Sublime

Meg’s ghost wasn’t her ex or the breakup. Her ghost originated, as is the case with many of my clients, from a traumatic experience in her earlier years. Her sudden flood of emotions was a purging of old, stuck, physiological arousal. Week by week, as Meg’s autonomic nervous system strengthened, the childhood energy sought to release itself.

“What about me?” I scream, choking. “Come on, Clay,” the psychiatrist says. “Don’t be so … mundane.”

Groves wrote, if a patient repeatedly makes a doctor angry, the patient is likely a “demander,” whose unreasonable expectations simply need to be redirected into a desire for good medical care. A patient whom a doctor finds depressing may be a chronic “help rejecter,” who needs reassurance that the doctor won’t abandon him or her once a symptom aba