Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life

he wanted to be sure I understood how secrets work. “When you agree to keep someone’s secret, you hold their shame.”

“What do you want?” he asked.
The word want echoed in my head. Want, want, want. I groped for a way to speak my longing in the affirmative, not just blurt out how I didn’t want to die alone.
“I want—” I stalled.
“I would like—” More stopping.
“I want to be real. With other people. I want to be a real person.”
He stared at me like what else? Other strands of desire floated through my mind: I wanted a boyfriend who smelled like clean cotton and went to work every day. I wanted to spend less than 50 percent of my waking hours thinking about the size of my body. I wanted to eat all of my meals with other people. I wanted to enjoy and seek out sex as much as the women on Sex and the City. I wanted to return to ballet class, a passion I dumped when I grew breasts and fleshy thighs. I wanted to have friends to travel the world with after I took the bar exam in two years. I wanted to reconnect with my college roommate who lived in Houston. I wanted to hug high school friends when I ran into them at the mall. But I didn’t say any of that because it seemed too specific. Corny. I didn’t yet know that therapy, like writing, relied on detail and specificity.

I wanted therapy to be linear. I wanted to point to measurable improvements with every year I put in.

I told Dr. Rosen I wasn’t in the habit of saying no. He asked if I knew what that cost me. I shook my head. Costs? People liked me because I was a Yes Girl. If I went around saying no, then what? They’d be mad at me. Disappointed. Unhappy. I couldn’t tolerate that. That kind of audacity belonged to other people, like guys and hot women with no emotional baggage.
“If you can’t say no in relationships, then you can’t be intimate,” Dr. Rosen said.
“Say that again.” I held still so that each word would seep inside me, past my skin and muscle, and settle in my bones.
“If you can’t say no, there can be no intimacy.”

“What about confidentiality?” I said.
“We don’t do that here,” Rory said. Patrice and Carlos confirmed with vigorous nodding. The memory of my mother scolding me in high school flashed in my mind. I’d bent the vow to let 12-step people in, but they were bound by the spiritual principle of anonymity, which was right there in the name of the program. What were these jokers bound by?
“How are we supposed to feel safe?”
“What makes you think confidentiality makes you safe?” Dr. Rosen looked energized, ready to school me.
“Group therapy’s always confidential.” My authority on group therapy was one friend from graduate school who had to sign a confidentiality agreement when she joined a group. “Maybe I don’t want my secrets all over your group grapevine.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t get why I want privacy?” There were zero expressions of outrage on the faces staring back at me.
“You might want to look at why you’re so invested in privacy.”
“Isn’t it standard practice?”
“It might be, but keeping secrets for other people is more toxic than other people knowing your business. Holding on to secrets is a way to hold shame that doesn’t belong to you.”

Another rule: “Feelings have two syllables or less: ashamed, angry, lonely, hurt, sad, afraid

I was alive because I’d told the truth about my bulimia over and over in meetings. Nothing in my life had empowered me—not good grades, not a thin body

I released a secret, not caring who in my family might abandon me, because I finally understood that keeping the secret was an act of abandoning myself.

I sat my parents down and told them that I’d graduated from therapy. All better now. My parents beamed with pride, and my mom shared her life philosophy: “You just make up your mind to be happy. Focus on the positive; don’t put any energy into negative thoughts.” I nodded. Great idea. On the way down the hall to my bedroom, I stopped in the bathroom and threw up my dinner, a habit I developed after reading a book about a gymnast who threw up her food.

I was a misfit. The deep secret I carried was that I didn’t belong. Anywhere. I spent half my days obsessing about food and my body and the weird shit I did to control both, and the other half trying to outrun my loneliness with academic achievement.