Emotional Blindspot

She eyed the files set neatly on the table in front of her, anxious about the order in which she had piled them up for the third time in the last fifteen minutes. Curiously her hands reached out to the top file, fingers itching over the well dusted blue cover of the folder. Staring at her slim fingers atop the folder, she was plunged in a battle of her own.

“You can’t arrange them both in sizes and colors altogether. Let it be.” He calmly spoke to her from across the table. Shifting in his seat, he eyed her sternly. His fingers tapping over the glass table on their own accord. A habit he had formed when observing something while investing his complete attention into it.

“Get out of my head, psycho.” She snapped back and emphasized the last word, making sure he heard her. To which he only shrugged his shoulders to make it known he wasn’t even bothered by her irksome demeanour. He grabbed a green folder out of the pile and started flipping through the pages until he stopped at one to read the content on it. It only further infuriated her on how he wasn’t even reacting to her.

“You know you should have a couch in here.” She casually stated trying to get him to converse, avoiding his eye contact. That’s what she had been doing since she walked in here.

“You can’t sleep here.” He retracted. She visibly rolled her eyes at him. “As if I’ll even get any sleep here, I hardly sleep anyways.” She explained, throwing her hands in the air in exasperation.

He eyed her without changing his blank expression and stretched out his hand to extract his notepad from his drawer. He clicked his pen and started scribbling across his notepad. His expressions changed from blank to thoughtful, as if he was contemplating his sanity being in the same room as her. She wasn’t his first to solve. Nor was she as complicated as he had dealt with before but breaking through her core was going to take time. He could give her all the time in the world if only she hadn’t refused to speak out, so blatantly during the first five minutes of her visit. Making sure he knew she wasn’t going to let him in on any personal information about herself.

She started spinning the paperweight atop the glass table, clicking her tongue as if stopping the words to leave her mouth. “Out with it.” He demanded after noticing how hard she was trying to hold back.

She took a deep breath and sighed. “If my sister had set me up on a blind date instead, it would’ve still been understandable but who on earth sets you up for a session with a therapist.
Oh, wait, my apologies. Sets you up with ‘the’ best therapist in the city or did she say country? She thinks I’ve lost it apparently. Maybe I have.” She kept on babbling.

“You’re not a lost cause. We all at times just need to figure out ourselves and it’s okay to seek help.” He commented back emphatically.

“Yeah, but how many of those people visit a therapist to seek help?” She challenged.

“A lot actually.” She huffed back in utter annoyance. He never understood why people treated mental health issues and getting help, some sort of taboo. You could scratch a blade through your own skin but couldn’t sit through a session of therapy and take your prescriptions because you’d be labelled insane then. Maybe these labels were what intimidated them all.

“I was expecting some old, wrinkly guy sitting across of me, just questioning me about my life and then jolting down some prescription or something and I’d be done for good. But here I am with you…you’re around my age which only increases my discomfort in telling you my life tales. Couldn’t my sister have just chosen someone else, ugh!” He continued scribbling down on his notepad.

She sank back in her seat, confounded over the idea of ever agreeing to go into therapy in the first place. She didn’t want to rave about her sad stories and he seemed fine with that. She was visibly petrified with the thought of being judged by him. On second thought, she mentally told herself she could either man-up and get help, or she could just run away like some coward. She decided to give into the first thought.

“So, how does this work? I mean the therapy. Can it help anyone figure out themselves?” He raised a perfect eyebrow, utterly amused by her restless persona.

“Most of the times, yes. Normally it works like patients come in and tell me their problems. If they’re suffering from sleep deprivation or depression or suicidal tendencies or even seeing and hearing people that don’t exist…..and I being the doctor help fix it. Simple as that.” She pondered over what he said for a few stretched seconds before speaking up again.

“So, like I’ll have to tell you stuff about me in order for you to figure me out and help me?” She shifted uneasily in her seat, discomfort radiating off her body language. He gave her a warm reassuring smile.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” He reassured her before continuing, “your sister’s main concern is you quitting your jobs, constantly changing your friend circles and losing interest abruptly in things and people altogether. There’s an inconsistency, which isn’t healthy. Let’s just focus on that, alright?”

She took in a deep breath, “you can never figure me out, no one can.”

“That’s one thing people like you purposely misjudge about others. You love to complicate simple things deliberately and make it so hard for everyone else to understand you. Feels thriving and all until you lose track of the plot yourself. And that’s when you end up here.” She let out mocking laughter but deep down it hit a chord.

He calculated her responses and observed her for a minute or two before sinking back into his own leather seat and pushing his notepad across the table towards her. Confused, she looked up at him questioningly and met his gaze. It was her first eye contact ever since the moment she walked into his office. His eyes held a different kind of spark, an understanding and consideration she wasn’t known to. Like he had figured her all out despite knowing nothing about her at all. Unconsciously, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and broke the eye contact. She stretched her hand to retract back his notepad, feeling all alert under his intense gaze.

He had neat handwriting but that wasn’t what made her draw her brows together in mild shock, “how did you…” her mouth felt dry all of a sudden, crease lines embellishing her forehead.

He had written down her traits, with a lot of flow charts and arrows that only confused her but a few words visibly popped up like OCD, social anxiety, sleeping disorder, insomnia, low self-esteem, emotional blindspot…

“Emotional blind spot?” She questioned. He held her gaze once again, looking too eager to answer, making her feel as if he had been waiting for her to pick up on those words and question him. But instead, he stood up from his leather seat, straightened his almost crippled white dress shirt and started walking around the table towards her seat.

She self-consciously straightened up and pushed herself back in her own seat. He came to stand before her and decided to lean back against the table, not breaking the eye contact once. He sure was invading her personal space, which was rather an unprofessional move in his book and made him mentally cringe at his recklessness. “Everyone has an emotional blind spot that’s somewhat a root to all their emotional instability or rather problems in simpler words. It could be love or attachment, rejection, separation, anything… ”

“And what do you think is my emotional blindspot?” She tilted up her chin to the same plane of gaze as his, so she could directly look into his dark eyes. Her own gaze was partly evasive.

“Commitments.” He answered in monotone. He could sense her waiting for him to elaborate his statement, “you’re scared of commitments. It suffocates you somewhat. Maybe you’re scared of people leaving you, so you leave them before they do. It can be emotionally satisfying at the particular time but it’s emotionally draining you out as well. A never-ending cycle of restlessness.”

She felt her mouth gasping in shock at him. She felt personally attacked in a way. It felt like he just peeled off a few layers of her and exposed her to his crude gaze. In an emotional hypersensitive state, she unconsciously wrapped her hands around herself which didn’t go unnoticed and he suppressed a smile.

“How did you figure out all this?” She held up the notepad at him, almost pleading for answers. Today she didn’t recant when a complete stranger called out on her, even if he put ‘doctor’ before his name. Her defence seemed to be melting and all she could do was ask him how he got to her within the span of an hour despite her not sharing any personal details. He started intriguing her. As if on cue, he read her thoughts,

“I’m trained to read people, whatever you talk about, your body language, everything that’s there to you.” He could feel she let down her defense and tilted forward to listen to him intently, “when you sat across of me earlier, maybe out of habit you made a circular motion with your fingers around that ring of yours on your right index finger, which is normal but you repeated the same motion with your left index finger too because physical contact on only one side of your body feels unsettling, doesn’t it?” She drew her brows together in confusion, “you also arranged the files on my desk because messy things discompose you right? And the arrangement still didn’t satisfy you….you still acted anxiously.”

“I- ” words seemed to dry out in her mouth again. She gulped down on her own saliva. He reached back behind him and fetched her a glass of water. He handed her the glass which she took, thankful for his consideration. “That’s Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder as known as an OCD.” There was a lot more he noticed about her obsessive behaviour but he made his point anyway.

“Eye contact makes you uncomfortable. You didn’t make any eye contact the first forty minutes since you walked in here, not even when you were madly refusing me for therapy and telling me how much your sister infuriated you for forcing you into coming here. That’s a catch for social anxiety.” He continued.

She handed him the now empty glass which he set back on the table. “You have a ghost of dark circles and you seem tired rather exhausted. Also, you just told me you don’t get much sleep which surfaced my next diagnosis that you’re suffering from a sleep disorder, maybe insomnia,” he continued.

She started nervously fidgeting with her hands. He was making the air too thick for her to breath in. Her mind suddenly felt occluded. Reading her like an open book and she wasn’t used to the strange feeling of it. Anxiety started pumping through her blood.

“Why do you think I have commitment issues?” She further inquired instead.

“That’s something I still need to crack. I mean you’re scared of commitments. You leave people before they get the chance to leave you. You quit jobs before they get the chance to fire you. No consistency, no attachments or dependency. You fear it and that’s what roots all your problems hence the emotional blindspot.” This time, he looked at her all confused. Pondering over something that he seemed to have a problem elaborating more to himself than her.

“Why you do it confounds me. Every emotional oversensitivity has a reason. I mean your fear of commitment can come from childhood trauma or abuse of any sort, maybe failed relationships or separation from someone you’ve been too attached to is what makes you scared of getting too close to people and depending on them? It’s something I haven’t figured out yet.” She stared down at her hands. Her hair fell over her face, shielding her expressions from him.

“What kind of relationship do you have with your parents?” He asked out of the blue, intrigued. Trying to crack open her seal but not making her self-conscious at the same time. She let out a sour laugh.

“I’ve been living up to their constant approval all my life. Not the golden child like my sister you see. It’s kind of messed up but good I guess. I love them and they love me back.” She let information slip again and that was all he required to crack the code. His face lit up like a light bulb as if he just hit a jackpot. They didn’t call him the best in town for no reason. He read people like he read his books.

“A.P.D” he declared proudly.

“Sorry?” She looked up at him with a blank face.

“Avoidant Personality Disorder.” She flickered her gaze between his eyes, somewhat requesting him to break it down to her. “APD associates with fear of rejection and being negatively judged by others. That’s what downplay your self-esteem and perks your social anxiety, nervousness and fear. What makes you strive for almost perfection and triggers your OCD. All your life you’ve been taught living up to everyone else’s approvals. You have been so scared of rejection and being wrongly judged that you started fearing commitments. You felt trapped and suffocated. Persistent feeling of never being good enough no matter what you do, always feeling like a disappointment more to yourself than others…” he wanted to continue but seeing her suddenly gloomy features, he felt a slight prick at his own heart.

“You feared I’d judge you if you open up about yourself to me even for the purpose of therapy and me being your doctor, so you just refused to take my help altogether.” She looked away and sighed. No longer being able to meet his eyes.

“Can you fix me then, doctor?” She addressed him in a small voice.

“You’re good enough, trust me.” He replied back instead.

“I think I do.” She referred to the latter part of his statement.

“Will take a few more sessions to establish that statement as a fact next time.” He gave her a reassuring smile.

She surprisingly smiled back at him and nodded. A smile that caused her eyes to crease around the sides indicating it was genuinely felt.

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