Kale: Okay, Niamh, let’s do another of these “uplifting guided meditation” links my therapist sent me.
They don’t address a lot of the specific, uniquely screwed-up, events in my life . . . But it turns out, my feelings are all still general, pre-existing human emotions. Who knew, right?
Tape: Picture a time in your life when you felt loved . . .
Kale (thinking): I’m nine, and just got in trouble at school for how I reacted to a hallucination.
Granddad gives the staff such a chewing-out. Grandpa hugs me and tells me it’s not my fault. And no matter what happens, he’s there for me.
. . . and then they both got too frail and confused to even notice if I needed help and my sister had gone full-blown addict so I was caring for them all by myself and
Kale: Nnnnnope! Next track, please!
Tape: Picture the time in your life when you were happiest . . .
Kale (thinking): I’m 25, 26? It’s just me and my nibling now — but we have a stable home. And their health is the best it ever got.
I have what I think is a wonderful job. My powers are flourishing, now that I don’t have to hide them. I’m not afraid of anything anymore.
. . . and then Calyx died and it turned out my “great job” was 100% abusing people and my crush was a spy on assignment to investigate the company which was run by malicious scammers the whole time and
Kale: FFFHHHH
Therapist: No, you’re still not having unique emotions that I’ve never seen in any of my other patients. If the meditation didn’t work for you, all that means is that I likely shouldn’t recommend it to most of them, either.
Kale: Well it did not work for me.
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I don’t know a lot about guided meditation, but maybe Kale might have had a more positive experience focusing on his interactions with Thorn and Leif, rather than family?
Thorn’s mostly been positive. (Taking Kale at his word about the ‘dangerous animal’, being chill about the halucinations and dark magical boy thing save for when he was provoked, and the trust of ‘So… I want you to take care of my nibling while I aggro my sister’s in-laws and try to get them away from the building.’)
As for Leif, I don’t think Leif has managed to provoke any negative emotions save “Well… at least this one’s not married”.
then again, that’s not a lot to build on… Yet.
Yeah, the problem with what he tried to focus on is that there are string attached. However, while most people wouldn’t have the strings SO bad as Kale, thinking about when things were good can bring memories about how it ENDED being good in others as well.
And, well … while focus on Thorn might be better than family, imagine if he tried to focus on the Kolpovision party for example. It could’ve easily remind him of Dex’s assassination attempt, which, while ending relatively well, was not exactly pleasant experience.
Alternatively, it may make him horny, which while better than angry is probably not desidered outcome either.
I think it’s really interesting (if perhaps unintended) that Hermosa and Kale both had pink eyes, but Hermosa got pink prosthetics, while Kale got orange. I know neither of them process colors the same way as they used to, but the symbolism of Hermosa “getting his eyes back” while Kale has a color pretty well linked to his past has some implications if you want to dig deep down hard into something that doesn’t really matter LOL
Don’t worry about it. The fact that the difference you noticed was probably intentional on the part of the people who got them their respective prosthetic eyes, at least, subconsciously, is completely normal and not at all a comment about how we’re all kind of messed up.
Sigh.
Don’t these usually start with some breathing exercises to slow you down? And I think Kale needs one that specifically instructs him to focus on that moment and his feeling during it. XD
those breathing exercises can have issues too. 😂 trauma (plus anxiety, depression etc) can get its hooks into *anything*, and you’ve gotta adapt the meditation to not stir up more than you’re ready to process.
one of my tricks was to call up a happier moment and then scrub the actual content as fast as possible while holding onto the feeling, because the content could always be twisted. but mostly I stay away from guided meditation, they’re too much of a minefield for my brain.
PS: this comic gave me a strong sense of deja vu, has it been posted before?
I gave Patreon subscribers an advance look at this page a while back, so that’s probably what you remember!
ohhh that explains a few things, thanks 🙂
Ahahahaha. Reminds me of why I stopped reading dating advice.
Psychiatric medications are very hit-or-miss because brains are complicated. Not working on one patient has very little to imply about whether it works on other patients.
Meditation, not medication.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation
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