DR. G.: If you really want to get out, Marie, you'll have to make a very simple decision.
MARIE: What's that?
DR. G: Decide to act sane.
Dr. Greenwald asked her to think of the benefits, the payoffs, that came to her as a result of her crazy behavior. There were a number of major payoffs: she didn't have to look after herself, didn't have to look for a job, didn't have to listen to her mother.
The upshot was that Marie decided to give up being crazy and to return to everyday living. It would have been easy for Dr. Greenwald to conclude that she had been faking all the years she was in the mental institution. But she had not been play-acting. Yet her illness began through a choice she had made, and it ended the same way.
Leaving the hospital world was not easy for her. In fact, it was often very difficult. But she stayed with her decision and often had to reaffirm it. She married and had a child. She wrote to Dr. Greenwald:
I found myself beginning to drift off, drift out of my life, the way I used to. And—I didn't! I decided to be the kind of person, the kind of wife and mother, that I want to be. Not perfect, just what's possible. And if I drift off, I won't be able to hear my daughter, I'll be just like my mother was with me.
Marie went back to school and earned a degree in psychology. After her experience, she was, she felt (as did Dr. Greenwald), in a special position to be helpful to other people in suffering.
WHAT DIRECT DECISION THERAPY IS LIKE
On your own or with professional help, the truth about you—whoever you are—is that you carry within yourself the resources to heal your most grievous pains, overcome your most paralyzing fears, devise ingenious solutions to your most burdensome problems.
Harold Greenwald, The Happy Person