Desperately Seeking Psychologist

From the Archives XVI

Oct 19, 2022

The institutional capture of America’s therapists

I could tell immediately Julie was a Nope. The cadence of her speech suggested she was running late for an important appointment. Her words caught on each other, like bubblegum in your hair. She spoke over me and asked questions that had nothing to do with anything I’d started to say. I didn’t complete a single sentence, not at first anyway. After a disorienting, disjointed orientation, I finally got to my opener:

“Before we go any further, one reason I’m seeking therapy is because my daughter came out as trans earlier this year, and it’s caused a lot of conflict. My husband and I don’t believe our daughter is trans. One therapist has already refused to work with me. Will this be a problem for you?”

Julie didn’t hesitate. “Oh, yes I’ll have to pass. I wouldn’t be able to see you because I have gay friends.”

Gay friends.

She had gay friends, so she couldn’t see me. Because if I didn’t believe that my daughter were trans that meant I must be homophobic. My brain imploded. This was what happened when you swallowed propaganda wholesale. This was what happened when you didn’t think for yourself. I wondered how someone with so little depth could even practice psychology. Then I thought, I could have been the pussy-lickin’est lesbian you ever saw, and it wouldn’t change my mind about my kid.

I should have told her I was gay.

Instead I clenched my jaw and hissed, “How is that relevant?”

She explained, “A person’s sexuality is something they’re born with, so no, I don’t think it would work.”

I said, “Who’s talking about sexuality? This is about identity. If she were gay there wouldn’t be a problem. Gay has nothing to do with this.”

I thought back to my bummer of a phone call a few days before, with an old college friend. Amy* was getting her master’s in social work. She took a class on oppression. “The world favors straight white men,” she’d explained, and then told me about the paper she’d written, on CRT. She’d been assigned Ibram X Kendi’s book, How to be an Antiracist. Before her social justice class Amy sympathized with my skepticism. Now I felt a chill.

“I guess everyone has a different path,” she said wistfully, after I questioned the logic of modern trans identification. When I mentioned the ridiculous level of trans acceptance she said, “I’m sorry to play devil’s advocate, but trans women—especially black trans women—are the most oppressed group in the country.” We ended our call soon afterward and the loneliness set in.

“Well no, I just don’t think it would work,” Julie repeated, unmoved.

“Just so you know,” I said, “I voted Democrat my whole life. I’m not even Christian. I have gay friends. I know trans people too. This isn’t me being a bigot. This is about the fact that my daughter could destroy her body and her future by medicalizing something that I know is not true.”

Weiss said, “I’ve worked in family therapy for thirty-five years. It’s easy to put your issues onto your children. I do it myself. I get impatient. I get tired. But you need to be a safe space where your daughter can come to you and talk about anything. You can’t be criticizing her choices. It won’t feel safe for her.”

“Who said I was criticizing her?” I asked, seeing every shade of red. The idea that my thoughts and opinions and feelings were unacceptable to the very profession tasked with helping people, through talking freely, smacked of blasphemy. I wanted to punch her in the throat.

“Your daughter needs room to explore. She needs you in her corner.”

“But I called you for me. She has a therapist in her corner. Am I not permitted to feel and express my personal feelings in my own therapy?”

“I’m not talking to you as a therapist. I’m talking to you as a mother.”

Oh okay. I hadn’t gotten the memo. Was I now receiving unsolicited motherly advice? Wonderful!

“So here’s what motherhood is like for me,” I said. “Every authority in my daughter’s life—her school, the Pediatric Association, universities, the government… They all affirm her quote-unquote identity. I love my daughter more than any of them. I know her better than any of them. I want the best for her. And everyone around me is working against that. Can you imagine how stressful that is? How lonely?”

“That must be—” she began, but I cut her off.

“I know she’s not trans because she’s never experienced a shred of gender dysphoria in her life. And I know she’s not trans because thousands of girls just like her—white middle class liberal girls—are now identifying as trans. Do you not see that?”

Julie reluctantly agreed that it was a curious thing, that so many adolescent girls were identifying as trans. “I wonder why that is,” she said.

I offered a reason. “Well, Critical Race Theory teaches these kids that the patriarchy is responsible for all the evil in this world, so who would want to be in that group? Trans gives them a way to identify into a marginalized population—an oppressed minority.”

“That makes sense,” she allowed.

Ooh, I thought. Maybe I’ve peaked her. Maybe she’ll start listening to Stella and Sasha. Maybe I’d send her a link.

“Well, I just called to tell you I can’t see you anyway,” Julie said. “I’m not taking on new patients at this time.”

Could she not have led with that? I thought. What a weirdo. Dr. Julie Weiss PhD deserved ZERO stars. I thanked her for taking the time to talk and hung up the phone.

My heart raced with fury and indignation. I used the adrenaline to clean Miss Miller’s room.

Sitting on my daughter’s rug among stacks of her old school work, I noticed that all her old notebooks proudly displayed her birth name in painstaking, fancy cursive. She hadn’t thrown them away. In fact, they surrounded her, like friendly ghosts. As I slipped them into a shopping bag bound for storage, I hoped I’d get to say her name again one day, with or without a therapist in my corner.

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PS, I never did write a one-star review for Dr. Julie but I did write one for the salon that I allowed to defile my hair the other week when the owner refused to acknowledge or rectify the situation. Even though they suck donkey dick, I have to take responsibility for gaslighting myself into returning again and again until I finally got the message. Every time I walked out of there, I’d say to myself, I guess it’s okay… Until finally I walked out looking like Ginger Spice.

The cool, ashy tones of Ginger Spice, 1997. Pass the brown lip liner.

You think when you reach the crispy old age of 55 you’d have it all figured out. You’d have the perfect colorist and would never make mistakes again. You’re too old! Too ‘been there, done that.’ But nooooooo. You just keep smacking your head into walls like a first-grader who snorts Pez for breakfast. The wisdom is in the awareness. The growth comes from not dragging the rest of the world down with you when things don’t go your way. Enlightenment means managing the fallout, not preventing the fiasco.

Yinning my yang. Photo credit: me.

Please to enjoy. Because nothing riles me up more than unaccountable, manipulative assholes, or brassy hair. Which, hey, pretty much describes every entitled trans activist.

Om shanti, dammit.

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