My Story
This is a 6 – minute video overview of my story:
It was 1996, just past 5:15 a.m., and I was driving to work at the FAA Terminal Radar Approach Control Facility (TRACON) at Houston Intercontinental Airport. Air traffic control was my full- time job and psychotherapy was my part-time job.
Dark sky. Quiet roads. Ordinary morning.
I was on FM 1960, approximately six miles from the airport.
Then something tore across the sky.
A meteor.
Huge. Blazing.
And it wasn’t drifting sideways like in the movies.
It was coming straight at me.
At first I thought it was a plane on fire. My body reacted before my mind could. I slammed on the brakes, opened the door, and stood on the pavement – frozen.
It looked like death was about to hit the highway.
But at the last moment it veered left – maybe a few miles – and disappeared.
No sound. No explosion.
Just… gone.
And here’s the strange part:
Even though I saw it clearly, within minutes my brain started doubting it.
Not because it didn’t happen.
But because there were no witnesses.
No dash cams.
No video.
No shared reality.
And that’s when I learned something important:
Reality isn’t just what happens. Reality is what gets socially confirmed.
The Social Fear Nobody Talks About
When I got to the facility, the mid-shift supervisor (Joe Schneider) looked at me and asked:
“Notice anything unusual on your drive in?”
I shrugged.
“Not really.”
He stared at me.
“Really? We’ve had nonstop calls about a massive meteor in the eastern sky.”
I paused.
“Yeah… I saw it.”
Joe raised an eyebrow.
“You just said nothing happened. You see meteors every morning?”
And suddenly I didn’t know what to say.
Because the fear wasn’t the meteor anymore.
The fear was being the only one who saw it.
Afraid of sounding crazy.
Afraid of losing credibility.
Afraid of becoming “that guy.”
The Confirmation
Two hours later, an American Airlines pilot radioed in:
“You guys see anything weird this morning? Around 5:30?”
I asked, “You mean the meteor?”
He said, “YES. We were north of Dallas. It lit up the whole sky. We thought Houston was a goner.”
I asked, “Did you report it?”
He said, “Of course not. We wanted to keep flying—and keep our licenses.”
That’s when it hit me.
I hadn’t reported it either.
Not because it wasn’t real…
…but because of a very human fear:
The fear of not being believed.
What This Has To Do With Psychotherapy
I’ve seen the same fear in therapy.
Sometimes clients have sudden, extraordinary shifts—real breakthroughs that don’t fit the textbook.
And they often don’t talk about it afterward.
Not because it didn’t happen.
But because they’re afraid no one else will believe it.
They’re afraid they’ll be:
- minimized
- pathologized
- explained away
- ridiculed
And unfortunately… sometimes they’re right.
Because many clinicians don’t know what to do with sudden healing.
My Decision
That morning in 1996, made me decide something:
I would stop hiding behind “normal.”
I would speak – even when the story sounded unbelievable.
That’s why I began recording video/audio interviews shortly after that meteor morning.
In my next posts, I’ll revisit two clients who had their own “meteor moments” in therapy – breakthroughs that defied expectation.
Both involved healing their one-eye blindness.
Because some truths are too important to keep to yourself.
Maybe an event needs multiple witnesses before society calls it “real.”
But healing doesn’t work that way.
Sometimes the most important change happens in silence…
…and only one or two people will ever know it happened.
Clint77090@gmail.Com