A 51-year-old divorced management consultant came to see me for the first time on 26 September 2008. Tell me more about your panic and your feelings of anxiety; what exactly do you feel? Describe every detail. Say a bit more about your feelings after being abused by your brother! I try to remember how I felt ... there were a few other things at school that reinforced my bodily perception that I wasn’t a real man. I grew up in an Italian community where 14- and 15-year-old boys already had full beards and big, masculine bodies. I was just this thin little guy from Long Island. I didn’t feel like a real man, I didn’t feel particularly masculine. On the school bus someone once pinched me in the testicles. I felt like a girl, like something you could just use and abuse. It was so demoralising. As if I had only a small penis, as if I were a little boy. Later, at about 18, I was in a bar. A big guy, a truck driver, stalked me; he wasn’t trying to pick me up, he was stalking. He followed me outside, and I jumped into the car and drove away, it was very frightening. Almost like a sexual predator. Once, after high school, I brazenly approached a girl and said: “I want to sleep with you!” She replied: “You probably can’t even find your cock, it’s so small.” After experiences like that I had the feeling: “You’re really useless. You’re probably not a man at all, you’re not strong, you can be used. Stuff just happens to you, you have no control over it.” “I chose the gecko as my animal totem. (The gecko is actually a transformation totem; it has to do with metamorphosis and change, because geckos tend to mimic their environment; they also lose their tails easily.) I went through a process where I was no longer a gecko and became the Great Elk-Bull. The Great Elk-Bull meant anchoring strength for me, so that I could stand in my own power after I am now over 40. So I changed my name. I am now Elk-Heart. Being Elk-Heart for me means not only power, I think it is about a more important part of me, and that is my heart. Something I think I can give — that fulfils me spiritually and emotionally. I have undergone some changes. Occasionally I will draw on the Great Elk-Bull again because I need that power. These feelings go back to the time when I felt small, insignificant and scarred. It was a time when I did not have control over my environment or what happened to me. When I look at my life now I’m amazed that everything is so different now, I have control. In my life today I am so lucky, so many advantages. Having absolutely no control over your life and feeling very small — describe that feeling! That scares me. I’m afraid of the dark. I’m going to tell an embarrassing story now — it really haunts me. It doesn’t happen often, but every now and then it sneaks in when I go up to my bedroom and the lights go out ... I feel uncomfortable being alone at night because I think something is after me. It’s completely irrational, but it’s an old childhood fear, a feeling that I wasn’t safe anywhere, that “something” wanted to get me. As a small child I repeatedly had nightmares that I had been forgotten. I was in an old abandoned building, and my family had forgotten me, and there was a maze and I could not get out. I looked out of the window and saw them sailing away in a boat or driving off in a van. I turned around and there was a huge witch, a terrible person who was now supposed to be my mother. Then I woke myself up. When I talk about it I realise that this feeling of financial insecurity is merely a metaphor for the fact that as a child I could not feel safe — that’s what it’s about. Even with women I do not feel safe. I was lucky to have a relationship with a woman after my marriage which affirmed that I was OK, that I could attract women, that everything could be different. That was exactly what I needed. Not safe? I was in danger, I had been forgotten. Danger from what? That someone with more power could take me ... There is a cartoon, a picture of a sweet little girl in a cute dress with a bow in her hair; she sits at a table with really horrible parents. The caption reads: (Parents) “It’s true, you once belonged to a beautiful king and his queen, but we stole you, and now we are your parents and there’s nothing you can do about it!” My father was an alcoholic, and that was very sad because he had completely lost control of himself. How? He was slovenly and drooled and made a fool of himself. He did not abuse me, he was not violent at all, he was more of a lightweight; his face was smeared with food, he slurred his speech and often fell asleep. When I was 17 or 18 something happened that was particularly frightening. We had a large house and it was somehow spooky because it had belonged to a captain in the 1880s, and so we had always been afraid of going down the stairs where all the many rooms were. I was alone with my father, just the two of us, and of course he was drunk. We were a large family, but none of my siblings were there. It was in the evening, probably about 7 o’clock, he was drunk and completely off his head, then I heard footsteps upstairs very clearly and I became very afraid; it was so eerie, and it became clear to me that I could not rely on him to protect me. I grabbed my keys and left. I got in the car and drove for 4 hours through the night. I wound the window down to stay awake and drove to my mother’s in our holiday home. It was so horrible. What would you say if someone asked you: “What were you like as a child?” I was a very compliant child. I didn’t make trouble. I had top grades. I was considered well adjusted and unproblematic. My mother met her emotional needs through her children, and especially through me. She would make advances to me and stroke my leg, no, not my leg ... I don’t know why I said that. She confided in her children how lonely she was, all the problems she had. About ten years ago I cleared this up with her as far as this issue is concerned. It became a problem in our marriage. There were some problems between my ex-wife and me because the close relationship between my mother and me always seemed threatening to her and there were no clear boundaries. How could that happen? How could her clinginess pose a threat to your wife? My mother came more often to visit me. She was very clingy, she came and sat next to me and put her hand on my leg, she pressed herself against me. My mother would not accept that she could not hold my hand when we went out with my wife, or put her arm around me or sit very close to me. It was a terrible moment when my ex-wife said: “Stop treating my husband as if he were your lover!” I had to distance myself more from my mother; she became an emotional burden for me. I don’t feel aroused by it (HG—hand gestures: hands together, fingers intertwined). But that’s how it was. I was very close to her. When I had nightmares I would go into my parents’ bed and sleep between them. My mother was very understanding. I did that until I was about 14. You were abused by your brother and began to seduce other small children — tell me more about your feelings connected with those experiences! I felt powerful and believed I had control. I was aroused by their curiosity and by my ability to make it seductive and comfortable for them so that I could satisfy my needs. I had problems with masturbation because my ejaculations were very painful. I had nocturnal ejaculations that were very intense and painful, so I was pretty frustrated and didn’t know what to do with it. I saw no way out, felt awkward with girls and could not masturbate. I remember an early experience with my brother. A boy was on the couch and I pulled my trousers down. I felt that great joy, that huge feeling of happiness. I spread my legs over him and said: “Just watch the television!” And I let my penis dangle into his hands, and when he began to play with it that was really exciting. Finally I found a little relief from the grief and pain of feeling alone. Sometimes I had this feeling of being at the centre of attention. I was positively flooded with euphoria because I was noticed and someone cared for me. I felt safe, that I could receive joy that seemed safe. I liked that I had control. I enjoyed that it was secret, that it was my thing. It was very painful for me to try to work all this out — on the one hand I had done things that hurt other people, and on the other hand I had felt good doing them. Tell me something about your career, your interests! I am a self-employed marketing consultant. I have been doing it for about 8 years. I work alone. I have many different areas of work. I write articles, do advertising, invent names. I develop and design advertising and work with a graphic designer. I design websites, develop marketing strategies and tell people which market targets they should aim for, which groups of people they can address, what they should say, how they can differentiate themselves from the competition, how to proceed to always reach the right people. I organise everything for a company, from hiring suitable employees to customer service, sales and services. I do not work sequentially but at the same time for everyone (HG: as before: hands together, fingers spread and intertwined, then one hand on top, one below). What do you do in your free time? I draw. Tell me about that! Once or twice a week ... I draw very large portraits, e.g. a head, in charcoal. Sometimes I draw nudes. Say something about your feelings when drawing! I flip a switch and am on another level. I enjoy looking, applying my visual ability. It’s like taking a music course and concentrating entirely on listening to music, or a wine tasting where you concentrate entirely on the taste experience, really focusing on taste. Or during a massage where you give yourself over entirely to sensation. I like that I can concentrate entirely on seeing, and that I can direct my attention to different ways of seeing. I like to look at things from different sides, and that’s also what my work is about. I like to use different patterns of behaviour and different strategic methods, I mix them together and live out my creativity that way. Drawing allows me to do that. I cook, and that is a tangible way of experiencing things. I play racquetball because it has a physical and a social component. I want more contact, more communication with other people. That means life to me — life takes place in this social context (HG - again he spreads his fingers and interlaces them). But I want to take something from here and see how it fits into my life. I like people who are good at demystifying all this stuff and finding the connections. I had no idea that this fits here... For example — when they did that one thing — did you know then that you would now do the other? — (HG — the same) — but there is probably more to it. This modern way of bringing up one’s earlier experiences really fascinates me. Those are the crosspoints where things come together (HG — with fingers splayed back and forth) A year ago I had different relationships with my clients. I had ongoing relationships, I was good friends with my clients. We socialised. When we came together it was: “We have to go out to eat, we have to play golf.” They were business contacts but ... I really miss that. A big theme in my life is that I don’t have such relationships. A year or two ago my work was still manageable, I was not so hectic. I had relationships where I could call people and they were pleased about it. It was like a family. I mention family because I lost my family. My family broke up. That’s why I stayed in the nest so long, and when the nest was torn down I asked myself: “What am I supposed to do now?” My ex-wife felt lied to. She did not know a lot about me when she got involved with me and had children with me. It was a contentious issue. What I liked about her were her ethical principles. She knew what was wrong and what was right, she always did the right thing. I liked that. My boundaries were flexible, wishy-washy: “Well, I don’t know!” What made it difficult was that she was not only critical but also hurtful. She did not fight fair. She became really mean and humiliated me, and thus I felt so wrong and bad, as if something were not right with me. It brought that old feeling of not being enough back to the surface. I felt frozen. I was angry with her; then I gave in because I was the one who messed everything up, yet I resented her. We repeatedly fell into that vicious circle. I said: “You know, something’s not right with me.” But she turned everything around; she was a better fighter and made me feel that I had to say: “Yes, you’re right.” Before I told her about my past I read a book about a girl who had been sexually abused by her father, and it aroused me. We then acted out that fantasy. Well, you can say it always takes two. That was devastating for her. In therapy she said: “I can’t believe you did that to me.” That went badly, but I had done it. She had been raped at about 15, but she had put it in a locked box, that was the past. She could not connect the dots. My theory is: if she admits it to herself, then someone has control over her. It is a control problem. We had a very disturbed sex life where it was only about the physical and there was no fulfilment. It was not love! |
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Describe a gecko! It is a lizard belonging to the chameleon family. It changes colour, visually matches its surroundings. I understand situations and can adapt to them. The gecko is known to lose its tail. It is very fast. Losing its tail can signify transformation. I gave up the gecko because I needed more power within myself. I bend to the situation. I want to be able to face the world. I want to be someone who does not worry about money and who does not constantly count his pennies. |
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Prescription: Gecko LM5 |
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Photos: Wikimedia Commons |
