Comfort.

Let's say a long time heroin addict comes to see you. She says, "I just can't tolerate all these feelings. I'm overwhelmed and anxious all of the time now that I'm not using. Even my skin hurts sometimes." What do you offer her to help with the discomfort, the physical grip of anxiety, the dread of regret?

Okay, so now, let's say you are sitting with a man who left his children, three of them who are now adults, because he didn't like their mom and now he's feeling the shame, and the terror that accompanies a true encounter with lost time. He has a history of his father leaving and he always thought he'd be different, but now, in your office, sitting there crying, he's realizing he's probably caused the same heartache in his three offspring that's he's been running from for the last 45 years, and it's excruciating.

Or, there's the incest survivor, the one who lived with her mother who was drunk all of the time. She's finally feeling her way through the past so she might have a present she can attend to, be in, not keep at bay in whatever ways she can muster. She comes in and says, "sometimes I'd rather be dead than go through this. Isn't there something you can give me to help me feel better? Isn't there something to dull this even a little?"

To all I say, and I'm not joking, "take a warm bath, find a place outside where the earth is exposed, take your shoes off and walk around, drink some tea, call a friend, write, listen to your favorite song, and if all else fails, pray."

Absurd, yes? A warm bath is minutia compared to the rush of heroin; calling a friend when you feel like a big schmuck (and you were) is hardly relaxing; walking on the earth when you feel shame has eviscerated you might feel a little like an insult. But, what else is there, really?

Sure, some of us are more inclined to reach out to others, and being a self soother myself, my comforts are more solo, still whatever we have used to run, to numb, to get the fuck away, it doesn't work after a time. Psyche finally gets her way and the truth will not vanish even when we are loaded to the gills or locked in a cave. For the therapist, this is the time of harvest. We clap our hands and smile when this stuff starts leaking through the cracks; what better time for healing but when it feels like there is no other choice?

The songwriter/poet/genius Ferron, who I often head toward when I need a particular kind of comfort, the kind where words from someone who feels like she knows me and can pierce right through to the most tender of places, has a song called, "Shady Gate." In it she says," wash your face my good friend tells me/and clean your house in troubled times/I must admit it helps an awful lot/to go on loving what you love/you see I've trained my mind/I'm not afraid to look behind." How beautiful is that? How simple and perfect and so Ferron, who had horrific things happen to her when she was young and knows exactly how to tell us about it.

Some people go to meetings, some stare at the ocean, some like a bowl of steaming hot brown rice, perhaps some go to a movie; me, I like to walk for long periods of time with nowhere particular to go. How about you? A bath? Folding warm just out of the dryer laundry? Kneading dough? Popcorn? Standing in the wind?

What helps you to walk through your wreckage? What feeds your soul?