When I was in my mid 20s, I was reeling so badly from “normal” life difficulties that I actually permitted myself to be persuaded to see a therapist. I was so stubborn, intellectually-oriented, and skeptical that, looking back, I can see that this alone was a miracle. That moment when I threw my hands up, acknowledging that my own willpower and rationality might not be enough to help me navigate combined rip tides of confusion and grief. I wasn’t my therapist’s most enthusiastic client, then, but I was there under my own steam, and, I thought, willing to be helped. It was genuinely surprising to me then, when, on my second visit, in the midst of my recounting of some tale of woe or other, I looked up to find she was sleeping. Head tilted, mouth slightly open, her face radiated peace and relief. I heard her satisfied sigh and watched as the Bic pen slipped from her fingers and fell noiselessly to the carpeted floor. Forgetting the thread of my story altogether, I moved into problem-solving mode. Should I quietly slip out? But wouldn’t she still charge me? Maybe I should clear my throat and then pretend not to have noticed? She must have felt my gaze because her eyes opened and she looked directly at me: “Sorry,” she said, “but that sometimes happens when a client isn’t actually present with me. It’s hard for me to be more interested in what they’re saying than they are.”
For some years after, rather than actually absorb my therapist’s explanation, I simply added this experience to my overarching personal narrative. That hippy-dippy woman who was happy to charge me $85 an hour so I could watch her nap. That unprofessional clinician who’d tried to blame my supposed “lack of presence” for her failure to fulfill her one duty: to listen to me. I trotted this tidbit out at parties from time to time, folding it into my clever, but self-deprecating shtick: “Wanna hear about the time I bored my therapist to sleep?” But by the time I was in my mid-30s and had become deeply enmeshed in Buddhist explorations and practices, I began to question the whole thing: Was it possible I actually had had some responsibility for what had happened? Wasn’t it true that I had just been recounting a mechanical, almost scripted story, rather than actually delving into something spontaneous and genuine? Might, in fact, my therapist have faked falling asleep in order to make her point in a way that an arrogant 26-year-old PhD student might actually hear? Whatever her actual methods or intentions, I have often returned to this memory when I’ve found myself engaged in a “conversation” where I can recognize that either I or my interlocutor has gone unconscious. I think of it as “turning on the spigot,” when language seems to be pouring from someone’s mouth automatically, a flood of words that appears to be only barely connected to the subjectivity of the person uttering them. It’s a stream of verbiage intended to fulfill one’s role in the dialogic drama, to create the appearance that one is engaging in authentic conversation when, in fact, one has barely been present—emotionally, psychologically, subjectively—at all.
For the most part I just consider this to be “normal,” in that the majority of conversation seems to be of this variety. I’m referring here to virtually mindless narrations of all sorts: soliloquys, diatribes, recountings, a whole range of speech performances that all have in common that the speaker is phoning it in. This is only possible, of course, because (and when) there is a tacit agreement among “interlocutors” to participate in the performance. And so we have all sorts of little scripted parts we play when someone’s spouting their “he said-she said” at us. “No way!” we might reply. Or, “I can’t believe he did that to you!” Our primary role in such conversations is to confirm the other’s story, not unlike an improv performer agrees to accept whatever premise the other players toss out and, you know, run with it. In a way, it’s a mutually agreed upon conspiracy in that we have an unspoken agreement to take turns between speaking our parts and “listening.” Indeed, many of us only ever notice the insufficiency and dissatisfaction of this sort of “conversation” when we’re with someone who refuses to cede the floor when they’re supposed to, that is, when their “time is up.” We’ve all found ourself with someone who goes on and on with their “and then…..and then….” but doesn’t allow us to have our turn on the stage. And while only one of us may leave that “conversation” feeling annoyed, neither of us is likely to walk away with the satisfaction that comes from true human connection.
To be clear, I’m not here endorsing what some have described as “honesty gospel.” This is the sort of description applied to folks like queer, feminist writer Glennon Doyle whose very persona and career has been built on “telling it like it is,” especially in ways that have been forbidden to women. To be sure, there is power in this message, which builds on thinkers such as Brené Brown, and is rooted in a decades-long trend in popular psychology. In part, it is based on a refusal to permit fear and shame—and the fear of shame—from running one’s life. The idea is for a woman to show up “as she really is,” warts and all, rather than as the curated, sanitized, false “representative” she has become accustomed, perhaps all her life, to sending out on her behalf. But while I find great value in this approach, the Buddhist in me can’t help but notice how quickly “brutal honesty” can become just one more role in the drama, a competition of suffering in which honesty is gauged by how many gory details one is willing to pour forth. All too often, what is presented as “fearless honesty” is actually just one more costume—a tragic one—draped over a subjective reality that may be far more surprising and less sentimentalized than what is presented. Unfortunately, many of us learn to evaluate the honesty and authenticity of both others and ourselves by the degree to which we’re willing to detail our eating disorders and abortions. Put another way, “authenticity” becomes just one more role to be convincingly performed, a far different experience from being nakedly and spontaneously present without the mediating crutch of yet another layer of story.
Now, then, yes of course, I understand that narrative performances—even those that may be more or less unconsciously rendered—may serve an important social or psychological function. Engaging in dialogues of all sorts can, I am sure, serve as a catalyst for deeper shifts even when such conversations are apparently superficial. There is, after all, a reason why “talking cures” have endured for so long. And I also understand the important social role that both “venting” and “small talk” can play. Both can be a necessary part of the human dance, sometimes as a way of creating ease, and, other times, as a prelude to something more profound. I also appreciate that, for folks who are in a psychologically precarious place—as most of us probably are from time to time—it can simply feel too risky to turn the spigot off or set the script aside. Yes, of course. But, however necessary our role-playing may seem to us, it comes at a steep price. Because when we lose our ability to be present with others, it means we have lost our connection to self as well. For when we are grounded, rooted in the core of who we truly are, it is simply not possible to lose ourselves, to forget ourselves, in the comedic or dramatic roles we perform on the stage. The real tragedy, then, isn’t that, when we phone it in, others miss out on the beauty of our truest selves, but that we ourselves do too.
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