Straight through me

One of mine said, almost in passing, on the way to something else: I keep waiting for somebody to notice that I am barely holding it. And then immediately apologised for being dramatic. I did what you do. I slowed it down, I did not let the apology stand, we stayed with it for twenty minutes and it was good work and she left lighter than she came in, and I am not going to write any more about her than that. What I am writing about is that it went straight through me. Not in the room. In the room I was completely present and useful and none of it showed, which is the job. It was in the car. I got about four streets and had to pull over on Haywood by the bank and sit there for a minute with the engine running. That is the second time this month something has come across that room and gone through me rather than past me. The first was the one about her husband and finding out the shape of a thing herself. I know what that is called when a client describes it. I know the whole literature on it. The word is not the problem; I could give you the word in a second. The problem is that the word is a thing that happens to therapists who are not getting something they need, and I have spent the whole summer establishing in this journal that I am not getting something I need, and the two have been sitting in separate drawers.