Lessons from a Traffic Light
Lessons From a Traffic Light

    
        
            
            
            
            
            
        
        
            
                
                    
                        
                    
                
                
                    
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                                    Lessons From a Traffic Light
                                    
                                        
				By Hans R. Agrawal			
                                        March 14, 2015 2:30 pm
                                        March 14, 2015 2:30 pm
                                    
                                
                                
                                    
                                            
                                             Couch is a series about psychotherapy.
                                        
                                    Jeremy will be here in a few minutes. I like Jeremy enormously and really want to help him. But I know how it will go. He’ll smile and apologize. He’ll talk about feeling weak and inarticulate and unsuccessful.
                                        He’ll be angry with his father for being dismissive and pigheaded. I’ll struggle to find a new way to speak to him about these old issues. We’ll both sound repetitive and tired. But right now,
                                        in these several minutes before his session, I sip my coffee and observe the pedestrians outside my window.
                                    My office is on the third floor of a flatiron-shaped building in Cambridge, Mass., at the intersection of several busy streets in Harvard Square. There is a peculiar scene I have observed many times. An individual arrives
                                        at the intersection, intending to cross. Although a walk signal — the white lit figure — invites him to proceed, he seems paralyzed with ambivalence and indecision. He steps off the curb, then back
                                        on. The walk signal changes to the flashing red “do not walk” hand, then to the static red hand. In that instant, just after his window of opportunity has closed, he darts across the street, as cars
                                        and trucks accelerate at right angles to his path.
                                    It is a curious phenomenon, and I have wondered about the psychology involved. Why does the crosser not take advantage of the walk signal? Why does a red light suddenly relieve him of his paralysis? Why does he risk
                                        crossing just as vehicles could mow him down?
                                    Over time I have come up with an answer. The crosser experiences the walk signal as fraught with uncertainty, and therefore danger. He is not sure when in the cycle of the walk signal he arrived at the curb. He is not
                                        sure how long he has to cross. He does not trust that the system is properly calibrated such that even if the signal is white, he will have enough time to cross this expansive intersection.
                                    When the signal turns red, on the other hand, he knows exactly where he stands. Time has run out. He need not fear running out of time, and in the absence of this fear he is liberated to dash across the street. The
                                        red signal is associated with certainty, and therefore safety.
                                    In some ways this is the very definition of neurotic. The crosser’s intolerance for risk and his compulsive search for safety lead him to put himself in the riskiest and most dangerous situation. He ends up choosing
                                        known dangers over unknown ones.
                                    
                                    
                                        Photo
                                            
                                                
                                                
                                            
                                            Credit Chi Birmingham
                                            
                                        
                                    
                                    
                                    Back to Jeremy.
                                    Jeremy came to psychotherapy at a difficult time in his professional life. He had started a company but it failed. And afterward he didn’t know what to do. He was a youthful 40-something who had spent most of
                                        his adult years preparing to do something important and collecting advanced degrees from elite universities. But at middle age he was lost and without a professional identity or narrative. He felt that his degrees
                                        did not give him the real-world skills that he needed to succeed. In his mind he was a charlatan. At the same time, he saw himself as unable to harness and use what he did know.
                                    One of his strategies for managing his fear of not succeeding was to throw himself into many projects at once. Spread much too thin, he would make commitments and promises but ultimately disappoint colleagues who counted
                                        on him. To protect himself against the possibility of failure, he took steps that guaranteed it.
                                    Jeremy’s fantasy of psychotherapy was that it would provide him the confidence and grit he needed to conquer the world. Or at least make a pile of cash. We spent much time looking at his relationship with his
                                        father, a brilliant, larger-than-life figure who bullied and belittled his wife and children. He considered Jeremy to be anxious and fearful like Jeremy’s mother, rather than big and bold like himself.
                                    Over the course of the first year of treatment Jeremy volunteered his time to a technology company that his father was starting. Jeremy came to session after session enraged that his father had disparaged or ignored
                                        him in whatever recent task they were tackling: raising capital, filing patents, hiring employees. Jeremy knew this would happen, so why did he get involved?
                                    We came to understand his choice from several angles. One was that Jeremy was trying to redo a father-son relationship that had never gelled. Another was that he was choosing to stay in the family, with all its known
                                        and familiar dangers, rather than to cast his lot with an uncertain world of new possibilities.
                                    ON this particular day Jeremy looks more agitated than usual. “A lot has happened since our last meeting,” he announces. “I’m a mess.”
                                    My mind races through possibilities. Has he been fired? Is he seriously ill? Is someone dead?
                                    As it turns out, his and his father’s company has received word that the efficacy of its product surpasses all expectations. It is a major milestone that virtually guarantees that they will secure another round
                                        of funding. The company is now real. And valuable. It is very likely to be sold in the next year, at which point father and son could congratulate each other on a successful collaboration.
                                    But Jeremy is confused. “We got what we wanted, this is great, it’s amazing, actually,” he says. “So why do I feel so terrible?”
                                    This is unknown territory for Jeremy and he is frightened. He is attached to feeling ineffectual and stuck in a wished-for relationship with his father. What if he lets himself taste victory and it still fails? There
                                        is so much to lose now. Maybe even more terrifying, what if he gets what he wants? Then who would he be? He does not know how to assimilate the identity of successful entrepreneur and worthy son, however much he
                                        has coveted it. Doing so would represent a bizarre kind of loss: That is not who he has known himself to be.
                                    The walk signal is now inviting Jeremy to cross. But he is paralyzed.
                                    The song “Me and Bobby McGee” captures this dynamic with its iconic line, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” We are all afraid of acquiring what we can so easily
                                        lose, whether professional status or someone to love. We are caught in a dilemma. Pursuing these commitments can be terrifying. But letting ourselves ignore them can be dangerous, even fatal.
                                    Hans R. Agrawal is a psychiatrist in private practice in Cambridge, Mass.
                                    Details have been altered to protect patient privacy.
                                    
                                
                                
                            
                            
                        
                    
                    
                    
                
            
        
        
        
    
    
    
    


