This Too Shall Pass Read Online Free PDF

back to my seat, my feelings of showing off confirmed as I met the listeners’ glutinous stares. Someone killed the lights a minute later, as if nothing had happened, and we began watching old footage – a film on something like sixteen-millimetre celluloid, the images grainy on the whiteboard that had been unsteadily rolled forward from the far left of the room by Celia.
    The vision was of kids repeatedly sketching circles around a word in their school notebooks or fastidiously missing the cracks on a pavement. Then there were children more entrenched in their rituals, one unfortunate boy doggedly circling every tree he passed on the way to and from school. When a teacher tried to persuade the boy to detour from his course, he punched the man in the solar plexus. As the teacher moved off, injured, the viewer saw the boy return to his routine, unremorseful.
    While I could concentrate for the main, a residual hum in my temples reminded me of Celia’s self-injurious flub. I found myself – almost absurdly – wondering what would come out of her mouth when the rasp and hum of the projector stopped, which, of course, it was bound to do. Worse than this, having been told she was my supervisor, I thought, and depressingly so, that there was little chance of the scintillating hothouse experience I’d dreamed of. My heart raced. I became aware of the closed-in air and snuck a slow sly look around, eyeing the audience.
    Confirming my doubts, the entire auditorium seemed intoned with boredom. Everyone’s face was cast – as unyielding as bronze – in a stiff ashen mould.
    Were they rejecting the serious dulcet tones of the narrator – clearly someone from a different era – or were they simply numbed by information they already knew? Whatever the case, apathy rang like the pitch of tinnitus. My mood, utterly out of sync, became a liquid infusion of distress. I’d come to child psychiatry mecca. I didn’t want it to be dull. I wanted to be enthralled.
    When the lights flickered on I pulled myself together.
    Tnere were good reasons as to why I was so earnest. Having worked in a country town for so long, the prospect of the city job had been exciting. I’d told myself I’d be among those at the cutting edge, the frontline. But even on second inspection, there looked nothing frontline about Celia. She could have been the skinny one from Laurel and Hardy, or Gilligan from the sunk SS Minnow. She certainly didn’t seem switched on enough to catch and hold the eye of wayward and troubled adolescents. Nor did she resonate with the glow of someone who engendered inspiration in others – or, at least, me . I had a lot to learn and I worried Celia might just be too much Celia for my liking. Where were the modern city slickers? I screamed silently. One order of charisma with fries, please!
    I tried to relax as I listened hard to the rest of her spiel. She spelt out the connection between anxiety and compulsive behaviour, the growth of neurological pathways from repetition, the release of feel-good chemicals like serotonin from repetitive activity, and the rise in discomfort when the compulsion was thwarted. Yes, but how do you treat the disorder? A thousand ways. Celia traced the general methods of psychotherapy, cognitive behavioural tasks, family therapy interventions.
    â€˜I’m breaking the rules,’ she said. ‘Talking about treatment when it’s meant to be the topic of the next lecture. Always breaking the rules.’
    I didn’t believe her and resolved to think she was showing off. She finished with a nervous smile.
    On cue, as palpable as fog, a general rabble of conversation rose from the audience. Where was the applause? Despite my uncertainty, I couldn’t help notice the lack of gratitude. It seemed as though no one appreciated her efforts, the fact that she could speak on the subject, any subject, for that long.
    My gaze, having threaded through