Emmerdale’s Emma Atkins reveals Charity’s huge decision for the future over her ‘hellhole of a life’
Charity Dingle (Emma Atkins)’s mental health has reached crisis point in Emmerdale. After months of struggling with the trauma of knowing she killed a man, reliving the moment every time she hears a loud noise, unable to sleep and suffering from panic attacks, finally she lashed out and accidentally stabbed Mackenzie (Lawrence Robb).
In the aftermath of this, Charity is absolutely broken. She’s terrified she’ll hurt somebody else and tries to keep everyone she loves away from her. It’s finally Cain (Jeff Hordley) who manages to get through to her, as Emma Atkins told us.
‘She sort of cuts herself off, and it’s Cain who comes into the house and brings her to her senses a little bit somewhat by saying, “We need to pull rank, we need to get the family involved. You need to come out of the shell that you’re in and get help.”
‘He takes her on this walk and they go through the woods and she says, “I can’t be with anyone, I can’t be near anyone, I don’t trust myself.”’
Cain asks her to consider having some counselling, telling her that it helped his son Kyle (Huey Quinn) when he was in a similar situation after shooting Al Chapman (Michael Wildman).
Charity is at first reluctant, as Emma explained. ’She’s just like, “As if I can unravel this hellhole of my life to someone, you know? I just I can’t because once I once I unravel, there’s no stopping.” She’s just trying to deny, deny that she needs help, real help.’
Despite her misgivings, Charity does eventually agree to seeing a psychologist and Emma told us about the ‘amazing’ therapy session that unfolds.
‘It starts off where Charity is in complete denial and she’s being very sarcastic and completely rude to this lovely woman who’s trying to help her open up these doors to healing and finding some way in and every time she tries she blocks her.
‘Then it’s beautiful, in a way, because the therapist says, “Look why not talk about a lovely childhood memory, a pet that you might have had?” And she goes, “Oh I had a dog when I was a kid.” And then that the journey starts then because she starts to go right back into the dog and how the dog suddenly disappears. And why does the dog disappear?
‘Oh, because the father. Why is the father taking the dog away? She had issues with her dad and it all starts to unravel.’
While Harry’s killing is what sparked her current crisis, Emma said that the therapy session also brings up a lot of stuff about Charity’s traumatic past.
‘As much as she’s going through the hell now, I think there’s so much PTSD attached to her past as well. So it’s all relevant, I guess.’
The therapy also helps her to realise how much she loves Mack, Emma explained – and how much she might have lost.
‘It’s a lovely episode to discuss how much she truly loves Mack and it’s the one person that she feels that she has begun to really let go and love and let her guard down.
‘And this person is perfect for her and she feels she’s completely ruined it and lost his trust.’