Page 60 of The Barren Luna

“Regina, imagine your mind as a thick jungle. Your thoughts move through your head all the time, and if they always walk the same way, the bushes and branches on it get broken, trampled, or removed, thereby creating clear pathways that allow them to travel through the jungle. Now, if every day you think something like “I don’t deserve to be happy,” then that path gets used regularly, thus getting bigger and wider, whereas the rest of the jungle continues to grow. So when your brain needs to move a thought from one place to another, the “I don’t deserve to be happy” path becomes easiest because that’s the clearest and widest path in the overgrown jungle.

After a while, normal thoughts start traveling down that path as well, which is what causes negative feelings and anxiety. Therapy would help your thoughts clear new paths in that jungle, by slowly and persistently forcing them to travel through a different path than they normally do. With time, at least part of your thoughts would go down the “I do deserve to be happy” path, and over a longer period of time, you’d slowly clear out anew path for your thoughts. In short: time, effort, and patience can achieve a lot.”

We sat in silence for a while as she mulled my words over.

“How long would the therapy take?”

“There is no fixed time frame for this type of healing, every patient has his or her own timeline. I can offer you three months of my time, and at the end, we'll see where we are with our progress.”

“Why would you do that?” she looked at me with those forest-green eyes. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful,” always grateful, always polite, “but I’m sure you have much more pressing work to do.”

“I have three reasons for doing this. One is that you are absolutely worthy of love, help, and care, and there is no work more pressing than helping a fellow living being.”

I paused for a moment to let those words sink in as she chewed on the inside of her cheek, probably to stop herself from crying.

“The second reason is that this is how I am honoring the memory of my mate, through helping wolves who are in pain, which you are.”

Pause.

“And the third reason is that I see parts of myself in you,” I said and took off my glasses to blur my vision. I’d never shared so much of myself with a patient before. “The shame, the guilt, blaming yourself, the loss and the devastation, I’ve lived it firsthand and I know how it feels, which makes my urge and need to help you even stronger.

But in order for therapy to work, you have to decide if you can trust me enough to let me in. I know this is a big ask, and I know that your sense of trust has been severely eroded, but I hope you can see and feel my honesty and openness.”

I could hear her heart accelerating at my words, and I knew she’d made a split-second decision.

“I trust you,” she blurted out. “I don’t know why. Maybe because you’re the only person I know who’s been through something similar, maybe it’s your eyes, they’re so kind – I just – I do trust you, and I would like your help.”

I couldn’t help but smile.

“Wonderful. I suggest meeting twice a week for now and we’ll see how it goes. The first sessions can be raw and I would like you to have enough time to recover emotionally between them.”

“Alright.”

“Do you have any questions for me?”

“Do I need to prepare somehow?”

“Not really. For some sessions, I’ll ask you to consider a particular issue or to read some materials. There will also be some journaling if you’re up for it?”

“I’d love that, I’ve always loved writing in my journal.”

“Perfect. I’ll also ask you to write lists and letters occasionally,” I said, taking out my journal and opening the page for this week.

“For our first session, which we can schedule for - tomorrow morning if you’re free?” I looked up at her, and she nodded. “At nine?” Another nod.

“Okay,” I made a note in my journal and then continued, “so, for the first session, I’d like you to write a list of the goals you’d like to achieve in therapy. They can be as specific or as general as you want them to be. You can write down one goal or a hundred, the important thing is that they’re yours, okay?”

“Okay,” she seemed a bit excited now.

“And lastly, would you consent to our sessions being recorded for my files? The recordings would be labeled with a patientnumber only until the end of our time together, then I would have them transcribed for my records, after which they’d be destroyed.”

“It’s alright, I guess. I mean, I testified about everything in front of all the Alphas in the country, so - ” she shrugged as she trailed off.

“I would still respect your refusal, you know? You may have testified about what happened, but you had to in order to defend yourself from criminal charges. Also, you mostly discussed events, not personal fears or feelings. I get the sense that you hate disappointing people, but I need you to be honest with me if this is something that you are not okay with.”

“Does the recording device bother us like other electrical devices do? That's actually what I’m most worried about.”

“You wouldn’t believe how long I’d searched for the perfect one! Trust me, it’s the least invasive device I could find – it sounds as if there was a fly on the other side of the windowpane, trying to get in. A low buzz at its worst, and after a while you get used to it.”

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