Author's Note: After watching the Christmas episode, I was struck by the stray thought that Rachel's therapist must be really, really horrible. This story is a result of that thought and the fact that I've pretty much always hated Finchel.

Warning: As this is basically a rewrite starting at the end of Season 1 and carrying into Season 2, every aired episode of Glee is fair game. Also, there will probably be a fair amount of bad language and sexual situations. Finally, there will be a fair amount of brutal honesty regarding most of the primary characters. Don't like – don't read; it's pretty simple. All mistakes are mine; I did well in English but it wasn't my major.

In Treatment

Prologue: Immediately Following Regionals

Life is not what it's supposed to be. It's what it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.

Virginia Satir

They lose at Regionals.

It was inevitable. The fact of the matter is Vocal Adrenaline had two things New Directions didn't: Jesse St. James and Shelby Corcoran. Even though the V.A. performance is essentially the Jesse St. James' Show, and shouldn't show choir be about a strong ensemble, they are still polished to a high sheen and that produces higher scores than a rag-tag group of misfits.

Even if one of those misfits is poised to be the next Barbara Streisand.

She knew, deep down, that the speech she gave to Shelby was just her grasping at straws. Even if New Directions should have won, they weren't going to. The best they could have, should have, done was beat Aural Intensity. But, if she could have just gotten Shelby on board, then she wouldn't have lost everything. She'd still have a mother, albeit in a professional capacity, and a co-director of glee club that was qualified to push them to victory. Rachel really does like Mr. Shuester, but, sometimes, she wants to grab onto his collar and shake the idealism right out of him.

Even she stopped believing in the power of kittens and rainbows and unicorns that puke sunshine.

Of course, her speech doesn't work. She wonders if Shelby even processes her team's crushing victory before running to the hospital to snatch up Noah and Quinn's baby. Rachel doubts it; in the end, everyone gets what they want, except her.

And Noah.

Rachel's pretty sure that, years from now, when she's writing her memoir, she'll describe the glee club's loss at Regionals as a deep dark pit. In beautiful prose, she'll describe that crawling out of that pit and getting on with her life gave her the strength to deal with all the inevitable disappointments early on in her career. Rachel's also pretty sure that her adoring fans won't figure out she's feeding them complete and utter bullshit.

They lost and she all she wants to do is vomit. She wonders when she'll trust a guy enough to let him stick his penis down her throat so that this whole lacking a gag reflex thing can become a blessing. Because, right now, it's stopping her from doing the one thing in the world that would make her feel better.

To top it off, Finn told her that he loved her and all she can think about is the smirk on Jesse's face as he hoisted her trophy in the air. She knows that some of her nausea is fueled by the soul crushing disappointment of losing Regionals and Shelby and, most likely, the glee club and some is fueled by her complete and utter inability to tell Finn she loves him back.

She's not even sure she wants to tell him and that just makes her nausea worse.

Her dads schedule her for an emergency appointment with her therapist; she wonders how rich Dr. Steiner has become as a result of the various emergencies over the last four years, and for the first time in her life Rachel is at a loss for words. She has a lot of things she should be obsessing over. But there's only one topic she manages to separate from the rest and blurt out to the woman seated a few feet from her.

"Finn told me he loves me and I find myself unable to return the sentiment."

She'd give herself points for coherency, but, the words that follow are a jumbled mess.

Rachel knows she should love Finn. After all, he's her knight in shiny armor, the Tony to her Maria. Even better, he's the Jay Z to her Beyoncé; together they'll be the glee power couple. Failing that, he at least has enough power to protect her from slushy facials and pornographic pictures in the girls' bathroom. Also, she's pretty much single handedly responsible for ruining his life (well, her and Mr. Schuester), so, maybe he should get something in return for all her meddling.

He's sweet, he's gentle, and, while simple, he's pretty much everything a first love should be.

Deep, deep down inside Rachel knows that these are all really stupid reasons for loving someone. That small, still voice deep down, the one that's managed to not be beaten into submission by musicals and Disney movies, hopes that Dr. Steiner tells her so. Instead, Dr. Steiner opens her mouth and makes Rachel wonder just how much her dads have been shelling out for therapy.

"Rachel, do you think that your inability to say 'I love you' has something to do with the fact that you've never had a healthy, heterosexual relationship modeled for you?"

Like magic, for the first time in twenty four hours, Rachel is able to stop thinking about everything. When she picks up the five hundred dollar crystal vase next to her chair, she's not thinking about Jesse or Fin or Shelby or the fact that when she goes back to school she's not going to have a glee club to go back to. Instead, all she can think about is the pros and cons of smashing Dr. Steiner's favorite vase on top of her meticulously styled salt and pepper hair.

She throws it against the wall instead.

She is, after all, too pretty for incarceration and the sensationalism would make for a better Lifetime movie than an auspicious start to a Broadway career. Her dads pay the doctor for the vase and decide to seek out a doctor in Columbus; one who isn't writing a book about the children of homosexual parents.

It takes two weeks to find a doctor who isn't too busy to work his schedule around her schedule and who doesn't have professional ties to Dr. Steiner.

Rachel never does get around to telling Finn she loves him.