She looked at me skeptically, took a deep breath, uncrossed and crossed her legs, and then told me her story of unconscious healing.
It was never just about the clothes.
The woman sitting across from me in my office continued with her story and why it was so important for her to be well-dressed.
She proceeded to tell me more about how, when she was little, her family had barely any money and they shopped from the dime store in the rural area where she lived.
She dressed in hand-me-downs, ill-fitting cheap clothes, and none of it flattered her adolescent body and the extra weight she carried back then.
At lunch, in the middle school cafeteria, she was made fun of by the “cool girls” who sarcastically baited her by saying things like, “Nice jeans! Where’d you get those? The donation bin?”
She moved through her teenage years feeling ugly, poor, and like she never quite fit in.
Certainly not with the “cool girls.”
She was obsessed with trying to understand what the “right” clothes were for each social occasion. She felt like she was always just a little bit off from what others’ apparently effortlessly wore. And while she couldn’t afford them until later, she dreamed of having a wardrobe of nice clothes. The right clothes.
Years passed, degrees and professional accomplishments accrued. Now this woman was in her mid-30’s, commanding a six-figure salary in a major urban area. And she could buy those clothes she once daydreamed of.
Her closet was now filled with $150 jeans, $200 cashmere sweaters, Italian leather loafers, demi-fine jewelry, and all the items that once felt impossible to obtain. Impossible to once envision her body and life in.
She had capsule wardrobes for every season.
Gear and occasion-specific clothing for things like skiing in Tahoe, or hiking Mt. Tam, or a weekend in Palm Springs.
She could pull the “right” items from her closet whenever she wanted to fit in with the upper-middle-class female friend crowd she now ran with. The proverbial middle-aged “cool girls.”
She mentioned it took thirty minutes to decide what to wear to my offices. Because she didn’t know what a good therapy outfit would be.
“You probably think I’m vain. My family does.”
She again looked at me defiantly, then dared me to challenge her about her clothes.
“On the contrary,” I said, “I think that it’s very wise and self-supporting of you to care so much about your clothes given what you told me about your story. It sounds like you creatively organized your life and gave yourself a reparative experience.”
Creatively re-organizing your life is unconscious healing.
Healing does not always happen in the therapy room.
