Page 66 of All's Fair in Love and Christmas
“So?” Keri brings the conversation back around.
I swallow and wipe my mouth with a napkin. I haven’t decided on an adjective to describe how the meeting with the counselor went. “It was ... good,” I settle on for lack of anything better. “Different than I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
I shrug. “My expectations come from television, so I kind of thought I’d be lying on a sofa, forced to come up with deep thoughts to say, and the therapist would hum and respond with something like, ‘Tell me more.’”
Keri snickers. “You mean things on TV aren’t reality?”
That pulls a half smile out of me. “Hardly.”
She takes a bite of her lunch. “Okay, so if you didn’t reenact a scene from a movie, what did happen?”
I share with Keri some of the things the counselor said about social anxiety. About the way the brain functions and reacts. About some of the work I’ll need to do to retrain my neural pathways.
Keri nods while she chews, her eyes distant like she’s deep in thought. She takes a sip of her water. “What about when you have to be in an environment with other people, like at work? Did she give you any tools to use when you start to feel overwhelmed and panicky?”
Somewhere in the restaurant a cell phone rings, the sound cutting through dozens of conversations.
“She gave me some breathing techniques that will help in the moment to reset that fight-or-flight instinct.” I stab a cherry tomato with my fork. “But the hard work she warned me about is something called systematic desensitization or exposure therapy.”
Keri’s nose wrinkles. “What’s that?”
I grimace. “Slowly putting myself in situations of increasing anxiety levels. I’m also supposed to practice shifting my focus off myself and what my brain is telling me and back onto the person I’m interacting with so I can pay more attention to the way they’re actually responding and not how I’m telling myself they’re perceiving me.”
Keri’s mouth falls open. “Wow. That’s a lot.”
My sentiments exactly.
We eat in silence for a few minutes, but I can tell Keri’s still thinking over everything I’ve said. Finally, she puts down her spoon and pushes her food to the side. She leans forward. “I’m sorry. I can’t stop thinking about you and Jeremy together. Why don’t you use him as part of your exposure therapy? Talk to him as one of your social experiments.”
I’m shaking my head even before she’s done speaking. “I have to learn cognitive restructuring first. Besides, the social exposure experiments are supposed to start with things that are really low risk.” Telling Jeremy I’m secretly in love with him is off the charts on the risk-factor scale. Not only because I’d be risking embarrassment, what he’d think of me, and rejection, but also because I’d be risking my heart.
Keri leans even closer. “Believe me, telling Jeremy how you feel is almost no risk at all for you.”
My hand pauses as I reach for my water glass. “What do you mean?”
She looks away, the debate in her head only visible in the jumping muscle of her jaw. Eventually, she turns back to me. “Try the attention training thing with him. Where you focus onthe other person’s reactions to you instead of what’s going on in your own head. That’s all I ask.”
Why? What does Keri think I’ll see?
I want to parse her every word. Examine each of them for a different meaning. Does she know something I don’t? Why won’t she just tell me? I’m about to jump down that rabbit hole like Alice when I stop myself. I need to get out of my head more, not curl up there.
I need a change in subject.
“We’ve talked enough about me. I want to hear about you and Alejandro. Will there be a second date?”
Like a match to a candle, Keri’s eyes light. “I’m going over to his place tonight to wrap presents and watch our favorite holiday movies.White Christmasfor me andPlanes, Trains, and Automobilesfor him.”
“That sounds very homey,” I tease.
“I know it’s only our second date, but it feels like we’ve been together for years already.” Keri’s sigh has a dreamy quality. “Like we skipped over the awkward bits and the wondering what the other was thinking and arrived at the best, most comfortable part. The secure part.” She sighs again. “It’s wonderful.”
I’m happy for Keri. She deserves all the good things life can bring, and Alejandro seems like the best kind of man for her. But I can’t help feeling a little jealous. There will be no skipping the awkward to revel in the comfortable for me.
Jeremy’s arms were pretty comfortable.
That’s true. They were. So ... maybe?
