MULTIFACETED

by John Nichols, MS, LPC/MHSP

I’m a big fan of the TV show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. I actually started binging the entire series from start to finish a few months ago. It came out in 1997 when I was in my mid-twenties and I quickly became a fan. If you’ve never watched the show, really anything you need to know about it is in the title, so I’ll spare you my description. Google it and get back to my article. For those of you who are already familiar with it, I have either just scored 100 cool points with you, or you may avoid me once we ’re meeting in person again. John Nichols, MS, LPC/MHSP Anyway, I love the show. It’s a great escape from the day to day. I love the characters, and I’m totally bummed that I am about six episodes away from the series finale. I am also totally bummed about what has recently been made public about the series creator, Joss Whedon. Many actors who worked with Whedon on “Buffy” are coming out publicly denouncing his treatment of the women who starred in the show. Apparently the creator of this show whose heroes were predominantly strong, powerful women, and whom the media and fans at the time lauded as a true feminist and champion for women’s rights, was in fact a misogynistic bully replete with his own little “casting couch”. The creator of the show I absolutely adore is a sleazy Hollywood cliché. Wonderful. As a fan of the show and the actors that made it, I’m bewildered as to how someone whose behavior I find so despicable could create a show that myself and millions of other viewers absolutely adore. However when I put my therapist hat on, I am reminded that dualities and pluralities can coexist. The school bully can also be a talented poet. That jerk of a boss can also be a loving, doting mother. The waiter at your favorite restaurant is also an inventor, a mentor, and has a wicked green thumb. The doctor with the gentle bedside manner can also be an abusive partner who carries on multiple affairs. When I was a fledgling therapist working at a non-profit in East Tennessee, one of my first clients was an adolescent who had done some things to a much younger neighborhood child that made my stomach turn. He lacked remorse, he blamed the victim, and I begged my supervisor to let me punt. She refused. I was pissed. Sessions were going nowhere. My client and I were equally frustrated and resentful for having to spend an hour a week with each other. He passed our hour together each week by drawing in his sketch book and ignoring me. I once started talking about the aliens who fed off my brain to see if he was paying attention. His occasional “uh huh’ s” led me to believe he was not. During one of our usual fruitless sessions he asked me if I had a pencil he could have (not borrow, have). He explained he had drawn his down to the very nub and he didn’t have any at home. He said, “I haven’t finished the barn yet” as he showed me what he was drawing. When he turned around his sketchpad my eyes fell on his drawing of a snow-covered country house next to what appeared to be a horse barn surrounded by a wooden fence. The kid was twelve years old. If you had told me that an art school student had drawn it, I would have readily believed you. “Sure man,” I replied. I had a pack of five pencils that I handed to him. “Keep it. Do you have a sharpener?” He told me he was “cool," and then therapy finally began.

(From the Chair, continued from page 2) There were many parts of his story, a lot of you can guess. Those of us who have worked with adolescents that act out sexually know the similarities. But there was also more to his story. He was a talented artist. He loved animals. He was a big Lenny Kravitz fan, which scored him 100 cool points with his therapist. His first big life goal was to graduate high school, buy a Winnebago and see the continental United States. He wasn’t sure about college. He just wanted to live a good life, be able to support himself, and be free. I almost failed this kid as a rookie therapist because I was hyper-focused on one part of his human condition. It wasn’t until I allowed myself to see all of him that I was able to help him heal and to connect with him as a human being. I grew to really care for him and respect him. I sat with him as he cried in shame for the awful things he had done to his neighbor. I listened as he recounted the equally reprehensible things that a family member had done to him just a few years prior. I was privileged to hear him as he forgave himself and the uncle who had hurt him. I would have missed all these things if I had chosen to lump him in the first box that I thought he fit in. We are challenged in this season as therapists and as citizens of the world to see our clients, our colleagues, and the rest of our community as more complex and multifaceted than the boxes we initially want to place them in. Sometimes it's really hard, I get it. Sometimes we have to dig super deep to find something in others that we can relate to, respect, or love. If it were easy, things would be a lot different. Perhaps even better. By the way, the kiddo I told you about found me on the Book of Faces a few years ago. He finished high school. He worked all the way through it so he could save up and buy that Winnebago, and he left town the day after he graduated. After seeing the continental United States, working odd jobs when he needed, he settled in a little town in North Carolina. He just got married to a really sweet girl and they bought a puppy that they named Xander. Kiddo was a Buffy fan, also, evidently.