Way Down We Go | Dr. Kopitar-Higgs

[attr="class","cbgtop"]

[attr="class","cbody"]July had brought a change in her routine that she had not been expecting. Going to therapy had been a necessity after everything that had happened. There was no way of coming back from what she had been through without help. Some days, she wondered if there was any way of coming back from it even with help. It seemed just as impossible of a feat sometimes. There were days when it felt like it was never going to happen, and then there were days when she almost felt normal. But she knew that the latter never would have been possible on her own.
[break][break]
When she had gotten back to England, she had not wanted to go to a psychiatrist. She had not wanted to go at all—and she wouldn’t have ever, if Ares hadn’t eventually made her. She didn’t know what she was supposed to talk about—she didn’t know what she was supposed to say. How could anyone begin to understand what had happened? There wasn’t a psychiatrist in the world that would have dealt with anything like this before, and so what would they be able to do for her? What good would it do to talk about something, to bring it all up again, in front of a complete stranger?
[break][break]
It had been harder still when Ares had been Minister. It didn’t feel smart to talk to anyone about anything, not when there was so much that could be used against him. If her psychiatrist happened to be involved with the Death Eaters or on the complete opposite spectrum, perhaps they were on the other side of the political fight—would doctor-patient confidentiality go far enough to keep them from using what they learned from her against him? She wanted to think so. But there had been no way for her to know for sure. It had made her far too paranoid to trust anybody when he had still been in office. Instead, she had compartmentalized. She had tried to move forward—she had gotten pregnant, which had been a surprise, though she thought that having Clary was one of the best things to have happened since her return. The kids grounded her. Orion and Clary, and Ares, were the reason for her good days.
[break][break]
Eventually, she had decided to open her mind a little bit and had consented to therapy. It had felt safer when she didn’t have to think of the political ramifications of having the wrong therapist. It was a silly thing to think, a paranoid thing to think, but it had been an excuse not to go to therapy and it had worked, until it hadn’t.
[break][break]
But since then, she had been going every week, and it had helped in some ways. She at least knew what some of her myriad of issues were, at least. PTSD, agoraphobia, she was sure that the list in her therapist’s notes went on and on with other potentials. She wasn’t necessarily the most forthcoming of patients, which she supposed slowed down the process of trying to figure out just what to diagnose her with, though PTSD was an obvious one. A little research of her own had been enough for her to see how many symptoms she could tick off of a list. It was strange seeing it boiled down into a bullet point list of symptoms, but at least she knew what she was up against.
[break][break]
Her therapist was retiring, though, which was the change that she couldn’t have anticipated. It had meant finding somebody new, and the recommendation had been Dr. Kopitar-Higgs. She had no idea if she would like the woman—she did know it was a woman, that was important, or if she wouldn’t. If she didn’t, she would probably find some reason to stop going to therapy. But for today, she would go. It was her first appointment, so she knew that skipping it wouldn’t have been a good idea. Better to go and see how it went. Maybe it would be fine. As much as she’d protested against it at first, as reluctant as she was to talk about details of what had happened, therapy had helped. There was no reason to think that would stop now.
[break][break]