know that she had a family. The diploma on her wall, meanwhile, let me know where she went to school and got her degree.
In retrospect I probably should have been suspicious that her two “diplomas” were from “The School of Hard Knocks” and “The Institute of Fuck Around and Find Out.“
Needless to say, I don’t have the same context clues about my online therapist’s life outside our therapy. I just see her face on a computer screen for fifty minutes and sometimes her pets wander into the frame.
In one of our most recent sessions, I mentioned the pop philosopher/best-selling author/Oprah favorite Eckhard Tolle in passing and she got an excited look on her face because she was clearly a Tolle person. I am as well but I am a little self-conscious about it because he’s a little sketchy.
Here’s the thing: I’m not sure I want to know anything more about my therapist and her life outside me. If I found out that she was a Trump supporter or anti-vaccines or anti-mask it would be deeply disillusioning and make it difficult to go on with therapy.
I remember sometimes running across my old therapist in Chicago outside of her office. It was a surreal experience akin to spotting your third grade teacher at Walgreen’s.
The information imbalance between my therapist and myself is steep but I like it that way. It’s not just that I don’t really know anything about my therapist beyond her being a good listener and good at her job; it’s that I don’t want to know more. In this instance at least, ignorance is bliss.
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