Later, after the session was over, I suggested to my colleagues that the fact this had all played out in his childhood home made things worse for Sam, as if the past were his only safe place and now even that was closed to him. We talked about the “bicycle lock” combination that had clicked into place that night, all those risk factors lining up, and if the final “number” was the look of fear in his father’s eye—or just an intolerable feeling of not being the person he wanted to be.
