One of the most powerful ways we’re attached to others is through our social hierarchies. Think about how much time and emotional energy we spend thinking about the person just above us at work, or the person we answer to, or the person who currently has the most influence on our daily lives. If that’s a nourishing relationship, we thrive, but if that’s a troubling relationship, it’s hard to turn off that kind of worry.
In the summer of 1981 when I was 30, a strange and embarrassing thing happened to me. In a group room at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, where I had just started my residency in psychiatry, as one person said her ritual goodbyes to the circle of over 25 patients and clinicians, most of them strangers to me, I cried. The cry washed through me, quiet but strong enough to bend my head, soak my cheeks, and run my nose—I did my best to stuff it and later to dismiss it.
