First Session: Agnes

Valli was, in a way, misinterpreting the situation. Ore more accurately, he was missing key components. He knew in a general sense what he was dealing with, but literally only in the most general sense.

"I won't ask you to go into detail," Valli said. "Only in general terms. Doing so will help me understand what I might be able to do for you, and how I should focus the therapy so you can see some kind of an effect."

Alright. Maybe too much. He'd hoped for something more vague and general, something like I was assaulted or someone betrayed me, but apparently even an overview might have been too much for Agnes.

"That's something we can work up to," Valli said, more or less giving permission for her to simply pull back. "It's common for there to be multiple factors involved in a breakdown, and helping one generally helps the others. We can work through things bit by bit, and eventually you'll reach a point where you'll be able to talk about it without shutting down."

Valli didn't have enough fingers for all the patients who'd murdered their parents. Sometimes just one. Sometimes both. It wasn't exactly common, but it wasn't exactly uncommon either.

"That's alright," Valli said. "As I mentioned, I don't plan to read through your file in detail unless you want me to. Even without being told what the 'cherry' is, it's obvious that something extremely traumatic happened to you. Working through secondary trauma--the stuff around the cherry--can help... reduce the load. Think of it like a pyramid. If you take blocks from the sides, the height of the pyramid gradually diminishes until you can finally reach the top."

Even so, he suspected she probably did want to say it. To get it off your chest.

"We can do whichever you'd prefer."

She was willing to try. That was good. Considering she was there involuntarily, Valli had expected far less interaction. Lots of those who were there involuntarily tended to pull back, never quite committing to anything. But she was going to try, and Valli gave her a smile, doing his best to look supportive.

"Just start taking blocks off. Just pick one, and talk about it. Not a vital one. Not a key one. Just one. Something that bothers you."

Ah, food issues. That was something Valli had experience with, something he could more easily work with. The subject of unusual diets was something that was fairly Manta Carlos specific, because in the Narrow Reality no one had to feed off blood or sex or something like that. That meant alllll the research and information had to be done on Manta Carlos, which meant the whole field was... Well, it was still being worked on.

"Having a sudden change of diet, especially to something taboo like flesh or blood can be jarring for most people. If you can eat food, something that I suggest to help normalizing things is to eat food as you would have normally, and then drinking blood alongside it. That helps your mind catch up to the fact that blood is food. Over time, you slowly phase out the solids, until you're just left the mindset of blood as a meal."