Trying to Restructure My Character (Sean)

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh's first holiday bash had been spent high on pain killers and utterly miserable. But then subsequent holiday parties had improved, and he had thought that 2010 was an anomaly.

But then 2015 had happened.

Josh had, briefly in 2013 and 2014, hoped to begin a career in politics. He'd been disappointed at being roundly defeated in both elections despite having so many connections and running on a platform that played well in Vermont.

But he could now see that his ambitions had been flawed. After all, how could he expect to be a leader when he panicked under pressure? And pressure that was, at it's core, nothing. There had been nothing to fear and he'd still been paralyzed.

He had seen other people react just as poorly, but then others (Sean, for instance) had coped with the fear and helped. And that was what he should have done.

And so after weeks of mulling this over he had finally decided to broach the topic over dinner.

"So, ahhhhh, I've been thinking...."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

((OOC: This is backdated to early/mid-January.))


Every facet of this most recent Holiday Bash had been an unmitigated disaster, and Sean had to concede that it now, officially, topped the list of worst Bashes in the history of Pilot Ridge. It was worse than the several where he had been unable to drink, since those had only been frustrating for him rather than for everyone else in attendance. It was worse than the Bash in 2010 when Josh had been suffering from the aftereffects of his assault and there had been people from M.S.A.D. present (whom he had later recognized) sniffing around as though they weren’t a supremacist group with plans for violent domination on the horizon.

Even that Bash hadn’t required evacuation by every last emergency services unit in Pilot Ridge. That Bash didn’t involve trampling.

That Bash hadn’t resulted in Hammel being placed on precautionary alert, and not merely because Hammel had already been on alert since July 2010. Hammel was keeping an eye on PUSE, which was all that could be done until someone made a first move.

The telepath had served both his partner and himself a chicken breast, some couscous, and a healthy portion of broccoli, before joining the other man at the dining room table. He looked up at Josh’s opening gambit, waiting patiently for him to elaborate on whatever it was that had been on his mind.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh, like many other people, found it difficult to admit when he needed help with something. He found it particularly difficult to admit when he needed help with changing his own behavior. Just because Sean had successfully helped him quit smoking (and helped him adopt a healthier lifestyle all around) didn't make this request for help any easier.

And, further, asking for help made him feel weak. This was the sort of thing he should have been able to change on his own. Oh, he knew intellectually that Sean would disagree with his assessment there! But that didn't stop the worry from creeping in, worry that his partner would judge him for needing this.

Which was ridiculous; this was Dr. Sean Neville, champion of mental health care. He wouldn't judge. The fact that Josh worried about it was, perhaps, further proof that he really needed this help more than he wanted to admit.

"I....ahhhhh....." Suddenly the words didn't want to form. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Ahhhhhh I think I....ahhhh....I might want.....ahhh...maybe I should..."

No. That wasn't working either. He decided to begin from a different angle.

"Ahh, you know, I completely embarrassed myself at the bash and ahhh. It made me realize, if I want to be able to help people when I'm not at work, ahhh, well, maybe I should...deal with my ahhh....panicking. You know, so that I can rise to the occasion when I need to."

There. That didn't sound too terrible, did it?

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean was unlike many other people, because, all factors equal, he wanted to be able to ask for help when he needed it. That he didn’t had less to do with concern about feeling weak, or about appearing weak in the eyes of others, than it did with prioritizing other people’s needs and comforts above his own, such that he didn’t want to burden them with his issues – albeit ones he acknowledged as completely valid. This led to certain people accusing him of having a martyr complex.

He would never judge other people for seeking help; he wanted other people to get the help they needed. He had devoted his entire career to the task of trying to destigmatize mental health so that people felt as comfortable addressing psychological problems as they would a broken bone or chronic pain.

If what Josh was tiptoeing around saying was what the psychiatrist thought his partner was trying to say, then he supported him wholeheartedly; he had wanted Josh to seek out some assistance for his anxiety for years now. From the moment of their fight prior to their reconciliation, in fact, as an acute desire, although he had swallowed that because their reconciliation was so fragile at first.

However, he wanted to make one thing plain to the other man, and so he said, “You didn’t embarrass yourself at the Bash. We were all under the influence of a meta-human ability that makes people panic by design.”

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh shook his head, twisting noodles around his fork idly. "And yet some people coped with it, and kept a level head so that they could help."

For instance, Sean. Of course, he knew he shouldn't compare himself to his partner, because the telepath was one of those people with better coping skills than essentially anyone else Josh had ever met.

"What if I had been elected? How pathetic would that be, the person who promised to help cowering uselessly."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean shook his head as well. “Please don’t call yourself pathetic; you aren’t, and you’ve never been that.”

Of course, his partner’s self-recrimination far beyond what the underlying situation warranted illustrated why he would benefit from therapy. The telepath could only support that decision, because he knew the depths of his partner’s anxiety and wanted him to have an avenue to work on it, and because, unlike most people in their society, he advocated prophylactic mental health treatment. He thought people would benefit from having an annual meeting with a mental health professional, the same way they had an annual physical exam (even though far too many skipped that as well), an assessment and check in to make sure that nothing had arisen, and, if it did, to nip it in the bud or help deal with it in a manageable way, to prevent a more acute psychological development.

He had successfully sold a total of two other people on this idea in his thirty-three years of practicing medicine.

Sean reached for his water glass and sipped it. “Did you notice who coped with it better than most everyone else?” He didn’t deny that some people had coped with it better than others, but it went beyond assigning personal weaknesses and strengths, and he wanted to make that plain to the other man.

[Joshua Bernstein]

"You, of course," Josh admitted. "How could I not have noticed?"

Even paralyzed with anxiety he had noticed, because (and he felt a surge of guilt over this realization) he relied on Sean coping to help him when he couldn't.

"And that's another thing! I can't lean on you all the time. That's hardly fair to you."

No matter how well Sean coped, what if he needed someone to lean on? And instead he had to deal with a spouse who couldn't handle even mild stress.

"This needs to change."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

“Me,” Sean repeated, because he couldn’t deny that. However, he didn’t believe that he simply had magnificent coping skills that made him better than other people or made him more valuable; he had learned. “Doctors, firefighters, and emergency personnel – people who are trained to keep calm under pressure.”

Even with that, Rhea had managed to suffer a head injury and then pass out so that she required evacuation to Maddock.

“You can’t compare us,” he told his partner gently, as he set down his water glass and reached across the table with his now-free hand. “We’re different, but that’s not a value judgment. There’s nothing wrong with leaning on your spouse.” The telepath did it himself, even if Josh might not notice when he did so, or might not realize it as readily.

As always, he thought that Josh sold himself short, but, that, too, was the result of his anxiety and self-recrimination. For all of the reassurance he gave to his partner because he didn’t want the other man to absorb harmful messages about himself – or worse, to think that Sean agreed with those beliefs – he thought that Josh would benefit from therapy, and he wanted him to get it, even if he had needed to reach the point of seeking it out himself.

“We can find you a therapist,” he offered.

[Joshua Bernstein]

"Do you think that would help?" Josh asked, although he didn't truthfully expect Sean to suggest something he didn't believe had a chance of success. True, it had only been through a form of therapy with Sean that had helped him give up cigarettes, and it had only been through a form of therapy with Sean that had helped him cope with the after effects of his assault.

But the success of those didn't mean that this would succeed. He wasn't even sure if he could learn to cope with his anxiety. The thought of living without constant self-doubt and worry and judgment seemed too far out of the realm of possibility, a mere fairy tale.

And, further, Sean's suggestion meant that for the first time ever he would be seeking help from someone else. His past therapy had been with Sean, which meant that it was easier for him to pretend that it wasn't therapy at all. It was just his partner helping him. Seeking help from someone else was different.

But he did want to try, and so if Sean thought therapy was the best idea he would certainly give it a go.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Although Josh didn’t take his hand, Sean didn’t withdraw it, should his partner change his mind, or lest the other man interpret that as a sign of rejection.

Because he didn’t shield at home, because they were seated so close to one another, and because their minds were in sync when they were together, the telepath easily followed his partner’s train of thought. If Josh hadn’t wanted to see a therapist, then had he been speaking merely in vague statements about wanting to change but not knowing what avenues to try? Was he seeking permission from the psychiatrist to seek out professional help? Was he using Sean as a sounding board?

The telepath didn’t want to probe, and so he didn’t, instead allowing this to flow as a more limited, “natural” (by the standard of non-telepaths) conversation.

“I think therapy can help with a lot,” he said, and he couldn’t hold his job if he didn’t believe that. He advocated talk therapy for everyone, and he believed that CBT and other more focused forms of therapy could work for certain issues, although not as the cure-all that it and DBT had been touted in recent times. He would need to help his partner find someone adequate. “It’s worked when we’ve done it together.”

Then, he added as an explanation, “And while I’d be happy to do this with you if that’s what you wanted, I think you’d benefit from being able to talk to a third party about me, instead of having to hold back because you happen to be speaking with me.”

[Joshua Bernstein]

"Why would I want to talk about you?" Josh asked, somewhat aghast. "You're not the reason I feel afraid so often. If anything you keep me sane."

He chuckled weakly.

"But I don't know. Do you think, you know, this is something I should see a therapist over? Maybe I should try to fix it on my own."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean neither smiled nor chuckled; his expression was gentle and encouraging, but he found no humor, and felt no awkwardness, in discussing this. This was his area of expertise. “I don’t think that I cause your anxiety,” he assured his partner, since he had no reason to believe that. For all of their earlier codependency, they had a healthier dynamic now than they had when they were in school. “But, even earlier tonight, you compared yourself with me, and I think that being able to speak to a more objective person about dynamics is helpful. I think it’s better not worrying about holding back because what if saying something might inadvertently hurt your therapist’s feelings?”

Truthfully, Sean wouldn’t be hurt by something Josh told him in confidence during a therapy session, just as he had listened patiently to his partner four years ago when helping him through the aftermath of his assault, when everything had become too overwhelming. At the same time, he didn’t want Josh to feel constrained, and he wanted Josh to have a sense of privacy that might be lacking otherwise due to the fact that he lived with a telepath.

Finally, he withdrew his hand from the table and picked up his fork again. “This may sound blunt, but how would you go about trying to fix this on your own?”

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh dropped his fork onto his plate and drew his hands down into his lap.

"I...I don't know. I thought maybe you would know how to go about that."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Josh withdrawing had not been Sean’s goal in asking the question. Instead, he had wanted to make the point that this was not something that one could simply overcome on one’s own, just as one couldn’t simply overcome a physical health problem, or a learning disability, or all manner of other life afflictions that required professional assistance.

“Anxiety is as real as an ulcer,” he told his partner, and his voice contained nothing but sympathetic gentleness. “If you have an ulcer, you go to a doctor. If you have anxiety, you’re best off going to a therapist.”

Although the telepath was well-aware of all the stigma facing mental health concerns, he maintained a simple view of the underlying issues. Mental health issues were real and required treatment, and so people should seek treatment with as few barriers to receiving it as possible. Thankfully, the ACA had contained a clause about mental health parity, and they would be able to find someone on Josh’s insurance plan.

He ate a forkful of couscous and swallowed before he continued, “If it was as easy as flicking a light switch, we would have done it already. And, even with everything I can do...you wouldn’t want that.”

[Joshua Bernstein]

"Maybe not," Josh conceded, picking up his fork again and resuming twisting pasta around the prongs. "But I was hoping there would be something easier than therapy."

But who, when faced with the daunting prospect of repeated doctor visits, wouldn't hope for a simpler solution?

"Do you know anyone?"

Since Sean worked in the mental health field he had more connections there than Josh, so his partner would have a better idea of where to begin looking.