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He told me to let her cry and meet him outside the cabin.
When I closed the door behind me and took a seat on the small porch, I felt like the biggest piece of shit.
Two minutes later Bruce came walking calmly toward me and sat down with a satisfied smile.
“How can you look so happy when Cia is lying in there crying?” I asked. I really didn’t like the guy at that moment.
“I’m happy for her, because we’re finally at the point in her regression where some of the pain is stored. This is what we’ve been looking for.”
“What do you mean? Are you saying that you’ve been waiting for her to break down? What are you, a sadist?”
He chuckled. “No I’m not a sadist. But you need to understand that before every breakthrough there is a breakdown.”
“Why?”
“That’s not important. It’s just how it is. When Cia was a small girl she faced situations she couldn’t cope or deal with, things that were painful or frightening.”
“Didn’t we all?” I asked.
“Yes. I want you to think of a child finding something so frightening that they store it in an inner closet and slam the door shut. For years the child doesn’t dare to open that closet, and in time they forget what is actually in there and only remember that’s it’s something terrifying.”
“All right.” I had followed him this far.
“Now, our job is to empower Cia to open those rattling closets and confront whatever she has stored in there.”
“How?”
“That depends on what is in there. But I can tell you that for the most part it’s not half as frightening as people fear. You see, when we go back as adults and take a look at the frightening memory we have a different perspective and a new cognitive understanding. Let’s say that the sound of dogs barking always makes you uncomfortable and you don’t know why, since you like dogs in general. When we dive down you realize that as a child you were told something traumatic, such as your parents announcing their divorce or telling you that someone has died, and at the same time the neighbor’s dog barked like crazy… years later you are left with that uncomfortable feeling every time you hear a barking dog even though you don’t remember why.”
“Okay, that make sense, I guess, but then what do I do about it?”
“As an adult you’re able to cognitively separate the two and once you understand the reason, you can remind yourself that it’s just a dog barking and it means nothing to you.”
“But how do we find out why Cia is crying?” I said with a dampened soundtrack of her sobbing from inside the cabin.
Bruce smiled. “We ask her, of course.”
“But what if she doesn’t know?”
He arched a brow. “She might not know, but her body remembers and it will tell her if she listens.”
“So what do I do now?”
“You wait.”
“For what?”
“For her to be ready to talk.”
“And when is that?”
“When she is calm and has digested all the sadness and fear that is running through her right now. She can’t talk at the moment, and you should never seek to have a rational conversation with someone who is upset – they’re not open to dialogue. My guess is that right now she just wants to be alone.”
“So no bath tonight?”
“No, not unless she calms down and accepts your closeness. You don’t want to overstep her boundaries.”
“Is that a joke? I’ve been overstepping her boundaries ever since we got here,” I said.
