He groaned. “Of course not. You’ll make me dig into this, won’t you?”
“Well, it’s interesting because we don’t want you to feel like you’re not getting some successful treatment here. So, by thinking that your sister had a failure in her previous program, I can see how that fear would then translate into how your current program will also fail.”
He stared at her. “I didn’t even think of it that way.”
“Well, you did because you just said so. But what I think you mean is that you didn’t consciously think of it that way. It’s something that’s been rolling around in the back of your head in the shadows.”
“I guess,” he muttered. “And that’s definitely not something I would want to think because, you know…” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to even have that in my head. I don’t want that to even be a possibility.”
“Good,” she said, with a bright smile. “So we should keep that one on the books and see how you handle it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want you to think about it, think about in what way you feel you can avoid that same scenario and not have what happened to her then happen to you.”
“Well, I had thought it was a failure in her initial program,” he said quietly, “but I’m now wondering if maybe it was her inability to keep up the home exercises afterward.”
“Maybe. So what can you do about that?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, frowning. “Maybe ask Shane for a program that’s a little more manageable after I leave.”
“That’s one option,” she confirmed, with a nod. “That’s a good option too. I think they’ll also be doing an outpatient program over a longer term, so people like you and your sister can come in every couple weeks for a tune-up.”
He stared at her in surprise. “That would be a really good idea,” he murmured. “I’d sign up for that for sure.”
“And so that would also help alleviate the fear too, right?”
He frowned and nodded. “Considering I hadn’t even seen it as a fear.”
“No, not consciously.”
He nodded. “It all comes back to that conscious versus subconscious thing again.”
“Of course,” she said, with a laugh. “The things that our brains can dream up…”
“Of course.” He sighed. “And I don’t think my sister’s a failure,” he stated, a little more robustly than he had before. “It really bothers me that that even came up.”
“Good, I’m glad you don’t see her that way because obviously she probably wouldn’t like to know that that’s how you view her.”
“And I don’t,” he protested. “I don’t even know where that came from.”
“Your subconscious again,” she noted. “And sometimes, by viewing other people as failures, you think that something like thatcan’thappen to you because you’re not a failure.”
“In my case,” he corrected her, “I’mmorelikely to think it would happen to me because Idoconsider myself a failure.” And then he stopped, frowned, and asked, “I didn’t just say that, right?”
“Oh, you did,” she declared very, very gently. “You absolutely did.”
He groaned. “I don’t think of myself as a failure.”
“So why did you say that?”
He shook his head. “I have no idea. I really don’t see myself as a failure. I guess I would consider that, if a relapse happened to me, then I would be a failure, which is almost as bad but not quite the same. I’m trying not to blame myself for things I couldn’t control. Like Peter’s death.” As they’d talked at length on this issue before, he was more comfortable bringing it upagain. He didn’t want to blame his sister any more than he wanted to blame himself.
“So you don’t see yourself as a failure right now, but you might if your program wouldn’t work because you wouldn’t blame the program. Instead you would blame yourself. Whereas in your sister’s case, you’re blaming her and the program.”
He frowned. “It sounds like you’ve twisted up all my words, and yet I’m not sure you have.”
“Nope, I’m not sure I have either,” she replied, but now she was grinning.