3 Chapter 3 - How do I say this

Art shook his head. "Soul Energy? Rewards for walking out my door? I do that all the time!" he wonders.

He walks to the open car door, watches the nearby traffic pass the "crash window", and then gets in. He puts his headphones on. Once again, his Dad gives him a disappointed look. His Dad has never really understood why he would put the headphones on and never plug them into anything. He does not understand or maybe just can not believe in the concept of an internal playlist that only really requires a little reduction of the external sound. Art highly suspects that his Dad just thinks that he puts headphones on to block out his parents. Well… that is true sometimes. Right now, he needs the mental space to think of how to approach the therapy session.

[Author's note: I'm not a psychiatric nor psychological therapist, do not take my depiction of this fictional therapy as _anything_ other than fiction and the thoughts of an author]

The first time Art went to see Dr. Héping, a couple of years ago, he had been very anxious about it. Of course, he had been anxious about everything then. He was worried about what the Dr. could do to him. Would he use hypnosis to make him a thrall? Drug him into a vegetative state to take advantage of his parents? Try to catch him in some word trickery into revealing his darkest fleeting temptations, and then parade those around with labels emphasizing them publicly as his most important character traits, and declare how much of a danger he was to everyone around him?

That session, they just talked. No diagnosis, no prescription, no hypnosis (Art knew this because he tracked the time very carefully, every second was accounted for), and no divulging of dark temptations beyond the "checkbox" questions about self-harm.

The next time, while talking about the possible sources of anxiety, the doctor did ask some of the harder questions - and then, they just talked about how Art felt about such temptations, how he felt about the fact that he faced such temptations, and how he deals with them. If the doctor even discussed them with Art's parents, he must have done it well, because they never acted like they were worried about it.

Over the next few sessions, Art slowly had begun to recognize that Dr. Héping was taking most of his queues from Art himself. There was a prescription for an anti-anxiety medication - but it was presented as an option for aid, and the good doctor was confident in his prescription, but didn't mind talking about alternative plans. Art deduced that he must be considered a low risk patient, because there was little suggestion of behavior that he needed to change or even topics to discuss that weren't brought up by Art himself.

But now, hallucinations … that's an entirely new area. Art doesn't want to be a danger to himself or others, but really doesn't think he is such a danger. Now he realizes that he had started packing his bags because this was one of those situations that might end up with him in a psychiatric hospital. That is something that he wants to avoid.

"System Quest: Straight talk with the Therapist." Art is not laughing any more, he clenches his jaw in fear and maybe a little anger. This of course alarms his parents more.