"What are you watching?"
"Children's programming about the importance of doing chores to help out around the house."
"Do you enjoy this? You're an adult."
"Yeah, but I have the emotional maturity of a child, because my emotional development was stunted by repeated trauma while I was growing up. So, if I watch stuff like this, it helps me feel like doing stuff around the house, because I'm really, really impressionable. Also, I have to clean my living space, it's disgusting."
"So you're watching a children's show to help you clean your home."
"And now you know why I have diminished responsibility." -- Anon Guest
Therapy for Humans is a strange realm to begin with, and then you have the peculiar group of Humans who attempt to hack their own brains. They are, after all, the first responders to the chaos inside their heads. Some know their patterns. Some just realise that they're going through some ungulate excrement and attempt to apply whatever brakes they have access to.
Others choose motivation, with varying degrees of success. Some attempts are doomed to failure. This was looking like one of them. Human Kat was watching an animated entertainment aimed at children. One evidently familiar to her as she was singing along with some of the songs under her breath.
Companion Uinn attempted to unriddle this particular inactivity. Human Kat was one of the ones with Diminished Responsibility and a greater need for assistance at personal-level minutia. She could reliably feed and dress herself, but the issue was in cleaning up any messes. Which had evidently happened since Uinn had last visited Kat's domicile. "Do you have a story to tell about this?"
"The hardy perennial battle with executive function disorder. I thought that if I could divorce cleaning activity from punishment in my head, I could get moving with cleaning a dish before you got here." That shrug - a half-aborted protective flinch - struck at Uinn's heart. "Another fail?"
"Thank you for speaking honestly," Uinn began. "Learning what works depends entirely on your honesty with yourself and with me. What we also need is a proper analysis before diagnosis and conclusion."
"Okay, yeah. Analysis first. Right."
"So. How long has this experiment been running?"
Human Kat checked her chronometer. "Ah. Uhm. Three hours?"
"Three hours is usually insufficient to alter a lifetime's worth of emotional response. Does it spark anything while you're watching it?"
"It's comforting more than non-threatening," said Kat, slipping slowly into analysis mode. "I feel safe and secure watching it, I could imagine I'm there, having the childhood I never had in reality."
Rescue Humans often retreated towards children's media for emotional security. So much so that it was being considered as part of their treatment. "That's a good thing. I'll be monitoring any progress during the following months. Since I'm here to help you now, how about we play some of the cleaning songs while we sort out the messes?"
Human Kat voluntarily paused the episode. This was progress. Normally, she would insist on waiting for the episode to finish. Uinn took care not to criticise.
"Excellent. When we're done, you can show me what's so great about this media."
The songs gave the cleaning efforts a useful rhythm and actually kept Human Kat on task instead of derailing the activity for something amusing she "just had to show" Companion Uinn. Further evidence that this was an entertainment with therapeutic value rather than a displacement distraction that could easily lead to yet another self-devaluation spiral.
They were finished way earlier than normal, leading Human Kat to exclaim, "Holy flakk, I think we have a winner on our hands."
"I think we might. Time and testing will tell." Companion Uilla helped prepare some healthier snacks and beverages. "Now, I think, we might begin with you teaching me about your favourite character."
Human Kat's inhale-of-doom[1] was just as adorable as ever.
[1] The excited and delighted inhalation of someone who is about to tell you everything they want to share about a given topic. Possibly as fast as possible because the topic is just so good, you gotta join in!
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Trudy]
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