“People outgrow you, siblings, lovers, childhood friends. They become more or find someone else or they just get busy. You stop being a major part of their lives. An occasional hello, a birthday greeting, that’s all you get from them. And there’s nothing you can do.”
“I think everyone I ever loved has outgrown me and now I just sit and miss them. I miss too many people and they don’t even exist anymore. They have become more, they have outgrown me.”
“I’m not going to ask you if you have ever hurt someone you love, someone you care about, because we all hurt people we love, right? Although unintentionally most of the times but we do hurt them. I want to ask you how do you feel after it? After hurting your loved ones?”
This is Arianē, my client. She is suffering from anxiety and this is my 7th session with her. She is one of the most interesting persons I have ever met. She always have something unique to teach me, yes I learn a lot from her and today she is talking about hurting people.
“I feel guilty after hurting people.” I answer her, but I know she’ll have a different theory even about this simple matter so I ask her, “What about you?” She stays silent for a long time, then she answers, “I feel hurt.” She spreads her hands in front of her, as if reading the lines then she looks at me and continues, “I don’t know if I can make you understand.” I smile and say, “Try, you know I learn quickly.” She smiles back(fake smile, I know) with that anxious expression on her face and then she starts talking;
“I have always believed that when we love someone, anyone, our parents, siblings, friends, we get the chance to be a different person with them and not our normal boring self. Mostly we love people for this reason, for being able to share a unique side of our self with someone who will appreciate and understand it. We have different parts inside us and we divide them between the people we love. For instance, you are totally professional at the moment but from here when you’ll go home or to the park with your friends, you’ll be your different self or part that you can not be with anyone else. We have unique parts of our being for every person we love. We love them because we love our those parts, our selves in that funny or philosophical mode. So when I hurt someone I love, I feel hurt too because while hurting them I also hurt the part of myself that belongs with them. Hurting the people you love is like killing yourself with a slow poison. When people leave you because of the hurt you have caused, you lose that part of yourself too. The more people you hurt, the more you lose yourself, it’s like leaves falling from a tree, slowly.” She does a hand movement as if following imaginary leaves falling from a tree.
As soon as I clears my throat to say something, she gets up from the sofa, “Time’s up, I should leave. Bye.” And just like every time, she leaves quickly and I write just one sentence in my file, “She feels hurt too.”
Nonfunctioning Adult 