Posted by Captain Johann Dvorak (CO) in Ready Room- Debrief

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Vora Zorell (Scientist) in Ready Room- Debrief

(snip)

Vora nodded. “When my orders were able to be kept up with, yes, they did. But unless I was giving crazy orders, this crew is too well disciplined to disobey them on a whim.” She was trying to frame it as a counter-reason to his point but in that moment her face shifted in tiny ways as she processed that maybe she had just made his point rather nicely.

“You’re right,” he said, noticing that he probably already made the point, but decided to drive it home anyway. “But even a disciplined crew has ways of expressing doubt. Usually in the form of someone trying to be the backseat driver. ‘Recommend we raise shields.’ Either that, or waffling by implicitly comparing everything you ask them to do to what they imagine I would ask them to do, maybe even suggesting you double check every order with me before you give it. But, nothing like that happened either, did it?”

Of course, they already both knew the answer to that one.

Vora shook her head. “No, nothing,” she said softly.

Leaning back on the sofa, she looked up and closed her eyes, letting her mind and body be still for a moment, if that was possible. “I wish is wasn’t so hard to let all the stuff from before dictate how I view everything now.” She opened her eyes and returned her head to a forward facing position to gaze at Johann. “And it’s not just about the missions that went badly. I had sixteen years of my life where all I ever heard about myself were terrible things that were untrue, or I wished with everything I was that they weren’t. But I’ve only had ten years of hearing anything remotely positive. The scale is still a little bit unbalanced and wanting it to balance sooner isn’t going to help. Even if I wish it were different.”

Lt. (j.g) Zorell, Sciences

“That assumes those two things should even be on the same scale,” Johann said. “That really is what your problem has always been. If you don’t mind me saying that so bluntly.”

– Johann Dvorak, CO

She smirked a bit and even found herself chuckling. “No, I don’t mind. I’m sure it’s only one of a few problems I still have. But it’s not as simple as it seems. I mean yes, the good should outweigh the bad because it’s more recent, but that’s not how the mind works, for both Humans and Tenraith, it seems. I’ve had enough therapy and I’ve read enough psychological theory that I understand intellectually what’s going on, but actually being able to do anything about it is something else entirely.”

Vora sat up and turned to face him more. “For me especially, it goes like this: the underlying fear I have is that I don’t deserve the good stuff in my life. You can tell me otherwise, but I didn’t just deal with physical and sexual abuse, Johann, I dealt with a very real and constant mental abuse. The brain is tricky. It wants to protect us so it makes up stories out of any situation we’re in: beginning, middle and end. It wants to know what the problem is and who the enemy is so that we’re prepared to fight or flee. And it makes these decisions very quickly with very limited amounts of data. My brain is exceptionally good at keeping me alive. Except that I’m not in a fight or flight situation on the Europa most of the time. But I’m so attuned to needing to know who the enemy is that in the face of having no enemy, my brain says ‘well, there’s no one else there, so it must be you. You’re the problem.’ And because I had heard that over, and over, and over again, that’s the tape running in my head that I fixate on. It’s familiar, even if it’s unhealthy. Add to that my memory recall and I can almost always find a situation where it really was my fault and I suffered the consequences accordingly. It’s basic negativity bias. It’ll keep me alive, but I end up miserable.”

It was almost amusing and despite the seriousness of the conversation, Vora was smiling slightly. “I know the theory of this all, but I like said before, it’s going to take a lot more positive memories to start to truly cancel out some of the bad ones. And while I don’t know the full solution to this problem, I do know that this”-she gestured between the them-“is helpful. I need you and probably others as well to point out when I speak to myself poorly and treat myself in ways that are not kind. Because I won’t hear myself do it and I won’t notice the actions until too late. But if people point it out when they witness it, I’ll learn what that negative tape sounds like and learn to change the words and tone. And hopefully I’ll truly learn to believe the positive stuff about myself.”

Lt. (j.g) Zorell, Sciences