The Perfect Family by Jacquie Underdown

Author:Jacquie Underdown
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2019-08-29T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 33

Nikki

Nikki sat on the big blue chair across from Dr Puethe for their fifth session. They had worked through many stressful moments in Nikki’s life, then they focussed on positive emotions and experiences to remind her it wasn’t always like this—something had changed. They had to identify the trigger.

At the end of her last session, Nikki still wasn’t sure what was at the root of her mental predicament, but the more she hacked at the encasement that kept whatever lay beneath contained, the more energy it gathered.

With each session, she was becoming more and more confused and filled with the scary belief that she was going mad. Maybe there was some structural disease that was making her regress in so many areas of her life—mainly her confidence and her self-belief.

Dr Puethe tapped his notepad with the tip of his pen. “We are going to try something a little different today. See if we can get to the bottom of all this.”

Nikki’s stomach lurched, and she shifted in her chair to find a comfortable position. New didn’t sit well with her. She liked tried and true and done before.

“I’ll take some notes during this session, is that okay with you?”

Nikki nodded, used to, at this stage, the general session patter.

“You can have a copy to take home with you later if you so choose.”

Again, she nodded.

Dr Puethe leaned against the back of his chair, crossed a leg. “What I find helpful is if we talk about a specific situation. I would like you to recall a time when you felt particularly overwhelmed. It could be something we’ve talked about before that you’d like to explore more deeply, or we could look at something else.”

She drew a deep breath, readying herself to confront her mind. “The morning I crashed my car into a tree.”

“I want you to close your eyes and lie back against that chair. Think about the emotions you felt that day.”

Heat flowered in her chest. A familiar swirl of nerves filled her belly as though she was back there, hands gripping the steering wheel, anticipating spending another day at work. A conflict of emotions. “Anger. Fear,” she whispered.

“Good. Feel those emotions inside of you.”

Darts of remembered feelings shot through her. Her hands twitched. “Hate.” Her eyes flung open. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that.”

“Nothing is off-limits. Even hate has a place here. I want you to feel that anger, fear and hate.”

She closed her eyes and concentrated again on trying to recall those emotions. They bubbled up from deep inside her, thrashed at her insides—hot and sharp, blunt and hard.

“Try to animate that emotion,” Dr Puethe said. “Give it form and substance.”

Shadows formed behind her eyes, then splotches of colour. Bright red like blood at first. Then dark brown. Fur. Grey fur. A snout. Ears. Red rimming the figure’s mouth like it had torn at raw meat dripping with blood.

“A wolf,” she whispered as she tried to make sense of this. She looked harder. It wasn’t blood around the wolf’s mouth; it was lipstick.

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