Real People, Real Problems, Real Solutions by Robert Waska

Author:Robert Waska
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

The miracle worker

Alice came in for help with feelings of panic. She was a fifty-year-old waitress who had always tried to “stay out of people's way” and shunned any social life. She was content to just be alone at home, watching movies. Alice had some limited success as a painter years ago, but gave it up because it was too “unpredictable.” She started to feel uncomfortable when she was promoted to head hostess at the restaurant. This entailed much more direct contact with the public and she was frightened by the pressure and demands that contact seemed to bring. Her insurance provided ten therapy visits.

The first time I met with Alice, I had the impression of someone who felt terribly scared of how demanding and judgmental others could be. She felt people always “dropped” her without a moment's notice, leaving her alone and desperate. I wondered to myself if that would be my fate as well. She said she only worked to pay her bills and had never felt any motivation to compete or climb the career ladder. “I would gladly scrub toilets and never have contact with a soul if I just got paid enough to make my bills.”

Alice's background was a combination of minimal achievement and social isolation. As a child, she felt her parents had put up with her and otherwise ignored her. Alice also feared her father. While she didn't come out and say it, I had the sense that her father could go berserk at any time unless Alice was nonintrusive and quiet.

When Alice described her adult life, she mainly talked about a series of low-paying restaurant jobs in which she was at first extremely impressed with some aspect of management or the restaurant's philosophy. After a while, she found out something about the restaurant or its management goals that brought on great disappointment and she eventually left. This was somewhat repeated in the transference.

Alice talked about the various stresses of her job and the ongoing financial problems she was having. She talked in a mechanical manner that left me feeling she was trying to contain and disguise a profound loneliness, fear, and paranoia. Here and there in her stories were little comments about the government, the “system,” and the ways that authority is cruel to the “little guy.” I proposed that she was talking about her experiences growing up and her internal experiences with herself now as an adult. She quickly denied all of that and said she thought everything was connected to her manager at work. She only felt pressured by the manager to be the new hostess. Alice said she wanted some advice on how to deal with that and how to feel less “stressed out.” She said she had thought of suicide for several months and couldn't sleep well. She was ready to quit her job and move out of the city to get away from it all, and if that didn't work she was ready to kill herself. I felt she meant this and would probably carry it out if we didn't manage to reduce her fears.

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