Rochelle Pickles
Rochelle Pickles is a writer, editor and non-practising psychologist from Boorloo, currently living and writing on unceded Gadigal land. Her work has been published in the anthologies Soak and Our Selves by Brio Books and Night Parrot Press. Rochelle has an MA in Creative Writing and she is working on a novel.
Centipede
An eruption of sound wakes her from sleep, relentless and familiar. It takes her a moment in dream to decipher the feeling of panic, like the crackle of an oiled frypan before bursting into unexpected flame.
Something then sinks in her, and she reaches out a hand to press the snooze button on the alarm, knowing she doesn’t have time to snooze.
In the shower the anxiety grips hardest—staring at the back of the bathtub thinking of all the clients for the day, all the problems to solve.
He’s asleep in their bed as she stands naked before the wardrobe, staring at all of the worthless pieces of fabric she’s expected to put on her body every day and pretend to be a person. All too stiff, too tight, too colourful. She doesn’t want any of it on her. After fifteen minutes of staring, she selects the same thing she wore yesterday. She paints her face and puts a headband on so she won’t have to brush her hair. He inches an eye open and looks at her reflection in the mirror.
‘Beautiful,’ he says reassuringly, knowing her mind.
She moves her mouth into a smile but the part of her that would feel something knocks hollow in her chest. She kisses him on the head and picks up her handbag to leave.
* * *
Quinn was late to the appointment, her foundation sweating off as she walk-ran down the street.
Arriving at the front door of the building, she stood for a moment to take a deep breath before pushing the doors open. She hated that her therapist might think her disorganised.
Deanna was walking breezily towards her in creaseless lilac linen before Quinn even finished checking in with the receptionist. She was in her early fifties and always wore flowing outfits and beaded sandals. She smiled warmly and said,
‘Morning, Quinn. That’s a lovely outfit. Would you like a cup of tea?’
Quinn made a brief calculation, determining whether the additional time waiting for tea to be made was worth the dent in therapy time she needed to work out how make it through another day. She said yes and wiped the sweat from the bridge of her nose. They settled into the plush cream couches and Deanna rested her notebook on her knee. She looked up, expectedly.
Fifty minutes later, Quinn exited Deanna’s office puffy-eyed, paid and walked back to her car. She twisted the rear-view mirror to check her face and reapply the washed-off layer of mascara. Quinn checked her watch—another hour until work. Taking another deep breath, she turned the key in the ignition.
Quinn liked to arrive early. She greeted Joy at reception with their usual nod and a tight-lipped ‘hang loose’ hand gesture before checking the roster for which room she’d be in today. She adjusted the lighting in Room 4 to how she liked it and took the framed photography piece off the wall, the one with the little girl cuddling her mum on a sunlit couch. Robyn, the director, thought it represented what their service was supposed to provide: safety, connection. Within a month of working there Quinn had a client walk in the room, look at that photograph and stroll right back out. Quinn thought: exactly. She’d taken it down every day since but made sure it was back up between sessions, so Robyn didn’t find out. There was a little nail on the naked wall and sometimes clients commented on it, when they wanted to avoid talking about the thing that they actually needed to talk about. Why don’t you put a picture there? they asked. Quinn got tired of thinking up excuses and started to ask them how the naked wall made them feel.
Quinn scanned her client list for the day—Robyn had asked Joy at reception to squeeze in a couple more to fill the cancellations, and Quinn’s monthly direct supervision session had also been mysteriously replaced by a paying customer again. She sighed again and took out a pen. Her therapist had suggested that taking time to write out brief session plans at the start of her workday might help defer her ruminations over session preparation in every other waking hour.
Seven clients back-to-back. A 5-year-old boy forced to attend because his mother didn’t want to address her own anxiety: get out the crayons, allow extra time for an unofficial session during parent feedback. A 22-year-old man with social anxiety who mostly likes to chat about how great he is with women: review therapy goals to get us back on track. A new client—a 28-year-old woman with a loss of interest in daily activities, unable to stop crying, lack of energy, wanting to sleep all day: get some depression tip-sheets ready. Quinn also wrote—burnout?—then put a line through it because she was probably projecting. A nonbinary teen refusing to go back to school with possible post-traumatic stress disorder from a bullying incident, a new mother adjusting to life with a baby, a 46-year-old woman processing the grief of her mother’s death, and a 9-year-old girl who melts down every time there’s a change in plans.
Quinn took a deep breath in for four, held for four, and breathed out for six.
She looked up at the clock. It was time. She heard the mother of 5-year-old boy ask to see the psychologist.
Quinn closed the door after her second client—22-year-old man with social anxiety—and checked the clock. She had five minutes to write the notes.
NAME disclosed that from 6 years of age, his REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED. When he tried to go to REDACTED for help, the REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED. At 11 years old he disclosed this to a teacher and he recalls child protection services visiting the home to speak to his mother, though claims were dismissed following the visit and REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED. He did not make any further disclosures and left the family home at 16 years of age. He has discussed this with a previous psychologist since that time but continues to experience REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED.
She glanced back up at the clock, her body shaking after fighting to keep it steady for the last half hour. Had she done everything right, said everything right? Did anyone need to be notified? Would he be ok until next week? What if he got spooked and never comes back? She didn’t work with serious complex trauma like this—she knew she needed to refer him to someone who did. But he had been coming for weeks and it had taken him this long to trust her enough to share the thing. It always felt like a punishment, this professional deferment of personal vulnerabilities. Quinn looked down at the plan she had written for the session—neatly attached to the front of her clipboard before a series of frenzied notes. Of course there no way to plan, no real way to prepare.
She was late for the next appointment and there was a gentle tap on the door from Joy. Quinn poked her head out, nodded and said to send the next client through. She moved away from the door and breathed in four, held for four, and breathed out for six.
28-year-old woman was dressed in navy linen and low heels, her long smooth hair falling down her shoulders. She was casual chic, dressed like she could either head to the office or collapse on the couch at a moment’s notice. Quinn looked down at her own outfit, suddenly concerned they were matching.
Quinn greeted the new client with the warmest smile and invited her to sit down. She checked the confidentiality papers and started with the usual.
‘Tell me a little bit about what’s brought you here today.’
The woman took a deep breath. ‘I’m just…I feel like I’m losing myself, forgetting what it’s like to be me? If that makes sense. My work is…quite stressful. I think about it all the time. But I’m also starting to…not care. I just want to sleep all day. I feel so sad all the time. I think I’m a shit person. So…yeah.’ She gave a little laugh that pushed tears to her eyes.
Quinn smiled gently, adjusting her clipboard on her lap and circling the crossed-out burnout. ‘What do you do for work?’
‘I’m a psychologist.’
Quinn froze her smile in place, nodding and lifting her notes to check the paperwork again. No mention.
‘What field are you in?’
‘Private practice. Adults, mostly.’
Quinn noticed that she had not stopped nodding and forced her head still.
‘She didn’t even tell the receptionist, at intake?’
It was Saturday morning and busier than usual in their favourite spot. Quinn shook her head at her friend. ‘I was totally unprepared. I’ve never treated another psych before.’
‘I have,’ Em said, yanking her arms off the table to allow the waiter to place down her eggs. ‘I was freaking out the whole time. Like, are you watching me work? Are you like, “why are you mixing ACT with CBT? Where’s the schemas, bitch?”’
Em laughed at her own joke and shoved a whole egg in her mouth in one. She ate with the velocity of a contestant in a hot-dog competition.
‘Right?’ Quinn sawed at a slice of sourdough toast with a blunt butter knife. ‘I kept subtly asking her about her background but all I really wanted to know is, “are you better than me at this?”’
Em nodded, the loose bun on her head bobbing as she grinned without reply because her mouth was full again.
‘And she’s basically describing me,’ Quinn continued. ‘It’s like I’m listening to myself. She can’t get the things out of her head, she thinks she’s shit at her job, she gets no decent supervision. She’s always anxious that she’s not doing it right, or not doing enough, but she’s also losing that capacity for empathy, and she’s lost all interest in stuff she used to enjoy.’
Em creased her eyebrows. ‘You okay, love?’
Quinn gave up on the toast and pierced a cherry tomato, keeping her eyes on her plate. ‘I’m getting some therapy. It’s helping a little.’
Em reached out and squeezed her forearm across the table. ‘I’m sorry, lovely. You know you can call me any time.’
Quinn knew she could, but adding more unpaid therapy to her friend’s full caseload didn’t feel right either. She knew Em had been struggling too. ‘I know.’
‘What would you have done, if you’d known beforehand?’ Em asked.
Quinn thought about it. ‘Talked to my psych about being a psych that feels insecure about treating another psych?’
‘Oh yeah. Same, probably.’ Em finished the last scraps from her plate, running a finger over the leftover sauces before popping it in her mouth.
‘My psych is so good,’ Quinn sighed. ‘I keep stealing her stuff to do with my own clients.’
‘If the new psych-client is just like you, it’s a direct transfer!’
Quinn groaned. ‘Maybe I should just refer her to the source?’
Em rolled her eyes. ‘I know you feel shit about yourself right now but you’re a great psych, Quinnie. You care and you do right by them.’
Quinn shook herself to avoid getting teary. ‘Well, so do you. I don’t know how you do what you do.’
And because they were both psychologists, bound as if by blood in ethical code, Em recounted in a low voice the thing that a client had shared with her that week that kept her awake at night, unable to erase the image from her head. Quinn absorbed the thing and later that night when she closed her eyes to sleep, she couldn’t shake the image too. She wanted to tell her boyfriend—clinging to him next to her in the bed for distraction—but even if she could, she knew the thing was too big for a regular person to hold, to contextualise with all of the other things. And so she held it, like a deeply-drawn breath, along with all the other things from that day, and the weeks, and the years, until she fell asleep.
Dan paused the TV as Quinn walked into the room.
It was Sunday night and she was wrapped in a towel after her bath, trying to ease the anxiety of returning to work tomorrow. She sat down on the couch and cuddled into him. She knew he’d been watching a horror movie she couldn’t handle, but the image on the screen seemed innocuous.
‘Did that help?’ he asked, referring to the bath.
‘A little.’
‘Need me to get you anything?’
‘No, it’s ok.’
He switched the TV back to free-to-air. There was a story about Australia’s mental health crisis: not enough professionals in the field to meet the needs of the public, a steeply rising prevalence in anxiety and depression, the long-term risks of an expanding need going unmet. The premier announced that more places will be made available in courses and degrees to pump out more professionals—they assured viewers that hundreds more psychologists, social workers, youth workers and mental health nurses would be fed into the education, health and public sectors within the next few years.
Quinn watched on, expressionless. ‘I think I’d prefer the horror movie.’
‘Oh shit, sorry.’ Dan changed the channel. ‘I was thinking about something else.’
‘Tell me what you’re thinking about,’ she said, always calmed by the straight-forward linearity of his thoughts.
He laughed too loudly. ‘I was thinking about how you would medically attach someone’s mouth to another person’s butthole.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘It’s in the movie I was watching!’
‘It better be in the movie you were watching.’
‘My mind was just still on it.’
‘The logistics.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Hmm. What’s this one called?’
‘Human Centipede.’
‘Well, now you have to tell me what it’s about.’
The next week, Quinn sat in the waiting room of her psychologist’s office, early this time to prove herself.
Deanna came to collect her in the same routine as always: the warm smile, the offer of tea, the nestling into the cushions on the couch, the notebook, the expectant look.
Quinn told her about the client psychologist.
‘What’s the big deal?’ she asked. ‘You come to see me!’
Quinn laughed uneasily and grabbed a cushion to cuddle. She didn’t know how to explain to Deanna that she was a real psychologist and Quinn wasn’t.
‘She isn’t much younger than me. She’s describing a lot of the same things I find hard. I ended up repeating things that you said to me when I first started coming here—things that helped. But I also felt like this…fraud. How can I sit there and act like I believe that she can get better, that she’s right to stay in this job despite all the ways it’s breaking her down, if I’m also struggling with those same things, and I don’t know if I’m right for the job, or if I’ll ever feel better?’
Deanna sighed. ‘Do you think she’ll start to feel better, with help?’
Quinn nodded. ‘It’s always easier for me to believe that they can get better, than it is for me to believe that I can.’
‘Because you put everyone else before yourself.’
They’d discussed it. ‘I guess, yeah.’
‘You’re not a fraud if you struggle sometimes, Quinn. You’re allowed to feel however you feel and your experiences in therapy help make you a good therapist. What would you prefer, your therapist having no idea what it’s like to feel anxious? To feel depressed?’
Quinn shrugged. She was the same as everybody; she was desperate to know what suburb Deanna lived in, who her family were, what she ate for breakfast—but she didn’t want to know who she was or how she felt, not really.
Deanna leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘Let me tell you something. We don’t all have it together as much as we let on. Even I see a psych sometimes.’
Quinn took this in, leaning back in her chair for a moment. ‘Have you ever heard of this movie, Human Centipede?’ she finally asked.
Deanna suffered an accidental furrow of the brow at the unexpected change in subject. She corrected her expression. ‘Oh—I think I’ve heard of it, yes?’
‘It’s about these two girls who go on a road trip in Europe, their car gets a flat tire, and they seek help from a stranger—a medical professional. But the surgeon doesn’t help them, he kidnaps them and degrades them in this unimaginable way. He’s fixated on this idea of making the world’s first human centipede; joining humans through their gastric systems. Everything they take in has to go out through someone else.’
Deanna shifted in her seat slightly.
‘I’m sorry,’ Quinn jumped in, ‘It’s so gross. I don’t even watch horror. Just something about the idea of this human centipede struck me, you know?’
Her therapist leaned forward. ‘Why do you think that is?’
Quinn hesitated. ‘Well…do you ever think…that’s what we’re like?’
Deanna blinked. ‘I’m sorry?’
* * *
An eruption of sound wakes her. She reaches out a hand to press the snooze button on the alarm, knowing she doesn’t have time to snooze.
In the shower she stares at the back of the bathtub, her mind sifting through every possible scenario, everything that wasn’t done well enough or could be better. Techniques, strategies, diagrams, resources, advice.
She puts on the same thing she wore yesterday. Different scarf, different headband.
He looks up at her from the bed, his smile apologetic in its reassurance. She kisses him on the cheek and picks up her handbag.
She’s early to arrive at the office and sits down to write a plan. Then she looks up at the clock—it’s time. She can see it now, ahead of her, grey steel protruding—the endless pipe of things. Can see herself, giving her first warm smile of the day, before attaching her mouth to the receiving end, turning the dial to start the flow. And she drinks, and drinks, and drinks.
Her thoughts are interrupted by voices outside the door. She hears the first client of the day—they are ready to see the psychologist.
*