Saw my shrink. This dude spends a lot of time just talking to me without charging more for time slots. It’s either because my gum buddy and him are friends and I’m now a little more than an acquaintance with another friend of his who is a pretty high profile shrink around here because I did a project for a business associate without know he was going to join up as part of it.
The latter has a fucking photographic memory. I only knew him because we’d play mahjong together on night duty in the military and he joined in a couple of times. I spoke to him once and brought something about my brother up. When I met him again 2 years ago, the fucker not only called me by my name writton on my informal uniform tag, which puts my surname and “Chinese name” first and my English name last. And he asked fucking details about my brother that I HAD FORGOTTEN. FUCK lol. That was over 20 years ago. I dunno if I wrote it here, but I’ve said before. Where I live, if you were able to attain a high-level education during his era, you are either a rich kid or really fucking smart.
Or maybe he just likes the sound of his own voice since he’s doing most of the talking and it’s not about psychiatry or psychology and people IRL generally think I’m a good listener…
Shrinks whom I brought a SCHIZOPHRENIC relative to (2 of them here, 2 in China) for consultation did less talking and more medication prescribing after the first consultation. The PUBLIC mental health facilities in 2nd tier cities up TILL TODAY look like those horror movies where dumbass kids decide to walk into old, abandoned asylums where bad shit happened in like the 60s or so.
Which is interesting because way back when I was in the military - I won’t call myself a “vet” since I have never engaged in active combat other than raiding a training facility and the only fear was prior to the raid since we didn’t know what to expect but it was pretty high. This was post-911 and the fucking terrorist cells in this region were training CHILDREN in facilities set up in the jungles so we expected some real shit to go down and the added complexity was how to not get any kid killed.
The other officers had never done shit like this. Have you watched Black Hawk Down? You saw how the dudes had to run back to base camp because the dipshits didn’t want to take them on board the vehicles or something like that due to “protocol”? That would be the same thing for the senior officers with all the “deployment badges”. They basically went to the countries and did nothing. Protocol, man. Protocol.
However, during the raid, the fucking cowards who were holding weapons just dropped them and everyone HID BEHIND THE CHILDREN and surrendered without even putting up a fight. No one even tried to run.
We kicked the living shit out of them and while this was mostly due to the anticipatory fear the fuckers cost us, which was heightened by the strategy which involved not getting kids killed. No one there had been in actual combat. How the fuck would we able to engage in combat if the fucker put up a fight AND not get any kid killed?
So, anyway, the shrink was basically doing most of the talking about his life and shit while passively implying that he predicted how all my progress would occur. This used to annoy me, so I asked him stuff like, “Ok, I went to online support groups. How do you think that worked out?”.
The dude told me that I would have stopped because I’m not the kind of person who purposefully finds other people in the same predicament and we all spend time “licking each others’ wounds”.
THESE ARE HIS WORDS, NOT MINE.
I do not think in that way. My thought process, even in my shittiest of moments unless I go into a state of automatism, is based on evaluation of results, not judgement. Unless you fucking shadow box next to me. That’s when I judge you as a dim-witted dipshit.
And then he said I would take control of the group and give serious advice to some fucker. Which I DID. Some kid had some problem we’d write off as mundane.
I told him something like: “Pain is pain. The trigger or severity of the situation doesn’t matter. How badly you feel is. It only matters when finding an appropriate solution, which is about problem solving, not judgement. So do not add on shame to the shit you’re feeling because you think the triggers are too trivial in nature.”.
Which is why I brought up the military stuff. Because this kid would be one of those fellows who just stand still and go into a short “trance” out of fear or whatever it is after pulling the pin from a grenade and end up forgetting he needs to throw it until everyone yells loud enough. You put him in the situation I described, he would have shat is pants right at the start of the operation. Seen quite a few during my earlier years of reservist duties since that was a period where all the fucking multinational terrorist cells were fucking shit up. The trigger was like akin to breaking down when you have a single hair out of place compared to what I’ve been through lol. And then the bigass tsunami happened and the Abu Sayaf and Tamil Tigers literally got washed off the map lol.
You see why I still believe in God?
So, yeah, I learned that this fucker actually does know that psychological shit although he mostly dispenses medication. Lesson learned. Shrinks with experience know more shit than what we think.
