Violet: C’mon, Rowan, fight it! You’re not “broken.”
You don’t know . . .
Where I’ve been. What I’ve done . . . I can’t be fixed, I never had a chance . . .
Violet (thinking): Okay, Violet, think! The books said how to deal with a case like this. Although they didn’t warn me the person might be soaking in freezing water the whole time.
Violet: . . . Yeah, okay. I get it. You’re a total unsalvageable breaky mess! I believe you.
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Who wants to help me beat the frell out of Mr. Aspen?
While it’s mostly his fault for making Rowan susceptible, I hope we get to see the Whispering spirits get theirs. Whether it be comeuppance, or rehabilitation.
S.O.P. for dealing with The Whispers is appealing to the victim’s delusion?
When that’s the only way to get them to somebody who can help? Yes. I know that if I was being mind controlled into what amounts to a suicide attempt, I hope somebody would say whatever it takes to get me to somebody who could help.
It’s S.O.P. for people with real-world delusions, too. Or at least, it’s step one. If you try to argue about things they’re convinced are real, they’ll feel invalidated and attacked. If you play along, they feel related-to and understood, and you can coax them into the path of professional care with less of a fight.
Where can we read more about this from a professional health source?
A nursingcenter.com article on caring for patients with psychosis, talks about ways to connect with them that don’t involve “rationalizing or arguing with” the content of the delusion.
An article from Advances in Psychiatric Treatment — this one is about what happens when they’re in professional care, and even then the effective techniques are more complicated than “simply challenging paranoid thoughts.”
I know I’ve seen books that go into this in more detail, but I don’t have any titles on hand. Check your library.
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