“In the still of that late winter night, 1979, for the first time I laid in bed, cold and numb except for a thin, hot streak coursing through my head, and fantasized about killing my father.”

These words hung conspicuously at the end of one of the essays I wrote for my MFA thesis last year. My collection of childhood stories included this account of the time when I was 14 years old and my dad had just roughed up my 17-year-old brother. Violence and alcohol-fueled degradation were like the stained wallpaper that covered the interior of our small ranch home, only much louder. I’d never written these words before. Indeed, I’d never uttered these words before. My father died several years ago and although this event occurred more than 40 years earlier, writing these words still felt taboo, almost wrong to acknowledge. And yet, through that time and for several years hence, they were truer than true.

In my 30-plus years of being a witness to my clients’ stories, the tracts of suicidal and homicidal thoughts have felt siloed. It’s as if a threshold has to be crossed for these experiences to be acknowledged. A person has to have substantially horrific experiences of abuse (highly subjective designation) or significant clinical depression/anxiety for there to be a social endorsement of giving voice to these thoughts.

Most of my clients are the walking, functioning wounded. In other words, they are seeking to manage and adjust to the slings and........

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