I’d spent seven years in therapy myself before I ever sat in the other chair. Had done the work, processed the trauma, learned to recognize my patterns and challenge my distortions. And still, some mornings I woke up with the familiar weight of anxiety pressing against my chest, reminding me that healing isn’t linear and self-awareness isn’t the same as immunity.
Today was one of those mornings.
I sat in my office an hour before my first client, coffee cooling on my desk, staring at the notes from yesterday’s sessions. Three new referrals from the trauma center. Three people whose lives had been shattered by violence, who were looking to me to help them put the pieces back together.
No pressure.
My phone buzzed with a text from Holden:Errands done. Try not to psychoanalyze anyone too hard today.
I smiled despite myself. He’d left before dawn, slipping out of bed with a kiss to my forehead and a whispered promise to text once his errands were done. I’d pretended to be asleep, but really I’d been listening to him move around the apartment, memorizing the sound of his footsteps, the way the front door clicked closed behind him.
No promises, I typed back.Try not to plan anything too obsessively today.
No promises, he replied, followed by a heart emoji that still made me grin like an idiot even after six months of dating.
I set the phone face-down and made myself look at my notes instead. Six days. The run was in six days, a fact I’d been carrying quietly at the back of everything since he’d told me — not panicking, not spiraling, just aware of it the way you’re aware of a weather front moving in. Holden would plan for every variable. I would do what I always did - hold the space, stay steady, not let him see me counting down.
Six months. After years of holding a professional line — watching him from across the room while I worked with his brothers, telling myself dating a client’s associate would be a terrible idea — I’d finally said yes last spring. My mentor had raised concerns about boundaries, about whether I could maintain objectivity when my personal life was so closely entangled with a world I encountered in my practice.
I’d assured her I could. And so far, I had.
The motorcycle club thing hadn’t been an easy adjustment, even with all my prior exposure. Dating someone in that world was different from treating them professionally.
I’d been to the clubhouse enough times to have formed a full picture of what that world looked like. Club girls included — women who showed up for a few months, liked the atmosphere, moved on when the phase ran its course. I’d processed that one deliberately, because it was the kind of thing my clients wouldspiral on and I’d wanted to know my own mind clearly before I committed to anything. What I’d landed on: they weren’t a threat. They belonged to the background of the club, not to Holden. He’d never made me doubt that for a single day.
By the time my first client settled into the chair across from me, I’d put all of it away.
Valerie was a domestic violence survivor working through the aftermath of a fifteen-year marriage. She was at the stage where she could talk about the abuse without dissociating, which was progress, but she still flinched whenever a man raised his voice.
“I keep thinking about what you said last week,” she told me, fingers knotted in her lap. “About how the healing happens in the doing, not just the talking.”
“What did that bring up for you?”
“Fear, mostly.” She laughed, but it was hollow. “I know I need to do things differently. I know I need to practice being in the world without him. But every time I try, I hear his voice in my head telling me I’m too stupid, too weak, too—”
She broke off, tears spilling down her cheeks. I slid the tissue box toward her and waited. “Sorry,” she whispered.
“You never have to apologize for having feelings in this room.” I kept my voice gentle but steady. “Tears are information. They’re telling you something important.”
We spent the rest of the session exploring what that something might be, working through the layers of internalized criticism until Valerie could say what she actually needed without apologizing for it. By the time Valerie left, she was calmer, grounded, ready to try again.
That was the challenge of this work—maintaining the clinical distance while still being present, compassionate, human. Too much distance and you became cold, mechanical. Too little and you burned out, lost yourself in everyone else’s pain.
Most days, I walked the line pretty well. Today, for some reason, it felt harder.
My second client was a teenager dealing with anxiety, and my third was a couple on the verge of divorce. By noon, I was exhausted in the way only emotional labor could make you—physically fine but nothing left to give.
Lunch was a salad I’d packed that morning and a call from Indira — who, as of six months ago, had apparently decided I was hers now. I’d been in the periphery of the club’s world for years, crossed paths with her at events, but we’d been cordial strangers until I started dating Holden. Since then she’d been incrementally claiming space in my life, and I’d stopped pretending to resist it because I liked her.
“Please tell me you’re free on Saturday,” she said without preamble. “I need someone to help me pretend I care about flower arrangements.”
I laughed, nearly choking on a cherry tomato. “Wedding planning not going well?”
“Dutch keeps saying he doesn’t care what color the napkins are, and I keep wanting to strangle him.” She sighed dramatically. “I thought marrying a biker would mean less traditional wedding drama, not more.”
“Have you considered that maybe he genuinely doesn’t care about the napkins?”
“Of course he doesn’t care. That’s the problem. I want him to have opinions so I can disagree with them.” There was a smile in her voice now. “Men are useless, Bea. All of them.”
