A/N: This chapter was inspired by Therapist Jane as well as my own therapist. So this is a homage to both of them. Also, Dr. Pratt was definitely written with Therapist Jane in mind because we all love her so much.
As always, I want to thank blossom-of-snow for editing this story.
The navy blue velvet of the couch irritated the skin on the back of Sharon's knees, and she shuffled away from it until she was perched on the edge of the couch. Weren't therapist couches supposed to be comfortable, to make patients feel at ease? Sharon felt the misdirected anger rising. She's never felt that angry and upset about nonsense like uncomfortable couches before she started therapy.
It was her fourth appointment with the therapist, and until now, Dr. Pratt had been asking her questions about her life in the past and present in order to know her better.
"Let me share an observation with you," Dr. Pratt said. "You're a police officer who has taken in a material witness with a complicated background that is quite similar to yours. And having that child in your house made you face repressed memories, memories of events that you successfully buried so deep that you managed to forget they ever happened to you."
Sharon considered the doctor's point for a moment. "I don't think that's true. Rainie endured serious abuse. I didn't."
"You don't think that you have been abused?" Dr. Pratt asked in a serious tone.
Sharon shook her head and watched Dr. Pratt scribble on the fresh legal pad in her lap.
"I'd like to better understand what your idea of abuse is," Dr. Pratt said.
"What do you mean?" Sharon felt her anger simmering again. Wasn't the meaning of abuse clear to a professional therapist?
"I want you to tell me, in your own words, what you consider abuse to be," Dr. Pratt explained.
Sharon took a deep breath. Her chest and face burned, and she wasn't sure how to calm down. "Abuse is when someone repeatedly hurts another person, either sexually or physically."
"How about a person who hurts another person emotionally?" Dr. Pratt suggested.
"Yes, of course, that's abuse."
"And if we consider what you've told me about your life so far, don't you think that this type of abuse applies to you?" Dr. Pratt asked.
"I guess maybe a little bit," Sharon replied with a sigh.
"How about financial abuse?" Dr. Pratt went on.
"It's a form of abuse, but I haven't experienced that," Sharon said.
"I think you told me about your first husband's tendency to empty your shared bank account and leave you and your children in debt. You said it happened three times." Dr. Pratt said.
"Yes, but—" Sharon paused. She knew where Dr. Pratt was heading, and she did not like it one bit.
"While this is not a classic manifestation of financial abuse, it could be considered as such in your case." Dr. Pratt clarified.
"Okay, so I had people in my life who mistreated me a little. How can you even compare that to a situation in which a child was repeatedly raped and beaten by the people who were supposed to care for her?"
"You did mention that you were having nightmares depicting violent events from your childhood," Dr. Pratt said.
Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the edge of the couch. "Yes, but I don't remember any of them. They might not even be real."
"I think we should treat them as real, even if they are not," Dr. Pratt said.
"That makes absolutely no sense," Sharon snapped.
Dr. Pratt remained irritatingly calm. "I see that you are upset. Why do you think that is?"
"I'm just–" Sharon stood up and began pacing around the room. If she knew what she felt or how to explain her feelings, she wouldn't be here.
"Maybe you don't want these dreams to be real. If they were real, you'd have to admit that you were a victim of physical abuse," Dr. Pratt suggested. "Could that be it?"
Sharon leaned against the back of the couch. "I'm not a victim."
"You don't see yourself as a victim?"
"No," Sharon said.
"Sit down for a moment." Dr. Pratt's voice was both soft and demanding at the same time. Sharon retook a seat on the couch. "I see that you are very angry right now, and from what you've told me about yourself, that strikes me as odd. It makes me wonder — who made you this angry?"
Even though she knew she could answer if she tried, Sharon shrugged.
"Could it be the people in your life who hurt you? The people who were supposed to love you but took from you instead?"
"I don't know."
"Sharon, you described an abuser as someone who repeatedly hurts someone else. Do you think your father ever did that to you?"
"He used to yell a lot and call me derogatory names," Sharon said.
"These are examples of emotional abuse. Do you agree?"
Sharon nodded. She could not deny that her father's foul mouth was responsible for some of her emotional scars.
For the next forty-five minutes, Dr. Pratt questioned Sharon about some of her memories of her father, how they made her feel and act, and how they affected the way she thought about and treated herself.
At the end of the session, Sharon felt drained. As she unlocked her car and sat in the driver's seat, she felt no motivation to drive. She knew that it was her choice to start seeing a therapist, but talking about her issues made her so angry. Even after an hour in that room, she didn't understand why she felt this way. She's never been an angry person, and although she was not a stranger to fury, she has never felt it burning her from the inside out before. Although the therapist did not seem phased by it, her outburst at Dr. Pratt's clinic left her ashamed of herself.
The guilt for her behavior accompanied her throughout the entire week leading to her next session with Dr. Pratt. Sharon considered canceling her session and toyed with the idea of quitting therapy altogether, but she decided to give it one last try before making that decision.
"I apologize for the way I acted in our last session," Sharon said as she took a seat on Dr. Pratt's uncomfortable couch. "I don't know why I got so angry, but it was wrong to take it out on you."
"Sharon, all your emotions, positive and negative alike, have a place in this room. Anger is a normal reaction to some of the life events you described here. This is the right place to express it."
Sharon looked at the therapist with confusion.
"You know, Sharon, many patients who experience a strong emotional response during therapy, choose to stop attending therapy because they find it hard to face their issues anymore. I commend you for being here today, for choosing to continue," Dr. Pratt said.
"I almost didn't come here today," Sharon admitted.
"I'm glad you did, because I think we made real progress last week, and I think you're heading in the right direction," Dr. Pratt said.
Sharon gave the therapist a single nod and drew in a sharp breath.
"So let's start where we left off last week," Dr. Pratt instructed. "You talked about your childhood, and you mentioned that you've always felt like your family was not like others."
"Yes," Sharon confirmed.
"What did you mean by that?"
"Well, my mother got pregnant by accident, and my parents were forced to marry. I think they had many dreams, and they got stuck with a child none of them truly wanted. Other children I knew always seemed loved and wanted. I didn't feel that way." Sharon sighed. She briefly mentioned this information to Andy before but made it seem much less impactful than it felt.
"You didn't feel loved by your parents?" Dr. Pratt asked.
"It's more complicated than that. I knew they didn't love each other, and they weren't happy to be parents together. I think both of them felt a sense of obligation to keep the family together because of other people's expectations of them. It's not that they didn't love me. They just didn't love being a family."
"Did you feel unwanted?"
"Yes," Sharon said. "I felt that by being born, I ruined their lives and forced them into a situation that made both of them unhappy."
"Do you still feel this way today?" Dr. Pratt asked.
"No. Eventually, I realized that the choices they made were not my fault. I was the result, not the cause of their problems." Sharon paused and took a deep breath. "But there are times when I feel guilty for the suffering my existence put them through. My mother had to live most of her life in fear of what my father would say and do if she acted this or that way, and she never got to live out her dream to be a professional pianist. And my father wanted to be a lawyer, but because I was born, he never went to law school and had to settle for a low paying job at a car repair shop. While I was in college, my paternal grandparents passed away, and my father inherited a large sum of money. Before that, things were tight."
"You have empathy for the situation that you think the circumstances of your birth put them into," Dr. Pratt suggested.
Sharon nodded.
"Could that empathy stem from your experience?" Dr. Pratt asked.
"I'm not sure what you mean."
"In one of our first sessions, when you described to me how you found your way into the police force, you mentioned that you planned to become a lawyer, but had to give up that dream when you became pregnant. Did you start identifying with your parents' experiences when that happened to you?"
The question surprised Sharon. She never saw any similarity between her career path and those of her parents.
"I always saw my children as blessings. I've never resented them for the ways they changed my life. Emily and Ricky were both happy little accidents, and I never have, not even once, thought that they were hindering me from success or fulfillment."
"Okay, let's get back to your parents," Dr. Pratt said. "Which one of them were you closer to?"
"Growing up, I felt closer to my mother, but after I turned eighteen, that changed. My mother didn't want me to go away to college. My father supported my decision to pursue higher education, especially because I wanted to become a lawyer. I think he wanted to fulfill his dream through me," Sharon said.
"That's interesting. Why do you think your mother didn't want you to go away to college?"
"I think she was scared of staying behind with my father. Maybe she saw me as the glue that held the family together and feared what would happen once I left," Sharon said.
"Were any of her fears realized?" Dr. Pratt asked.
"Partially. When I returned for my first vacation from college, small-town gossip indicated that they were no longer monogamous."
"How did that make you feel?" Dr. Pratt asked.
"Not surprised. I always knew that their relationship has been flimsy, at best." Sharon looked downwards at her hands and then at Dr. Pratt. "My mother once told me that my father's dalliances meant that he spent more time away from home, and my mother could have time for herself, play the piano. She felt safer on her own."
"That's interesting," Dr. Pratt said.
Sharon arched an eyebrow. "Is it?"
"Having been cheated on, I thought that you'd have strong negative feelings about that," Dr. Pratt said.
"Is that criticism?"
"No, just an observation," Dr. Pratt replied.
An observation that plenty of former friends and family members have made over the course of her life. "My circumstances were different. Jack's cheating was a betrayal of my trust. My parents had no trust between them."
"I see. Let's go back to your relationship with your father. How did he react when he realized that you weren't going to become a lawyer?" Dr. Pratt navigated the conversation to a different topic.
"I'm sure he was disappointed. But by the time it was clear that I wasn't going to law school, I already had a career in the LAPD. He asked me if I was happy working for the police department and said that he believed in me, no matter what I chose to do," Sharon said.
"Did this interaction change the way you felt about him before?" Dr. Pratt asked.
"A little. I thought he only supported my going to college across the country because he wanted me to fulfill his dream, but after he realized it wasn't going to happen, all he cared about was my happiness."
"This is very different than the way you described him in your childhood," Dr. Pratt noted.
"Things changed after I left for college. He still drank, but he no longer felt as obligated to my mother as he did before. Me leaving home gave my parents their freedom," Sharon said.
"Did you feel the same when your children left home?" Dr. Pratt asked.
"Probably not with the same intensity. I never felt like my children bound me in any way, but of course, some things were easier to get away with when they no longer lived at home." Sharon admitted.
"I see," Dr. Pratt said and jotted notes in her legal pad. "We're almost out of time, but before we finish, I want to ask you about how you're feeling about today's session."
"It was helpful," Sharon replied.
"Good. In what way?" Dr. Pratt asked.
"I think that it made me understand that I had many of the same experiences as my parents, but I handled them in a very different manner than either of them did," Sharon replied.
"Do you think you handled it better than they did?"
"Yes. I feel that I always found a way to make lemons into lemonade, rather than cry about my misfortune. In fact, I didn't see many of those experiences as misfortune at all. I saw them as blessings."
"That's an interesting observation, Sharon. From what you told me, I tend to agree with you." Dr. Pratt said. "You had a more positive outlook on life than they did. What do you think is the reason for that?"
"I don't know," Sharon shrugged.
"Well, that's food for thought until our next session, then." Dr. Pratt said.
Sharon smiled. This session taught her a lot about herself and helped her understand the differences between her parents and her. She was satisfied with her progress and relieved that she had a safe space to explore her complicated childhood and youth.
As she went out of Dr. Pratt's clinic into the sunlit summer day, Sharon felt confident and calm. Yes, there were still issues that she needed to sort out and discuss with Dr. Pratt, but she knew that with her positive outlook on life, she would brave even the most difficult memories.
-TBC-