Tales from the Crisis House: Pleasure and Pain

In this Atlasphere series, Andrew Schwartz recounts his adventures at Excalibur House, a 28-day residential psychiatric facility where he worked for two years as a counselor.

In Episode 1, Andrew learned the value of “speaking the client’s language.” In this second installment, Andrew finds a way to stimulate a more integrated awareness in the heart and mind of a young female client.

“Jasmine” was new to Excalibur House, and was hard to miss. A young, long-haired, dark-skinned Mediterranean woman, she had a figure out of stereotypical male fantasy: tall and lithe, with plentiful, improbable curves that she flaunted with relish.

Adding to the general distraction, when she spoke to you, she did so with a palpable sparkle in her eyes.

“Hello, Andrew!” she intoned sensuously when we first met, her voice velvety and accompanied by a flash of pleasure in her bearing. “Are you going to be my counselor?”

Jasmine was a friendly, often giddy woman. I noticed over the first few days of her stay that she seemed frequently high on the pleasure of her own body, and in conversation, intoxicated by her own musings.

She would speak to me excitedly, hurriedly — as though the excitement might escape — about her hallucinatory world, in which she received communications from the likes of Beelzebub, Minerva, Zeus, and Narcissus.

“Andrew, Andrew!” she said to me one day, practically jumping out of her skin. “Last night, Narcissus was talking to me, and he said that if you caress your cheek in a certain way when you’re looking at yourself in a mirror, you can get a sparkle of sensation down to your toes! I tried it, and it worked!”

“Well,” I responded, “I’ll just have to try that for myself!”

Later, after verifying the effectiveness of the technique, I thanked Jasmine for the tip.

She grinned and said, “Narcissus is a good advisor!”


For all the pleasure she brought into the space in and around her, though, Jasmine also periodically fell into dreary depressions that would last for several hours or a day.

The first time it happened, the contrast was a shock: her movement had become hesitant and slow, her eyes devoid of their usual brightness, and her face downcast, darkened by a shadow of despair.

I found her that day sitting in a corner of the living room on a couch, immobile. “What seems to be the trouble?” I asked her gently.

Jasmine glanced at me, then looked away. Shaking her head, she said only: “Nothing.”

I nodded and moved on.

It soon became apparent that whenever Jasmine was depressed, she would become practically mute, unable or unwilling to talk about her pain. In these states, I found I could not reach her emotionally by any means at my disposal.

Because Jasmine’s depressions alternated with her intensely giddy states, psychiatrists called it a form of “bipolar disorder” and prescribed mood-stabilizing drugs. The drugs didn’t seem to be working.

Was there something I could do?


Lying on the floor of my apartment one night with some gourmet potato chips, I thought about the situation.

One thing was certain: Jasmine was capable of feeling pleasure, and capable of feeling pain. Numb to existence she was not.

And yet each of her feeling states was almost trance-like in its purity: When she was in Pleasure, it was as though she was surfing on the delusion that Pleasure was all that existed in the universe. When she was in Pain, it was as though she were witnessing the cataclysm.

I ate a gourmet potato chip.

As a counselor, I had a natural inclination to help clients look for the root of their pain. But attempting to work with Jasmine while she was depressed hadn’t gotten me anywhere — and when she was in Pleasure, she had no desire to talk about Pain.

I ate another gourmet potato chip.

It was almost as though Jasmine alternatively operated on the basis of two mutually exclusive theories of reality: Theory #1: There is Pleasure. Theory #2: There is Pain.

Pleasure and Pain … Pleasure and Pain … the words swirled through my mind — Jasmine can only feel Pleasure or Pain …

I put my gourmet potato chips away.

Then a thought hit me: What if I could somehow get Jasmine to feel pleasure and pain at the same time?

I liked the thought.


Several days later, on a Friday, I went into work prepared to make my move. It had taken me several days to cook up a reasonable strategy, due to two challenges inherent in the situation:

For one, given Jasmine’s almost total lack of receptivity in her depressed states, I knew I would need to influence her toward integration primarily while she was in a good mood. But this would mean in some sense asking her to feel worse — and the very last thing I wanted was to unintentionally communicate the notion that it is wrong to feel good.

For another, I knew that explaining my idea to Jasmine in psychological terms would likely not work, as Jasmine was not psychologically-minded. If I wanted to be impactful, I knew I needed to speak to Jasmine using her own language: the language of myth, metaphor and fantasy.

I was nervous about implementing my strategy, and frankly, it seemed like a long shot — but I had gotten into the habit of taking therapeutic risks, and this one seemed worth it. So, strategy in hand, I waited for Jasmine to be in one of her giddy moods. I didn’t have to wait long.

“Andrew, Andrew! Minerva was talking to me last night about this affair she had with Narcissus! She was telling me something he was able to do in bed that almost took her out of this world! And she said that if you …”

Jasmine was going on near-frantically, and I let her continue for a minute. Then I abruptly broke in, as though the thought had suddenly struck me like a lightening bolt:

“Jasmine! Do you know about light and dark energy?”

Jasmine stopped speaking, looked at me with curiosity, and responded, “Umm … I think so.”

“Can you hold both at the same time?”

She began to laugh. “What?!”

“Light and dark energy — at the same time! It’s very important to be able to hold a proper balance of light and dark energy, you know.”

Jasmine’s face became a mixture of intrigue and impatience. She started, “I don’t know…” Then the impatience won out over the intrigue, and she gushed, “but Andrew, listen! Minerva was telling me that Narcissus can do this amazing thing to you in bed that can help you guard against the demon beings…”

I listened for thirty seconds, then decided that I needed to up the ante. I took a deep breath, then cut in cheerfully and forcefully:

“Look — I need to show you something important! Hold out your left hand! Can you create light energy in it?”

Jasmine stopped speaking again, raised her eyebrows at me, then narrowed them, and held out her left hand, looking at it. After a moment, she looked up at me and reported happily that indeed she could create light energy in her left hand. So I continued:

“Great! Now hold out your right hand. Can you create some dark energy in it?”

Jasmine narrowed her eyes again, put out her right hand, and after a moment looked up at me and replied again in the affirmative. Then I went for broke:

“Now: bring your hands together.” She did, so I continued with great enthusiasm: “Look! Look! Now you are holding both light and dark energy at the same time!”

Jasmine laughed out loud.

I seemed to have won her attention, so I went on. “Now listen Jasmine,” I said, and became very serious: “It is very important to have a balance of light and dark energy. You see, some people are overburdened with dark energy. They bring darkness to themselves and to others. Others have too much superficial light energy, being afraid of the dark. They are unstable and lack power. But when you have the proper balance of light and dark, you can be a Radiant, Balanced Being.”

“Radiant Balanced Being?”

“Yes,” I responded. “And so, when you are feeling a lot of dark energy, raise the light energy a bit! Or, when you’re feeling a lot of light energy, try raising the dark. For example, right now, where are you in terms of the balance of light and dark?”

Jasmine giggled and said, “Oh, I’m light energy!”

I hesitated nervously for a moment, then gritted my teeth and plowed ahead with a sense of mission: “Good — you’re halfway there. Now all you need to do is bring up the dark energy a bit” — and I made a lever-raising motion, like an engineer at a mixing board — “to come into balance.” Then I repeated: “Just bring up the dark energy a bit to come into balance.”

I looked at Jasmine, and she looked at me. Then she burst into laughter. “Okay, Andrew,” she said through her laughs, “I will try that.” Then she started describing to me the communications of Minerva once again.

I told her I needed to tend to other important matters and quickly escaped into the counselor office so that Jasmine might have some space to be conscious of what had just occurred.


Later in the day, when Jasmine came to take afternoon medications, she was intoxicated with giddiness again. Not wanting to sell my strategy short, I repeated much of what I had said earlier in the day. I advised her to “bring up the dark energy a bit!” and she laughed again — a bit less hysterically this time — said “okay,” and went on with her business.

Over the weekend and the next week, I continued counseling Jasmine along the same lines. I soon noticed that her periodic depressions were not occurring any more, so on Tuesday I stopped speaking of bringing up “light energy.”

I continued counseling her to bring up the “dark energy” for several more days, but then ceased that practice as well, since Jasmine’s intoxicated giddiness seemed to be easing off.

To all appearances, she was going about her business and interacting with others in an increasingly thoughtful, light, and sober manner.

She said to me, “Andrew, I want to work to help other people like me.” I told her I thought she could be very skillful at that.

She continued to speak to me about various hallucinations she found interesting or exciting — but she wasn’t spiraling as readily into intoxicated bubbles of manic elation.

She also began speaking of things that were troubling to her — minor things, such as a male client who was ignoring her. And she would speak of these without falling into an abyss of negativity, recognizing that they were unpleasant but nonetheless real parts of her life experience.

When she left Excalibur House, she hugged me and said, “Radiant Balanced Being! That was a good one.” I smiled at her and said, “I agree.” Then she was gone.


It is hard to say whether my words had anything to do with the subtle shift I observed in Jasmine over the course of her stay. But I can say happily that I have found my memory of the experience helpful in maintaining my own balance.

You see, the point is not to disparage intense happiness or joy, nor is it to disparage deep sadness or even depression. Rather, by working with the exercise of holding pleasure and pain at the same time, we can learn gradually to witness all our experiences from a deeper seat of consciousness — one that can serenely know, learn from, and enjoy a wider spectrum of emotional reality.

I think Jasmine experienced a subtle shift toward that kind of consciousness, and that left me feeling very satisfied.


Andrew Schwartz is a math tutor and bodyworker who recently finished a two-year stint as a psychiatric counselor. He is a former editor and interviewer for the Atlasphere, has counseled individuals privately and led personal growth groups from his home, and has given talks in various settings on his theory of free will. Andrew also maintains a personal web site, which houses his articles, interviews, music, poems, and intellectual influences.