Posted by Captain Eela Dasca (Lt. Governor) in Starfleet Complex- Rewriting Narratives

Posted by Lieutenant Tandra Mika (Counselor) in Starfleet Complex- Rewriting Narratives

Posted by Captain Eela Dasca (Lt. Governor) in Starfleet Complex- Rewriting Narratives
Posted by… suppressed (4) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

Eela took a moment to gather her thoughts. “I’m a psychologist and trained therapist, and as a Haliian I’m an empath and touch telepath, so I’ve always been very self-aware and adept at separating my own thoughts and feelings from those of others. And being a starship captain I had a lot of confidence in my abilities. I was very good at it.” She paused and carefully blew the breath out through her lips. “But… ever since my accident, the brain injury had me learning emotional self-control all over again. I lost the ability to so easily decipher the things I picked up from others.” She held her hands tightly in her lap and a frown increasingly formed as she spoke. “Cory and I argued… a lot. I had a lot of difficulty containing my anger and it would explode in very unhelpful ways he didn’t have the ability to handle well. And we knew each other so well that we knew exactly how to say the right words to cut deeply. I was not innocent in any of this for sure, but… I realized in talking with my friend that there are thoughts in my head that seem unlike myself. Not mine. And it wasn’t until I sat down with her and she made me write them all out that I realized that not all of them, but most of them were things Cory had said to me during our arguments. Or maybe they were pithy throw away comments that stuck with me. I’ve internalized them. They’ve become the framework for who I see myself now. And they are not kind. And it bothers me because it paints the last years of our marriage in a different and even more negative light.” The words sat on her tongue but she couldn’t bring herself to say them.

~Eela Dasca. Lt. Gov.

Oh. Oops. Mika wouldn’t have offered a hand if she’d known that. That was okay though. She knew for next time. She had some experience working with empaths, mostly Betazoids. “I understand it can be difficult when you have trouble telling your own emotions and thoughts from those of others. How has it been going relearning that ability?”

“Frustrating,” Eela said with a bitter laugh. “I did a lot of work in those months after waking up from the coma processing what had happened to me, and trying to figure out the different ways my brain had re-wired itself to compensate for the injury. But I think the part that is hardest is that it makes me hesitant to connect with others now. Which is not me, not how I’ve ever been. I need connection, and I am letting it happen, but thee’s a part of me that distrusts it, especially now that I am a public figure that a lot of people have expectations of and want something from.”

“As a doctor, I always inform patients that even minor injuries often have longer term effects on our bodies. So when there is a major injury, it is that, but multiplied. And that can be hard to cope with. As a counselor I find it all the more important to remind patients of that.”

Add a spinal injury and it had certainly been a interesting compounding of variables. That whole first year had been a thousand tiny hurts masked within the obvious big ticket ones that everyone else could see.

“When you find yourself distrusting these connections, ask yourself why. What about it is untrustworthy? Is there a reason for it? Or is it something unfounded your mind is telling you? We don’t want to be too trusting, especially in a position such as yours, but equally, being too distrustful is isolating and unhealthy.”

Eela just nodded slowly. The truth was that while she was wary of other people at times, it wasn’t them she distrusted.

“It’s very easy to internalize the things we hear, especially if we hear them more than once.” Mika smiled politely. “Even if they weren’t truly meant when they were said. It takes practice and conscious effort to change those ideas about ourselves. Positive self talk.” She had yet to ask about the divorce, she did not want to start there. It might also come out on its own while they spoke about the other things Eela had brought up. “If you are comfortable answering, what is the message that sticks with you the most?”

~ Lt Mika, CNS

Strangely, the one that floated to the surface of her mind wasn’t even on the list that Sharah had her write, though she could see aspects of it in the others. “That I’m heartless. Cruel. And because I get scared of my unpredictable reactions, it makes me hesitant to connect, to show how I feel about things, and people. I know it’s not true because me life since I set foot on this planet has demonstrated that it’s a false belief. Hell, when I made the list of thoughts, my friend made me write whether they were tru or not and I took it a step farther and reframed them with what I know to be true. But I can’t help but hear his words in my head, even now.” That last terrible fight, the one where Cory revealed himself to be a stranger to her after all these years. How had she missed it? How had things turned so badly so fast. It made her doubt everything.

~Eela Dasca, Lt. Gov.

Mika was beginning to notice a pattern with connections, a want or need to connect, but an inability to do so or a distrustfulness of it. She noted it for later, perhaps something worth exploring where it came from, what made her feel that way. “You know it isn’t true, you have evidence to the contrary, but it can be hard to deprogram these harmful thoughts from our minds. I would again, come back to the idea of positive self talk. To remind yourself when those kinds on ideas come up that it is not true. Remind yourself what qualities you would use to describe yourself and what actions remind you that you do possess those qualities.”

~ Lt Mika, CNS

Again, Dasca nodded, though her gaze drifted off to the side as she rubbed the pad of her right thumb in circles in her left palm. For several moments, she was silent as she tried to find the right words- ever elusive that often were. “It’s one thing to write a list, look at it from a factual perspective. It’s quite another to feel it’s true. I think about that list I wrote, those beliefs I said were untrue. But that’s not correct. They are mostly untrue, but like anything that we react strongly true, it’s because there is a shred of truth to them. I think perhaps the reason I can’t just toss them aside is that I’m still wrestling with what is the truth and what is the falsehood. Simple repetition isn’t going to help with that.”

~Eela Dasca, Lt. Gov.

Mika allowed the silence to persist, waiting patiently for Eela to continue. Allowing people to find their own words was important, and so was letting them think and reflect on their own. A silence was not typically a bad thing. She nodded again. All good lies had an ounce of truth, that was what made them believable. And when those lies were about yourself, that could make them particularly difficult to manage. “You’re right, that does make it harder. But I have to say, we all have these negative qualities in some aspect or quantity. One could come up with endless half truths about any one of us and make us sound awful. It’s how we choose to act on them, or not act on them, that makes us who we are.”

~ Lt Mika, CNS

Oh and how she had acted! Right out the door, blowing up what was left of her marriage, though she new she was right that there hadn’t been anything left to save. But that action fed into one of those other beliefs she had been accused of by both Cory and her son. They all fell into place like players in a stage production reciting lines. She turned her head, pressing the back of her fingers against her mouth and pushing her hand into the crook of her shoulder. Her chest felt tight and Eela had to force herself to breathe.

“I ran away. I fled. To protect myself. Or that’s what I tell myself,” she said quietly. “But the truth is that Cory issued me an ultimatum and gave him the proverbial middle finger and did exactly what he told me not to.”

~Eela Dasca, Lt. Gov.

“Let’s take a moment and breathe.” Mika had been trained in body language and intonation and that was a stressed look if ever she saw one.

After a few moments, she gave Dasca an even, level look. “And what exactly drove you to do that, to flee the situation? You cannot judge yourself based on actions taken in extenuating circumstances. Even if the rest of your marriage was perfectly fine and healthy, all that fighting in those final years or months, or however long it was, wears on you.” She sat back and shook her head, “I am not saying you were blameless, I can’t comment on that without more context, but you cannot judge yourself on a single action.”

~ Mika, CNS