First Session: Zoraida

"Social contracts are a bit of a complicated bit of philosophy, so I'll simplify things down. The idea is that, among people, there are countless implicit agreements between people that allow for people to cooperate. What I want to talk about is kind of... similar to that concept, so I figured it was worth checking if you were familiar with the concept."

He paused a moment, stretching his hands just to ease out some tension in them, and then got into it.

"All relationships--friendship, romantic, familial--come with social contracts. Understandings that aren't spoken, but help define relationships. One of those is simple reciprocity. Relationships can't be one sided and healthy. There has to be equality. Just as others lean on you, you need to be able to lean on others."

"Of course," Valli said with a smile. "All things which are broken can be mended... in theory. That said, from what you've described none of your dynamics are damaged beyond being fixed or anything like that. They're simply imbalanced, like a painting that's been hung slightly askew. You simply need to reach up and nudge it in the proper direction."

Easier said than done, but it was largely a matter of self reflection for Zora. Of recognizing the issue and adjusting her behavior.

"I would start by thinking about... one or two relationships you have. People close to you. Think about how they might have opened themselves up to you. Do you think you could return that honesty, and open up to them?"

"Trying is what matters," Valli said with a smile. "People often feel as if things don't count if they don't succeed, but when it comes to psychology, trying is what counts. Your brain..." He reached up, tapping at his temple, "recognizes the effort."

"Being willing to talk things through with people is a major factor in overcoming trauma. When people talk about moving on after an incident, they often assume that means putting what happened behind them and not speaking about it. But moving on means being willing to talk about it. It means no longer giving it a place of importance in your mind, no longer giving it special treatment."

"That's common," Valli said. That was an important part of any therapy session. So many people felt they were strange or unusual, or that what they were feeling was unhealthy in some way. But generally speaking, people had perfectly normal reactions. Wanting to avoid the bad memories. Not wanting to burden others.

"Survivor's guilt," Valli said, putting a name to their feelings. "It's that much more common when the perpetrator is connected to you in some way. The feeling of 'couldn't I have seen this coming? shouldn't I have stopped this?'. It's normal to place the blame on yourself, to have the feeling of couldn't I have done better. But what matters is recognizing that the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the person who committed the crime. Even if it's human nature to blame yourself, it's important to recognize where the blame should be placed, and make sure it lands squarely there."

"Guilt," Valli said, "is important because it gives us a feeling of control. It is a scary--even terrifying--prospect to feel like we have no say in our own destiny, and it's for that reason that our sense of responsibility becomes more prominent after a situation which was largely out of control. In a situation like this..."

A situation which Valli knew very little about, beyond the broad strokes...

"It's common for your brain to fixate on what ifs. What if I had done that? What if I had not done that? Would things have turned out differently? The truth is that they might not have, but it's painfully easy to decide, in your own head, that the answer is yes. Your brain wants to believe it has more control over the situation than it does, so it decides that if only you had done one thing differently, everything would have been fine."

It was something that more or less everyone did. Something that Valli himself did. He'd simply learned to recognize it, to break it down in his own head and push it away. Recognizing habits was the key to stopping them.

"Guilt is a shield, but at times it can become too heavy and threaten to crush you. In those times, it's important to recognize it for what it is."