When clinical psychologist Catherine Gildiner started her career, she felt confident in her abilities. She thought she knew everything she needed to help her patients, but things turned out to be more complicated. Catherine's first patient, Laura Wilkes, helped her realize that to achieve results, she had to be flexible and strive to find the psychological truth with her patients.

Сatherine met Laura after she broke up with her boyfriend, who cheated on her. The situation was heartbreaking, and at the same time, Laura was suffering from herpes, which she suspected her ex gave her deliberately. Laura was reluctant to go to therapy, but stress-induced herpes outbreaks forced her to come to Catherine. According to Laura, she felt stuck, constrained by pain and stigma. Catherine then explained that her psychological state was exacerbating her illness, which made medication alone insufficient. To deal with the virus, Laura had to get rid of the stress.

The first step was understanding where the stress in Laura's life originated. It turned out that as a child, she experienced severe trauma. After Laura's mother died when the girl was very young, she and her siblings were left in the care of an abusive and neglectful father. One day, he took Laura and other children to a cabin in the woods and left them alone. Throughout the time in the cabin, nine-year-old Laura cared for herself and her siblings. After the children were discovered, they were all placed in foster homes. A couple of years later, the father returned and regained custody.

When Laura came to see a therapist, she was 26 years old, and her father was still an abusive figure in her life that she kept coming back to. All her life, she had been looking for reasons to justify his indifference and toxicity. Laura later began to apply this pattern of behavior to all the men in her life. These unresolved dynamics with her father also left a lasting imprint on her stress resilience. Laura and Catherine talked about psychological boundaries, which define healthy interactions. Laura's ex was unemployed, a drug dealer, and had a severe drinking problem. Psychological change is difficult and triggers anxiety when breaking long-standing habits that make us feel stable and secure. Despite the pain, Laura didn’t realize she had the right to set boundaries. Yet, eventually, she found the courage to change her situation.