It was hot that summer, hotter than four kids from the chilly Pacific Northwest could comprehend. Our dad had gotten a math scholarship for six weeks in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, so he and Mom had piled all us kids into the Volkswagen van and headed off cross country to a planet
Once when I was a little girl, my father said to me, “Stop crying. You’re too smart to have feelings.” He was my perfect dad (until adolescence anyway) so it seemed he must be right. He never stopped trying to get everyone in the house, my mother, my brother, my sisters and me, to stop expressing our emotions, although he met with minimal success.There’s a prevailing notion in our culture that you shouldn’t have emotions, or if you do, only the
People who are new to psychotherapy often wonder what they should be doing in the time between sessions. Anxious to grow and evolve, they’re unsure how to aid the process, and their appointment next week seems far off in the future.The psychotherapy sessions themselves are concentrated, intense 50-minute “hours” one or more times a week. They can be