Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Janna Kingston (Counsellor) in Counseling Suite - Ensign Astor Check-In

Posted by Ensign Noah Astor (Doctor) in Counseling Suite - Ensign Astor Check-In

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Janna Kingston (Counsellor) in Counseling Suite - Ensign Astor Check-In
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snips)

Kingston nodded. He had a reasonable and measured view on the situation and that boded well for how he might handle whatever the Athena might throw at him. “Is there anything that you want to discuss specifically, or have questions about?”

~Janna Kingston, CNS

Noah pondered for a brief moment whether he wanted to open up to the counselor any more. He was very quiet and often described as shy but he wasn’t sure that was even something to talk to the counselor about. At any rate, he had resolved to try and get over that and make friends here. Otherwise, it was going to be a long mission if he spent all of his free time in his quarters reading.

“Well,” he ventured tentatively, “I guess if there was one thing that I would want to work on about myself, it would be how to get over being so shy. I spent a lot of time in the Academy on my own except for class and clinicals. I don’t really want to be the quiet guy in the corner anymore. Its not really like I get anxious about it, if people come up to me I can hold a decent conversation, its just getting up the courage to initiate conversations myself. I don’t know if that makes sense....”

-Ensign Astor, Medical

She smiled. “It makes perfect sense. And that is definitely something we can work on together. You’d be surprised how often it’s an issue, but the good thing is that you’re new here, so you don’t come with any social reputation. We can work out ways to help you in this area and you can start to use them as you get settled.”

“Now, in those situations where you might be inclined to start a conversation, what happens in your body and your mind?” Kingston asked.

~Janna Kingston, CNS

Noah settled back into the chair to think about the counselor’s question. He wasn’t sure he had ever really thought hard about naming what he felt during those times. Was it fear or dread? Anxiety perhaps? None of those seemed quite right. Fear was certainly something he had felt before, many times in his life, dread less often. He worried that he would say the wrong thing and people would think less of him or not find him very interesting.

“I guess… I worry that I will make a fool of myself and so it seems safer just to wait for people to come to me rather than try to initiate things.”

-Ensign Astor, Medical

Janna nodded and rose to her feet. Moving over to her desk, she grabbed a PaDD and returned to her seat, hading Noah the PaDD. “Okay, so a simple exercise… I want you to write down a list of all the worst case scenarios that can happen in a social situation. Nothing off limits. Doesn’t even have to make sense. And speak them aloud to me as you write them down.”

~Janna Kingston, CNS

Noah took the PaDD from the counselor and thought for a second. Nothing off limits and doesn’t have to make sense, so best not to overthink it.

“Ok…,” he began to write as he spoke, “Well… I could trip and fall down while I’m walking up to someone, I could have something stuck in my teeth, there could be an inside joke that I interrupt and not know what’s going on, my uniform could split open, I could open my mouth to speak and something like a squeak or no words could come out, I could misread the pips on someone’s uniform and insult a senior officer, there could be a missed cultural cue and I insult a whole race of people or say something stupid, or there could even be a bodily fluid malfunction: spit my greeting or the ship happens to randomly lose gravity in that section, I get knocked off balance and lose bladder control.”

Glancing down at the list he had created he realized that some of those things were quite ridiculous, but once he had started thinking about horrible things they had just kept coming, like word vomit…

“Oh one more, I could have a bad reaction to food being served and have to run off to vomit… or worse do it in front of them.”

-Ensign Astor, Medical