Kindness as a prerequisite for mental health

Kindness is a main condition for emotional health. It cannot be bought with another currency, although people are constantly trying to get it  “by backdoor employment, “by pulling strings”, or some other means. Only a good man can be emotionally healthy.

A client of mine has long struggled with paying the price for his emotional health through kindness and genuine concern for other human beings. Consciously, he could not possibly relate them to each other. However, a part of him knew it all the time and told him, through a recurring dream, what the way out was, what would save him. For him, however, that dream was a “nightmare” that made him afraid to sleep. He was fleeing in panic from what was best in him.

He came to psychotherapy because of panic attacks and frequent anxiety states. The attacks began immediately after his father’s death. His mother died when he was 11 and his father took care of him until he was twenty-something. He describes his father as a hard-working, good man, a devoted parent who bravely coped with life despite his illness. Father suffered from asthma attacks, and often had bouts of choking and coughing. In addition, he had serious heart problems. Listening to him talk about his father’s attacks, I had the impression that he was afraid for himself, that something like that would happen to him, that the illness would tranfer from father to him , that he could get disturbed emotionally due to these attacks…

as if he thought only on himself, not on his father, about how he was. He remembers how, just before his father’s death, he talked to him bythe phone, when his father had a coughing fit in the middle of the conversation. The client thought it was a good thing he wasn’t home, so he didn’t have to worry about his father’s attack disturbing him, he could put the phone away or just hang up.

After his father’s death, he was not able to sleep in their house. “It’s as if there’s some kind of father’s spirit in it that he’s afraid of.” “What would a ghost do to you, what are you afraid of,” I asked him. “I don’t know…”, he answered, “I wasn’t afraid of my father, he would never harm me, but… I don’t know, I’m just afraid…”. Immediately after the funeral, he moved to his girlfirend’s house, with whom he had been dating for several years. Actually, to her parents’ house, with whom he lived for the next two years. They “adopted” him. He didn’t really like it in that house. Her father was an alcoholic, her mother a workaholic, relations were strained, the atmosphere unpleasant… but he was afraid to go to his house.

After two years, when he got a job, he rented an apartment and rented out his father’s house to tenants. The girl he was living with became boring to him because she kept telling him about problems with his father, about problems at work that she couldn’t stand. She expected him to help her quit a job she couldn’t stand, move in with him, and have him finance their life together for a while until she found another job. “Why would he do that?” he wondered. She just “brings him negative energy that can make his anxiety attacks worse.” He didn’t even think about “getting even” for being a parasite in her parents’ family for two years. In fact, he rationalized that it was not his choice, that he “had to put up with them” because he had nowhere to go.

Then he met another girl who was more “cheerful” and more relaxed, but he didn’t want to leave the first one “just in case” until he was sure he was safe with the second one. He kept her “as a reserve”. However, she happened to see a message on his mobile phone and discovered that he had another one. He “ran away” to his apartment, and for the next few months refused to see the girl who asked him to talk, to explain to her what it was about, why… When I asked why he was avoiding her, why he didn’t clear it up… he answer was: “Well, I would be embarrassed.”. I told him that it seemed that it is always more important to him that he was not embarrassed than how the people with whom he had significant relationships were doing. “Yes…”, he answered, “I can’t stand the inconvenience, I’m afraid of it…”. After several months of avoiding him, he began to panic because of the idea that the girlfriend would take revenge on him, that she would to embarrass him somewhere, come to his door and yell in front of the audience… (which later happened). Should I pity him, or should I slap him? I kept mixing those two feelings about him.

On one hand, he was a pleasant person, with a good-natured appearance, and he evoked in me positive feelings and some protective needs. I could empathize with his feelings of insecurity about growing up in a home where illness and the expectation of death were constantly present, as his mother had cancer since he was two. I could feel that atmosphere in which it was inappropriate to rejoice, to be lively, to be mischievous… in which to get attached was to lose. On the other hand, his preoccupation with himself, treating others as a means of appeasement and protection, without understanding the need to reciprocate, made me feel that I too was some kind of analgesic, tranquilizer… to which he treated with great with respect, but only when he needs it.

Psychotherapy is a very strange business. Psychotherapists are taught to build a relationship in which they expect nothing from the client. The client is not there to meet the needs of the therapist. Something like, “use me until you feel better, then go away…”. And that’s okay. However, at the same time, it is also a very intimate relationship in which strong trust is created, the client shares with the therapist his most intimate experiences, even those that he has not shared with anyone, and the therapist empathizes, tries to understand them, accepts the client into himself… he feels, reacts… like any human being. These very human reactions, if they are not his projections (this is why psychotherapists undergo personal psychotherapy in their training, so that they can recognize their own projections and “transfers” and separate them from authentic reactions) can help the therapist understand how they feel and other people from the client’s life react in relation to him.

This guy was very diligent in coming when he was sick, when he was overcome with panic attacks and anxiety. However, when he felt better, he would simply stop coming without notice, talk about taking a break, or that he no longer needed therapy… We would end some meeting with the agreement that he would call to make an appointment when he saw the schedule at work… And then, simply, he is gone for several months. When a “fuss” starts, there he is again. He doesn’t explain why he didn’t come, but just starts talking about what’s bothering him at the moment. It’s as if he pulled out an analgesic from a drawer, and what does one have to explain to an analgesic. This is how he perceived his father. I wondered how his father felt about that trait of his. And unconsciously, he too wondered exactly that. A dream that often repeated itself and scared him speaks of this.

He often dreamed that he was dreaming, and in the room next to him was his father, watching him. As if she wanted to tell him something. He does not see his father’s face, but he feels that he is there. He doesn’t know if he’s angry. He doesn’t know what he wants to tell him. He’s just watching him. He would wake up in fear. Through the analysis of the dream, we came to the conclusion that he felt guilty for not being there when his father died. He came a few hours later. Why should that guilt bother him so much? He did some work in the city, his father was fine before he left… He also felt guilty for being a coward, for running away from home, instead of continue living in the house that his father had built with great difficulty, for maintains. But why was he afraid of his father’s ghost immediately after his death? His father was always good to him.

After a year of psychotherapy, his anxiety decreased significantly, he found the strength to return to the house, to tide it up, and he was proud of it. He was preparing the house to start a family in it and to marry the girl he had become sure of in the meantime. He felt better and stopped coming.

After about a year, he called again. The anxiety increased again and he dreamed the dream with his father almost every night. “I just thought that we had reconciled”, he complained, “that he was happy that I returned to the house, that he had a granddaughter… Why am I dreaming of him again?” It’s still like he wants to tell me something, but I don’t know what. I’m less afraid, but my sleep is still unpleasant”.

Then he told me about how he copes with marital and parental responsibilities. As there are days when it is not difficult for him, but there are more days when he is seized with anxiety at the thought of what he has to do that day…  as if he is somehow “crying” inside himself, feeling sorry for himself  for having to do it. He feels better when those obligations are over, when he can “tuck in” in the evening. But then his father came to him in his dream… And that disturbes him. “What does he want to tell me now”, he wondered.

He also told me about how difficult it was for him that his wife’s parents were at the baptism of his daughter, and he, “as an orphan”, had no one to come. Self-pity again instead of regret. Self-pity is a destructive emotion, while regret is a healing emotion. He didn’t feel sorry for his parents, but felt sorry for himself for being an “orphan”. I felt I knew exactly what his father would tell him the day he was ready to hear it, but I didn’t want to say it myself. That is what belongs to the father in him. And that father led him to the realization of the father in himself, because the son also became a father.

The next thing he said indicated that to me. He began to feel guilty that his fears and anxieties did not make him the good father he was. Dealing with his fears, he was not joyful and open enough to play with the child. When he was caught by periods of panic attacks, he avoided going away from home, which made it impossible for him to go to some nice places with his family and spend fun time. “He whined about life like a selfish child”. But he began to think about someone else, about the well-being of his child. For the first time I heard him not only thinking about how he was doing.

One day, his daughter fell and bled on the head, just as he was having a severe anxiety attack. “When I saw her so bloody, I didn’t even remember that I was having an anxiety attack… I grabbed the child and ran with her in my arms to the health center. No fears there, no anguish, will my heart stop beating, that was all from another story. It was as if something broke inside me. Everything ended well, thanks God. In the evening, I dreamed of my father again, but this time I saw and heard him… his gentle face… he only said ”   Son, be a good man”. “God, why was I so afraid of that!?” , he asked himself… And started to cry. “What I would give to be able to talk to him now… I miss him so much, to see him enjoying his grandchild… now I would have something to talk about with him…”

“Well, you are talking,” I replied.