It’s always been hard to find a good listener, especially when what you have to say is really unpleasant. Lynne Silbert is by all accounts a magnificent listener.
She honed this skill in her private psychotherapy practice and at The Wellness Community-West Los Angeles, which honored her last week with its “Tribute to the Human Spirit” award for nearly two decades of dedication to cancer patients.
“She stares right in your eyes, even when you have to look away, but her listening goes beyond this,” said a young woman in Silbert’s support group. “This extraordinary attentiveness of hers draws deeper levels of honesty and insight from you. She does not settle for hearing from my brave face, but wants me to connect with the painful, messy stuff underneath.”
After a recent group session, which explored the difficulties some patients have with their families, Marilyn (names have been changed to protect the privacy of participants) said she was dealing with a sibling who refused to have anything to do with her illness.
“Lynne shows us we have to take care of ourselves. We talked about that today,” she said.
Having attended support groups with other facilitators at the Wellness Community for 13 years, Marilyn said she joined Silbert’s group about a year ago.
“There’s a comfort level in her group. She knows what questions to ask and how to bring you out, and allows you to have your feelings,” she said. “There’s a warmth about her. She lets you know she cares.”
One thing that happens, Silbert said, is the participants reach out to each other, share their experiences and feelings.
“Even though Marilyn is fighting for her own life, she reaches out to others, drives others to meetings and appointments,” Silbert said.
Marilyn also leads a newcomers group, meeting with newly diagnosed patients.
“I explain how the Wellness Community influences our lives,” she said. “The whole process of this disease is scary, it’s hurtful.”
“When you’re in the middle of treatment, a lot of scary information comes your way,” said another woman. “I learned not to assume statistics are bad. The people who find solace look for the good things that happen.”
Silbert was also honored for helping to create a weekly support group for young people, which she still facilitates. The Young Adults Group provides a safe haven in which cancer patients between the ages of 21 and 40 can candidly explore issues specific to them.
“It’s a time when people are becoming independent, but then the cancer diagnosis throws them back into it [dependency],” Silbert said. “Having other people your age is important.”
One of the participants in that group said Silbert influences how the participants relate to each other. “It’s a strange alchemy, depending on who’s there, who’s leading. A facilitator like Lynne changes the dynamic,” she said.
“She doesn’t just listen. She can push. Once she pushed me to recognize something new in my relations with a hurtful family member. She listened and then told me this person is my ‘teacher.’ I was stunned. But she’s right. This person has taught me what I need and am not getting … how I can be more giving and compassionate to others because I know so precisely how it feels not to get that. This new perspective doesn’t make me feel punishing or superior, just more compassionate and wise.”
“Cancer is no cakewalk, but it doesn’t have to feel like a waste,” she added. “Thanks to Lynne, I feel, in a very profound way, that cancer can be a teacher.”
Silbert, who lives in Malibu with her husband, Dr. Seth Weingarten, came to the Wellness Center soon after Harold Benjamin, a Beverly Hills attorney, whose wife had breast cancer, founded it. After her mastectomy, he studied the effect psychological and social trauma has on the cancer process, then formulated a set of guidelines patients can use as partners with their physicians called the “Patient Active Concept.”
He founded the Wellness Center to provide this concept, without charge, to cancer patients.
“I was just licensed as a therapist and didn’t know what I was going to do,” Silbert said. “One night I was at a party with my husband, you know, I was just a doctor’s wife. Then I met Harold Benjamin. He had just started the Wellness Center, and when he told me about it, I knew right away that’s what I wanted to do.”
Even though they deal with many patients who are gravely ill, the people who work at the center seem to have no problem with depression or burnout.
“Nobody leaves the staff here,” Silbert said. “I’ve been here 19 years and there’s no turnover. There’s zero burnout.”
In fact, Silbert’s involvement with the center has increased. For the past five years, she has served on the Board of Directors and has worked to secure grants to help provide additional programs and services.
While Benjamin’s original concept of patient advocacy means patients need to be active partners with their doctors, the center encourages medical professionals to become involved. Oncology nurses from City of Hope come there to learn. Even doctors who are diagnosed with cancer participate.
“There are no experts on staff. We never tell doctors what to do. The participants turn to each other,” Silbert said. “Since I’ve been here, I’ve seen patients become more active, more involved in their care. Doctors are facing a different kind of patient today. We know now the way you think can affect your immune system.”
The way you think. The way you listen. The way you laugh.
“There’s a lot of joy here, a lot of laughter,” Silbert said. “I’ve never walked out of a group unaffected by the honesty, by the human spirit.”