Chapter 7 #2
And normally, she knew, Anna would back off.
But for some reason, not today. “This is what we call a trigger point,” she said, her voice calm.
“Something that touches on a sensitive area of thinking or feeling and causes you to be flooded with panic, adrenaline, cortisol. For you, mentioning Hilary Jensen is a trigger point.”
“More of your psychobabble,” Victoria sneered, but she couldn’t deny that she was on the verge of screaming.
She squeezed her hands into fists, once again digging her nails into the soft flesh of her palms. Tension wound her tighter and tighter until she was a taut wire, crackling with electricity, her gym-sore muscles beginning to shriek in agony.
But she held it all in, as tight as she could, knowing she was trembling with the effort.
Anna stood and stepped swiftly over to her, crouching in front of Victoria and taking her tightly balled fists into her hands. “Let it happen, Victoria. Don’t push it down. Let it go through you. Scream, if you have to. Cry. But feel it. Let it out.”
No. No. No.
“You don’t have to tell me anything of what happened right now.
” Anna’s voice was as calm as Victoria’s nerves were not.
“I’m only asking you to let yourself have this panic attack.
I can show you how to come down afterward.
It’s okay to feel this, Victoria. It’s better to feel it, and to let it out. ”
“No,” Victoria rasped, her breath coming in ever more shallow, burning gasps as her lungs felt held in a vise. “No, make it stop…”
“Don’t be afraid of this. This is normal, Victoria.
” The soothing drone went on as Victoria drowned, pulled under waves of memory, of Daniel, of Hilary, of shrieking alarms and shouted commands, of guilt and rage and helplessness.
She pulled in as deep a breath as she could, and nearly choked on it.
“You’re safe, Victoria. You’re in my office, we are alone, and you are safe. Your memories can’t do anything more to you than what they’re doing now. They hurt, but they can’t do more than that. You can face them. You will survive this. They’re only memories.”
The panic peaked, crested, squeezed one last agonizing time.
Released.
The next breath Victoria took filled her lungs, deep and refreshing. As did the next. With effort, she pried her eyes open and pulled her fists out of Anna’s hands. Uncurling her fingers, she saw that once again she had cut her palms open, eight little bloody crescent moons.
Without another word, Anna got to her feet and retrieved a box of tissues from her desk, bringing them over to Victoria. She thought they were for her hands at first. Then she felt the salty burn of tears on her cheeks. She lifted one shaking hand to touch them. “Oh…”
Anna pulled a tissue from the box, then gently brushed Victoria’s hand aside to dab at the tears. “You did so well.”
“I… I don’t like…” Victoria drew in a shuddering breath.
“You don’t like feeling out of control,” Anna suggested gently. “I understand. Panic attacks are awful, frightening things. Have you ever let yourself ride one out before?”
Wordlessly, Victoria shook her head. She’d never been able to allow herself to do it before.
It had been too terrifying to even contemplate, just the way the panic and anxiety had wrapped dark fingers around her ankles and pulled at her had made her want to scream and hide.
She had thought that allowing the memories to consume her might well kill her.
“But now you know what doing that feels like.” Anna turned Victoria’s hands palm up and began to dab at the fingernail cuts. “How does it make you feel?”
It took several swallows before she could get out, “Less… frightened. But also completely knackered.”
“They can take a lot out of you,” Anna agreed. Leaning down, she reached for Victoria’s tea flask and put it carefully in her hand, wrapping her fingers around it with so much gentleness that Victoria almost wept. “Drink some tea.”
“You sound like my grandmother,” Victoria rasped out, thumbing the little spout flap open and taking a long drink.
“I do think you Brits are onto something with the tea drinking.” Anna’s smile was sweet, and Victoria realized that the therapist was still holding one of her hands in both of her own.
Any other day, any other person, she might have snatched her hand away. But on this day, with Anna… she said nothing, did nothing, only drank her tea and allowed herself to enjoy the sensation of a soft warm hand in hers. It had been so long since anyone had been allowed to touch her…
But then she got a bit of a rude awakening. “I think you’ll find that allowing yourself to work through future attacks will make the next one easier to deal with,” Anna said, and, oh, that was a deeply unwelcome thought. Victoria frowned.
“I would, on the whole, prefer not,” she said.
“Can’t we do something to just make them…
stop?” They often prescribed anti-anxiety medication to patients before procedures.
That had to be an option here, though it had never been one she entertained before.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about it now, except that if she never had to ride through a panic attack again, she’d take it.
“There are medications.” To Victoria’s disappointment, Anna’s hands left hers as she stood up and returned to her chair, picking up her notebook and pen.
“They would take time to work. You might feel a bit like a guinea pig while we found the right one for you, the right dosage. I’m not saying we can’t go there.
” Her smile was reassuring. “We absolutely can, and I’m glad you’re open to it.
But there are other reasons I would like you to consider allowing yourself to experience the panic attacks and learning how to manage them. ”
Victoria tilted her head. “And those would be?”
“Prolonged emotional repression can lead to memory loss, for starters.” Anna tossed the fact out there as casually as if she were dropping a water balloon on Victoria’s head.
“Oh.” She hadn’t known that.
“And you might find, eventually, that you’ll start avoiding going places that trigger panic attacks.” Anna leveled a significant look at Victoria. “Could start making your chosen line of work a bit awkward.”
Victoria thought about how she had been running away from the hospital more often lately. “There is that.”
“And there’s the physical toll these attacks take. Just constant adrenaline floods, mental exhaustion… look how tired you are just coping with this one attack after months of repression.” She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “And you are already tired every time I see you… do you sleep?”
Victoria looked down at the tea flask in her hands and fidgeted with the spout flap.
Everything about her was starting to feel heavy and pulled down towards the earth.
“Not… I don’t…” She sucked in a long, deep breath and tried again.
“It’s hard to sleep. I… dream of Daniel Jennings,” she said, haltingly.
“Of that… of that day. And…” She inhaled again. “Of other days.”
She couldn’t let herself say more than that.
And Anna didn’t push. She simply nodded, her face understanding, her eyes sympathetic. “Then can we consider the idea of me giving you some coping exercises, and you can learn how to manage your panic attacks, then we can think about medication?”
Never had one word been so damned difficult to utter. But Victoria forced it out. At this point, after this session, she was willing to learn something if it meant she could get the dreams and the panic attacks to eventually stop. “Yes.”
“Great.” Anna set her notebook aside and leaned forward. “I’m going to start with a basic one that I’d like you to try the next time you feel a panic attack coming on. The first step of it is staying where you are when it comes, rather than running from it.”
“I…” Victoria didn’t understand. Or like the idea of staying in one spot where she might be discovered. That was what had gotten her into this whole therapy mess in the first place.
“If you stay where your brain is perceiving there to be danger, and you show it there is no actual danger, it can help you to relax,” Anna explained.
“And while you stay there, I want you to try to focus on your surroundings and count things out. Talk to yourself about five things you can see, four that you can touch, three that you can hear, two that you can smell, and one that you can taste.”
“This seems ridiculous,” Victoria shook her head. “How can something so simple possibly help me in the middle of a panic attack?”
“It works by forcing you to focus, and it gets your mind off the hamster wheel of fear,” Anna said, her voice patient. “It’s a bit like a benevolent version of a straw breaking the camel’s back. One little well-placed twig or bolt can break a cycle.”
“Hm.” Victoria wasn’t entirely convinced, but… oh, what the hell. “All right. What else?”
“We’re running out of time, but I have this sheet of exercises. Some are for getting you out of an attack. But some are for you to try before bed.” Anna pulled a sheet of paper out of the back of her notebook and handed it to Victoria, who looked at it and snorted.
“Meditation?” She could only laugh. “Dr. Monroe, be serious.”
“I have never been more serious, and you did agree to try,” Anna reminded her. “I have one other thing I want you to try that’s not on the list: eat something, please?”
“Eating is therapeutic?” Victoria raised an eyebrow.
“You certainly seemed to enjoy your pastry today.” Anna’s eyebrow lifted right back at her. “Food can be therapy. But also of course satiating your appetite can help you sleep. Have a good hearty meal, drink a cup of chamomile tea, and try a meditative exercise before bed tonight.”
She thought she might have a box of loose chamomile in the back of a cupboard somewhere, covered in dust. Tucking the paper into her bag, Victoria stood up and prepared to leave. “All right. I’ll give it a try.”
Anna beamed, and Victoria couldn’t help noticing how it lit up her whole face. “Thank you for being open to listening, today, Dr. Ellis.”
Victoria paused at the door, her fingers tightening around the straps of her bag. The urge to be snarky bubbled up, but she let it wisp away, and kept her farewell simple. “Thank you for your ideas, Dr. Monroe. I’ll see you in a few days.”
At home that night, she looked at the sheet of exercises and rolled her eyes. “What a great load of twaddle and woo.”
Victoria had never in her life sat down to meditate and was not sure at all she would have the patience to get through any of these. Certainly none of the ones that involved her speaking affirmations aloud. There was an app recommended with pre-recorded meditations; that seemed her best bet.
She also thought that treating this entire night like one of her comforting rituals might help get her through the nonsense of it all.
To that end, she had ordered her favorite meal, chicken parmigiana, from an Italian place nearby.
While she would normally have a glass of a fine white wine with it, tonight she would drink a simple lemon sparkling water.
When the meal arrived, Victoria carefully removed the steaming, delectably melty and cheesy pasta dish from its container and plated it.
Onto her birchwood dining table it went, along with cutlery, a lovely Diptyque candle with a delicious fig odor, and a tall glass of the lemon water.
It was, she admitted, rather a peaceable tableau.
Victoria had expected as usual to have little to no appetite, especially as she’d eaten that enormous pastry this morning.
But she’d also had a full slate of surgeries and rounds today, and no panic attacks.
So as she sat down, her stomach growled for the second time that day and she found herself tucking right into her food.
It felt like it had been forever since she truly enjoyed eating. Victoria savored each bite, each sip of the fresh and fizzy water. By the time her plate was empty and she was doing the washing up, she felt pleasantly sated and comfortably full.
Continuing with her evening ritual, she dug out the dusty tin of chamomile tea she’d half-remembered and set about making a nice cup of the stuff, with a bit of honey for sweetness.
This, she took to her bedroom and set on a tiny mug warmer she kept by her bed to stay hot while she took a long, hot and soapy shower.
She felt like she was genuinely taking care of herself tonight in a way she hadn’t for far too long.
There was something nice about it. She even washed and thoroughly dried the thick golden waves of her hair, then, sitting in the middle of her bed in a navy satin pajama set, Victoria did something she really hadn’t done in a long time: she plaited her hair.
Her fingers twined her locks into a long, heavy rope of flax that thumped satisfyingly down her back when she threw it back over her shoulder. She felt pleasantly loose, clean, full of delicious food, and tired in a way that owed nothing to stress and overwork.
And she hadn’t even begun Anna’s silly meditative exercise yet!
Victoria hit play on the meditation app and picked up her still-hot cup of chamomile tea.
The directions being crooned at her in a soothing monotone were, as she expected, revoltingly twee.
But she obeyed the directive to get comfortable, close her eyes, and allow her thoughts to drift while she cupped her mug of tea in her hands and let the cozy warmth sink into her fingers.
Once she got past her eye-rolling skepticism, Victoria could admit to a certain pleasant softness to the whole rigmarole.
When the meditation gently faded out, her cup of tea was empty, and her brain had slowed down into nothing more noisy than a contented hum, Victoria switched off her bedside lamp, slid under the duvet… and fell asleep.