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 Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 7:10 am
This is a thread where Fallon's solo RPs with her therapist will be collected.
The office of Dr. Nathaniel Price is nestled along a main road near Destiny City Park. It sits in a strip mall beside a dentist office and an insurance company across the street from a McDonald's. The neutral brown of the building is as nondescript as the small sign that reads "Price Psychiatry" in black block letters beside the entrance. There are two potted plants framing the doorway, and a tiny bell that tinkles lightly when the door is opened.
Inside, the walls of the waiting room are painted seafoam green, and the far wall holds a display shelf with every pamphlet known to man, ranging from diagnosing bi-polar disorder to coping with postpartum depression to facts on anxiety. The receptionist is a black woman with closely-cropped hair and thin lips named Adella who will offer coffee or juice to every person in the same sing-song-y voice that she uses to announce everything. Chairs upholstered in golden yellow line the empty space.
When the doctor is ready, Adella will slip in through the frosted glass door and call out the name. Patients are escorted back to the doctor's office and then Adella exits with a soft click of a shutting door. Dr. Price's office stands in stark opposition to his waiting room. The furniture is deep brown accented by dark greens. Two bookshelves frame the plush chair the doctor sits in, and a long couch sits adjacent to his chair. His desk is up against the far wall and constantly laden with books and paper.
New to the profession, Dr. Nathaniel Price is 29 years old. He inherited the practice from his mother, but considers himself much more advanced in terms of innovative treatments. His eyes are a warm hunter green, and his hair is the same color of his furniture -- a rich, almost mahogany brown. Dr. Price's outfit of choice is a simple button-up (no tie) with either dark jeans, blank pants, or a pair of ironed khakis.
And he wants to help you grow.
If you want your student to see Dr. Price too, feel free to borrow him.
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 7:11 am
A History of Treatment It had been a few years since Fallon was last forced to sit in a doctor's office to talk about her feelings. It started when she was seven years old after multiple reports from her elementary school about "unruly behavior" and "insubordination." At first, there were parent-teacher conferences. Lots of them. But her parents did not want to medicate their child, something the school tried to push time after time. When the conferences didn't help and the medication was denied again, Fallon was moved to EH Self-Contained. (EH? A nice PC way of disguising "emotionally handicapped.") Most of the kids in Fallon's class had severe learning disabilities too, but she didn't. She wasn't the best student in the world, but she made As and Bs and still got a special cake from her mother for turning in quality report cards. Sitting in a padded room with the rest of the underage sociopaths was painful for Fallon. The focus was never on learning; it always degraded into someone throwing a tantrum and the rest of the class being sent to the other side of the room for quiet study. The Novette-Naims did not like the stories that their nine-year-old child had to share about those programs. So they took her out and sent her to private school. At this time, Fallon's father had not yet patented the technology that would fill their bank account over night, and the schooling was a great financial strain. Fallon seemed to do well -- at first. But then her old habits reemerged. She would be in the principal's office daily for throwing someone's lunch box across the room, stealing her neighbor's pencils, tugging on other girls' pigtails. Once again, Fallon was facing a self-contained learning environment, or expulsion. Her parents kept the administrators at bay by promising to enroll her in counseling outside of school, and they did. But it was another bill to add to their daughter's already pricey list of needs. Dr. Price was a nice old lady with graying hair, wrinkled hands, and a box full of toys. She'd play with Fallon for hours and ask her easy questions like, "How do you feel about this toy, Fallon? Does it make you happy? What about this one? What makes you unhappy about it?" She taught Fallon how to count backwards from ten and how to breathe deeply when her heart began to pound. She even tried to get Fallon to talk about her dreams of the stains that she couldn't get out. For a time, this, too, seemed to help. Then Fallon cut off the pigtail of Susan Lohr during arts and crafts in the sixth grade. To this day, Fallon cannot remember why she did it. She was expelled that afternoon, and Susan's parents showed up, threatening to sue. The Novette-Naims pleaded with the family, and in the end, the Lohrs agreed to not press charges. It was a tense time in the household. And then Fallon's father applied for and received the patent for a new bit of technology his firm had been working on for years. Suddenly, Fallon's bills were nothing. The bigger problem was getting her into a school -- any school. After much discussion and heated arguments over the dinner table, the Novette-Naims decided that Fallon needed a fresh start. Her father's sister was ill back in France anyway, and in a matter of weeks, the decision was made to move the entire family across the ocean. Destiny City held bad memories. Surely France would be better. This was what they thought. Fallon started in a new school, but her French was not as good as her classmates', no matter how much her father had spoken it to her as a child. She could understand them, but her own words were thought of as having a hideous Western accent. The other children pushed her around and teased her. Stress did not sit well with Fallon, never had. Again, she lashed out, getting into a fight with five other children at recess, and again, she was held accountable by the school system. They made it very clear: Fallon needed to be medicated or she needed to get out. The thought of medicating their eleven-year-old daughter was painful for the Novette-Naims. They wanted to believe that Fallon could simply overcome it. In the end, they gave up. Fallon was started on a regiment of anti-anxiety medications, including a few to treat the side effects of the other medications. Fallon's organization and diligence made taking the pills simple. Her OCD helped her withstand some of the more negative side effects too -- the weight gain, dry mouth, the jittery feelings, nausea, lightheadedness, and difficulty sleeping. She remained on the medication for a year and a half. Then one day, her mother forgot to refill her prescription. The withdrawal symptoms were nearly immediate. Suddenly, Fallon felt every compulsion come rushing back in full force. She couldn't go to school and spent the day throwing up while her mother frantically called the therapist to beg for a few pills until the pharmacy opened the next day. When she finally got the pills, Fallon stared at them for a long time. And then she flushed them down the toilet. If this was what it would feel like every time she missed the pills, then Fallon wanted nothing to do with them. She could manage her OCD just fine, right? After all, she was older, and her new therapist had been teaching her more and more activities to help diffuse her OCD-induced anxiety. For a while, she didn't tell her mother or doctor what she had done. She wanted to prove to them that she could handle it. When they found out three months later that she was off her medication, doing well in school, and handling all her compulsions in a controlled and effective manner, they came to the consensus that Fallon should try staying off the pills for a while. And so she did. It was hard, but Fallon managed. She took up crocheting. She took up gardening. She took up cleaning. She took up organizing marbles. Fallon's life was a series of coping mechanisms that she had designed herself to maintain control over what she considered to be minor distractions. Or, at least she told herself they were minor. Things continued to be fine for a couple of years, but then her parents began to argue. And argue. And argue. The added stress in the house made Fallon more stressed, and she could feel herself slipping more and more. That was when she decided to return to Destiny City for school. Living in her parents house was only threatening her control. She reasoned that separating herself from the situation until they worked it out would be the best possible answer. Plus, this Barren Pines sounded like a great place. Who wouldn't want to go there? In the wake of the trauma of Barren Pines/Organ Theft, Fallon found herself once again being forced into therapy. Given her previous record of misconduct, Crystal Academy made it a stipulation of her enrollment, and her parents refused to return to France until after her new therapist told them it was okay. She had no other option and so she returned to the office of Dr. Price with indignation set in her brow and anxiety pounding in her heart. But this wasn't her Dr. Price, the kind old lady with the toys. This was her son who had followed in his mother's footsteps -- Dr. Nathaniel Price. Fallon didn't know what to expect, but she knew that, unfortunately, there was nothing she could do to stop it now.
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Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 7:41 am
A Common Thread Fallon had been seeing Dr. Price for some time now. They had gotten over the usual psychiatrist-patient hurdles. ("How do you feel?" "I feel fine." "What do you mean by 'fine'?" "I mean fine.") Fallon was difficult, evasive, curt. Dr. Price slowly won her trust. They bickered. ("You're being evasive." "No, you're being evasive.") They tested each other. ("What does this look like to you?" "A person asking too many questions.") And now they had an understanding. ("Do you want to knit while we speak?" "Please.") Now when Fallon entered his office, Dr. Price didn’t scribble notes as she moved to rearrange the knick-knacks on his end table, or color code his bookshelf. ("Fallon, is that necessary?" "It looks better, Dr. Price, trust me.") With Dr. Price, Fallon felt more open than she had with any other psychiatrist, and this was a good thing. That afternoon, Fallon was in her usual spot: sitting on the left side of the plush green love seat adjacent to Dr. Price's low mahogany chair, legs crossed one over the other, hands fidgeting with the bundle of yarn in her lap. Usually she cross-stitched, but Dr. Price had been encouraging her to expand her horizons. To Fallon, that meant yarn. They were half-way through a session, and Fallon's shoulders were already squared from the tension. "Fallon." Dr. Price looked up at her over his reading glasses. "You seem tense." She scoffed and worried her hands over the yarn. "We're dissecting my brain. How am I supposed to feel?" It had been the usual topics: her family, her violence, her need for control. "Do you feel that we are dissecting you?" Fallon shot him a look. "Don't." Dr. Price didn't say anything. He simply folded his hands in his lap. "If you want to ask me something, then be direct. Don't fish. I hate the fishing for feelings." An unreadable smile crossed the doctor's lips. "Okay, Fallon. Let's be straight with each other. You don't think you need this, do you?" "This?" "Therapy. Me. Us talking." Fallon pursed her lips. "I've had it before." She had. Lots of it. Most enforced by her school, much like her visits with Dr. Price were now. Crystal Academy had read her disciplinary record. They were not impressed. "It didn't work. It only started to work when I took control of myself. I made the changes that made school easier. The second I made decisions, the teacher complaints stopped coming in. Me. It was me and my personal control." "Control." "Yes, control." They stared at each other, each mounting a hand on their pistol. He fired with psychological insight. She fired with knowledge of self. Her gun was loaded first: "No one knows what it is like to be me, except me. Everything is fine. Everything is okay. I know that I've had problems in the past, but I am controlling myself. I have coping mechanisms." She held up the bundle in her lap. "I have yarn." Dr. Price crossed his legs too. "You have many coping mechanisms, Fallon. Many good ones. I am not denying that." Fallon raised an eyebrow. She wanted to say something, but she could sense he hadn't finished yet. "But listen to the language you are using: I am controlling myself. Controlling yourself? Does that sound like coping?" She opened her mouth to speak, but Dr. Price kept going. "Keeping yourself on a leash is not coping, Fallon. You are not treating your disease. You are swallowing down your feelings and packing them tightly into a little bottle. And you've done well. For your age, you have masked those bottled feelings to a remarkable degree. But that is not coping. That is hiding. And one day, something will happen to make you snap, and all those feelings will come rushing out in one messy spill." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Is that what you want?" Fallon didn't know what to say. These moments only happened every so often. Most of the time, she and Dr. Price simply bantered, talked about her day, sometimes drank tea. Then, other times, like now, he would slam her with a major revelation, something intended to create a breakthrough. Her eyes were leveled on him. This was like the time he told her she needed to use squeeze toys when she felt angry. Except worse. Because he was telling her that everything she had been doing for the last several years of her life had been a waste, nothing but a waste, and that she was just as much of a ticking time bomb as she had ever been. Tears pricked her eyes. "You're telling me none of it helps, none of it does anything?" She thought of the times she didn't go to birthday parties to stay home and organize her marbles on days when her emotions were buzzing loudly in her chest. She thought of laying on her floor and picking out pieces of her own hair from the soft fibers of the carpet with a pair of tweezers until her breathing evened. She thought of biting the inside of her cheek until it bled after watching a little kid destroy an ant hill. Fallon remembered all the times she had abstained against impulses all for the sake of getting better, of being normal. And now he was telling her it was useless? Dr. Price creased his brow, smile turning downward into a concerned frown. It was a familiar look. "Fallon, you are an impressive young girl -- but you're that: a girl. No one expects you to fight this on your own. You cannot shoulder this responsibility alone." He reached for the box of Kleenex and passed it to her. Fallon pulled the box into her lap and hid her face in her hands. "I can help you. There are things we can do to help. You're already improving. Have you noticed it? You were so anxious our first few meetings, and now you can go entire sessions without getting up to rearrange something or to lint roll your clothes. Do you notice that, Fallon? That is very significant." Fallon wouldn't look at him. She hated crying, but she did it often enough, typically in the privacy of her own room. "I can help you." Fallon glanced up and shot him a glare. "I won't go on medication." "I'm not asking that. If you don't want that, I don't want that." Fallon wouldn't let it go that easily. She clutched the Kleenex box to her chest and jabbed a painted nail into her palm to punctuate her points. "It makes me someone else. It makes me someone that I don't know. And maybe that person is calm, and not violent, and not anxious, but that person is not me." The doctor opened his mouth to speak, but this time Fallon cut him off. " I can't cook." Dr. Price looked confused. "When I'm on the medication, I don't cook. Ever. I don't want to. I can't think of things to cook. I just stare at the pots and pans and feel nothing -- no inspiration, no excitement, no joy, nothing." Her crying became hysteric, and Dr. Price placed a hand on her shoulder. It wasn't a by-the-book move for a psychiatrist, but Fallon was only a few years older than his own daughter. He was human. Dr. Price let her cry. He waited until her breathing slowed, until her fingers stopped tearing the Kleenex to bits. She looked up at him through watery eyes. He let his hand slip back to his knee. "Fallon, I can teach you skills. We can work together to make OCD a part of who you are -- not what defines you. I don't want you to control yourself; I want you to be yourself. The anxiety and violence are all symptomatic of your fears over having to constantly be in control." Fallon looked back down, chin wrinkling. "Please, Fallon. You aren't alone in this. There are people who know exactly how you feel, who have gone through these same things, and felt the way that you feel." He seemed to want to comfort her again, the father in him fighting the psychiatrist, but his hands stayed at his sides. Dr. Price said again, "You're only fifteen." They sat there for a long time, her crying, him soothing. When the tears stopped, they discussed integration, of not bottling things up, of talking it out. Dr. Price gave Fallon his work cellphone and permission to call at any time. He gave her the number of a help line for people needing to just talk for her to call if he didn't answer for whatever reason. Then, as she stood to leave, Dr. Price handed Fallon her purse and held the door open for her. "Fallon, you are a strong person. Trust me -- it won't always be this hard. I promise you. It will get easier." The room changed then, and for the first time, Fallon noticed the alphabetized shelves, the plants scattered at equidistant spots around the room, the knick-knacks organized in groups of five, the magazines laid out in a perfect square on his table. Dr. Price met eyes with her. "It will get easier." When Fallon left, jacket curled tightly around her, she tried to process all the things in that room she hadn't noticed before. Dr. Price said things would get better, and with all her heart, Fallon wanted it to be true. She slipped her hand into her pocket and felt for the little stress toy hidden there. She squeezed it every three seconds the entire cab ride home.
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Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2010 7:17 am
Coping with Memories That day, Fallon reclined on one of Dr. Price's overstuffed armchairs, legs crossed neatly one over the other. Her fingers fiddled with the hard metal knots that circled the armrest. She never understood the point of them. In the past, they were used to actually bolt stretched leather down onto the frame of the chair, but nowadays, leather was sewn and stitched together with industrial machines. The little brass bolts were for show, an ugly show at that. Fallon rapped her nail against the bolt. "I don't know why you have such bad taste in furniture," she said, wiggling her nail under it. If she pulled it off, would he be mad? For a second, she contemplated doing it just to see the look on her psychiatrist's face, but thought better of it. Provoking your own psychiatrist didn't seem like the most advisable thing in the world. Dr. Price sat in his usual chair, with the same sweater vest, same pad of paper, same pen. Fallon could appreciate a man of consistency. He leaned forward. "Fallon, you are deflecting." One hand lifted the pen. "Tell me about the bad dream." Why had she even mentioned it in the first place? God, she could kick herself. Dr. Price knew something was off when she walked straight into his office and began rearranging his bookshelf. This was something she had done everyday for the first two weeks of treatment, but in recent weeks, the habit had died off all together. Fallon did not even notice that she did it (or stopped doing it, for that matter) until Dr. Price brought it up. She fixed him with a hard look. "It's just a dream, Dr. Price. I'm sorry I rearranged your books. I can put them back," she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, "even if it looks better this way." She placed one hand in her lap. Dr. Price didn't move. He was like that a lot of the time: stoic, statuesque, and when Fallon was annoyed with him, robotic. "You feel like things are slipping out of sync, Fallon. I know that because you felt compelled to rearrange my bookshelf. If you tell me about the dream, maybe I can help you put things back together." Fallon glanced off and drew her mouth into a thin line. Dr. Price bit the corner of his mouth. "You've been making excellent progress. You should be proud of that. I just want to make sure you continue to move forward. Stagnation can be just as detrimental as--" "I dreamed about Leonette." "Leonette." "From Barren Pines." "The organ ring." "Sure." A brief silence lapsed between the pair. Fallon broke first. "We were very close in our classes. We had puzzle nights on Fridays. When I woke up in the hospital, she and Andeon were the first people I asked about. Andeon was okay. Leonette was not among the survivors." She crossed her arms. "So you can imagine how painful it might be for me to have a dream about her." Fallon went back to fiddling with the chair. Dr. Price had heard all about Barren Pines, at least from what Fallon could remember. She told him about her floor mates, her friends. She drew him a diagram of the kitchen. She told him about the time Andeon fell asleep in the middle of math class and starting saying Miss Johnson's name in his sleep. Then he looked at her, sadness and seriousness in his eyes, and explained to her that it is very easy for a captor to manipulate the reality of his/her captives. He went over specific drugs that could have been used to make her hallucinate these things. He explained that her fellow patients were probably just kept in close proximity to her. He explained all of this to her, time and time again. It was one of the most frequently discussed topics in their bi-weekly sessions. And yet, Fallon argued. Sometimes she cried. Other times she threw her hands in the air and refused to discuss the matter. On a couple of occasions, she threw things, and that was when Dr. Price would try to talk to her about medication. Again, she would resist. In the past month, these talks had become less painful and more civil. Fallon was coping with the situation, even if she didn't seem to totally believe what Dr. Price said to her about it. Dr. Price leaned on one arm of his chair. "It must have been very hard to think about her again," he said. Fallon sighed. The floodgates had been opened, and she was ready to spill. So she did -- all of it from Andeon and the others ignoring her to the strange oasis surrounded by larger than life ferns to the glass marbles and the sandstorm. "I was so alone, so forgotten. And the only person I thought was there for me helped choke me." Her hands retreated to her lap. "I felt helpless." She pouted. "And I hate that." Dr. Price nodded. "Everyone hates to feel helpless. As human beings, we want to believe that we are in control of our own lives and that we have some say in what happens to us. I feel like this dream has revealed some of your fears." The pad of paper hit the table with a light thud. Dr. Price steepled his hands in front of his mouth. "Fallon -- I want you to repeat after me, okay?" "That seems ridiculous." "Humor me." Fallon hesitated, but Dr. Price pressed the issue. "If you do this, we can change the subject after. How about that?" He smiled. "So now we're bartering?" "If it works." Touching her bottom lip, Fallon tried to read Dr. Price's notes from across the table. She couldn't. "Fine," she said. Dr. Price nodded and picked up his piece of paper again. He scribbled down at few things and then placed it beside him, face-down. "Okay," he said, making eye contact. "Here we go: I am worthy of love." "...what?" That was not what Fallon expected to hear, and it read in every line of her face. "It's an exercise." Dr. Price ignored her reservation. "Say it: I am worthy of love." Fallon straightened in her chair and uncrossed her legs. "Uh... I am worthy of love?" What, exactly, was this supposed to do for her? "It isn't a question. It is a statement -- again." "I am worthy of love." The words felt stupid, and Fallon began to blush. Dr. Price kept going: "I do not need to be afraid that everyone I care about will leave me." He touched at his chin and waited. "That's a lot to remember." "Don't be smart. Just say it." The chair squeaked. "I... do not need to be afraid that everyone I care about will leave me." If the receptionist in the lobby could hear this, Fallon would be mortified. Her eyes moved to the door as if to check. Dr. Price smiled wider. "Good! Now, just one more: I can trust the people who love me." He waved a hand to encourage her to say it. Fallon closed her eyes and licked her lips. "I can trust the people who love me." To what? Not die? It was the only thing she thought would keep this feeling of fear and loss at bay. Then again, even those who hadn't died were still absent, like Andeon. Fallon wanted to believe everything that Dr. Price was saying (and that he was making her say), but it was difficult. Every day, life got a little better. Every day, Fallon felt a little happier. But it was a long climb up that mountain, and turning around to look at what had lay behind her was terrifying. For once, Fallon was happy for change, even if it was a change that crawled like a two-legged turtle. When she opened her eyes, Dr. Price was staring at her, still smiling. The robot man had disappeared, at least for the time being. "Now, Fallon," he said, propping his hand under his chin. "What did you want to talk about?" The light from the lamp cast a glare on his glasses and made him look like a villain from a comic book. Two could play at this game. Fallon uncrossed her legs and smiled. Well, smirked really. "I want," she paused for a dramatic breath, "to talk about your hideous furniture." And so they did. Dr. Price was a man of his word.
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