There are certain things that people do. Certain coping techniques, ways of relieving stress. Ways to wind down. Everyone has them, whether it´s crying or laughing or lashing out at other people, and most people understand that. Most people can shrug off whatever bad habit, bad trait, bad action, with a ‘not having a good day´ or a ‘not normally like this´ or a ‘I don´t know what crawled up his/her butt´.

There are certain people though, in particular professions that are supposed to be immune to that. At least as far as the greater world is concerned.

Doctor´s can´t have bad days. Doctor´s can´t be having an off moment. Doctor´s aren´t allowed to make jokes at your expense in order to ease their own tension.

They do though. They do, you just don´t know about it. You don´t want to.

And the thing about it for Kate, the thing that really just makes her want to reach out and strangle somebody, is that… she´s the loneliest person here. No one understands that, no one gets that save for maybe Elizabeth, and by the very fact of who she is, what she does, she can´t tell anyone.

There are reasons psychologists are encouraged to go to therapy themselves.

Back in the Real World, and that´s what Kate calls it, capitalized letters and all, she knew how to cope. She was allowed to put down her psychotherapist hat and have a drink. She was allowed to knock on the door across the hall from her and go have a dinner with her neighbor.

She was allowed to hit in strangers in bars and have highly irresponsible and self-damaging one night stands with people that didn´t know what she did for a living. She didn´t, but she could have.

Here, though. Here she´s The Psychologist. Here she´s supposed to know what she´s doing. She´s supposed to help these people. She´s supposed to know what to say and when to say it, and she´s supposed to care. She´s supposed to have genuine feeling and concern for all of her fellow men and women.

She´s not allowed to kind of hate Rodney McKay for his propensity to yell at her about how meaningless her job is while at the same time coming to her time and time again because yes, indeed, he does need therapy, and he is smart enough to know it.

She´s not allowed to have a crush on John Sheppard. She´s not allowed to let her mind wander when he´s sitting on her couch doing everything but talking about who he is, how he is, what he´s feeling, or what really matters to him. She´s not allowed to watch his fingers picking at the couch cushions and imagining what those fingers would feel like inside of her.

She´s not allowed to want to laugh at Radek when he starts going off in Czech and all she can decipher is the name Rodney and the word bastard.

She´s not allowed to make inappropriate jokes about the Wraith.

She´s not allowed to laugh in the middle of someone´s crying fit.

She does though. Want to know why? She´s human.

She´s just very, very good at not showing it, and that´s what makes her a good psychologist.