As I walked out of Dr K’s office this past Thursday, I felt simultaneously wrung out and enlightened. I trudged home and thought back to one of my early meetings with her, almost a year ago.

It was a Friday. Sunny. Crisp. Early December. You could smell the eggnog lattes wafting out of every Starbucks in my neighbourhood. I had a ridiculously large grin pinned to my face as I skipped up the hill to her office. My smile did not relate to the still painful incisions marking my armpit and left breast (scars from a recent lumpectomy and lymph node dissection). Instead, I attributed my giddiness to a brand new crush. Although the timing didn’t make any sense, he had provided a welcome diversion recently. Who needs to obsess about the big “C” when you can daydream about a guy instead? But that’s another story…

I coaxed my clown like smile up the steps to her office. Did I even need to see my psychologist today? I felt totally fine. What would we even talk about? If I could have avoided the cancellation fee, I would have happily skipped right past all of my submerged emotions.

“Terri, please come in. It’s so good to see you.” Dr. K. smiled warmly as she ushered me into the peaceful green sanctuary of her office.  As soon as I sank into the soft chair, my peppiness began to falter. I tried to turn the session on her. Ask her questions. Chat about the weather. But, I couldn’t hide from her piercing green eyes for long.

Soon, my face grew wet and my fist closed around the growing wad of Kleenex on my lap. My nose started to leak and I angrily wiped the snot before it could cake onto my face, like a two year old’s after a temper tantrum. I closed my eyes to hide from her.

She persisted. “Terri, what are you feeling in your body when you talk about going back to work?”

I turned over her question in my cobwebbed mind. I had never equated specific thoughts with corresponding physical reactions. I concentrated harder. Then, I finally looked up and tried to hide the quiver in my voice.

“I feel like my chest is in a vice and I am going to throw up.” I whispered.

I didn’t want to concentrate on those feelings, so I accelerated onto my next few thoughts. “But, I have to go back. My consultants need me. My boss depends on me. It’s already been two weeks since surgery. I thought I would only be off work for 3 days.” I didn’t tell her that I hoped work would provide a welcome release from all of the scary thoughts constantly bombarding me.

‘Are you sure you are ready for that?’ her cautionary tone slowed me down. “A cancer diagnosis is one of the most traumatic events that can happen in a person’s lifetime. You need to accept that life, as you knew it, no longer exists.”

My eyelashes fluttered and the silence in the room pressed up hard against me.

Right. I couldn’t fix this, overachieve past it, or pretend it wasn’t happening. I had to actually accept it? What if I didn’t want to?

She warned me that if I didn’t deal with my emotions, I would face bigger problems. Other patients had struggled with depression and anxiety years after recovering from cancer because they had used my long honed skill of creating small mountains under their rugs.

I looked up at her, my face lit with questions. Process my emotions? What the hell did that mean? Sure, it sounded like a good strategy, but I had no idea where to start. Did she mean that I should sit in my apartment and cry everyday?

Before I could fantasize about a world where I actually dealt with my feelings, the hour had passed. I had to leave. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay inside those green walls. Safe from the decisions lurking outside.

She touched my shoulder, smiled, and encouraged me to concentrate on one thing at a time. Why didn’t I go for a walk and enjoy feeling the sun on my face? She promised that I would have the opportunity to make plenty of tough decisions soon enough. As she gave me a gentle prod out the door, she advised that I use her as a recommendation to not go back to work yet.

I stumbled out into the cool sunlit air and guilt put her arm around me as we drifted down the path to the ocean. Of course I wanted a break from the stresses of my job. Right now, the thought of taking care of other people suffocated me. But, how could I let everyone down? How could I reconcile what I wanted to do with what I felt I should do? And even more alarming, who was I without the badge of my success at work?

But I decided to follow Dr. K’s advice, so I tossed my shoulders to shake off guilt’s heavy arm and walked away from her as quickly as I could.

Since that day, Dr. K and I have worked together to shovel through the blockade I constructed years ago to protect myself from my emotions. Sometimes I hate her. In the self-righteous screaming way you hate a parent for telling you that you that you can’t go to a high school dance until Grade 9 (even though your 8th grade friends get to go this Friday). But, as I continue to see her every two weeks, we traverse important ground that extends far beyond cancer.

I used to squirm at the thought of people knowing I had a regular date with a mind doctor. But now I am proud of it. If investing this time will help me live a slightly less convoluted version of my life, sign me up…