Annanan1

me again,
still working on this scene. i am getting there with a lot of help. thank you all.

something else that i need to know. what could i have the theripist get the kid to do to help him work out the pent up anger that he has over the event. i need something visual and practical. it is a sci-fi so VR and stuff is a possiblity but not sure what form it should take.


ta
wendy

seigfried007

Grief, depends on the therapist.

They'll have him journal is feelings, punch pillows, write stories, draw pictures, paint, etc. Maybe destroy an effigy of someone he hates or blames for said action--happens very often in child therapy.

Mostly though, they try to keep it as non-violent as possible--nothing big or loud or interesting to watch. It's supposed to soothe. So, they might bring in a puppy for animal therapy or go horseback riding or go for a walk in the park. Nothing terribly interesting--and I'm sure kids that have it much worse take higher precedent. Nothing works like a guilt trip--say, the next patient in has DIDs or was an incest survivor or watched her dog being gang raped. The MC blinks, shudders and goes on with life feeling a little better about himself. At least I'm not that lady.


The only thing I've noticed in office therapy sessions that's changed meaningfully lately is the presense of drugs and sometimes the decor. Most offices are pretty homey and clean--couple well-padded couches, padded armchairs, bookshelves, a diploma on the wall, a brass name plaque as a paperweight on the usually darker wood desk, lots of blues and greens and at least one good window (or one hell of a lot of relaxing outdoorsy scenery pictures to make up for it), a PC to the side, a coffee table, some lamps on little endtables. They try to make the setting intimate but open enough not to be claustrophobic or stuffy. Nobody likes flourescent lighting either--not if they can help it. They'll open blinds or maybe turn on a lamp to avoid that buzzing flourescent clinical feel of overhead tube flourescents.

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nacreous

play therapy would be a popular choice, but art therapy also has merits. In either case the therapist is trying to use catharsis to delve into the subconscious drives which are blocking the kid. try having him use dolls or maybe drawing pictures. This world is very precise, there are right ways to do it and wrong ways. If you really want to show you know your stuff, you should research this very interesting subject. In case you will go with art therapy, see Kubler-Ross's "On death and Dying" which deals with how cancer-patient kids draw out their feelings on their impending deaths. In case you'll go with play therapy, I dont know any specific guides, but imagine you are the therapist. Figure a way to make this kids 'spill the beans' using props and dolls which represent things from the environment in which he experienceed the trauma.
good luck, its going to be hard to do this well.
cheers.

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Annanan1

Slight problems i have is this is sci-fi setting and they are at this point marroon in space, counsellor is actually the assistant medical officer who has training that feild also, he is one of the crew man and the one who was sent to the prison to retrive the kid afterwards, also helped patch him up. so he knows pretty much what happened already. would he still make the kid recount what happened? i think the kid is also hurting himself at this point due to helpless feelings that he has and the pent up emotions.
i really want to make this feel real, that's how i write i don't want to bore people, but i need to make it seem real, which is why i am asking all these questions. wouldn't venting anger be something they would do (such as whaking VR Critters with a mallet or something like that) sure the anger would get in the way of the over healing.

thanks for everyones help on this subject.

papertears

if theres any chance there is post traumatic stress disorder, one of the new (within the last 20 years) treatments involves EMDR. this non invasive technique that requires no meds seems a bit far fetched, but has been found useful. it isn't super VR, but the more refined techniques use lights--so i could see it being something someone with access some sort of light device and knowledge of how to perform it using it.

i'm not a doctor so i really don't dare explain how it works, but you could google or wiki it. the US and i believe i read that either the UK or AUS were using it for PTSD treatments because it has very few side effects-mostly a one time headache. the similie i've heard that best describes how EMDR is assumed to work is that when something stressful happens, the brain gets stuck, like the needle on a record might get stuck in the groove. this grove is the stressful event and any kind of sensual event can trigger the stickiness. EMDR somehow stops whatever sensual event (even if its not related to vision) triggers the needle to get stuck in that groove.

edit: after re-reading your last post, i was thinking about some of the YA sci-fi i've read lately. one of the books was about a young man who discovered his ability to teleport sort of by accident after pattern abuse by his father and then some other folks.

i thought that was a really creative use of both sci-fi and an escape mechanism, because like something you mentioned--you want to avoid boring your readers. i think you're on to something here, by offering the opportunity for this kid to make use of his situation/technology to get some healing. because this is sci-fi, and there is so little we know about the brain and the potential we have for treating mental illness with VR or other technology, it might not hurt to look into this EMDR treatment. i'm not sure if your book is in the future or what makes it sci-fi. perhaps though, for some reason, there could exist one day or some where else a more refined VR version of EMDR that does help not only kids but anyone deal with some of the issues your character is facing. the people that don't like it only have one argument against it, and that is the people that don't respond to it--its not like meds or surgeries that have side effects and are extremely expensive. i wouldn't see it as such a stretch either because its being used now--having patients follow the lights on specially made light boxes. in the past they had them follow a metal rod with a light on top--which was harder to concentrate on. so upgrading the light box to a more fancy technology, but something that is still available in your situation seems feasible. just an idea.

as for help with treating self-injury, a lot of this was covered in post #2 with the punching of pillows. one new thing that i've seen is to try to replace the sensation from the injury with a less self-degrading one--for instance my therapist had me hold an ice cube for as long as possible, when i would get the urge to cut. this isn't anything VR but it was part of a long list of things that helped. treating self-injury is hard because people do it for so many reasons and respond so differently. another way they treated me that helped was by having me pick up a red marker and write the feelings i felt over the areas i normally cut, or even simulate the lines while sticking my foot in a bucket of ice (only if the areas were healed of course, this would risk infection if there were wounds or scabs.) yeah this seems out there, but i really wanted to stop cutting and it helped somehow.

my last suggestion is that if there was some scenario that set off negative feelings, they'd have me write/draw/describe a better ending to it--one that left me feeling safer. i didn't get therapy when i was a kid, but some of it was from events from my childhood, and my therapist said to me something about 'we still treat that very similar' as we do kids because you were so young.

i was once beaten up by a gang of kids older than me from the neighborhood at about age 10. i tried to fight back but i was smaller and outnumbered. some of the guys pissed on me for being so weak. that really broke something inside of me because i pushed it away for many years. i didn't even remember it until i read my journal entry about it and had to deal with it.

in therapy, i drew pictures and i couldn't speak about it, but with the help of my counselor i was able to change the pictures to a different ending. i was 27, and i eventually drew pictures of stick figures that couldn't attack me because of a winged creature protecting me. this ended years of nightmares for me too. if you wanted to put more technology into it, perhaps give the kid some wicked version of a 3-d rendering graphics kit? i can't remember what the name of this therapy is...something replacement. its amazingly effective, and they use for kids that have bad dreams.

hope some of this helps.

Annanan1

thanks for all your effort i think some of these are great ideas and will help me and my charecter a lot. thank you

Mike C

Considered Hypnotherapy?

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Annanan1

how would that work then?

Annanan1

please can you tell me how that would work?

lilacstarflower

role play?

get the character to act out how he wanted the event to happen - could end up with him knocking out the therapist, destroying the room, starting a fire or whatever you want to happen

Probably writing a journal would be the way to release tension - its seen as the safe way because no one actually get physically hurt.

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Mike C

It's fiction.

You're a writer.

It works how you want it to work.

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