Finding Hope in the Crisis: A Therapist’S Perspective on Love, Loss, and Courage

Copyright © 2018 Maura A. Matarese, MA, LMHC.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-0442-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-0443-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-0450-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018905834

Balboa Press rev. date:  08/03/2018

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

PART 1

The Crisis: When Love’s Labor Is Lost

Chapter 1     Mythology and Modern Love

Chapter 2     Alone Again and Starting Over: Lessons on Love and Attachment

Chapter 3     Manipulative Partners and Abuse: How These Crises Happen and How to Survive Them

Chapter 4     Understanding Infidelity: Easing the Pain of Betrayal through Harm Reduction

Chapter 5     When Someone Wants to Leave: Rethinking Divorce

Chapter 6     Befindlichkeit: When Love’s Labor Really Is Lost

PART 2

Finding Hope: The Road Back Home

Chapter 7     Who Put Hope in the Box? Why Hope Always Springs Eternal

Chapter 8     Self-Energy: How to Turn that Frown Upside Down

Chapter 9     Pop Goes the Weasel: Befriending What’s Inside the Jack in the Box

PART 3

Courage and Creative Solutions: The Road to Love’s Labor’s Won

Chapter 10   No Mud, No Lotus: Unburdening the Exile’s Pain

Chapter 11   The Redo: Why It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again

Chapter 12   Creative Repetitions: Moving on to the Road of Love’s Labor’s Won

Afterword

Glossary

End Notes

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank and acknowledge the following people:

First and foremost, my family: Dad, John, and my mother, who left us too soon. My creative well springs from you all.

To my dearest of friends: Margaret Latawiec, Marilyn Unger-Riepe, and Amy Johnson; you’ve been there for me through thick and thin. I am blessed to have you in my life.

To my consultants and therapists, present and past: Fran Booth, Bob Fox, Nancy Costikyan, Jane Cole, Ronni Kotler, and Marc Albanese; your wisdom and care has nurtured my talent and very being. This book would not have happened without your attunement, advice, and encouragement throughout the years.

To my IFS consulting group and the IFS community: your unwavering commitment to accessing Self-energy has kept me on the path to do the same.

To Maria Martin at Forever Slender Med Spa in Wayland, Massachusetts.

To Angela Pennington, whose gift of Jyotish has always helped me see if and when the stars would align.

To Frogs, Ferris wheels, rhinestones, and roses.

To Randall Forsythe, whose genius always sparks my curiosity and inspires me.

To fools who dare to dream and those with the courage to free themselves to be themselves, I bow to you.

Om Gam Gannapataye Namaha (Ganesh prayer for removing obstacles).

FOREWORD

James J. Lynch, PhD

It was my rare privilege to spend my academic career at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School, the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, and finally as professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland Medical School, delineating the many major feeder streams that contribute to the ever-growing lethality of human loneliness in our culture. In a research journey that spanned over three decades, it became obvious that human beings can indeed die of a Broken Heart (Basic Books, 1977). Indeed, as the medical data revealed, the concept of a broken heart was far more than a romantic metaphor; it was an overwhelming medical reality. Only gradually did we come to understand why and how human loneliness had emerged as one of the hidden, albeit leading causes of premature death in America. Indeed, patients suffering from cardiovascular disease frequently increased their blood pressure far more dramatically during human dialogue than they did after maximal exercise. There was a profound, albeit hidden Language of the Heart (Basic Books, 1985) that needed to be understood in order to help patients adopt more effective and authentic ways of communicating. Authenticity had to be restored to dialogue that frequently had been shattered in childhood.

In the course of treating patients for the past forty years, I’ve tried to address the issue of authenticity in therapy straight away by asking each patient at the outset of therapy whether they thought they could share with me any feeling that I’ve never felt. At first, such a question usually elicits confusion and needs to be asked once again: If I have never felt sadness, do you think you could share your sadness with me? Not wishing to prolong this line of questioning in a cat-and-mouse fashion, I would usually quickly add, Then you should hope that I have suffered as much as you have, perhaps in different ways, but sufficient to help us share similar feelings in therapy.

Authenticity is the central clinical message that permeates Maura Matarese’s new book, Finding Hope in the Crisis: A Therapist’s Perspective on Love, Loss, and Courage.

Maura is wonderfully authentic. She shares with the reader her own thoughts and feelings that have been based on her own extraordinary journey. After completing college, she first began her career working as a production assistant in sports television in the competitive Boston marketplace. It was a world where interest in sports has been elevated into the lofty atmosphere of a new type of religion. Yet she is forced to confront the reality that this is a career path largely sealed off from women. Unrecognized at the time, she would come to see this feminine battle as one that can covertly stymie therapeutic relationships.

After seven years in sports broadcasting, Maura then sought meaning in a completely different field of endeavor when she decided to become an actress, working at the Boston Playwrights Theatre, among other Boston-based theater companies. Here, she was exposed to the far deeper meaning of Shakespearean and Greek tragedy. The wisdom of the Greeks would be a theme that began to blossom in her subsequent career as a psychotherapist. Slowly but surely, the very meaning of the word personality, which owes its origins to the Greek word persona (the mask that actors wore in Greek tragedies), suggests a hiding of their real selves, both from their audiences as well as from themselves. Persona or mask would come to be understood by Maura as the great battle in therapy, as she struggled with herself and with her patients to break down the false sense of self that controls our lives, which eventually must give way to a true sense of self, and the source of hope.

After an acting career, which she loved, Maura then decided to seek a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling. As part of her training and growth, Maura worked in a methadone clinic for the next nine years, both treating patients and supervising clinicians and interns, which brought her even closer to the concept of genuine authenticity as a psychotherapist.

This book is a delightful summary of the various schools of psychoanalytic and depth psychology that have become an integral part of her own pursuit of authenticity in therapy.

One additional note to add to authenticity: I vividly remember holding Maura’s hand many, many years ago, as I would take her and my three children to a local candy store in suburban Boston on warm summer’s evenings. We always called her M&M (Maura Matarese). She was as sweet then as she is today. Although I’m her uncle, I still believe that I can be objective in asserting that she’s written a book that contains all the drama of Opening Day at Fenway Park. For some, it will help them to hit a home run at the very beginning of therapy; for others, the ball may dribble past first base and the pennant is lost. If you read this book you will feel that the game is definitely worth playing. In any case, there’s always next year.

Shortly before his death, Socrates was put on trial on the charge of subverting Athenian youth. He famously responded by asserting that a life unexamined is not a life worth living.

Maura has written a book that emphasizes the importance of the Socratic message. Her goal is to tear down the false images that prevent us from discovering our authentic selves. It involves a therapeutic journey that truly makes life worth living.

PREFACE

What does it mean to be alive?

How are we to act?

What must I do?

—Tina Packer, Theater, Therapy, and Theology

You are closer than you think, my longtime friend and colleague once said to me.

I had been working on a book for several years, though the subject matter kept changing. What first started as Let the Stars Align: How the Ancient Wisdom of Yoga in Clinical Psychology Can Turn Your Karma into Dharma then changed to Understanding Narcissistic and Manipulative Partners at Home and at Work and then morphed into a new book called When Someone Wants to Leave. I now had three book ideas that I had started, with little inspiration to finish any of them. I would start and stop and start and stop again. Words simply wouldn’t come to me, and my ideas just didn’t gel. Having the classic symptoms of writer’s block, including procrastination, depression, and anxiety, left me feeling confused, exhausted, and a bit like a fraud. I knew that I had great ideas but couldn’t seem to manifest a whole book out of one in particular.

While struggling to find the energy to work on each book, I somehow found the energy to write a blog, inspired mostly by my clients, who were struggling with their relationships. It sparked my imagination. I had a need to tell the story in my mind’s eye, which was why I was writing a book; it just wasn’t happening in a linear way.

I am, at heart, a storyteller, a tangential one, though, I must admit.

Great stories, whether we read them or see them on film or in the theater, inspire us to dig deep into our souls and connect to the essence of who we are, which in turn helps us to become who we are meant to be. Believe it or not, everyday, ordinary life is filled with epic stories if we open our eyes, ears, and hearts to experience them. As a psychotherapist, I have had the privilege of doing this on a daily basis. So before I finish telling you the story of how this book came into being, first, let me tell you a bit about my story.

In college, I majored in communications and took a lot of acting classes, which was my true passion. I had a practical side, however, with an affinity for sports, which helped me land my first professional job working as a production assistant in sports television. I spent seven years there, working long hours for little pay, and I got to be part of an exciting world that many longed to be in. In Boston, the sports world has a Hollywood status that many a young, wide-eyed twentysomething professional can easily get caught up it. The epic comebacks and tragic overtime losses of Bruins and Red Sox games, along with working on creative and off-the-wall sports features, captured my attention for a while.

There was also a dark side to it all, especially for a woman, as working in sports was still considered unorthodox back in 1992. We weren’t always treated well. Sometimes, false assumptions were made about our motives for choosing this line of work, which were often conveyed in an unmerciful fashion. Some would be touched inappropriately and then threated if they ever considered complaining, and some would have to incur the wrath of their superior’s rage (though this was not uncommon for both women and men alike in the broadcast industry). In time, many of us, myself included, became disillusioned with it all.

In spite of this disillusionment, it wasn’t easy to leave. Though deep down, I knew that sports television wasn’t really my life’s passion, it took a while for me to admit this to myself and then find the courage to pursue what was. I had to get really unhappy before I did. It wasn’t until I saw how neglectful I had become at work, showing up late and not really caring about the end result, that I finally called it quits. I left that job to pursue an acting career, which was what I had always wanted to do. To support myself and pay the bills, I waited tables and did various odd jobs. Like most actors, I struggled to make any money at it. The jobs I did land paid well, but there were often long dry spells between them. I hung in there because I loved the freedom and sense of aliveness that goes hand in hand with a creative life. Having the opportunity to explore my soul through the literary world of the playwright and then share it with an audience was, at times, a religious experience. The more I trained and grew as an artist, the more I fell in love with the works of Shakespeare and the classical Greeks.

It all changed, though, after performing the role of Cassandra in The Trojan Women at the Boston Playwrights Theater. My excitement and passion to share her story through Euripides’s esoteric verse didn’t go over so well. My loyal friends, who came to all my shows, asked me to never invite them to something like this again. It became clear to me that the painful truths of the spoils of war, such as throwing young children off a cliff, accurately forecasted by a woman deemed crazy, was too much for most to watch. When I could no longer see a future on this career