Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life

by Christie Tate

That was how I’d always imagined the surface of my heart—smooth, slick, unattached. Nothing to grab on to. Unscored. No one could attach to me once the inevitable heat of life bore down. I suspected the metaphor went deeper still—that I was afraid of marring my heart with the scoring that arose naturally between people, the inevitable bumping against other people’s desires, demands, pettiness, preferences, and all the quotidian negotiations that made up a relationship. Scoring was required for attachment, and my heart lacked the grooves.

From a quick glance, I could tell he was too young to be my dad and too old to want to fuck, which seemed ideal.

To me, those Ivy League certificates signified that this guy was top tier. Elite. Crème de la crème. But it also meant that if he couldn’t help me, then I was truly and deeply fucked.

food addicts collect serenity coins and get sponsors to learn how to live without bingeing, purging, starving, and maiming their flesh.

“If you’re serious about getting into intimate relationships—becoming a real person, as you said—you need

to feel every feeling you’ve been stifling since you were a kid. The loneliness, the anxiety, the anger, the terror.”

“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.