Scene 3 - December 9th

Interior Therapist’s Office, Late Afternoon

Quinn Kaufman

I had had to cut that last sparring match short to take an extremely abbreviated shower - just barely avoiding being trounced again in doing so - and was still two minutes late when I rushed into the therapist’s office, my hair still wet. “Sorry I’m late, Doctor Wagner,” I gasped, pushing against a wall to slow myself to a halt, then falling into a waiting chair. “Sparring practice ran a little over.”

“Quite alright, Quinn,” he absently said, looking up from a clipboard that I assumed held his notes from our last session. “And haven’t I told you you can call me Charles?”

“And I’ve told you, if we bump into each other in the cafeteria, sure,” I replied. “In here, you’re my therapist. Doctor Wagner.”

He shrugged. “Whatever makes you comfortable.” The rotund man glanced down at his notes once more. “Would you like to pick up where we left off last week, or do you have something you’d specifically like to talk about?”

I tilted my head, thinking back. “Where did we leave off last week?”

“We were discussing your history of anxiety,” he said, “and I was just about to bring up how it had contributed to your low self-worth.”

“...I was thinking of asking if you had any suggestions to help manage the anxious thoughts - other than pointing out to myself that they are just unfounded anxieties and trying to ignore them - but that sounds more interesting, lets go with that. You think I have a low self-worth?”

“That’s not a bad strategy, actually,” Wagner told me, “so I’m glad you’re making an effort to do so already. But yes, from what you’ve said and what I’ve observed, you don’t place a very high value on yourself.”

“..what do you mean?” I asked. “I know I have trouble thinking of myself as someone other people will value, but...”

“Yes, stemming from being rejected by your friends in high school after you came out, as we discussed. The thing is, that kind of trauma can have a lasting effect on how you think about yourself from your own perspective, not just what you think about other people.”

“That wasn’t trauma,” I told him. “Everyone deals with rejection sometimes.”

“On that level? No, not really,” he insisted. “And it would be traumatic even if it was common. Quinn, you lost your whole social circle, people who had been your friends for most of your life. Your only support was your father - it’s no wonder you’ve been feeling like you’re falling apart without him.”

“...I shouldn’t have told you that,” I muttered, crossing my arms. It had been the subject of our first session - the overwhelming sense of grief that had overcome me and the grayness that helped me power through it. Wagner had called it an unhealthy coping mechanism, shutting off my emotions so that I could still function, and had given me some strategies to actually work through and lessen the grief other than just avoiding thinking about it - as a result, I was slipping into that state a lot less than I had in those first days, although it still happened on occasion. It was embarrassing to be reminded how stupid I had been about it.

It occurred to me that that was the kind of thing that I might want to talk about with a therapist, and so I said it out loud.

“I’m your therapist, Quinn,” Wagner reminded me. “That means you don’t have to worry about sounding stupid - and no, you weren’t being stupid, even if you think it sounded dumb. You were working through things the only way you knew how to, at the time.”

I sighed. “I know, I know, it’s just...” I trailed off.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“...you have anxious thoughts about being rejected,” he continued for me, “and are afraid of being seen as anything less than perfect.”

“...yeah. I know, it’s a stupid anxiety...”

“This goes back to what I was saying about your self-worth,” Wagner told me. “You fear rejection if you’re anything less than perfect, which means you have anxious thoughts about appearing less than perfect, which means that you - knowing that you aren’t perfect, as no-one is - feel like you’re failing, all the time. And that makes you feel as though the rejection your fear is justified, because you think that you’re a failure. The whole thing is a self-reinforcing loop that makes you feel as though you’re worth less than other people.”

He sighed, then continued, “This is a particularly dangerous thought process for a hero to have. If you don’t value your own life, you’ll be all too willing to risk it, or to sacrifice it for any purpose.”

“...shouldn’t a hero be willing to sacrifice themself, though?” I asked. “To risk it for the greater good?”

“Yes, but not too willing. Sacrifice should be the absolute last resort. Risking your life should be something you do only when you must - after all, if you die, you won’t be able to help people in the future, not to mention that you will be dead, which no one wants. It should not be, as I fear it will be for you, something you do as the first option.”

“...why do you think it’s my first option?”

“Perhaps it’s just extrapolation guided by my estimation of you,” Wagner admitted. “But take a look at what you did with Legion came to town. Without any training at all, you tried to insist on helping, decided that you had to follow her after coincidentally spotting her, engaged in battle despite Canaveral telling you to leave, then spoke to Legion and attempted to pull information from her despite the danger.”

“There was a bit of freaking out in the middle there,” I pointed out.

“True, but your first instinct each time was to dive further into danger,” he said. “I don’t mean that you feel you have on value at all - it seems that outside of situations like that, you’re willing to view yourself as important. But whenever it’s a choice between you and something else - between you and what Legion might have done, between you and the chance you could help Canaveral instead, between you and the possibility of getting some important information from Legion - you always choose against yourself. Hell, even with that costume contest, you chose what people might expect from you over the fact that you didn’t really want to do it this year.”

I leaned back in the chair, considering. “...you might be right,” I admitted after a few minutes. “How do I stop that loop, though? You said it was self-reinforcing...”

“You have to break it by thinking of yourself as someone who has value and worth. My recommendation is positive affirmation. I know it sounds trite,” he said, holding up a hand to forestall complaints, “but it really does work. Look in a mirror in the morning or before you go to bed and tell yourself that you’re important, and two other good things about yourself - it can be as simple as ‘my hair looks good today,’ or ‘I picked out an outfit I like.’ The important thing is that it’s something about you, not something that you have to offer to other people or something you did for someone else, but something that you’re proud of about yourself or that you did for you.”

I nodded. “Okay. I’ll give it a try.”

“Another thing that can help is doing things for yourself in general, rather than for other people,” Wagner continued. “Watch a self-indulgent movie. Buy a new video game or a book. Hell, go on a date! Do something for you, and don’t let yourself feel bad about it not being for anyone else.”

I immediately thought of Holly, then to ‘I’m not good enough for her,’ then to ‘she’ll stop being my friend,’ then to ‘’I don’t deserve her friendship anyway.’

“I’m beginning to see what you mean about thought loops,” I commented, then relayed that particular train of thought to Wagner - although I didn’t tell him that it was Holly I had considered asking out. Some things I wanted to keep private even from my therapist, particularly since he was also her therapist.

He nodded. “It’s insidious, but you need to break the loop,” he reminded me, then paused. “....actually, strike the dating idea off the table for now,” he recommended. “It’s probably not a great idea until you’ve built up a support system that you feel confident in.”

“How so?”

“It’s easy to get very wrapped up in a relationship, but it’s not healthy,” he said. “A strong relationship isn’t two people who look to each other for everything - they may look to each other first, but they have support systems of friends and family outside each other as well. You, however, have spent more than five years with only one person as your support system. While I’ve seen you getting better at trusting people and reaching out to them even in only a month, I think you’re still at a point where it would be very easy for you to forget everyone other than your partner.”

“...and getting all your support from one person isn’t healthy,” I finished.

“Exactly.” He gave me a worried smile. “It’s wonderful that you had such a supportive father, but he shouldn’t have been alone.”

I sighed. “I know you’re right,” I said, “it’s just hard.”

“Everything that’s worth it is.”