First Session: John

Insults weren't quite uncommon in therapy, but they weren't helpful, either, and Valli frowned as it was slung around. His behavior was certainly erratic. Throwing an insult based on a rushed response, and then the unnerving smile. Why force himself? There didn't seem to be a point to it. To give the idea of look how normal I am?

"You misunderstand," Valli said carefully. "An hour or two in an isolation tank, for example, doesn't have long term negative effects, and can be quite relaxing. Past that, the human brain starts trying to fill in the blanks. That leads to the hallucinations you experience. It also leads to a deeply compressed feeling of time. People might insist they only spend a week down in a dark cave, when actually it was three. The human mind is incapable of processing nothing."

The order of events was clear enough, as was the timeline, but the timeline itself was oddly unnerving. He'd been raised in a cult, learning who knew what, then been stolen away to be experimented on. Two years of sensory deprivation should have left John nearly incoherent. Had the injection actually managed to keep his mind intact? Was that what had happened?

"You mentioned that you've come to terms with it all. What would you say is causing you the most trouble on the island?"

Well, he'd certainly hit pay dirt, hadn't he? John felt the need to assert his existence in order to avoid anxiety attacks. He did so by being obnoxious and drawing attention to himself, and that was causing friction with... well, everyone else. Valli opted not to point out the obvious if you're having panic attacks, therapy could help in favor of focusing on the issue at hand.

"Not everyone is aware of your full circumstances. But even if they were, your circumstances cannot supersede their own. While it's important to you that people acknowledge you, they can't be required to do so, and they have the right to be comfortable in public spaces. It sounds like the most important thing for helping you move through this is to find alternatives that help satisfy that need without depending on others. Other people won't always necessarily be around, and can't be relied on for your own mental health. Self care is the most important care of all."

Valli had hopes that by clearly explaining what he could hope to achieve in the short term, John might be more willing to have a hand in his own therapy, rather than having to be proverbially kicked and dragged along through the process.

"All you can do is try," Valli pointed out. "If it fails, you've lost nothing, but you've made it clear that you're attempting to address the issue. If it succeeds, you've improved your position."

Nothing to lose and everything to gain. John hadn't suffered from those issues for fourteen years, but in two years the damage had been done, and now it was on Valli to try and piece the bits together again.

To say the least, Valli didn't have a lot of resources to call on. There was no handbook for what to do when your patient has been in extreme isolation. The closest he had was something like solitary confinement.

"To a certain extent, you're in an adjustment period. A difficulty adjusting is more or less expected, and while you've had six months out, you also were in an unstable environment, which was hardly conducive to recovery. It's pushed you to be more extreme in order to get reactions, and now you're..." Valli paused, weighing his words. "You're opting to overload yourself, because your brain is so ill used to the input that it's afraid it'll go away."

Which would explain the extreme aversion to the possibility of juvie.

"To start, I'm going to put a note on your file that isolation is to be avoided. It's standard to have a roommate anyway, but noting it in the file should help things a bit more. Some people do better by themselves, and some people do better in groups. And, once this is done, I'm going to pull some resources I have for solitary to make sure I'm up to date."

There was no shame in admitting that things changed. Therapy was a wide and varied field, and no one could know all of it.

"I think the easiest thing to focus on is panic attacks. What do you do currently when you feel one coming on?"