Dr. Rosen came to life and spoke. “What are you feeling?”
Instead of blurting out a bullshit answer that I thought would win me points—I feel empowered by the group dynamics—I took a breath and searched for the truth. I’d lost my bearings, but decided that the truth could function like a home base. It had worked in 12-step meetings—I was alive because I’d told the truth about my bulimia over and over in meetings. Nothing in my life had empowered me—not good grades, not a thin body, not dry-humping a beautiful Latin fraternity boy—like speaking the raw truth about vomiting up my meals. The first true, full-bodied sensation of power I ever felt was after my first 12-step meeting when I sat on a bench with a woman from the meeting and told her that I’d been bingeing and purging food I’d stolen all over campus. I felt the power of turning my back on my mother’s proscription about telling other people my business. I released a secret, not caring who in my family might abandon me, because I finally understood that keeping the secret was an act of abandoning myself. If there was a way to health in group therapy—and I wasn’t sure there was—the foundation had to be built on truth. There was no other way. And none of these people knew my mother or any of her friends. So no more fronting.
“Defensive.” How was I supposed to know that we don’t cross our legs?
Dr. Rosen shook his head. “That’s not a feeling.”
“But that’s exactly…” Now I was pissed, and I was positive that was a feeling.
Another rule: “Feelings have two syllables or less: ashamed, angry, lonely, hurt, sad, afraid—” Dr. Rosen explained feelings like Fred Rogers talking to a preschooler. Apparently, once you veer beyond two syllables, you are intellectualizing, effectively darting away from the simple truth of your feelings.
“And happy,” Rory said.
“But you won’t feel that in here,” Carlos said. Everyone laughed. The corners of my mouth rose in a smile.
Dr. Rosen nodded in my direction. “So what’s ‘defensive’?”
My first pop quiz. I wanted to give the right answer. It felt as hard as figuring out Sheldon’s conference on the LSAT practice test. I ran through the roster of feelings. Frustrated came to mind, but that was three syllables. Furious? Nope, three syllables. Three blind mice. Three times the cock crowed. Three times Jesus fell. Three was holy. Three was biblical. Why couldn’t I use a three-syllable word? My top choice: adios.
“Angry?” I said.
“I heard something else. How about shame?”
I said it aloud: “Ashamed?”
I thought of shame as something survivors of incest or ritual abuse had to work through. Shame belonged to people who had committed grave sexual sins or who did embarrassing things in public while naked. Did it belong to me? I always wore my clothes, even to bed—I often wore a bra during sex. Was shame the word for the feeling that everything about me was wrong and had to be buried under perfect test scores? Is shame what I felt as a little girl in ballet class when I pined for a petite body like the Jennifers and Melissas? Was that the name of the body disgust I felt in my gut growing up when I sat next to my friends and my younger sister, and compared the vast expanse of my thighs with their delicate, birdlike bones?
I wanted to be valedictorian in therapy like I was in law school. The problem with being number one, of course, was that it didn’t cure my loneliness or bring me one inch closer to other people. Then there was the fact that I hadn’t a clue how to be “good” at group therapy.
The cardinal rule in Rosen-land, of course, was no secret keeping among group members, which came up when Carlos discussed a woman named Lynne who was in another Rosen group. According to Carlos, Lynne planned to leave her husband because, in part, of his erectile dysfunction. I scrunched up my nose and shot a look at Dr. Rosen. How could he allow us to talk about some innocent man’s broken penis? What if I knew him? When Marnie mentioned the no-secrets business, I didn’t realize Dr. Rosen would actually condone gossip about other patients in the middle of a session.
“What about confidentiality?” I said.
“We don’t do that here,” Rory said. Patrice and Carlos confirmed with vigorous nodding. The memory of my mother scolding me in high school flashed in my mind. I’d bent the vow to let 12-step people in, but they were bound by the spiritual principle of anonymity, which was right there in the name of the program. What were these jokers bound by?
“How are we supposed to feel safe?”
“What makes you think confidentiality makes you safe?” Dr. Rosen looked energized, ready to school me.
“Group therapy’s always confidential.” My authority on group therapy was one friend from graduate school who had to sign a confidentiality agreement when she joined a group. “Maybe I don’t want my secrets all over your group grapevine.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t get why I want privacy?” There were zero expressions of outrage on the faces staring back at me.
“You might want to look at why you’re so invested in privacy.”
“Isn’t it standard practice?”
“It might be, but keeping secrets for other people is more toxic than other people knowing your business. Holding on to secrets is a way to hold shame that doesn’t belong to you.”
On one level I understood what he was saying. Food addicts in recovery meetings got well when they told their stories. But at the beginning of every 12-step meeting, there is a reminder: What you hear here, when you leave here, stays here. When that line is read, people in the meeting respond: here, here! Dr. Rosen was ethically bound to
