KaydeeKrunk
The Late Great Turt
It's a part of my story so I'm gunna put it in a spoiler, there's some abuse/death/mental illness mentions so don't read it if you don't wanna read about those plz.
(Some names and locations have been changed to protect those involved and due to doctor patient confidentiality.)
So, how do I do this, do I just... Like introduce myself, or something?(Sure just tell us your name, age, the usual.) Ok. My name is Barbara Standford. I am 43 years old, I'm a, I'm a therapist at a prestigious psychiatric hospital and uh, I guess this is kind of my story. (Give us some background first, about you.) Oh, ok, well I grew up in a pretty normal household, my father had been in the military since he was a young man, and when he finally came home he decided he was still thirsty for justice, so he joined the local police force, he was our hero, and he helped the community a lot. My mom was a nurse and worked long hours but always cooked us dinner and read us to bed, us being me and my younger brother, Henry. But she really helped the community too, just in a different way. Our parents always wanted us to follow in their footsteps, they weren't subtle about it at all, my mom would get me those, you know, silly little dollies you had to "nurse" back to health, with the little fake syringe and medicine, and little fabric bandages. Haha, but yeah, I was not into it at all. We had gone on a camping trip once, and my mom wanted me to stay behind at camp with her, but I followed along as my father took my brother out to hunt. My brother quaked in his boots as we came up on a young buck in a clearing, I could hear the zipper of his vest vibrating against his rifle.My dad tried to steady him and helped him aim the gun. He was like," Go ahead, shoot. Go on, son." Then BANG! The buck fell over and birds flew off of branches all around us, and my brother and father looked over at me. Haha, I had taken my dad's rifle from the tree he leaned it against to help my brother and did what my brother couldn't, he proceeded to faint as soon as we approached the body of the deer. My dad patted me on the back like, "That's my girl." From then on they knew they pretty much had their aspirations for my brother and I switched. My dad started taking me out to the range to shoot, and taught me about law and stuff, my mom taught my brother recipes and how to sew, and about health practices, things to do for ailments we'd all get and he'd help her nurse all the colds my father and I would always catch from going out hunting together. One Christmas, I **** you not, I got my own rifle and my brother got his own sewing machine, like seriously. Anyways, once we got older we both got into really good schools, my brother became a local medical practitioner, and I followed in my father's shadow and joined our local police force.
We lived in a pretty small town, on the outskirts of a larger city but we rarely had to tend to things within the cities limits, we stayed in our small town jurisdiction. People always say small towns are so safe, like it's expected of a small town to be all quiet and peaceful, well that's all bull****, I can tell you that for a fact. I grew up thinking we lived in a safe place, we always had our doors unlocked and we could stay out late as kids but I guess the adults just didn't want to ruin our childhoods by telling us just how bad it really was. We had drug rings throughout all kinds of family neighborhoods, trafficking, young girls too, way too young, we even had two serial killers, in a town with only 2000 residents it was a pretty ****ed up place, excuse my language, don't really know if I'm supposed to curse or not. (It's fine.) But I didn't expect all this going into the force, I was expecting just mild things, like maybe some kids robbing the liquor store, people running stop signs, maybe some marital disputes or something, like there was a reason I didn't want to join the military, I wasn't a fan of death, I didn't want to be involved in it, but I guess we don't always get what we want, huh? I mean damn, I saw so many things... just, just tragic things. I saw a kid who was stabbed to death at a park, a freaking park, I held people who were bleeding out, held them as they died, one of them was even my co-worker... we found a drug den on the street I grew up on, only a few houses away, pumping out kilo after kilo of drugs onto the streets I used to run around as a kid. One of the worst things I had seen was in a family neighborhood, walking distance from the elementary school, a man had smothered his kids in their sleep and stabbed his wife to death, then killed himself in his car in the garage, we only got the call a week after the fact when the post office called about the large amount of mail that had accumulated, so they were already starting to decay, it was summer and the smell... that paired with just the fact that a father could do that to his family. It was after that that I started going to therapy, there's so much that gets to you in that line of work, I honestly don't know why people do it, like yeah it's super important, but just, just don't do it. It was bad enough that I had to start taking some medication to help me through all of the stress and anguish from all that just, horrible ****.
I had met Mike during this time in my life too, and he was a huge help, he could always make me laugh and cheer me up no matter how bad my day was, no matter what I came home after seeing. He always let me vent and would like really listen, which is really rare, ya know. He was a teacher back then, he's a principal now. I met him at a local dating site's mixer, and we hit it off instantly. We moved in with each other super quick too and got married soon there after, I knew he was my soul mate, it was too real for him to not be. We tried to have kids, he loved kids, and I mean, don't get my wrong, I loved kids too, he always loved watching me play with my brother Henry's kids at all of our family get-togethers. We tried many times, for years, and eventually went to the doctors and they told me that I uh, I couldn't have them, it was a rare side effect of the medication I was on for my depression and stress, but *sighs* I just took it as God not wanting me to bring anymore children into this cruel world. (You never wanted to adopt or anything?) I thought about it but it didn't seem like us, I don't know how to explain it, I mean I have my nieces and nephews and now I have my grand niece too so it's not like I didn't get to experience them, but like I said I didn't really want to bring anymore kids into this world, and besides, I'm far too old for it now.
So, I worked on the force for about 15 years, seeing all sorts of atrocities that the world doesn't like to think about, I brought a lot of people to justice but it wasn't something we always got to do, a lot of cases went cold, and there were people who couldn't sleep at night because of it, including me. I mean, I couldn't bare to think that people could just do these things, that someone could kill another human for like, no reason you know. Or why someone would want to get a kid hooked on meth, just I couldn't wrap my mind around it, it really got to me. I, uh, I remember the first time someone had gotten a plea for insanity, it was a case where a man had brutally murdered his sister, who was fairly wealthy, had a really nice big house and he stole half of the valuables from her home, for drugs, for DRUGS, and he killed her over it, couldn't just rob her. I was so pissed, enraged even, because he essentially got away with it, due to the insanity plea. He got sent to a Psychiatric Ward and was there for maybe a year before they deemed him "cured" and released him, I would see him around town, still do, always doped up like he used to be and just wish I could "accidentally" hit him with my car, but that's still not justice. I knew there were people who really were sick in the head too, it wasn't all fibbers, we had a case where this 78 year old woman had kidnapped this 8 year old kid and had him chained up in a dog kennel in her basement and fed him raw meat and milk because she thought he was a wild tiger she saw by the school, she thought that the zoo was going to pay her $9000 and pick him up on this specific date a year from when she nabbed him, thankfully she had told her neighbor about it at the mailbox off hand and her neighbor called us to investigate, she seriously proudly brought us down to her basement to show us her "tiger" where we promptly arrested her, she ended up in the same psychiatric hospital.
But after 15 years I decided it was really too much for me, I had talked to my therapist about it, about how I didn't think I was cut out for it anymore, but that I didn't think I could do much else, it was my life, I had been trained for it my whole life, since I was a kid at home shining my gun watching Law and Order, I was in too deep, I couldn't just leave the field. I wanted to help people still, and then she made a suggestion, why not stay close to what I've been doing but go behind the scenes, do what she does, and become a psychologist. It kind of hit home with me, I mean I did have an interest in psychology and I had been asking her so many questions involving my cases throughout our time together because I had always wanted to understand what could force people to do these kinds of things, I just had this NEED to know, if that makes sense. After talking to my husband about it he said it would be a great idea for me, for him it was more me getting out of danger, which he was always super concerned about, so I decided to go for it. So at 35 I quit the force and started back at school for my degree in psychology. It was totally grueling and I constantly felt silly being in school at such an old age but it's what I wanted to do, can you imagine this old mug hanging out with a bunch of 18 year old's in college? (35 isn't that old.) Well it sure felt like it. It was nice though, my experiences in the field had helped me quite a bit in school and I graduated at 41, with honors, seems like forever ago but that was just two years ago... weird to think about. But after graduation I interned for my old therapist for a while, and after several months I opened my own practice in her office, it really does pay to have connections. Most of my clients were people with stress and depression, I was basically a really expensive target for venting, it was amazing, I did have one client who had schizophrenia but she was medicated to where it was under control, but I helped her with some episodes and stuff, funny enough I even had a few of my co-workers from the force as clients for a while. I felt like I was helping people, but just not in the way I had hoped. I wasn't preventing all the bad things from happening, I wasn't really helping victims either, I was just giving people prescriptions for Xanax and watching them cry, like, that was my whole job.
After about a year working there, at my own practice there was an opening at the psychiatric hospital, one of their psychologists was retiring and they reached out to locals to fill the position and with my history I was their first choice. I jumped on it, like that's what I really wanted to do. At the hospital they had different wards and they had a separate building where they housed the people who were criminally insane, to keep them away from the people who were just admitted there. I worked all around the facility though, I worked with people who were self admitted and people who had been put there as their sentence for crimes they'd committed. It was interesting seeing some people I had helped put there, like tiger lady, she was a lot different when she was properly medicated. It's an amazing facility too, I know we can't mention places and stuff but it is honestly one of the best in the country, super clean, well staffed, the different wards are laid out so well, and like I said about the separate buildings and stuff, it is just, a really nice place. (We'll take your word for it.) Anyways I started my practice there, got a nice little office where I did most of my sessions with my patients.
One of my first patients was this younger girl, she had remembered me, but I didn't really remember her, I'll call her Daisy, but when she came in she told me that she remembered me from my "copping" days, she was a prostitute and I had found her drugged out on a park bench one night and brought her to the drunk tank. It was only after that that I remembered her, she kept asking for her ducky while high off her ass.(What?) Yeah, she said after sitting in the drunk tank all day until she sobered up enough for us to release her she really looked in the mirror at her life and knew there were deeper reasons making her how she was so she self admitted herself. It was one hell of an ice breaker, usually it takes a while to break down the walls with a client but she was an open book, she told me about how her dad had left when she was just a kid and how her mom went through a whole slew of different men, men who didn't want to stop after having her mom, how several of them had sexually abused her when she was little so she grew up basically thinking she was this object for men, and that's all she knew, so when she became a teen she got in with a bad crowd at school, ended up dropping out and turning tricks for drugs. Wasn't too long after that that I ended up finding her, it was nice having such a productive first day with her, being my first patient, but it kind of got my hopes up going into my other patients.
It wasn't easy, like at all, I had a few patients who were mute, just by choice, they just wouldn't talk to anyone, it's so hard to get anything out of them, even facial ques and stuff, some tough nuts. Wow, that sounded meaner than I thought. (No, it's fine, I get you mean like, nuts as in actual nuts not like, crazy nuts.) I just hope they get it, don't want to sound like a jerk. I mostly had female patients, a lot of the men at the institute were sexually driven and had to be kept away from women. It was neat though, they had this big open outdoor area, with a garden and all sorts of outdoor activities and once a week they'd have a scheduled time for all of the non-sexually deviant people to meet up, since the genders were in different sections of the facilities and hardly interacted it was really cool, a couple of the patients would date and a few after release even ended up getting married and stuff, and we would let some of the patients on a case to case basis see each other for little "dates", I just have to say it again, it's a really amazing facility. The outdoor area and all of the activities helped me get in with some of my patients, I had to document and watch them interact with others as part of my job there beyond just talking sessions, and so I would help out and participate to earn their trust and such.
I had one patient, I'll call her Cassie, or Cassandra, she was pretty much a perpetual child, we had several patients who had their mental age reverted due to drug use, but there was no medical reason for Cassandra's case, well, beyond trauma. She was very closed off, she was draw all day, and when it was outside time she'd just lay in the grass or draw with chalk, she didn't really interact with any of the other patients, she was one of my mute my choice patients. I tried tossing balls to her in the grass, or sitting with her coloring, asking her what she was drawing but she wouldn't break. It took months of bugging to get her to finally talk to me some. She was coloring in her room during open floor time when the patients could walk around the ward and interact with each other, her roommate had gone down the hall so she was alone. She had pictures she had colored all over her wall, they looked like little kid drawings, rough scribbly lines, big smiley faces on everything, stuff like that. She looked down this particular day, her eyes puffy like she'd been crying, I sat down at the table in her room across from her and she had a sheet of paper in front of her that she was hunched over, she had a red crayon in hand that was already warn down to a nub and she was filling in the whole page with just red scribbles. I asked her what she was drawing and she stopped, stared at it for a second then slowly up at me and said, "it's my sister ok?" then rolled her eyes, and proceeded to continue her scribbling. It was the first time she had spoken to me and even after I tried to ask her more questions that day she didn't respond. (Tough nut?) Yeah, a tough nut, we think she's on the autism spectrum cause she's just, really has a difficult time communicating.
One of the most entertaining cases I have is a woman I'll call Mary. Throughout her life she had believed she had a direct connection to an angel who worked through her named Caspian. She was in solitary so when I met with her it had to be in her ward, a ward where I wasn't allowed a pen or any sharp jewelry, I had to bring a tape recorder which I normally had for my meetings anyways in case I missed anything during the interviews. Mary had been put in solitary after attempting suicide to be with the angels while in the normal woman's ward, as well as trying to stab an orderly. She tell me all about her "god's work" she had done when she was out.
(Recording)
Mary: "There's a lot of horrible people in this world, we have to cleanse them, we have to purify the world before Jesus' return!"
Barbara: "Well ____, what do you think about me?"
Mary: "You're a great person Mrs. Standford, Caspian tells me you're here to help me, that I should talk to you and you'll help me out, to continue my work, you are a woman of the lord."
Barbara: "I am yes, I am here to help you, but you put yourself here ____, I can't help you out."
Mary: "I need to be set free, I have repented for my sins, they are forgiven, Caspian tells me so."
Barbara: "What sins?"
Mary: "The tests, he tested me, Caspian, God, they test me, they tested my devotion I had to do the things I did for them."
Barbara: "What things ____?"
Mary: "They had me steal a child, an infant, I had to bury him on sacred land, they told me he was the anti-christ, it was only after I did it they told me they lied, they had to test my devotion!"
Barbara:"I don't think god would want you killing children."
Mary: "But they had to test my Faith, only the strongest of Faith can be blind, and only through my blind Faith can I myself become an angel, like Caspian."
Barbara: "But angels aren't humans [emitted]."
Mary: "The rules have changed."
Barbara: "How do you know Caspian is real?"
Mary: "He comes to me, he sits beside me, right now he is beside you, don't you feel him?"
(End.)
I have to confess that I did actually look to both of my sides for her angel but obviously nobody was there, religious based psychosis is very very common, a lot of my patients with schizophrenia had some religious aspect to their delusions, but Mary always takes the cake. It's amazing the wide variety of patients I had at the facility, I mean, in contrast to the patients I had at the private practice previously. (Say that five times fast.) Haha, yeah! I felt like getting into this psychiatric hospital was a real game changer for me, I wasn't going home overly stressed, my husband wasn't stressing as hard because he wasn't thinking about me not coming home someday, it was all around really good for both of us, it was really great honestly, I thought it was going to be at least. I really did.
I had gotten really attached to Cassie, it was hard not to, I mean even though she was in her 20's she acted like she was 10 and it was like playing with a big kid whenever I spent time with her, I decided to have her draw more because she seemed to care less about talking while she was at least drawing, her answers were short and usually under her breath but I'd get something out of her and that meant a lot to me. I knew from her case file that when she was 10 her younger sister had been stabbed to death in the middle of the night, they had thought it was a man who Cassie claimed to have seen who did it, but it wasn't until she was 16 and stabbed her dad in the middle of the night that they realized it was her. During the in between time, 10-16 she went to school, but was failing, couldn't concentrate and was still acting like a 10 year old the whole time, was moved to special education but nothing helped, nobody could get through to her. Cassie would constantly draw this figure, it was scribble-y, of course, but it was this long tall black figure that she usually drew when she drew other people, he would always be nearest to her in the pictures and I asked her about him but she'd just shut down whenever I did so I kept away from it as a subject. I always figured it was her personification of her darker side or something. If I tried to record her she'd just shut down as well, she'd just be like, "No, I don't want to be on that." and would curl up until I shut it off, but it wasn't like she was really talking much to me at that point anyways. She started to play with me some, which was something, we'd play some easy kid's board games like Chutes and Ladders and she'd giggle and be happy for a moment when she'd win. We had a late night session one time that let out just before turn down and she asked that I walk her to her room and when I did she asked that I read her a story, she uh, she just gripped onto my wrist like she didn't want me to leave her. So anyways, she had a whole shelf of books her parents had brought her, children's books because that's all she would read. Her roommate appreciated it too and I read Cassie to sleep from a Little Golden Book, I had to fight myself from wanting to kiss her forehead after closing the book up and leaving the room. (That's a little against the rules isn't it?) As I said, I got very attached... (Barbara?) Sorry sorry...
So, it wasn't too long after I finally started breaking through to Cassie that Mary had a major break down, she had faked a seizure and then escaped onto the grounds where she threw off her clothes and ran off somewhere, thankfully the whole campus was gated in so it just took us a while to find her, I helped the security and a group of nurses do a sweep of the whole campus until we finally found her far out in the garden trying to bury herself. When we were trying to pull her out of the dirt and cover her in a blanket she was shrieking "I'm a tree, I'm a tree!" It was really really shrill and loud, almost wasn't like it was her, it was really really weird. After that incident I started meeting exclusively with her for the following week, we got her switched around to some new medication. That night though she started "head banging" on her door until she was horribly bruised so she even had to start getting tied down at night. It was a huge change in her behavior it was the weirdest thing, it took her a few days to start talking again.
(Recording)
B: "[emitted], don't be so quiet, you need to talk about what happened."
M: "...mm..."
B: "You can talk to me, you know you can, Caspian told you I was a good person."
M: "I can't hear him anymore..."
B: "He stopped talking to you?"
M: "He stopped believing in me. He left, he left so fast, he said he wasn't alone, there was a darkness here, and he had to leave now."
B: "Is him leaving a bad thing.?"
M: "Yes, he never leaves, but he's gone, that's bad, that's bad, that means bad things will happen. There's a darkness here and it will be the end to us all!"
(Ends)
She looked at me so fervently in the eyes, like I could feel her staring into my soul, I know people always say that, but this was really really different, I could feel it, I could feel the... the sense of danger or something, it was really bizarre. I ended the interview prematurely because I couldn't be in the same room as her after that. As the week progressed she got a bit better, and by the end of the week it was like she was normal, and I'm not saying "Mary" normal, but like, normal normal, as if she didn't have any of the mental challenges she had before, they stopped tying her up, I had them cut back on her medication until she was only taking placebos and she was just... cured? It's weird to say cured, I never feel right saying cured, because really the cure is having it under control for the most part, but her's was like someone literally reached into her brain and took out the schizophrenia that had been plaguing her most of her life, kind of like... (Like Caspian was the illness.) Yeah, like Caspian was her illness. We moved her from the padded solitary wing to the normal woman's wing for about a month or so and then after getting checked over by many others and myself she was deemed free to go, last I heard she moved back to where she lived before and reconnected with her family and has a job and everything, which is like, so amazing, I'd like to think I helped, but I know now that I can't really take any credit for it.
When I started seeing my other patients again after the Mary incident, Cassie seemed really mad at me, I tried to explain to her how I had to help someone else but that I'd never leave and she scoffed at me, "but you DID leave, you left us all alone." I promised her I wouldn't leave her, a promise that I didn't even know if I could keep, but I promised her that to reassure her, but it was a huge step backwards, she stopped talking to me again, and wouldn't play with me much anymore either. My other mute patient, Penny I'll call her, even after meeting with her for so many months and trying a bunch of different tactics like writing instead of talking, drawing, games, whatever I could try, none of it was working, she would still not talk to me. I was in the cafeteria having some lunch one day when one of the other psychologists came and sat next to me, I didn't talk with the other doctors at the facility much, I mean unless we were working together on a patient because we all constantly had our own stuff to do but it was nice when we'd get a few moments. Anyways he came and had lunch with me and he was telling me about how he was trying out hypnotism on a few of his patients he was having a hard time with and how it'd be really helpful so far. I had taken a short course in school about the uses of hypnotism as a therapy but I never really thought about using it myself, in the class we had tried it on one another and it was really neat and stuff, but it felt, I don't know, wrong to do to a patient who didn't have full control over their own mind, why should I be able to take over? Ya know? I don't know, to me it just felt wrong, but Penny, she was just a real pill, I wasn't getting to her at all I needed to do something so I decided to give it a try.
(Recording)
B: "So [emitted], I figured since you wont talk to me we can try something different today. Have you ever been hypnotized? No? Ok, well it's pretty much like a nap, where I get to talk to you, would that be ok? Alright, so I just need you to lay down on the couch, get really comfortable. Good. Ok, close your eyes. Now, slow breaths, breath with me. Good. Now with each breath, I want you to imagine waves coming and filling you with cool relaxing water, starting at your toes, working up to your calves, your knees, now your thighs, to your hips, your stomach, your chest, then your shoulders, your face, now completely surrounding you, deeper, deeper into relaxation. Good. Ok [emitted], will you talk to me?"
P: "Hello Doctor Standford."
B: "Hello [emitted]! It's so nice to hear your voice."
P: "I don't like to talk, I get in trouble for talking."
B: "Who will you be in trouble with?"
P: "My step-dad, he said, if I ever talked I would get hurt, or my mom would get hurt."
B: "Your step-dad already got taken away, when you came here after what happened."
P: "I can't talk about what happened, he'll hurt us if I tell, I can't tell!"
B: "[emitted] I need you to understand, your step-dad can't hurt anyone anymore, he's been put away for a long time and you'll never have to see him again, your mom is safe and you are safe, you can talk, I promise you this."
(End)
She was shaking and crying at this point and I talked her back awake and she was still crying, she looked at me with big wet eyes and grabbed me and hugged me, she sobbed into my chest and told me she was sorry for having been a ***** this whole time, she told me, out loud, awake, with her actual words. After that session with the hypnotism she started talking, almost couldn't get her to stop to be honest, it was a huge breakthrough. Every session after then was amazing, we talked about her trust issues, and her body image that led to her starvation and self mutilation and we got her on pills that better helped her emotionally, she started making friends with other patients there and started eating regularly which she hadn't been doing, that's when I realized that hypnotism could be a really powerful tool for me to use with my other patients as well. I know for the most part people think hypnotism is like, bull **** or whatever, but I mean it's been used in therapy for a long time. (You don't have to justify it.) Well I know, but I don't want people to think I'm nutty or something listening to this.
Anyways, I kept working with all of my patients again, and kept trying to get through to Cassie, I didn't want to have to hypnotize her but it was almost getting to that point, she kept saying "we" instead of "me" and I knew that something had happened, she reverted back to near mutism and would just be drawing all the time. I'd try to approach her and she'd cross her arms and turn away, much like a young child would when they were being little brats so I'd just say I was going to leave, and she'd get upset and whine about that too, so there was really no winning with her. I still felt uneasy about doing it but I knew hypnotism could be the answer I was looking for, seeing the success I had with my other mute patient.
(Recording)
Cassie: "No! I can't be recorded."
Barbara: "[emitted] just calm down, you don't have to talk ok, I just want to leave this on today, ok, you don't have to talk. I have a really fun new game that we can play though ok? I need you to trust me ok [emitted]?"
Cassie: "... ok."
Barbara: "Alright, so just come here and lay down on the bed, get all comfy and close your eyes. Good girl, ok now, deep breaths, just deep breaths like this, follow mine. In, and out, in, and out, in... good. Now starting at your toes with each breath a cool wave of water will start to fill you, and with each wave you'll slip deeper and deeper into relaxation. Starting at your toes, then to your calves, up to your knees, onto your thighs, over your hips, now onto your stomach, your chest, shoulders, and finally your face. Good now you wont wake up until I snap, ok [emitted]?"
Cassie: "Ok."
Barbara: "Ok, so I want you to tell me who is the tall figure next to you?"
Cassie: "I'm not allowed to say."
Barbara: "You say "we" and "us" are you talking about the figure? Are they now your best friend instead of me."
Cassie: "You left us, I was alone, but he was always here, he never left."
Barbara: "He? Who is he, [emitted]? You can trust me, I want to be friends too."
Cassie(in a voice that isn't her own): "I don't want to be your friend!"
Barbara: "Ok, ok, calm down [emitted]... just calm down, relax, shhh.
Cassie: "He scares me sometimes, but he never leaves..." *starts crying*
Barbara: "Ok, [emitted] you can tell him to leave, I can help, we can help him leave you alone."
Cassie(in a voice that isn't her own): "I'll never leave, you *****! I'll never leave her! You can't make me leave you foul little *****!"
Barbara: *snap* Wake up.
Cassie: *crying* What happened?
Barbara: "It's ok, it's ok, [emitted], shh, it's ok."
(Ends)
In case you didn't get that, it wasn't really productive, she was so terrified coming out of it, she clung to me, she asked again for me to take her to bed and read to her later that night and started playing with me again, so I guess, even though it wasn't really productive it helped our relationship, which was in part what I wanted, she still wasn't talking much but at least she liked me again. After that though I decided not to try it again with her, at least not for a little while. From after that when she would draw she did continue to draw the figure but she drew him further back, so not right next to her, she'd draw him further back or at the edge of the paper, away from everyone else. She brought me a picture, I have it here, she drew us holding hands, you can see my glasses there, but he's way off back there behind the tree, see? So I figured that was kind of progress, distancing her from this figure, even if it was just in her pictures.
But then, like most of the time in life, as soon as something gets better, something else just has to get much worse. Daisy was found sleeping with one of the orderlies in exchange for drugs, he'd give her the wrong pills on purpose, but she wasn't even taking them, she had them all stashed away in her room, so he got fired and she got sent to solitary. So of course I had to start giving her more attention but she stopped talking, I could tell she was far more depressed than usual, that she was just kind of shut down. So I pulled out my ace and hypnotized her to get her to talk.
(Recording)
Barbara: "then finally over your face, now you're completely enveloped in the cool water, completely relaxed, now you wont wake up until I snap... Hello, [emitted]."
Daisy: "Hey doc..."
Barbara: "Why did you want to go back to your old ways [emitted]?"
Daisy: " I didn't want to, I thought, I thought I was over it..."
Barbara: "Then what happened?"
Daisy: "That guy... that pig... he just started getting handsy with me and stuff, and it all just flooded back, I thought I was over it, that, I wasn't going to have that body image anymore, but as soon as he touched me my confidence and... I guess... like my worth or something just left, flooded out of me and I was back to... back to being an object."
(she was shaking at this point)
Barbara: "You could have told someone, we could have helped you, and got rid of him sooner."
Daisy: "But he offered me stuff, and at first, it was like, I just wanted to get high again, the want is still there, so I wanted to milk it for the drugs."
Barbara: "just at first?"
Daisy: "it stopped being worth it, I hated myself again, and the high wasn't making that go away, it used to when I had harder stuff, but this stuff just made it worse... I just hated myself more..."
Barbara:"[emitted], so then what happened?"
Daisy: "I started saving it up... I figured if I saved up enough of it..."
Barbara: "if you saved enough of it what?"
Daisy: "Then I could kill myself."
(end)
Anytime a patient threatened their own life or others we had to keep them in solitary, it was so sad seeing her turn for the worse, we had made so much progress, and I guess I was so concerned with Cassie that I kind of ignored the changes I saw in Daisy, she still acted chipper and stuff in our meetings but it was still there, I just, I was too blind to see it, I was just glad we caught her before it was too late. We had her put on a stronger anti-depressant but had to do it through injections because she couldn't be trusted with pills anymore. She just stayed kind of numb to everything and stunted her progress so she was stuck in solitary for a good long while. I had to do daily sessions with her instead of weekly which of course pulled my time away from Cassie as well as my other patients so accommodate. So Cassie and I's sessions were cut back to half an hour and when I would close my notebook she would start crying because she knew I was going to leave, she'd cling to my legs and on a few occasions I had to have some orderlies remove her from me because she had gotten super clingy, which honestly I didn't protest to, I liked it, at least to an extent. It did make me sad that I couldn't spend as much time with her, especially when I was making no progress with Daisy and I felt like I was close to breaking through with Cassie, but the facility regulated my hours with each patient and a patient "in crisis" needed more attention.
So, how do I do this, do I just... Like introduce myself, or something?(Sure just tell us your name, age, the usual.) Ok. My name is Barbara Standford. I am 43 years old, I'm a, I'm a therapist at a prestigious psychiatric hospital and uh, I guess this is kind of my story. (Give us some background first, about you.) Oh, ok, well I grew up in a pretty normal household, my father had been in the military since he was a young man, and when he finally came home he decided he was still thirsty for justice, so he joined the local police force, he was our hero, and he helped the community a lot. My mom was a nurse and worked long hours but always cooked us dinner and read us to bed, us being me and my younger brother, Henry. But she really helped the community too, just in a different way. Our parents always wanted us to follow in their footsteps, they weren't subtle about it at all, my mom would get me those, you know, silly little dollies you had to "nurse" back to health, with the little fake syringe and medicine, and little fabric bandages. Haha, but yeah, I was not into it at all. We had gone on a camping trip once, and my mom wanted me to stay behind at camp with her, but I followed along as my father took my brother out to hunt. My brother quaked in his boots as we came up on a young buck in a clearing, I could hear the zipper of his vest vibrating against his rifle.My dad tried to steady him and helped him aim the gun. He was like," Go ahead, shoot. Go on, son." Then BANG! The buck fell over and birds flew off of branches all around us, and my brother and father looked over at me. Haha, I had taken my dad's rifle from the tree he leaned it against to help my brother and did what my brother couldn't, he proceeded to faint as soon as we approached the body of the deer. My dad patted me on the back like, "That's my girl." From then on they knew they pretty much had their aspirations for my brother and I switched. My dad started taking me out to the range to shoot, and taught me about law and stuff, my mom taught my brother recipes and how to sew, and about health practices, things to do for ailments we'd all get and he'd help her nurse all the colds my father and I would always catch from going out hunting together. One Christmas, I **** you not, I got my own rifle and my brother got his own sewing machine, like seriously. Anyways, once we got older we both got into really good schools, my brother became a local medical practitioner, and I followed in my father's shadow and joined our local police force.
We lived in a pretty small town, on the outskirts of a larger city but we rarely had to tend to things within the cities limits, we stayed in our small town jurisdiction. People always say small towns are so safe, like it's expected of a small town to be all quiet and peaceful, well that's all bull****, I can tell you that for a fact. I grew up thinking we lived in a safe place, we always had our doors unlocked and we could stay out late as kids but I guess the adults just didn't want to ruin our childhoods by telling us just how bad it really was. We had drug rings throughout all kinds of family neighborhoods, trafficking, young girls too, way too young, we even had two serial killers, in a town with only 2000 residents it was a pretty ****ed up place, excuse my language, don't really know if I'm supposed to curse or not. (It's fine.) But I didn't expect all this going into the force, I was expecting just mild things, like maybe some kids robbing the liquor store, people running stop signs, maybe some marital disputes or something, like there was a reason I didn't want to join the military, I wasn't a fan of death, I didn't want to be involved in it, but I guess we don't always get what we want, huh? I mean damn, I saw so many things... just, just tragic things. I saw a kid who was stabbed to death at a park, a freaking park, I held people who were bleeding out, held them as they died, one of them was even my co-worker... we found a drug den on the street I grew up on, only a few houses away, pumping out kilo after kilo of drugs onto the streets I used to run around as a kid. One of the worst things I had seen was in a family neighborhood, walking distance from the elementary school, a man had smothered his kids in their sleep and stabbed his wife to death, then killed himself in his car in the garage, we only got the call a week after the fact when the post office called about the large amount of mail that had accumulated, so they were already starting to decay, it was summer and the smell... that paired with just the fact that a father could do that to his family. It was after that that I started going to therapy, there's so much that gets to you in that line of work, I honestly don't know why people do it, like yeah it's super important, but just, just don't do it. It was bad enough that I had to start taking some medication to help me through all of the stress and anguish from all that just, horrible ****.
I had met Mike during this time in my life too, and he was a huge help, he could always make me laugh and cheer me up no matter how bad my day was, no matter what I came home after seeing. He always let me vent and would like really listen, which is really rare, ya know. He was a teacher back then, he's a principal now. I met him at a local dating site's mixer, and we hit it off instantly. We moved in with each other super quick too and got married soon there after, I knew he was my soul mate, it was too real for him to not be. We tried to have kids, he loved kids, and I mean, don't get my wrong, I loved kids too, he always loved watching me play with my brother Henry's kids at all of our family get-togethers. We tried many times, for years, and eventually went to the doctors and they told me that I uh, I couldn't have them, it was a rare side effect of the medication I was on for my depression and stress, but *sighs* I just took it as God not wanting me to bring anymore children into this cruel world. (You never wanted to adopt or anything?) I thought about it but it didn't seem like us, I don't know how to explain it, I mean I have my nieces and nephews and now I have my grand niece too so it's not like I didn't get to experience them, but like I said I didn't really want to bring anymore kids into this world, and besides, I'm far too old for it now.
So, I worked on the force for about 15 years, seeing all sorts of atrocities that the world doesn't like to think about, I brought a lot of people to justice but it wasn't something we always got to do, a lot of cases went cold, and there were people who couldn't sleep at night because of it, including me. I mean, I couldn't bare to think that people could just do these things, that someone could kill another human for like, no reason you know. Or why someone would want to get a kid hooked on meth, just I couldn't wrap my mind around it, it really got to me. I, uh, I remember the first time someone had gotten a plea for insanity, it was a case where a man had brutally murdered his sister, who was fairly wealthy, had a really nice big house and he stole half of the valuables from her home, for drugs, for DRUGS, and he killed her over it, couldn't just rob her. I was so pissed, enraged even, because he essentially got away with it, due to the insanity plea. He got sent to a Psychiatric Ward and was there for maybe a year before they deemed him "cured" and released him, I would see him around town, still do, always doped up like he used to be and just wish I could "accidentally" hit him with my car, but that's still not justice. I knew there were people who really were sick in the head too, it wasn't all fibbers, we had a case where this 78 year old woman had kidnapped this 8 year old kid and had him chained up in a dog kennel in her basement and fed him raw meat and milk because she thought he was a wild tiger she saw by the school, she thought that the zoo was going to pay her $9000 and pick him up on this specific date a year from when she nabbed him, thankfully she had told her neighbor about it at the mailbox off hand and her neighbor called us to investigate, she seriously proudly brought us down to her basement to show us her "tiger" where we promptly arrested her, she ended up in the same psychiatric hospital.
But after 15 years I decided it was really too much for me, I had talked to my therapist about it, about how I didn't think I was cut out for it anymore, but that I didn't think I could do much else, it was my life, I had been trained for it my whole life, since I was a kid at home shining my gun watching Law and Order, I was in too deep, I couldn't just leave the field. I wanted to help people still, and then she made a suggestion, why not stay close to what I've been doing but go behind the scenes, do what she does, and become a psychologist. It kind of hit home with me, I mean I did have an interest in psychology and I had been asking her so many questions involving my cases throughout our time together because I had always wanted to understand what could force people to do these kinds of things, I just had this NEED to know, if that makes sense. After talking to my husband about it he said it would be a great idea for me, for him it was more me getting out of danger, which he was always super concerned about, so I decided to go for it. So at 35 I quit the force and started back at school for my degree in psychology. It was totally grueling and I constantly felt silly being in school at such an old age but it's what I wanted to do, can you imagine this old mug hanging out with a bunch of 18 year old's in college? (35 isn't that old.) Well it sure felt like it. It was nice though, my experiences in the field had helped me quite a bit in school and I graduated at 41, with honors, seems like forever ago but that was just two years ago... weird to think about. But after graduation I interned for my old therapist for a while, and after several months I opened my own practice in her office, it really does pay to have connections. Most of my clients were people with stress and depression, I was basically a really expensive target for venting, it was amazing, I did have one client who had schizophrenia but she was medicated to where it was under control, but I helped her with some episodes and stuff, funny enough I even had a few of my co-workers from the force as clients for a while. I felt like I was helping people, but just not in the way I had hoped. I wasn't preventing all the bad things from happening, I wasn't really helping victims either, I was just giving people prescriptions for Xanax and watching them cry, like, that was my whole job.
After about a year working there, at my own practice there was an opening at the psychiatric hospital, one of their psychologists was retiring and they reached out to locals to fill the position and with my history I was their first choice. I jumped on it, like that's what I really wanted to do. At the hospital they had different wards and they had a separate building where they housed the people who were criminally insane, to keep them away from the people who were just admitted there. I worked all around the facility though, I worked with people who were self admitted and people who had been put there as their sentence for crimes they'd committed. It was interesting seeing some people I had helped put there, like tiger lady, she was a lot different when she was properly medicated. It's an amazing facility too, I know we can't mention places and stuff but it is honestly one of the best in the country, super clean, well staffed, the different wards are laid out so well, and like I said about the separate buildings and stuff, it is just, a really nice place. (We'll take your word for it.) Anyways I started my practice there, got a nice little office where I did most of my sessions with my patients.
One of my first patients was this younger girl, she had remembered me, but I didn't really remember her, I'll call her Daisy, but when she came in she told me that she remembered me from my "copping" days, she was a prostitute and I had found her drugged out on a park bench one night and brought her to the drunk tank. It was only after that that I remembered her, she kept asking for her ducky while high off her ass.(What?) Yeah, she said after sitting in the drunk tank all day until she sobered up enough for us to release her she really looked in the mirror at her life and knew there were deeper reasons making her how she was so she self admitted herself. It was one hell of an ice breaker, usually it takes a while to break down the walls with a client but she was an open book, she told me about how her dad had left when she was just a kid and how her mom went through a whole slew of different men, men who didn't want to stop after having her mom, how several of them had sexually abused her when she was little so she grew up basically thinking she was this object for men, and that's all she knew, so when she became a teen she got in with a bad crowd at school, ended up dropping out and turning tricks for drugs. Wasn't too long after that that I ended up finding her, it was nice having such a productive first day with her, being my first patient, but it kind of got my hopes up going into my other patients.
It wasn't easy, like at all, I had a few patients who were mute, just by choice, they just wouldn't talk to anyone, it's so hard to get anything out of them, even facial ques and stuff, some tough nuts. Wow, that sounded meaner than I thought. (No, it's fine, I get you mean like, nuts as in actual nuts not like, crazy nuts.) I just hope they get it, don't want to sound like a jerk. I mostly had female patients, a lot of the men at the institute were sexually driven and had to be kept away from women. It was neat though, they had this big open outdoor area, with a garden and all sorts of outdoor activities and once a week they'd have a scheduled time for all of the non-sexually deviant people to meet up, since the genders were in different sections of the facilities and hardly interacted it was really cool, a couple of the patients would date and a few after release even ended up getting married and stuff, and we would let some of the patients on a case to case basis see each other for little "dates", I just have to say it again, it's a really amazing facility. The outdoor area and all of the activities helped me get in with some of my patients, I had to document and watch them interact with others as part of my job there beyond just talking sessions, and so I would help out and participate to earn their trust and such.
I had one patient, I'll call her Cassie, or Cassandra, she was pretty much a perpetual child, we had several patients who had their mental age reverted due to drug use, but there was no medical reason for Cassandra's case, well, beyond trauma. She was very closed off, she was draw all day, and when it was outside time she'd just lay in the grass or draw with chalk, she didn't really interact with any of the other patients, she was one of my mute my choice patients. I tried tossing balls to her in the grass, or sitting with her coloring, asking her what she was drawing but she wouldn't break. It took months of bugging to get her to finally talk to me some. She was coloring in her room during open floor time when the patients could walk around the ward and interact with each other, her roommate had gone down the hall so she was alone. She had pictures she had colored all over her wall, they looked like little kid drawings, rough scribbly lines, big smiley faces on everything, stuff like that. She looked down this particular day, her eyes puffy like she'd been crying, I sat down at the table in her room across from her and she had a sheet of paper in front of her that she was hunched over, she had a red crayon in hand that was already warn down to a nub and she was filling in the whole page with just red scribbles. I asked her what she was drawing and she stopped, stared at it for a second then slowly up at me and said, "it's my sister ok?" then rolled her eyes, and proceeded to continue her scribbling. It was the first time she had spoken to me and even after I tried to ask her more questions that day she didn't respond. (Tough nut?) Yeah, a tough nut, we think she's on the autism spectrum cause she's just, really has a difficult time communicating.
One of the most entertaining cases I have is a woman I'll call Mary. Throughout her life she had believed she had a direct connection to an angel who worked through her named Caspian. She was in solitary so when I met with her it had to be in her ward, a ward where I wasn't allowed a pen or any sharp jewelry, I had to bring a tape recorder which I normally had for my meetings anyways in case I missed anything during the interviews. Mary had been put in solitary after attempting suicide to be with the angels while in the normal woman's ward, as well as trying to stab an orderly. She tell me all about her "god's work" she had done when she was out.
(Recording)
Mary: "There's a lot of horrible people in this world, we have to cleanse them, we have to purify the world before Jesus' return!"
Barbara: "Well ____, what do you think about me?"
Mary: "You're a great person Mrs. Standford, Caspian tells me you're here to help me, that I should talk to you and you'll help me out, to continue my work, you are a woman of the lord."
Barbara: "I am yes, I am here to help you, but you put yourself here ____, I can't help you out."
Mary: "I need to be set free, I have repented for my sins, they are forgiven, Caspian tells me so."
Barbara: "What sins?"
Mary: "The tests, he tested me, Caspian, God, they test me, they tested my devotion I had to do the things I did for them."
Barbara: "What things ____?"
Mary: "They had me steal a child, an infant, I had to bury him on sacred land, they told me he was the anti-christ, it was only after I did it they told me they lied, they had to test my devotion!"
Barbara:"I don't think god would want you killing children."
Mary: "But they had to test my Faith, only the strongest of Faith can be blind, and only through my blind Faith can I myself become an angel, like Caspian."
Barbara: "But angels aren't humans [emitted]."
Mary: "The rules have changed."
Barbara: "How do you know Caspian is real?"
Mary: "He comes to me, he sits beside me, right now he is beside you, don't you feel him?"
(End.)
I have to confess that I did actually look to both of my sides for her angel but obviously nobody was there, religious based psychosis is very very common, a lot of my patients with schizophrenia had some religious aspect to their delusions, but Mary always takes the cake. It's amazing the wide variety of patients I had at the facility, I mean, in contrast to the patients I had at the private practice previously. (Say that five times fast.) Haha, yeah! I felt like getting into this psychiatric hospital was a real game changer for me, I wasn't going home overly stressed, my husband wasn't stressing as hard because he wasn't thinking about me not coming home someday, it was all around really good for both of us, it was really great honestly, I thought it was going to be at least. I really did.
I had gotten really attached to Cassie, it was hard not to, I mean even though she was in her 20's she acted like she was 10 and it was like playing with a big kid whenever I spent time with her, I decided to have her draw more because she seemed to care less about talking while she was at least drawing, her answers were short and usually under her breath but I'd get something out of her and that meant a lot to me. I knew from her case file that when she was 10 her younger sister had been stabbed to death in the middle of the night, they had thought it was a man who Cassie claimed to have seen who did it, but it wasn't until she was 16 and stabbed her dad in the middle of the night that they realized it was her. During the in between time, 10-16 she went to school, but was failing, couldn't concentrate and was still acting like a 10 year old the whole time, was moved to special education but nothing helped, nobody could get through to her. Cassie would constantly draw this figure, it was scribble-y, of course, but it was this long tall black figure that she usually drew when she drew other people, he would always be nearest to her in the pictures and I asked her about him but she'd just shut down whenever I did so I kept away from it as a subject. I always figured it was her personification of her darker side or something. If I tried to record her she'd just shut down as well, she'd just be like, "No, I don't want to be on that." and would curl up until I shut it off, but it wasn't like she was really talking much to me at that point anyways. She started to play with me some, which was something, we'd play some easy kid's board games like Chutes and Ladders and she'd giggle and be happy for a moment when she'd win. We had a late night session one time that let out just before turn down and she asked that I walk her to her room and when I did she asked that I read her a story, she uh, she just gripped onto my wrist like she didn't want me to leave her. So anyways, she had a whole shelf of books her parents had brought her, children's books because that's all she would read. Her roommate appreciated it too and I read Cassie to sleep from a Little Golden Book, I had to fight myself from wanting to kiss her forehead after closing the book up and leaving the room. (That's a little against the rules isn't it?) As I said, I got very attached... (Barbara?) Sorry sorry...
So, it wasn't too long after I finally started breaking through to Cassie that Mary had a major break down, she had faked a seizure and then escaped onto the grounds where she threw off her clothes and ran off somewhere, thankfully the whole campus was gated in so it just took us a while to find her, I helped the security and a group of nurses do a sweep of the whole campus until we finally found her far out in the garden trying to bury herself. When we were trying to pull her out of the dirt and cover her in a blanket she was shrieking "I'm a tree, I'm a tree!" It was really really shrill and loud, almost wasn't like it was her, it was really really weird. After that incident I started meeting exclusively with her for the following week, we got her switched around to some new medication. That night though she started "head banging" on her door until she was horribly bruised so she even had to start getting tied down at night. It was a huge change in her behavior it was the weirdest thing, it took her a few days to start talking again.
(Recording)
B: "[emitted], don't be so quiet, you need to talk about what happened."
M: "...mm..."
B: "You can talk to me, you know you can, Caspian told you I was a good person."
M: "I can't hear him anymore..."
B: "He stopped talking to you?"
M: "He stopped believing in me. He left, he left so fast, he said he wasn't alone, there was a darkness here, and he had to leave now."
B: "Is him leaving a bad thing.?"
M: "Yes, he never leaves, but he's gone, that's bad, that's bad, that means bad things will happen. There's a darkness here and it will be the end to us all!"
(Ends)
She looked at me so fervently in the eyes, like I could feel her staring into my soul, I know people always say that, but this was really really different, I could feel it, I could feel the... the sense of danger or something, it was really bizarre. I ended the interview prematurely because I couldn't be in the same room as her after that. As the week progressed she got a bit better, and by the end of the week it was like she was normal, and I'm not saying "Mary" normal, but like, normal normal, as if she didn't have any of the mental challenges she had before, they stopped tying her up, I had them cut back on her medication until she was only taking placebos and she was just... cured? It's weird to say cured, I never feel right saying cured, because really the cure is having it under control for the most part, but her's was like someone literally reached into her brain and took out the schizophrenia that had been plaguing her most of her life, kind of like... (Like Caspian was the illness.) Yeah, like Caspian was her illness. We moved her from the padded solitary wing to the normal woman's wing for about a month or so and then after getting checked over by many others and myself she was deemed free to go, last I heard she moved back to where she lived before and reconnected with her family and has a job and everything, which is like, so amazing, I'd like to think I helped, but I know now that I can't really take any credit for it.
When I started seeing my other patients again after the Mary incident, Cassie seemed really mad at me, I tried to explain to her how I had to help someone else but that I'd never leave and she scoffed at me, "but you DID leave, you left us all alone." I promised her I wouldn't leave her, a promise that I didn't even know if I could keep, but I promised her that to reassure her, but it was a huge step backwards, she stopped talking to me again, and wouldn't play with me much anymore either. My other mute patient, Penny I'll call her, even after meeting with her for so many months and trying a bunch of different tactics like writing instead of talking, drawing, games, whatever I could try, none of it was working, she would still not talk to me. I was in the cafeteria having some lunch one day when one of the other psychologists came and sat next to me, I didn't talk with the other doctors at the facility much, I mean unless we were working together on a patient because we all constantly had our own stuff to do but it was nice when we'd get a few moments. Anyways he came and had lunch with me and he was telling me about how he was trying out hypnotism on a few of his patients he was having a hard time with and how it'd be really helpful so far. I had taken a short course in school about the uses of hypnotism as a therapy but I never really thought about using it myself, in the class we had tried it on one another and it was really neat and stuff, but it felt, I don't know, wrong to do to a patient who didn't have full control over their own mind, why should I be able to take over? Ya know? I don't know, to me it just felt wrong, but Penny, she was just a real pill, I wasn't getting to her at all I needed to do something so I decided to give it a try.
(Recording)
B: "So [emitted], I figured since you wont talk to me we can try something different today. Have you ever been hypnotized? No? Ok, well it's pretty much like a nap, where I get to talk to you, would that be ok? Alright, so I just need you to lay down on the couch, get really comfortable. Good. Ok, close your eyes. Now, slow breaths, breath with me. Good. Now with each breath, I want you to imagine waves coming and filling you with cool relaxing water, starting at your toes, working up to your calves, your knees, now your thighs, to your hips, your stomach, your chest, then your shoulders, your face, now completely surrounding you, deeper, deeper into relaxation. Good. Ok [emitted], will you talk to me?"
P: "Hello Doctor Standford."
B: "Hello [emitted]! It's so nice to hear your voice."
P: "I don't like to talk, I get in trouble for talking."
B: "Who will you be in trouble with?"
P: "My step-dad, he said, if I ever talked I would get hurt, or my mom would get hurt."
B: "Your step-dad already got taken away, when you came here after what happened."
P: "I can't talk about what happened, he'll hurt us if I tell, I can't tell!"
B: "[emitted] I need you to understand, your step-dad can't hurt anyone anymore, he's been put away for a long time and you'll never have to see him again, your mom is safe and you are safe, you can talk, I promise you this."
(End)
She was shaking and crying at this point and I talked her back awake and she was still crying, she looked at me with big wet eyes and grabbed me and hugged me, she sobbed into my chest and told me she was sorry for having been a ***** this whole time, she told me, out loud, awake, with her actual words. After that session with the hypnotism she started talking, almost couldn't get her to stop to be honest, it was a huge breakthrough. Every session after then was amazing, we talked about her trust issues, and her body image that led to her starvation and self mutilation and we got her on pills that better helped her emotionally, she started making friends with other patients there and started eating regularly which she hadn't been doing, that's when I realized that hypnotism could be a really powerful tool for me to use with my other patients as well. I know for the most part people think hypnotism is like, bull **** or whatever, but I mean it's been used in therapy for a long time. (You don't have to justify it.) Well I know, but I don't want people to think I'm nutty or something listening to this.
Anyways, I kept working with all of my patients again, and kept trying to get through to Cassie, I didn't want to have to hypnotize her but it was almost getting to that point, she kept saying "we" instead of "me" and I knew that something had happened, she reverted back to near mutism and would just be drawing all the time. I'd try to approach her and she'd cross her arms and turn away, much like a young child would when they were being little brats so I'd just say I was going to leave, and she'd get upset and whine about that too, so there was really no winning with her. I still felt uneasy about doing it but I knew hypnotism could be the answer I was looking for, seeing the success I had with my other mute patient.
(Recording)
Cassie: "No! I can't be recorded."
Barbara: "[emitted] just calm down, you don't have to talk ok, I just want to leave this on today, ok, you don't have to talk. I have a really fun new game that we can play though ok? I need you to trust me ok [emitted]?"
Cassie: "... ok."
Barbara: "Alright, so just come here and lay down on the bed, get all comfy and close your eyes. Good girl, ok now, deep breaths, just deep breaths like this, follow mine. In, and out, in, and out, in... good. Now starting at your toes with each breath a cool wave of water will start to fill you, and with each wave you'll slip deeper and deeper into relaxation. Starting at your toes, then to your calves, up to your knees, onto your thighs, over your hips, now onto your stomach, your chest, shoulders, and finally your face. Good now you wont wake up until I snap, ok [emitted]?"
Cassie: "Ok."
Barbara: "Ok, so I want you to tell me who is the tall figure next to you?"
Cassie: "I'm not allowed to say."
Barbara: "You say "we" and "us" are you talking about the figure? Are they now your best friend instead of me."
Cassie: "You left us, I was alone, but he was always here, he never left."
Barbara: "He? Who is he, [emitted]? You can trust me, I want to be friends too."
Cassie(in a voice that isn't her own): "I don't want to be your friend!"
Barbara: "Ok, ok, calm down [emitted]... just calm down, relax, shhh.
Cassie: "He scares me sometimes, but he never leaves..." *starts crying*
Barbara: "Ok, [emitted] you can tell him to leave, I can help, we can help him leave you alone."
Cassie(in a voice that isn't her own): "I'll never leave, you *****! I'll never leave her! You can't make me leave you foul little *****!"
Barbara: *snap* Wake up.
Cassie: *crying* What happened?
Barbara: "It's ok, it's ok, [emitted], shh, it's ok."
(Ends)
In case you didn't get that, it wasn't really productive, she was so terrified coming out of it, she clung to me, she asked again for me to take her to bed and read to her later that night and started playing with me again, so I guess, even though it wasn't really productive it helped our relationship, which was in part what I wanted, she still wasn't talking much but at least she liked me again. After that though I decided not to try it again with her, at least not for a little while. From after that when she would draw she did continue to draw the figure but she drew him further back, so not right next to her, she'd draw him further back or at the edge of the paper, away from everyone else. She brought me a picture, I have it here, she drew us holding hands, you can see my glasses there, but he's way off back there behind the tree, see? So I figured that was kind of progress, distancing her from this figure, even if it was just in her pictures.
But then, like most of the time in life, as soon as something gets better, something else just has to get much worse. Daisy was found sleeping with one of the orderlies in exchange for drugs, he'd give her the wrong pills on purpose, but she wasn't even taking them, she had them all stashed away in her room, so he got fired and she got sent to solitary. So of course I had to start giving her more attention but she stopped talking, I could tell she was far more depressed than usual, that she was just kind of shut down. So I pulled out my ace and hypnotized her to get her to talk.
(Recording)
Barbara: "then finally over your face, now you're completely enveloped in the cool water, completely relaxed, now you wont wake up until I snap... Hello, [emitted]."
Daisy: "Hey doc..."
Barbara: "Why did you want to go back to your old ways [emitted]?"
Daisy: " I didn't want to, I thought, I thought I was over it..."
Barbara: "Then what happened?"
Daisy: "That guy... that pig... he just started getting handsy with me and stuff, and it all just flooded back, I thought I was over it, that, I wasn't going to have that body image anymore, but as soon as he touched me my confidence and... I guess... like my worth or something just left, flooded out of me and I was back to... back to being an object."
(she was shaking at this point)
Barbara: "You could have told someone, we could have helped you, and got rid of him sooner."
Daisy: "But he offered me stuff, and at first, it was like, I just wanted to get high again, the want is still there, so I wanted to milk it for the drugs."
Barbara: "just at first?"
Daisy: "it stopped being worth it, I hated myself again, and the high wasn't making that go away, it used to when I had harder stuff, but this stuff just made it worse... I just hated myself more..."
Barbara:"[emitted], so then what happened?"
Daisy: "I started saving it up... I figured if I saved up enough of it..."
Barbara: "if you saved enough of it what?"
Daisy: "Then I could kill myself."
(end)
Anytime a patient threatened their own life or others we had to keep them in solitary, it was so sad seeing her turn for the worse, we had made so much progress, and I guess I was so concerned with Cassie that I kind of ignored the changes I saw in Daisy, she still acted chipper and stuff in our meetings but it was still there, I just, I was too blind to see it, I was just glad we caught her before it was too late. We had her put on a stronger anti-depressant but had to do it through injections because she couldn't be trusted with pills anymore. She just stayed kind of numb to everything and stunted her progress so she was stuck in solitary for a good long while. I had to do daily sessions with her instead of weekly which of course pulled my time away from Cassie as well as my other patients so accommodate. So Cassie and I's sessions were cut back to half an hour and when I would close my notebook she would start crying because she knew I was going to leave, she'd cling to my legs and on a few occasions I had to have some orderlies remove her from me because she had gotten super clingy, which honestly I didn't protest to, I liked it, at least to an extent. It did make me sad that I couldn't spend as much time with her, especially when I was making no progress with Daisy and I felt like I was close to breaking through with Cassie, but the facility regulated my hours with each patient and a patient "in crisis" needed more attention.
