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“It’s night and I’m on the highway. I can’t steer the car. I keep drifting back and forth across the line, but no matter what I do, I can’t control the car. Then I see people in the distance, just standing in the middle of the highway.”
“Do you recognize these people?”
Cassie nodded. “When I get closer, I see that it’s my parents and my sister. My parents look like they do in real life, but my sister is about five or six years old? She’s pretty young.”
“Is your sister often young in your dreams?”
&n
bsp; “I’m not sure.” Cassie tried to think back to any other time she’d dreamed about her sister. “I don’t think so?”
“What happens next?”
“I get closer. It feels like the car is speeding up. I try to step on the brakes, but nothing happens. I get so close that I can see the terror on their faces. My sister is crying and screaming. I try to swerve, but there’s no stopping the car. Right before I hit them, I wake up.”
“And how do you feel once you wake up?”
And how do you feel when… Dr. Greene had asked Cassie that kind of question thousands of times over the years, yet it was strange for Cassie to analyze her own thoughts and feelings. She’d rather keep her head down and carry on with life, but that didn’t fix any of her problems.
“Scared.” Cassie’s laugh sounded nervous. “Terrified, really. Sad. I’m crying or sweating or both.”
“Anything else?”
“Regret.”
“Hmm.” Dr. Greene wasn’t the kind of therapist who kept a notepad in front of her to make notes on, but every once in a while, she’d make an affirming noise and pause, as if she were filing the information in her brain’s file cabinets. “Do you know why you feel regret?”
“Not really. I understand the fear and the sadness, but not the regret. I tried everything I could to stop the car. It wasn’t my fault.”
Dr. Greene pushed her glasses further up her face. “So, as long as you do everything in your power to stop something bad from happening, you won’t feel any regret?”
Cassie smirked. Dr. Greene was good at asking Cassie questions to flip her perspective. “No, of course not.”
“Regret is a good indicator that a situation may not feel resolved to you, even if you’ve done everything in your power to fix it. We gotta accept some things are out of our control. It’s what you do with that feeling of regret that matters most.” She paused for a moment and rested her chin in her hand. “When did you first have this dream?”
Cassie looked up at the ceiling while she thought. “Maybe a couple weeks ago?”
“About the time you decided to see your sister again?”
Cassie’s gaze snapped back to her therapist’s face. “Yeah, about that time.”
“Is it possible that these dreams are related to anxiety about seeing your sister again? It has been a few years, after all.”
“It’s more than possible.” Cassie blew out a long breath. “It’s been weighing on me pretty heavily.”
Dr. Greene leaned forward slightly. “How come? What are you worried about?”
Cassie let it all out now. “Oh, everything.” She laughed. “We used to be pretty close as kids, but it’s been so long and so much has changed. Will we still get along? Will she still feel like my little sister? Will she treat me like I’m made of glass, like most people do once they find out what happened to me?”
“Have you asked her any of these questions? Raised any of these concerns?”
Cassie blushed. “No.”
“Hmm. I’d bet Laura is pretty nervous, too. You’re the big sister, after all. She looked up to you when you were kids. What do you think she’s afraid of?”
Cassie bit the inside of her lip as she tried to put herself in her sister’s shoes. “The same things? Whether we’ll get along. Whether it’ll be awkward. Whether we’ll still feel like family.”
Dr. Greene leaned back. “You share a lot of the same fears. That means you have a middle ground, a common issue. And, as always, the best way to solve a situation like this is with—”
