Meaning, I can take a few steps backwards in my recovery from depression and anxiety, but that doesn’t erase all the lessons, skills, and wisdom acquired in my past.

Those words are consoling to me the last three or so weeks as my boundaries crumble and I go back on promises I made myself not so long ago. I know that the footprints are going in the wrong direction, but I seem incapable of making myself turn around to walk toward healing. I’m afraid that I’ll lose it all — the knowledge, the insights, the discipline that I procured the last three or so years — as my strides reverse.

My therapist swears I won’t. And I’m holding her to her word.

Because you can’t unlearn something. It’s there, stuck in your neural passageways along with all the other gunk from your childhood. Recovery from depression–beginning the path to wholeness and happiness with the help of aids like cognitive-behavioral therapy, psychotherapy, drugs, Omega 3s, yoga, exercise, gratitude — is like learning to ride a bike or studying a foreign language.

You can store the bike in your garage for 10 years, or not utter “Gracias” to your Latin neighbors for decades, but the moment you’re ready to go, it comes back. With a little practice, of course.

I’m reassured by wise mentors in my life who have lived more years with depression and anxiety than I have, who agree that true recovery is based on progress, not perfection, and that growth almost always happens in uneven patterns with “muchos” messes. No neat freak need apply.

So even though we may feel like we’re spinning around in circles — lacking the gravity needed to pull us in a certain direction — even then we’re probably absorbing information, gaining knowledge, and educating ourselves in the subject of life so that, as T. S. Eliot so beautifully articulated:

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

I say that it’s simply really, really hard to find the correct fit and that the wrong fit can bring me frustration I don’t need. I would rather have no therapist than one who continually frustrates me.

A few weeks ago, I told a therapist I had gone to a handful of times that I did not want to continue seeing her. We’ll call her “Lynn.” Lynn was perfectly nice and was a good listener, but that was sort of the problem.

All she did was listen and say things like, “well, what did that feel like?” and “what would that look like to you?” Lynn was also one of those therapists who immediately wanted to delve into my family and my childhood. This approach was not at all what I was looking for. I wanted someone who would address my current situations and make suggestions.

I conferred with a good friend of mine who is a therapist and expressed my lack of connection with Lynn’s style. My friend was able to explain to me more about what it is I want and don’t want in a therapist. She explained that there are many different approaches a therapist can take. The one I did not like was psychodynamic. This is a Freudian approach that deals with inner conflict and the conscious vs. the unconscious. When Lynn spent sessions picking through my parents and childhood, she was trying to figure out how my past experiences affected my current choices and predicaments.

I’m not at all dismissing Lynn’s psychodynamic style. Nor am I denying that my past experiences influence my present. This is just not what I want right now. Through speaking with my therapist-friend, I was able to understand that I needed to avoid therapists firmly planted in a psychodynamic style.

After this revelation, I spent some time thinking about my past therapists. I pondered what worked and what didn’t and why I had spent a long time with one of them, but not the others. I realized that the therapist I spent a few years with, “Allen,” had frequently made suggestions and tried to guide me in certain directions. When I seemed stuck on an idea that was not working for me, he would forcefully challenge me on it. I liked Allen’s use of making suggestions and providing concrete guidance, but his confrontational style was sometimes overwhelming.

I went back to my therapist-friend with these thoughts. We talked about what had worked for me with Allen and what I was currently looking for in a therapist. My friend suggested I may be a good candidate for cognitive behavioral therapy. She thought it sounded like Allen had used elements of this style with me and it had worked well.

After looking further into cognitive behavioral therapy, I learned that it is a style that focuses more on the present. It is a goal-oriented approach and works with systems. This sounded a lot more like what I was looking for.

This gave me a new approach to looking for a therapist, but there were still so many to choose among that I felt a little lost. I found myself avoiding the search. It seemed like too much of an effort and I didn’t want to face the possibility of more sessions that may not work for me.

I got a kick in the butt on this from my therapist-friend. She knew someone through her work that she thought may be a good fit for me. But working with someone my friend knew brought up the possibility of a conflict of interest. She gave me her coworker’s name and told me to think about it.

When I looked up my therapist-friend’s coworker online to see what she was all about, I found her explanations appealing. However, after thinking more about the possible conflict of interest, I decided that I would prefer working with someone who was completely anonymous.

This reinvigorated my search. I found a therapist, “Eva,” who works with cognitive behavioral therapy and was within walking distance of my house. I decided to call her with some very specific questions.

I approached my initial call with Eva like an interview. Really, it was. I was interviewing Eva for the position of being my therapist. I wasn’t looking for a friend, I was hiring her to provide a service and do a job. I asked Eva all kinds of questions about her approach and her beliefs. I was also highly specific about what my current issues were and how I was looking for help with them.

Last night, I met with Eva for the first time. So far, so good. Eva was true to her word and gave me what I was looking for. She focused on the issue at hand and made suggestions. She helped me brainstorm new ideas. Eva did not once ask me about my childhood; she was helping me with today. I felt the meeting was successful and will be meeting with her again next week.

Here is hoping to a new, fruitful and therapeutic relationship with Eva. Finding the right therapist is difficult, but being able to express what I want and need from the relationship may prove invaluable.

Everything was booked and set via email. My choice. I hate calling people. She mailed me all the paperwork from her office to bring with me on my first visit. What I loved when I first met her was that she didn’t even want to look at the filled-out documents during session; she was eager to get down to talking. I was nervous being there, naturally, it’s sensitive material being shared with a stranger. I remember which chair I sat in and how she sat on the couch.

Eager. Ready.

So I tried to fill her in on my 18-year history of eating-disordered behavior. I had no idea what she would react to or even if she’d react at all. Turns out, she wasn’t one of those therapists that stare you down for minutes at a time. She often looked down and away when she was trying to express something to me. I could see the wheels in her head spinning. She often pushed my buttons. Going into therapy not really being able to express how I feel, I was able to tell her in the second year that she really made me mad. I knew I was making good progress when I was finally able to be 100 percent honest about my feelings.

I was worried I would offend her or make her mad. I am a big people pleaser, even when I pay them. Turns out, the more I talked and yammered on, the more she listened. I think she appreciated what I had to say and that I was just getting it out and showing some vulnerability. I was actively engaging in psychotherapy. That was tough for me, but she always went with my pace. I always had something to work on each week like homework. Or, more frequently, a goal to accomplish.

Then she got pregnant.

She informed me early and made sure I had a therapist for the interim. But I felt like a pool of jelly when she told me. I would be on my own for a while. Not only that, I had to try to reestablish a trusting relationship with someone else. Given the amount of maternity leave and knowing she was coming back, I just waited for her. I felt a new therapist would not be wise at the time. I did see one for one visit, but I got a bad vibe and backed off. The click wasn’t there. For me, if I can’t feel that connection, I’m not going to bother. That paid off for me.

Over the course of my three continuous years of seeing her on a weekly basis, we identified main areas of concern. I had to learn that it’s OK to think about myself once in a while. I deserve love and healing as well. She never put up with any of my games that I tried to play. She called me out on lies and bad attitudes. I swore at her once, and she swore back at me. I quickly learned that she was always, always paying attention to what I was doing.

One year around Thanksgiving, I brought in crayons and some paper. I made her sit down and draw or write what she was thankful for. I loved seeing this “real person.” And I loved when she laughed. For me, when my providers show or tell me little things about what they like and believe in, my trust in them escalates. A relationship is a two-way street. And that’s how I built my trust with her and my other doctors.

I did a lot of things because goals were set, and it was very encouraging to have someone who believed in me follow up on that goal. I didn’t want to disappoint her or myself. After all, I was paying this woman to help me.

This past January she informed me she’s moving. Relocating. I just said, “What?” No way. You can’t go. I greatly appreciated the amount of notice she gave me so I had time to adjust and prepare. During this time I stopped and reevaluated why I always showed up, even when I told her I didn’t want to come sometimes.

It was the encouragement. The challenges. The dedication she put in. The comfort of having a friendly person working with me. It was the confidence in myself that continued to rise each time I saw her. It was her unshakable faith in me. She never gave up. Ever.

I always thought therapy was for nutty people. In the beginning I was embarrassed to tell people I was even going. By the end I often said, “My therapist told me…” and I would conduct my own little psychotherapy sessions with friends. Whether or not I always showed it, I always listened to her. Even when I would stare out the window, watching rain and snow blow, my ears were never closed.

I said goodbye this last Wednesday. I had a very fun visit with her and was sure to show my appreciation for all the help she’d been. I was stoked to be there. I was ready. And much to my surprise….

I cried all the way home.

Psychotherapy proved to be an extremely rewarding experience. I always tried to outsmart my therapist, but she always had a one-up on me. It just humbled me and helped me realize there are just some things I don’t know much about. When you trust, you build and grow. It’s hard, yes. Just do it one time, and you’ll notice yourself doing it again and again. Before you even know what’s going on, you’ll start feeling that little pinch inside….confidence. I can hold my head high.

I’m worth it. And so are you.

Her name was Angela, a 21-year-old single mother who lived with her parents and her two children, aged 16 months and 2-and-a-half years. She was having trouble with depressive symptoms, and difficulty being patient with her young girls. Angela had already been through two counselors who had each left the agency; I would be her third.

I slowly walked up the driveway, a bit nervous but determined to really listen to Angela and find out what her needs, hopes, and dreams were.

Angela’s father answered the door, holding one crying child and shushing another, who was tugging at his pant leg. “You must be the new therapist,” he grinned. “Angela’s out back. Through that door.”

I thanked him and walked through the back door to find a young-looking, heavyset woman smoking a cigarette and gabbing on her cell phone and cursing indiscriminately. She saw me, said, “Gotta go,” and hung up. “You must be the new one,” she commented as she regarded me.

I learned quickly that Angela didn’t feel she needed counseling, but had agreed to participate so she could continue receiving welfare benefits. She made it clear that she wanted individual counseling with me, not family counseling or play therapy with her children. She often took phone calls during our sessions, and would rarely look me in the eye.

Angela had seen two counselors prior to me; she had not liked the first counselor, but felt extremely connected to the therapist who had recently left. She warned me that she tended not to trust therapists, and that it might take her awhile to open up and trust me.

Our sessions started slowly. Every week Angela would share about her children’s behavior, stress related to finding a job, and crushes she had on different young men. I would ask questions about her needs, goals for therapy, or her depression, but Angela’s answers were cursory and deflective. I respected her need to be protective, and remained patient despite my desire to help in a greater way.

One day, six weeks into our sessions, I arrived on Angela’s back porch to find her crying, shaking, and chain-smoking. I sat down across from her and remained silent until she began to speak. “My brother molested me when I was twelve,” she said, looking at the ground, tears falling at her feet. “It happened all the time, and I eventually told on him. He’s been in jail for two years,” she shared, finally looking up at me. “I love my brother, and I feel guilty for what I’ve done, every day. What he did was wrong, but I took away his freedom. So there…that’s it.”

I thanked her for sharing something so difficult and personal, and we talked about her story that day. At our next session, Angela asked whether she could share something from her notebook, a story she had been working on. Angela had shared in the past that she loved to write, particularly horror stories, and stories about witches.

That day, she read me the first chapter of a fictional story about witches that gripped me from the start. An avid reader, I was delighted to find that not only was Angela’s writing suspenseful and exciting, but extremely well written. Toward the end of the first chapter, as the narrator was setting the plotline and describing different characters, I realized that the protagonist was Angela! She was writing about herself!

Each week, I arrived eager to hear more of this compelling story. We spent the first half of our sessions with Angela reading her novel to me, and the second half talking about the characters. I learned, through Angela’s storytelling, that she felt guilty for hurting her brother, and conflicted about whether she was to blame for the abuse. I learned that Angela avoided intimacy by getting involved in long-distance and online relationships. I learned that she had attempted suicide as a teen, and had been hospitalized for a long time. I learned that she was terrified of being a mother, and feared her daughters would also be perpetrated upon at some point in their lives.

Eventually Angela became able to speak about her abuse using the words “I,” “me,” and “we,” instead of solely through her characters. In the process of writing and working on character development, Angela had realized her protagonist had been badly injured emotionally, and had not been responsible in any way for her abuse. She saw new qualities in herself such as strength, passion, and a wicked sense of humor, which increased her self-worth. She was able to re-write the story of her life via this novel, but reframed with a perspective of strength and survival.

By the time Angela finished the book, she spoke freely about her experiences of abuse, survival, her growth, and her hopes and dreams for the future. She reported her depression was now an occasional visitor who stayed for a couple days before heading home, rather than a constant companion. She also realized she wanted to return to college to major in creative writing. Angela envisioned a bright future for herself and her children.

As a therapist, I was powerfully affected by this experience with Angela. She taught me that no matter how much I want to help someone, I cannot force change, and I cannot create trust with a client immediately. I learned the power of trusting the client’s own process, and truly becoming a fellow traveler on her journey rather than an expert with all the answers. Angela conducted her own therapy, with me as witness. She moved through the process eloquently, and both she and I emerged as more enlightened beings.

I am now in private practice and have not seen Angela for years, but I think of her often, particularly when I am feeling pressured (usually by myself) to “fix” somebody. I remember her story and relax, thinking, “Trust the process. This client is strong enough to get there.”

I had been struggling for a long time with feelings of sadness, hopelessness, guilt and worthlessness. I had been engaging in self-injury for a long time and it was getting worse. I was suicidal off and on, never committing to a plan but just worn out from a traumatic, abuse-filled childhood, and the demands of life in general.

After the intervention, my friend the social worker interviewed therapists for me and found one that she thought would work well with me. (Ordinarily I suppose I should have done this process myself, but I was too depressed to care or to think properly.)

With their support I made the appointment and went to see the therapist.

I was not sure what to expect for that first appointment. I was very scared of the entire process but more fearful of what would happen to me if I did not go. The way things were going for me with my mood, I didn’t think it could get much lower or that I would survive the torment of the depression. The therapist met me in the waiting room and she did a very good job at putting me at ease.

In that initial consultation, I was struggling to explain my symptoms, and I ended up saying that my heart hurt. The therapist said, “Oh, you’re sad.” And I thought, “Yes. That’s it. I’m so very sad.”

I was also trying to explain that I hurt myself on purpose sometimes but without the intent of killing myself. I was worried about telling that to someone, worried about being hospitalized or all those “horror stories” that one hears. She listened and she asked me a question that I didn’t understand. I was relieved when she rephrased it so I could understand and answer it. It was then, in that first meeting, that I felt that this therapist could help me. I felt listened to and I had some sort of beginning answer to what had been plaguing me for so long. Thus began our therapeutic relationship.

It took me a little while to become comfortable with the idea of sharing with another person very deep and painful experiences of my past and present struggles. Ironically, it was during my therapist’s vacation early on that she allowed me the email privilege in order to keep in touch while she was away. I was able to explain and express my thoughts and feelings so much better in writing that we have kept that as an avenue toward healing in addition to weekly sessions and other interventions. She works with my psychiatrist in regard to medication but my therapist is really the one that is helping me heal.

Sometimes I get really frustrated at my perceived lack of progress. My therapist disagrees and thinks I have made good, solid strides. But I know that I have been through a lot of trauma and it will take a long time to heal from those experiences and patterns that have developed as a response to trauma. My therapist often tells me I am exactly where I need to be. It helps me feel accepted and not judged. Every week (except for the odd vacation or brief illness), I show up and she is there to help me and support me and my goals for my recovery and my life. It was so foreign to me that someone even wanted to help me, that I was worthy of help, and then to stick it out with me, and not abandon me like every adult had in my life when I was a child. It was profound and it stuck with me.

The greatest gift that my therapist has given me is that she is there for me. She has excellent boundaries; I don’t expect her to be there for me at two in the morning. However, her support for me is always there. I take what I have learned during the process of psychotherapy and I can apply it to my life, often with her words in my head giving me strength.

I know she can’t wave a magic wand and make my depression or post-traumatic stress disappear. She can’t snap her fingers and make me well from the ravages of suicidal thinking and self-harm. I know she can’t heal me. But she can help me heal. I trust her to do that. I trust her to hold my secrets, and hold my pain; I trust that it won’t crush her and that it will no longer crush me.

The other day I was at a session with my therapist, discussing something of not-so-great importance, but was something nonetheless that bothered me a great deal and was causing me to feel upset. I explained the situation, my therapist listened, and then she listened some more, and then she spoke. She encouraged me to think differently than I always think, to not get stuck in that same headspace, mired in the past.

After discussing the situation at some length, at least half the appointment time, I felt better. I knew that I didn’t have to go to that place in my head and my heart where it was my entire fault and I had done something horribly. I didn’t have to beat myself up emotionally or physically for a perceived wrong on my part. I was truly amazed how much of a difference just talking, and being heard and having my therapist support me made. She made me think differently about the situation. It was no longer upsetting. I no longer felt the need to punish myself. Her words were true, she just made me think more.

I don’t exactly have an ending to my psychotherapy story. After all, my therapy hasn’t ended. I am well on the way to being far less destructive to myself and not so reactive to all of the trauma. Four years ago, I wish I would have known what I know now about therapy, that at times I might be scared, but it’s not scary. That at times I will fail and mess up, but my therapist will still be there. That it is okay to trust people with deep, painful things and they are still okay and I am more okay. If I would have known that therapy could help me become who I am becoming I would never have wavered.

I couldn’t have known that then. I know it now, and only because I know my therapist and I know she can help me heal even more and become whole again. I tell my therapist sometimes that I can’t thank her enough for what she does. I don’t know how she does it, frankly. To listen to painful things day after day, week after week, year after year, it takes someone incredible and kind to do that.

The fact that she does it for me is still amazing to me even after all this time. I don’t know if I would still be alive today had I not chosen to listen to my friends, my very wise friends, and enter therapy, but I kind of doubt that I would be. But now I have hope. I can have a future. I am not the sum total of my abusive childhood, my depression or my post-traumatic stress disorder.

I am me and I have hope. My therapist helped me see that. I thank God for her.

A few people had suggested throughout the past couple years that I do it, and I thought I’d go to one session to say I’d done it and be done with it. Well, I went to that one session and told the counselor I needed help with stress. She talked to me about stress, but in ending the session, rather than asking “Do you want to come back?” asked “When do you want to come back?”

I have difficulty saying no to anyone, so I agreed to a time. The next session went nearly identical to the first, but during the third session she redirected the goal of our sessions toward me talking more. She had me take some tests (MMPI-2 and MCMI) and I wrote out a list of my goals for her.

She never directly told me, but eventually I picked up that she thinks I have social anxiety disorder. She started having me write down situations in which I felt anxious and what I was thinking and feeling at those times, but I didn’t really understand the point of it. I started realizing just how much anxiety had controlled my life, but I didn’t feel like doing this was helping me.

What this work did do, however, was make me really want to be able to do the things I was so terrified of doing.

After a few weeks of this my counselor started asking me to rate how much anxiety I felt in various situations, one of which was in sessions. Upon hearing how difficult sessions were for me she determined that rather than working toward my goals we should work toward me being more comfortable with her.

This is where things started spiraling downhill in a hurry. I would come to a session and she would have me lie down and close my eyes and do breathing exercises for fifteen minutes, then send me on my way. She couldn’t have known this since I never said anything, but closing my eyes brings my anxiety level up, laying down makes me feel vulnerable, and the breathing exercises were the way I breathe when I’m really anxious. So doing this was bringing me into an extremely anxious state at every session, and it would take me longer each week to calm myself from the session.

My sessions are on Tuesdays and one week it got to the weekend and I still couldn’t fully calm myself—nothing was working. I was frustrated and ready to just tell the counselor I was done, but because talking to people is so hard for me I didn’t know if I could do it. I was scared not only of doing it, but of hurting her feelings. After a weekend of spending hours on my laptop trying to figure out how I was going to tell her what was going on, I finally wrote something to tell her we either needed to get back to my goals or be done.

While this seems like a negative experience, I think the negative backstory is necessary to explain the positive experience I now receive. At my session that week I read what I had written and, although skeptical at first, my counselor agreed to go back to my goals. Unfortunately, I am a college student and we only had one more session before I left for break.

In that last session, though, she was pleasantly surprised to learn that I had managed to not only meet, but exceed my goal for the week, and said hi to three people over the course of the week. I know that seems like a marginal accomplishment, but for a girl whose social interaction is mostly limited to her journal that was huge. I also was given a packet about recognizing negative and unhelpful thoughts to read over my break.

Between my break and hers, it was a month and a half before I saw her again. We spent the first session back discussing the way my thoughts and anxiety affect each other, and planning our goal for the week: trying to say hi to as many people as I could throughout the week and recording both my negative thoughts and coming up with alternative responses. I wasn’t feeling very successful at the beginning of the week, but by the end of the week, with the support of my counselor behind me and the knowledge that my thoughts and feelings don’t have to define the situation around me, I had grown much in my ability to communicate. I was finally able to at least acknowledge my friends when I saw them. That was an enormous accomplishment for me.

Although that was only two weeks ago, it seems like eons ago because of the amazing progress I’ve made since then. In sessions, my counselor and I talk about the situations in which I completed my goals for the week, how the situations felt, and what could have gone better. We also roleplay situations that might still be too difficult for me to do spontaneously, and she talks me through the situation and encourages me until I can do it successfully.

Once my counselor and I were on the same page, I started making so much progress. I wish that I had had the confidence to let her know what was going on earlier, but even with the short time we had together before my break, my family and friends noticed a distinct difference in my confidence and ability to communicate. Now, after only a few weeks back with my counselor I have progressed to a communication level that I never realistically expected of myself. Sure, I always had my fantasies about becoming like my extremely extraverted friends, but I always knew that extraversion was likely not a part of my personality, and had much lower realistic expectations for myself.

I thought that once I got my therapy back on track that it would still take me years to reach a level of social ability comparable to that of my peers, and have been pleasantly surprised to find that at the rate I am progressing now I may be there by the end of the year. Understanding how a more normal friendship works may take a bit longer after living isolated as a nearly silent companion for so many years, but with the support I receive from my counselor I know I will soon be the socially secure college student I long to be. Even something as simple as commenting on a blog post, or even liking someone’s post on Facebook was way outside my comfort zone just a few months ago, yet now I can do them with little concern.

Although the process is difficult, every frustration and challenge has been worth it to be able to have the ability to have more than a one-word contribution to conversations with my friends. I would say even the frustration and anxiety that resulted when my counselor and I did not see eye to eye was worth it because it showed me the importance of learning to advocate for myself.

What started as something to check off the to-do list to please others has become something that has given me more than I ever expected to receive.

So we’re putting out a call for any and all psychotherapy stories — from therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, clients and patients. If you have a story you want to tell and can do so in under 1,400 words, we’re interested.

We’re not looking (just) for salacious stories. We’re looking for stories that show the personal nature of therapy, and how it can help people.

Read on for details…

We are looking, first and foremost, for your psychotherapy story (or that of a loved one; or if you’re a professional, one involving your psychotherapy session with a client). We don’t want fictional stories. We also don’t want you to tell your story in public if you’re not ready to share it and have it be read by thousands of people.

We are also looking for submissions that meet our editorial guidelines. These include:

• Good English grammar.
• Simple formatting — no indenting, but please use paragraphs and spaces between your paragraphs.
• Spell-checking before you send.
• Make the details anonymous. We don’t want you to be too personal with your details, to ensure no one recognizes you (or your client) from the story.
• Taking 5 minutes to proof-read your submission before sending it to us, making sure it reads well and makes sense.

All entries will be published anonymously, unless you specify otherwise.

There may be a small stipend involved if your submission meets our editorial guidelines and is a story we end up publishing. If this is the case, we will contact you for your billing details. (We’re not guaranteeing any stipend or giving details about it, because we prefer people do this for sharing their story, not for the money.)

Submit Your Psychotherapy Story

Ready to go? So are we! So go ahead and send us your best story about psychotherapy to:

(We can take any format you care to send it in.)

The Fine Print:
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I saw people in the throes of mania, psychosis and suicidal depression. I still remember the man who asked if I was a witch who would place a spell on him. And the woman who came barreling at me down the hallway, warning, “You best get out of my way, or I’m going to go Ninja Turtle on your ass!” I remember the man who swallowed six bedsprings in a suicide attempt. And countless others with bandaged wrists, bruised necks, and broken souls. I learned a lot about the breadth and depth of human suffering.

One day I was waxing philosophical about suicide with one of the charge nurses who had worked there for more than 20 years. She shared that she had a collection of 350-odd suicide notes that had been collected by a medical examiner over the course of his career. The notes had been collecting dust in her attic for the past 10 years.

She asked if I wanted them.

It’s not everyday that an archive of grief in the form of suicide notes falls into your lap. I hesitated for just a moment before saying, “Sure.” Her gaze settled in the distance as she told me that having the notes had been fascinating and also a terrible burden. The following week I left work carrying a banker’s box full of yellowing scraps of paper, greeting cards, receipts, napkins, and hotel stationery, on which were scrawled a few hundred people’s last words.

The musty smell when I opened the box was overwhelming. All of the notes were written by individuals who completed suicide between the mid-1940s and the mid-1960s, apparently before privacy rules would have precluded their being collected and filed away.

Gingerly picking up the fragile slips of paper, I read the words, in fits and starts. The notes, most of them no more than a few sentences, telegraphed such heartbreaking despair, hopelessness, and grief. And somewhat surprisingly, they also communicated gratitude, warmth, and an unmistakable concern for others. I couldn’t help but wonder about the lives of these individuals who, for one reason or another, had reached the end of their respective paths, and couldn’t see any further.

“I’m sorry to have to do this to you and the children, but I’ve come to the end.”

I eventually used the notes in a qualitative study exploring the interpersonal nature of suicide (Sanger & McCarthy Veach, 2008). My co-author and I focused on the suicide notes as acts of communication that demonstrated a desire to acknowledge and maintain connections with others, even in the face of death.

In their suicide notes, individuals said goodbye, apologized and asked for forgiveness, and attempted to exonerate others from blame. They provided instructions, expressed love and gratitude, and praised others for their upstanding qualities. Sometimes they discussed loneliness, isolation, and lost or unrequited relationships. They very rarely expressed hostility or pointed their fingers at others for their demise.

In simple and poignant prose, the decedents reached out to loved ones, seemingly trying to ease the unspeakable loss associated with suicide:

“You’ve been a sweet, dear, faithful wife. Thank you for that.”

“I’m sorry to have to do this to you and the children, but I’ve come to the end.”

“I hate myself for giving you this shame, but people will understand that none of it is your fault.”

“It is best I go now before things get worse for you and yours. Please forgive me for unknowingly hurting you. I should know by now that people do not want anyone with problems around them.”

Perhaps most striking was the finding that positive relationship themes, such as saying “I love you” and praising others, were more prevalent in the notes than negative relationship themes, including loneliness, isolation, and overt hostility. Expressions of concern for others also implied positive connections in the lives of these suicidal individuals. It was troubling, though, that this concern was sometimes communicated in the form of fears of being a burden or minimization of the impact of the suicide on others.

From birth, we are wired to need other people in our lives. In the study, more people focused on efforts to maintain their relationships or reconcile relationship difficulties (including those anticipated to result from the suicide) than on directly acknowledging the impending end of relationships. To me, this was a reminder of people’s strong needs for social ties, even as they approached an act that would sever all relationships.

By the end of the study, I was immersed in the balance of fascination and burdensomeness that came with owning a collection of suicide notes. I carefully placed the notes, encased in plastic sheets and organized in binders, back into the banker’s box, which has now been sitting in my attic for the past six years. I certainly cannot throw them away, but I also can’t quite bring myself to open the box again. I am quite literally keeping a lid on all of the pain they represent.

Reference

Sanger, S., & McCarthy Veach, P. (2008). The interpersonal nature of suicide: A qualitative investigation of suicide notes. Archives of Suicide Research, 12, 352-365.

In search of a connecting dialogue, they’ve come to a marriage counselor. Unfortunately, their initial therapy session ended up as a triumph of assumptions and accusations. So much was said in that hour that the distance between them felt insurmountable. It was a tragedy of total misunderstanding and disconnect.

She was talking with agitation and intensity as if she had some invisible “keep going” sign in front of her. Words were fast and sharp. Sentences poured out and linked into paragraphs without intermissions. One could sense despair, frustration, and pain. However, with the air in the room boiled by fury, her spouse could not connect, feeling spooked and terrified. She was shouting, reminding him about every way she had been wronged and failed by him. As if living in such agonizing circumstances was not bad enough, she was adding to their mutual pain by reliving each moment of his perceived transgressions in high volume and with screeching pitch. Her narrative was filled with acute judgement and accusations. Her mood, dark and powerful as a tornado, spread its dangerous swirls around him. All he could do was freeze and silently pray for safety.

Finally, she was drained of her anger. There was a brief pause in her intense monologue. He shyly took it as a cue for a conversation entry. He began talking, trying to explain his point of view, and perhaps apologize. However, after only a few seconds of listening, her face gained a peculiar look, the way you may look at your domesticated feline who just missed his litter box and made a mess on the floor: “I know this is what you cats do once in a while, but hey, shouldn’t you know better?”

This implicit judgement was subtle enough that she could not be called on it, yet it was tangible and impossible for him to overlook. The feelings that she silently conveyed were not lost on him: it was contempt infused with condescending love. This toxic mixture stopped him from talking.

He began examining the brownish hues of my office carpet with intensity, as if some mystical answer — the cure for all of his marital ambiguities — was right there in front of him in the acrylic threads. It was clear that he was done apologizing and explaining. He no longer felt safe.

More accusations and self-serving claims were delivered in the remaining hour by both partners. There were also threats to leave the room, exit the relationship, and fire the counselor for the lack of effective interventions. If I did not know any better, I would think that I was visited by Shrek and the Wicked Witch of the West; that their problem is they belong to different tales, and the only solution is to release them to their separate kingdoms in search of a better match. But they were not mystical creatures. They were honest, caring people who occasionally shouted loudly and forgot to listen. People who loved each other but felt hurt and stuck.

Many lines were crossed in that single hour so it felt it could not get any worse. It was good in some way: Having reached the threshold of interactional nastiness, yet desiring to stay together, left these two with no other choice but to figure out how to improve. Being in dire need of mediation, therapy was a timely intervention for them.

Some people think that therapists are for those who don’t know what to do. On the contrary, therapy can be very helpful to those who are quite knowledgeable and intelligent. Feeling overwhelmed and frustrated makes them overly focus on their own violated needs and sense of hurt and ignore their partners’. As a result, many couples struggle with stating problems clearly, putting blame and emotions aside, and begin to dialogue constructively and create solutions.

The couple scenario was an example of a simple but commonly forgotten thing: In conversation, the main goal is to repair and connect, not to accuse and blame. Verbal expression is good for healing, but can be a means of diversion. Words can be carrots as well as sticks. They can connect or break relationships. The same goes for your body language: We can communicate things to others without words. The way you position your body toward or away from your partner, your facial expressions, movement of your hands can all be silent yet powerful communication tools.

There was no resolution for this couple at war during their first few visits. But there was increased exhaustion, multiplied regrets, and a growing desire to stop hurting and make things better. These items did not complete the needed relationship repair toolkit, but they were good enough to start. Too tired to fight and play against each other, I hope their questions will increasingly include more of “we” and “us” reflections: What makes us suffer? What makes us better? How do we change? When it comes to “I” and “me” statements, I hope the search for self-justice will include more of: What is it that I wish my partner understood about me and my needs, and how can I communicate this better?

Strangers’ responses to learning that I’m a therapist are varied, and it’s not uncommon for them to be loaded in some way or another. “You’re analyzing everything I say, aren’t you?” many people joke. “Mmhmm,” I’m tempted to respond, with a raised eyebrow and Mona Lisa grin. “Oh,” others murmur, before the conversation trails off into stilted silence and the person starts surreptitiously glancing over my shoulder for someone else to rescue them.

The wedding guest’s response to learning I’m a therapist was of the “Oh, that’s cool” variety. I didn’t think anything of it. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t really “analyze” anyone, let alone people I’ve just met.

Later in the evening, after a lovely dinner, people started migrating to the dance floor, and I followed. I love to dance at weddings and I can dance well enough. By which I mean I don’t call attention to myself with my awkward moves. Often.

As the strains of Hava Nagila faded and the music shifted to more contemporary dance fare, the wedding guest I had previously chatted with caught my eye and shouted above the DJ, “I can’t even imagine my therapist dancing!” Incredulity and an afternote of the freely flowing wine (we were in Sonoma, after all) rang through his comment.

I laughed and shouted back, “Yep, we’re people too!”

After the wedding, I smiled to myself again about the encounter. The wedding guest’s exclamation was a reminder that clients vary broadly in their views of my role as a therapist. Some, like the guest, seem prone to thinking of me existing solely within the confines of my office. Like the students who believe their teachers live at school, these clients keep me in a safe box. They don’t imagine me dancing at weddings, or in other “real life” activities because it doesn’t really occur to them to do so. Sometimes it’s easier to disclose vulnerable material to someone whom you imagine, consciously or not, is not quite real.

There are other clients who keep me boxed up, but for different reasons and in a different way. These clients view me as a professional with a capital P, much like they might view their dentist or accountant. In these clients’ minds, I am the keeper of important information about things like how to intervene during a panic attack or how to skillfully communicate with a partner. These clients want to talk about symptoms and solutions. They don’t care about my dance skills or lack thereof, or at least not any more than they care about whether their accountant plays baseball.

There are, however, some clients who are curious about who I am outside of the consulting room. They want to know more about me as a person, apart from who I am as a therapist. Of course these two things are inextricably intertwined, but not often in ways that are clear to clients when it comes to the specifics. These clients want to know if I’m married; they ask whether I have children; they’re curious about whether I like the outdoors or scrapbooking or cooking. Sometimes they want to know if I have struggled in ways similar to them. Probably most important to the therapeutic endeavor, they wonder about how I see them, what I think of them, whether I am judging them.

Like many therapists, I am eclectic in my approach. I believe strongly that therapy is not a one-size-fits-all process, and that I need to tailor not only my technique, but also the therapy relationship to each client based on his or her needs.

Multiple theories inform my practice, one of which is a relational, or interpersonal process approach. One of the philosophical underpinnings of this approach is that the therapeutic relationship is a real one, and that here-and-now interactions between therapist and client can serve as powerful tools for promoting insight and catalyzing change.

The therapy relationship becomes an experimental forum in which I can provide interpersonal feedback to clients, they can process their role in the dyad, and they can test out new ways of relating. Some clients struggle with eye contact. We talk about why. Other clients are hesitant to disagree with me. We discuss what it is like to feel the need to continually acquiesce to others. On the flip side, other clients seem primed for an argument and take issue with just about everything I say. I share my experience of what it is like to be on the receiving end of their unrelenting criticism. And so on.

Over time, clients begin to view their interpersonal ways of being from a new perspective. They translate an increased awareness of thoughts and feelings about how they are in relationships, and new interpersonal behaviors into relationships outside of therapy.

Regardless of how clients initially perceive my role as a therapist, I am bound to reflect out loud at some point about the here-and-now dynamic playing out between us. Whether or not they want to know about my dance skills, clients hopefully learn that they can count on me for honest, genuine feedback about how I (as a therapist and a person) experience them. If they want to continue believing that I sleep on the couch in my office, that’s fine, so long as they take what they have learned in therapy with them into the world at large.

So when jobs surface in her company, or if she hears of an opening in her field, she only shares the information with non-friends. It’s just too messy, she explained to me the other day.

Having experienced a situation not too long ago that became just that — messy — I can understand her logic and applaud her for sticking by that rule. I am now much more careful about sharing work opportunities with close friends… in order to protect myself.

Should the same rule apply to therapy?

I never thought so. I mean, my psychiatrist told me the other day that I am her third biggest source of referrals, after a local cardiologist and a gynecologist. I don’t hesitate to share the numbers of both my therapist and my psychiatrist because, frankly, there are so many bad ones in Annapolis that I would feel guilty putting my friends into their dangerous hands.

However, in the last month, I’ve heard from two people who regret sharing their therapist with a friend. The first is frustrated because she can no longer get into see her therapist. The head doctor is now too busy with all the referrals. My friend has lost her preferred hour, so she’s had to rearrange her schedule around the therapy visits of her friends.

Annoying.

The other woman started to have friendship issues with the woman whom she referred to her therapist. So when she would discuss the friendship frustrations in therapy, the therapist no longer was able to see the situation objectively. When the therapist “took the other woman’s side,” according to my friend, she ended up so hurt that she quit therapy. She recently explained this in an email:

When we are in therapy, all parts of our lives come up. When something between you and the person you referred happens, and it will, you are backed in a corner you can never escape. The best of friends have arguments or differences and usually work them out between themselves. However, when you put a third party into the mix, especially a therapist who is seeing both people, it is always going to be the elephant in the room and there is no way that cannot affect your therapist relationship.

I can see her point. I remember when my mom and I shared a therapist, and I was doing a lot of inner-child work, exploring the pain of some of childhood memories. In some ways, it was helpful for my therapist to know my mom in that she benefitted from a bit of context with which to assess the situation. However, there came a point when both of us were subconsciously fishing for information on the other. The therapist was placed in an awkward spot. My mom eventually moved on to another therapist, so the situation resolved itself. But it could have exploded into a bloody mess.

What do you think?
Should you share your therapist with a friend?
If you have already, what happened as a result?

Yeah, well, that’s the theory.

So you jump into a pit bull fight and say, “Here, doggie, doggie, you want a treat?” If he doesn’t take your leg off, you are good to go!

If he does take your leg off, you have much more exposure therapy ahead of you… For which you might want to wear a padded suit.

Exposure therapy has two forms: systematic desensitization, which is more gradual, and flooding, where you jump in with your doggie treats. I learned all this in the book, Extinguishing Anxiety, by Catherine Pittman, Ph.D. and Elizabeth Karle.

I believe in the effectiveness of exposure therapy. I believe that our brains are plastic and, through exposure therapy, we develop new connections that compete with the jaded old guys, that our brains are capable of birthing a flock of optimistic buggers who are eager to try anything.

I tried this exposure therapy in May, when I spoke to about 3500 to 4000 people. Upon seeing all the chairs set up on the lawn, I experienced the same nausea that I do every time I have to drive across the Bay Bridge to the eastern shore of Maryland. Ever since my colossal breakdown, public speaking and pretty much everything that exposes me has that effect. So when I was trying out the microphone and sound system, I may as well have been looking down at a pack of pit bulls. However, I managed to get through the speech using relaxation techniques, exercise (I ran eight miles just before) and other tools that are described “Extinguishing Anxiety.” I am positive that my brain formed new connections from that experience, and that every time I walk up to a podium from now on will be a tad easier.

With that victory behind me, I have decided to use exposure therapy to conquer another behavior of mine in need of major modification: apologizing.

I have what my therapist calls an “apology problem.” I guess you could say that I am an apology addict. I can’t say “I’m sorry” enough in a day. Somewhere in my amygdala is written that if I say I am sorry, the person in front of me or on the other line of the phone has to like me … that my apology will smooth out any awkwardness between us. Sometimes it does, and I can live the next ten minutes with a tranquil consolation that the person now likes me and the world is one giant smiley face. However, two minutes later, I will inevitably say something inappropriate and I am back to apologizing.

It gets tiring, this apology habit.

So, as part of an exposure therapy exercise, I decided to try and see what would happen if I didn’t apologize…if I jumped over the neighbor’s fence and said hello to the pit bulls and gave them all some belly rubs.

Two nights ago was my big test.

There was a woman at a party with whom I used to be good friends. I really like her, but the friendship was not healthy for me… for many reasons. However, I have always felt guilty for distancing myself from her rather suddenly. If there was ever a temptation to apologize, this was it, and as the night went on, my need to apologize grew bigger and stronger and louder and wider. I felt like if I opened my mouth, nothing but an apology would come out. So I didn’t open my mouth.

“You’ll be okay. Really, it will be okay,” I had to reassure myself, just like when I was on the podium talking to 4000 people or at the highest point of the Bay Bridge.

I waited for the room to erupt in flames. But it didn’t. Or for me to suddenly collapse because she had been practicing with her voodoo dolls. But that didn’t happen either. There was a country’s worth of discomfort and awkwardness as I ate my crab balls … but nothing that eventful or bad happened. I was pretty sure that, by seeing me, she was reminded that she doesn’t like me. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe I can live in my community knowing that a few people disapprove of me or something I have done.

By the time the three hours were over, the temptation to apologize was still there, but I knew that my brain had developed at least a few new connections that said it was okay to put my “so sorry” sign away. Moreover, I know that every time I resist the urge to apologize, and participate in a kind of exposure therapy, I will have paved a brain highway that communicates to my mouth that it only has to apologize when it’s appropriate and necessary.

If not, I’m sorry for wasting your time.

What is one to do when one is confronted with a sleeping therapist?

Stephen Metcalf, writing in New York magazine, set to find out by going back and talking to his prior four therapists, all of whom had fallen asleep on him. Was it him or them?

Of course, psychoanalysts — who are specially trained to practice a very specific and older form of psychotherapy — defend their sleeping behavior as the patient’s fault:

“In the past I noted a tendency in myself to become drowsy with two patients,” wrote the analyst Edward S. Dean in a now-infamous 1957 paper. “At times this drowsiness became so strong that I desired more than all else that the hour end, that I be rid of the patient and could take a brief nap. I was surprised to observe that as soon as the patient left, I became instantly fresh and alert.” [...] Explicitly following Dean’s lead, successive analysts have generated a composite portrait of the sleep-inducing patient as a kind of negatively charged superhero. [...]

Browsing through the literature on sleepy analysts, I was struck by how united the analytic community is in interpreting its own sleep. Variations of the Dean defense abound. And yet analysts stand utterly divided on what the sleepy patient might signify. Is it primary narcissism, hallucinatory regression, a desire to retreat into a womblike state? Freud thought each of these at different times; he even thought it could be a repetition of our infantile withdrawal from the pain of our own childbirth. Or maybe it’s a hostile urethral (no joke) reaction to the analyst? Or maybe the desire to be united with the good mother, or a regression to the infant’s inability to accept the nursing breast? The disdain its critics feel for psychoanalysis is not hard to fathom. You pay a handsome sum to sit across from a real, living, breathing human being who, when confronted with your agony, presents you with a toneless expression and the gelid “And how do you feel about that?” Meanwhile, in his notebook, he jots: “Patient exhibits hostile urethra …” [...]

My therapist here was a Freudian who pushed me to take more sessions, to become a fully subscribed, five-day-a-week head case. I remember him only indistinctly, as a tweedy-shabby figure, a lifetime of neurotic confession—oh, city of thwarted glory!—clinging to him, the way a lifetime of johns clings to a prostitute. Does it come across how much I looked forward to this reunion? And yet the man who greets me at the door of his office is … Judd Hirsch. Circa Ordinary People. Seriously. An evidently humane and friendly middle-aged Jewish man in chinos and a button-up oxford. He is genuinely puzzled when I tell him how bitterly I recall our working relationship. “Really?” he says. “You speak of transference. Well, there is countertransference. And I remember you fondly.”

Asked about falling asleep during our sessions, he replies, “Oh, after lunch, glucose in the bloodstream, insulin, tryptophan …” I press him, and he says, “Well, why did the English take their tea in the afternoon?” Pressed, he says the question of his sleep “clearly distressed you.” To a man with a hammer, Mark Twain wrote, everything looks like a nail. Sitting across from my old doctor, in the late afternoon, in an old New England mansion, with its soughing radiators and pockets of gray light, it’s hard not to think of psychoanalysis not only as a dying art but as a ball-peen to the right eye.

Two Homer Simpson references in one day — we must be on a roll around here!

Thirty years and four shrinks later, and what have I learned? My personality seems to come with two presets: stentorian bore and class cutup, neither of which exactly enchants the mental-health professional.

It’s a dense and fairly long article (not always the best combination for online reading), but I found it interesting nonetheless. He doesn’t come to any solid conclusions (as you can see). Sleeping therapists could mean anything or nothing at all.

To me, however, it suggests a professional who isn’t being very professional and certainly isn’t acting in the best interests of his or her patients. A professional you pay to see should not be sleeping on your time — to me, it’s that simple. And if I caught my therapist nodding off more than once in my psychotherapy sessions, I would be looking for a new therapist shortly thereafter.

Read the full article: Why Would a Shrink Fall Asleep During a Patient’s Session?

Have you been in session when your therapist has fallen asleep on you? How did it make you feel? What should therapists do to prevent this sort of behavior?

“Hello, Samantha,” I say, “I’m Dr. Hufford. Come on back.”

I always reserve the same room for our work, hoping that it will help her to remember that we’ve met before. Samantha and I have met many times before, but for her, every session is like meeting again for the first time. She is stuck in an unrelenting present, experiencing life about an hour at a time, before her anterograde amnesia — an inability to remember new events — sweeps the memories away, floating just out of her reach.

“Cognitive difficulties” is the way that her medical record describes it. A more sterile understatement is difficult to imagine. Samantha remembers everything from before about 15 years ago. She remembers going to college, having friends and ambitions, and falling in love. But her description of the accident is distant and clinical; a factual recitation of what she has been told happened. In a casual conversation you might not realize that you were talking to someone who would, only hours later, have no recollection of ever meeting you. 

In clinical terms, her short-term memory is unable to be consolidated into long-term memory. To Samantha, she can sense that her memories are just out of reach, as though if she only tried hard enough they would come flooding back to her.

But the flood never comes.

Samantha’s clever, self-deprecating sense of humor was endearing right away. She reminded me of what one of my clinical supervisors used to say — being able to laugh at yourself is the best single indicator of mental health. But her self-deprecating joke from our first session was repeated in our second session, and then again, verbatim, in our third.

By the fourth session, I felt nauseous as she started it again. The joke is a mirthless reminder of what Samantha has lost, and what she continues to lose: With each passing hour, the amnesia continually washes over her, pulling her memories out to sea in an undertow of neurotransmitters run amok.

After each of my psychotherapy sessions, I dutifully make an entry into my patient’s medical record, choosing prepackaged dropdown phrases. ‘The patient [Choose one: Denied, Acknowledged] auditory hallucinations,’ ‘Mood was [Choose one: Euthymic, Elevated, Labile, Constricted, Flat], ‘Suicidal ideation was: [Choose one: Not present, Present but with no plan, Present with plan]’. Click, click, click, and I try not to think about the fact that my session notes for Samantha are all the same, the exact same.

Our hours together are spent oscillating between creating simple printed reminders for her to post in her room reminding her not to dwell on specific worries, to painful questions about an unfulfilled life, and whether I can please help. There is no place in the session note for her questions — questions not about the meaning of life, but the meaning of her life, about feeling lonely and wondering who would ever want to be with her. She thinks that she is broken, and wonders what kind of life she can ever have, unanchored from the past. She remarks how well I seem to understand her struggles, unaware that my prescient empathy is an accidental byproduct of her amnesia.

Psychotherapy is not my day job. Except for a few hours every Friday afternoon, my working life is spent in drug development, designing and running clinical trials of new medicines for psychiatric problems. That time speeds by, punctuated by meetings, teleconferences, reviews of scientific papers, and summaries of how a new drug compares to placebo in clinical trials of hundreds of patients. It is clean and tidy work. In contrast, the time that I volunteer on Friday afternoons is a chance to wade into the messiness of lives spent in poverty, and surrounded by loss, violence, and ugliness that is a world away from my office in La Jolla.

As the Fridays pass by, one day I hear that the famous neurology patient, H.M., has died. H.M.’s amnesia was remarkable, and decades of research into his deficits illuminated, among other things, that declarative memory (knowledge of facts and events) was separate from procedural memory (how to do things). In short, it is possible to learn something, and yet be unaware that you know it. Upon his death, his brain was sent to San Diego’s Brain Observatory for dissection and digital imaging. One morning, I log on to a website that is streaming live video of the transection of his brain. The automated surgical scraper takes another pass at his frozen brain as the lab technicians update the accompanying blog noting, “The ventricles can now be seen!” It’s neuroscience as performance art.

I close my browser before the next scrape across his brain and look out of my office window at a perfectly manicured line of palm trees. I wonder whether I could live Samantha’s life, dutifully waiting for a medical advance that has yet to come, while not even knowing how long I’ve been waiting. I am sure that I could not, drunk as I am on the good fortune of my life. I think of the expectant look on her face in the waiting room every Friday, as she sits there with grace and patience, surrounded by people impatiently waiting for their 10 minutes with a physician and a prescription for what ails them.

I have no pills for Samantha, and know that for such complex patients a single clinical trial is unlikely to ever be run – Samantha’s problems are too complex, and the rarity of patients with such disorders is insufficient for the business of medicine to ever work in her favor. I feel like an agnostic little drummer boy, dutifully drumming my drum while chastising myself for not having more to offer.

Am I helping Samantha? I think that I might be for that one hour every Friday afternoon, but the feeling is quickly swept away, floating just out of my reach. And then, busy with my work and happy life, another week is gone. It’s Friday afternoon again, and that means clinic. It’s 1 p.m., and that means I’m walking to get Samantha from the waiting room for our therapy session. I take a deep breath before I open the door, and find myself looking forward to our session. “Hello Samantha,” I say. “I’m Dr. Hufford. Come on back.”

I would get stuck at “Nnnnnnn… alright.” Which meant I was doing all kinds of things that I didn’t want to, have to, or have time to do.

If you are like me, surrounded by a modest sampling of users, takers, and even well intentioned askers who could zap all your energy if you let them, take heart! Here are a few fun, simple techniques to get your mind and mouth to work in tandem to repeat after me: NO!

1. Smile and shake your head.

You’ll find this, the most basic form of body language, to be a sweet, nonverbal way to communicate this sentiment: NO WAY.

2. Fill your calendar.

Fill up your daily planner with prior commitments, like long, hot bubble baths. That way, you can say, “No, sorry, but I have an appointment for that evening.”

3. Run out the clock.

Distract the person who’s asking for your time, change the subject, and stall until it’s time to say good-bye.

4. Tape your mouth shut.

You can do this figuratively (or literally!) until you learn how to say: “no,” “nope,” “sorry,” “can’t,” or any other variation. If you don’t say anything, you can’t say, “Sure, I’ll do it!”

5. Let the phone ring.

Just because someone is calling doesn’t mean you have to pick up. An even better method: turn your ringers off. That way you won’t even know that you are saying no!

6. Post a sign.

Think, “Do not disturb” or “Personal Time. Thanks for understanding!” Project to those around you that you’re in privacy mode.

7. Press “send.”

After you have finished composing a polite regret to yet another request by a pushy friend.

8. Walk away.

Put one foot in front of the other until some distance has accumulated between you and the persistent nagger.

9. Volunteer someone.

Find a better person for the job (namely, someone who has more time than you). If they can’t do it, it’s up to them to say no for themselves.

10. Hide.

This is a stronger version of “post a sign” and “walk away.” If you’re still feeling tempted by “yes, I can do that” (when you really can’t), build a metaphorical fort around yourself. Become invisible and completely inaccessible until the users are gone.