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Preface: The following is more from my personal journal and/or other writings as I moved through the inner turmoil after the Knapp trauma which happened the end of July/beginning of August, 2010. The sharings are simply my thoughts at the time processing through events that took place with my ex-therapist, John M. Knapp, LMSW. To access an ongoing index, click here and scroll down to the section entitled June 26, 2011.
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non-subject: getting past the generalized statement to what is really true
AWW ~ 1/12/2011
I sat across from Dr. McColloch, each of us sitting in separate matching, upholstered, wine-colored, wing back chairs. His office isn't plush; it's normal. A round cherry wood end table sits to my right. On it sits a lamp and box of tissue. My cell phone and reading glasses join them.
Outside his private office is a waiting room furnished with a striped upholstered love seat, a coffee table, three end tables, and two upholstered chairs. Magazines are stacked on the coffee table and one of the end tables. National Geographic. Travel & Leisure. Architectural Design. Plus some news and sports magazines. I don't recall ever seeing any celebrity or entertainment slicks.
I'd made this appointment earlier in the day when Dr. McColloch had returned my call after I'd left him a voice mail the day before. In tears I'd stated I needed an appointment this week if he had an opening. I'd had some recent triggering incidents in regard to my ex-counselor, John Knapp, on whom I'd filed a formal complaint three months prior. With the recent self-induced aggravation regarding John, I'd gone from self-doubt, to hives, to vindictiveness, to hatred, to wanting to write publicly about John's dirty laundry, to wanting to let the state investigator know what a dick-head John was so I could get her on my side and she'd want to burn John as badly as I wanted it.
I vented in the privacy of Dr. McColloch's office expressing how I hated John, how he was a jerkwad and hypocrite. Though deep down I don't hate him.
As Dr. McColloch and I had done before, we looked at possible outcomes to the complaint I'd filed. For all I know it might be thrown out. Dr. McColloch would be stunned if that were the case. John Knapp at least needs a slap on the hand.
After 45 minutes into the appointment, I was calmer. Then Dr. McColloch asked, "How do you think John's doing right now...in his life?"
"Hell if I know," I responded. "How am I supposed to know how he's doing?"
Dr. McColloch paused and looked at me. "Actually Carol, you know quite a bit about John."
He's right. I do. But I didn't feel like I knew much about John.
I know about John from my digging up information on the internet -and I had dug, even back to 1995- but I also know from John himself, things he'd personally shared with me in the past couple years. About his physical and mental health, his fears, his mental health diagnoses, his marriage, his relationship troubles with colleagues, his finances. Plus there's the stuff others have shared with me. Then there's the non-profit that he's starting and the money he's currently raising for the defense fund for the Beyond of Art of Living blog because the group it writes about is subpoening Google to reveal the identity of the blog authors, or something like that. Not to mention my complaint still pending.
"What if he doesn't care about the complaint I filed? I don't know if he really cares or has any anxiety over it."
"If he is having no anxiety over a formal complaint being filed against him, that isn't normal. Every professional has anxiety over formal complaints." Dr. McColloch shared some real life examples he knows about. Dr. McColloch has been doing this for over 30 years. He's practiced in New York, Chicago, California, and now here in the Bible belt. He's been around.
Then he added, "And if John doesn't have any anxiety, if he has no feelings or regret or concern as to how his behavior affects others, then there is a bigger problem. Then...we'd have a sociopath."
I'd thought about that with Knapp, even read up on sociopaths after my relationship with him came crashing to an abrupt stop. And again, after Sam contacted me in November and said he felt like John had put a gun to Sam's head and pulled the trigger, that Sam was stunned by the abrupt change in John and how John had twisted the situation with Sam.
With Dr. McColloch's question and my response to him, I recalled when Fred Poole had suggested I go into the characters in my memoir; describe them.
I realize that scares me. I feel I'm judging. And, in a sense I am. Yet, it is my perception of the people at the time. That can change.
Plus I'm not God. I have no final pronouncements.
I read again today about sociopaths.
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