One of my clients, who has given me permission to write about her as long as identifying details are removed, is a single woman in her mid to late thirties. For her whole life, she has cherished the goals of being a wife and mother. Although she is in treatment with me primarily for compulsive hoarding, we also monitor her depression. She often tells me about how sad she is that she is still single. When I first started working with her, she had not even had a date in the last 10 years. That changed when she got reacquainted with a friend from her college days on one of the social networking sites online. They sent each other email messages, they began texting and talking on the phone, he invited her to visit him over a long weekend, and she bought an airplane ticket and took the trip.
She came back into town after that trip flush with excitement. Her mood was the best I had ever seen it and she had high hopes for a future with her new man. Yet the days passed and she heard from him only sporadically. He sometimes returned phone calls and email messages. Often, though, he did not. She went through a long, difficult process of reaching the conclusion that he wasn't that interested in pursuing a relationship.
Then one session she opened her mail to find a Valentine's day card from him that promised her that said she'd "always have a special valentine in [his city]". She was stunned, her sadness and ruminations reawakened. Why would he send such a valentine's card when he wouldn't return phone calls? Why hadn't things worked out better between them? Why didn't he want to come visit her?
Hoarding treatment is a lot about letting go of stuff you don't need. Depression treatment is often about distraction from painful and pointless ruminations. Because the card seemed to bring up so much sadness and rumination, I asked her: can you let it go? I thought back to times when I had been romantically rejected in the past, and how sometimes the best thing for me to do was to reclaim my emotional life, to take charge again by cleansing my environment of reminders of the person who had caused me pain.
But this wasn't the way that my client saw it. She scoffed at my suggestion, and kept the card. She later told me, "I thought it was so funny when you suggested that I throw away that Valentine's day card. That card is the last thing I would throw away." I realized then that I had completely misunderstood the card's symbolic value. For her, the card did bring to mind the rejection, but it also carried a powerful message of acceptance. It told her that someone, for however short a time, could find her desirable. It helps keep her hope alive. And that is a message that is worth hanging onto.
