That fumbling made it easier for me to fumble, too. In our first meeting, I simply uh-huh, okayed every time I got confused. I’d wanted to feel smart and competent and act like I understood what he was saying. But now, I knew that would get me nowhere. So I asked ten times as many questions in my second session, interrogating Dr. Ham on everything I was unsure of. I asked him to define all the jargony terms he liked to drop on me. I asked him why he made the decisions he’d made.
