Therapy hawker

[Cathul Thuku]

Even though the patients change, Cathul's own 9-5 job (which isn't actually a 9-5 job because patients could keep her busy all the way through the night; she sometimes pulled all-nighters) left her feel a little... empty. She feels that, if she can't develop her Force ability, she will be an empty shell in the Force. Plus learning about the Force would make her use more of her brain capacity, But before embarking on that journey, there was one special patient, even though she was not the patient she heard about on the HoloNet that was looking for a new therapist since her old one's treatment plan fell apart. Apparently that patient had a longstanding case of borderline personality disorder and wanted the prescription of meds renewed. The cancellation that led to that particular patient being able to come to Mandalore for treatment was actually signalled by the patient's family because the original patient died. As is usually the case with any patient, M-6PO signaled the patient's arrival over comm.

"The patient has arrived, witch doctor" M-6PO said over comm. "Mrs. Hawk"

"Bring the patient in"

Cathul was left wondering what would bring that visibly offworld patient to Mandalore and her clinic, which was one of the very, very few clinics with any reputation whatsoever on Mandalore. She had to take notes in case the patient needed to continue care away from Mandalore or otherwise with another therapist, or even in those few emergency cases where she would need to breach confidentiality (if the patient poses a danger or if the patient stands trial) although she wouldn't need to.

[member="Curupira Hawk"]

 

[Curupira Hawk]

Witch doctor. It sounded silly. Witches had healers. Witch doctor sounded so off. Plus, a shrink. So not a doctor but a brain doctor, yes? Curupira stepped into the office once she'd been told to entered, stepping into the dull room before her eyes wandered to the Twi'lek in sight. "Hello," she started off in her usual cheerful tone, waving a hand at the woman before she looked around and then back at the other woman. Yep, still a dull room. Like super dull. Not that she was here to access the physical area of the place. She wasn't here for herself to begin with. Curupira Hawk was fine. She had too many issues to start legit seeing a doctor, any kind of doctor, she had questionable morals and her idea of what freaked a lot of people out but that wasn't why she was here at all.

"I'm Curupira. Ruu, for sure. Most people just call me Ruu." Still cheerful. This woman didn't know her but this was generally who the redhead was, cheerful, hyper, always upbeat. She didn't want to see the alternative though, which wasn't even a risk considering it was just the two of them. No, Ruu's darker aspects happened only under special circumstances and none of them applied in this situation so really, this was the Ruu the woman was getting.

She did however have a particular problem she wanted to talk to the woman.

[member="Cathul Thuku"]

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"I'm Cathul, nice to meet you, Ruu. Now, if I may begin, is there anything that made you feel hopeless, depressed or down? What is it that troubles you?"

About 90% of the patients that consult her do consult for PTSD. Curupira was not there for PTSD, and Cathul could immediately tell that she would need to adjust her diagnosis approaches. She isn't sure as to what the problem is, but she knows that the patient has a thinly-veiled problem, at least in the Force. She suspects the problem is rather complex in nature, and she can almost instantly detect PTSD in a patient. But many patients keep their problems to themselves until too late, like when a mental breakdown occurs. Speaking of mental breakdowns, Clan Lok is puzzled as to how Cathul could be the only therapist on Mandalore with any kind of reputability - and hence how she holds together the entire mental healthcare system of Mandalore on her shoulders. Her next few questions are aimed at ascertaining what troubled Curupira.

"Also is there any particular reason why you would trust me; there are many other places in the galaxy for mental health that you could have gotten some mental healthcare... (i.e. away from Mandalore)"

Force empathy didn't mean that she would be able to ascertain why a patient would trust a particulat therapist using the Force. She is a space witch (i.e. a Force-user) and she fully embraces her Force-sensitivity. And to the many on Mandalore that were NFU warriors, Cathul was a little bit like a curio, and the Mandalore Psychology Clinic as being a circus in which she is the main attraction.

[member="Curupira Hawk"]

 

[Curupira Hawk]

Her eyes narrowed, in confusion mostly at the question. Hopeless? Depressed? Down? Ruu hadn't known hopelessness since childhood. And depression was a completely unfamiliar term to her. Down? Her issue was usually getting bored. Not really down. "I haven't been hopeless in nearly twenty years," Curupira said with a shrug. It was ancient history she didn't dwell on really. But still, being who she was, the redhead would answer all her questions. Cathul would just have to get used to that. "And I've never been depressed. Or down. I get bored easily. But that's about it." In truth, the one era of her life when she'd been hopeless was when she'd been a slave and that was a fact Curupira didn't want to ever talk about. She'd been saved from it and it was long gone from her life. It was far worse for her remembering the death of her father or her kidnapping by the Nightsisters that led to her becoming a slave.

But that wasn't why she was here, the redhead noted and focused on getting her mind on track while Cathul asked if there was a reason why she would trust her instead of going somewhere else. "Nah. Dathomir is under the protection of Mandalore. And I'm mostly there. So made sense not to make a big trip to Coruscant." She offered another shrug. "I've never seen anyone of your profession so I'm not really sure how it works. But I've been told I will in the future so figure I might come talk someone about the issue." Yep, she'd been told. Katrine said she'd taken her to doctors and shrinks while she was a child. It was how she'd received her medication. Which she now lacked.

"I'm actually here to discuss my daughter." Katrine was adamant on the fact she was done with doctors and was fine. But Ruu could tell so far she was keeping things from her. So this was really for her to get a second opinion on the issue. What it meant, in a matter of speaking. "This is going to be a long confusing story. I should probably start from the beginning." She looked to the woman for a moment before she'd start. "I have an eighteen year old daughter who one day popped up in front of me." It was pretty much how it happened, a purple haired girl suddenly jumping in front of her and going Hi, Mommy! Shocked the hell out of her even though she knew Chloe already and Ket had said daughters many months ago. "And yes. I'm twenty-four years old. I haven't given birth yet. My daughters seem to have a tendency to... fall through the black hole and pop out of nowhere, informing me I'm going to give birth to them someday..." At this point, she was mostly ranting about it and realized she should pause and let the woman adjust.

[member="Cathul Thuku"]

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"Either that is the Force foreshadowing things, or your daughters will wield the time-fold spell, which allows them to go back in time for a brief period. Often it seems that users of the time-fold spells behave like you say when the spell is in effect, most people capable of using that spell are using it in secret"

In Mandalorian space, the big destinations for therapy are Alderaan and Wayland. Presumably Curupira came to Cathul because she was a Force-sensitive; she knew it was a big deal to Force-sensitive patients. And Dathomir is, compared to Alderaan and Wayland, a rather marginal destination for that, but all the Dathomirian therapists active on the planet were Force-users. Given that about a therapist in 10,000 was Force-sensitive, if the Galactic Confederation of Psychotherapy estimates are correct, many who looked for Force-sensitive therapists contacted the Orders directly. What is for sure is that therapy was highly complicated when the Force got involved in a particular case.

"The Force works in mysterious ways although it is important to tread carefully if time-fold spells are in use. I believe that you should interact as little as possible with when that happens. Otherwise you may actually have your own unique way of doing Force-divination, over which you don't have much control"

[member="Curupira Hawk"]

 

[Curupira Hawk]

Her eyes narrowed as she listened to the woman speak of foreshadowing or her daughters learning the time-fold spell, allowing them to go back for a brief time. That made her shake her head. "What's the time-fold spell?" Curupira asked quickly, not quite following what this spell had to do with anything.

"No, they actually went through black hopes and wound up here. My younger one has been sorta living me for months." There was no spells, but actual black holes. There was nothing brief about Katrine's time with her.

The woman went on to speak of threading carefully and needing to interact as little as possible. And then Force divination. "It's a little too late for that. Katrine tends to have an uncontrollable need to share. Though she has been keeping a few things from me that might be a little more relevant to why I'm actually here."

[member="Cathul Thuku"]

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"The time-fold spell allows its caster to travel in time, either backward or forward. As for the black holes, how long did the black holes last? Did they cause actual damage to the black hole's surroundings?"

She might have "twice the [brain]power", but she was mostly a medical practitioner, at least to the eyes of Mandalorian insurers. You can ask her a whole lot of different things about psychotropic medication or PTSD and she can answer it almost instantly. She vaguely remembers something about black hole evaporation but she was never told the details. Not that she couldn't use them, just that there is only a finite amount of information she could process in a given amount of time. In fact most baat'kayshs would not actually know about astrogation hazards other than why they are such. They would not know about how to gauge the level of danger of an astrogation hazard with any level of precision: they would leave that to a navicomputer.

"I am not one to ask about the damage an intense gravity well could cause, but it seems that a black hole massive enough to last for a few months at a time would have caused damage to the area surrounding said black hole while the black hole lasts. Black holes large enough to be seen with the naked eye (or even with the Force) would concentrate the mass of a large asteroid, or even a moon, within its horizon event, with a 1cm black hole holding the mass of a planet in it: you would have been sucked in it was it an actual black hole. I won't pretend to be a black hole expert, but a black hole that caused no physical damage would evaporate quickly"

[member="Curupira Hawk"]

 

[Curupira Hawk]

Time-fold spell let someone travel in time. Curupira was actually surprised when she learned this. Nobody had mentioned this to her before, and she was a Witch. Spells were what they did. The other questions, about the black hole just made her shrug. "Not a clue. I wasn't the one that went through it."

It was when she, Curupira Hawk, an expert at jumping through topics, talking of several at once, realized they were too out of track at this point, discussing time-fold spells, black-hole duration and a Cathul continued, gravity damage. She actually stayed quiet, her lips curving to one side to the next, letting the other woman speak her piece.

"You know, I'm not here to discuss black holes," the redhead said before she looked around. "Mind if I sit down?" She really wasn't sure how this was done. "I wanna talk about my younger daughter. Or how you deal with someone who's spent most of her life on heavy medication that was given by someone like you. And why, would someone give a small kid drugs no matter what the issue is?" There it was. That was why she was here. Not some black hole thing she didn't really need to know about right now. She was more curious from someone from the profession, though to be perfectly honest, Curupira still wasn't sure if she thought it was a legit thing or not. But clearly she would in the future if she'd taken Katrine to see them.

[member="Cathul Thuku"]

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"Meds? Or as we baat'kayshs say, among ourselves, chemotherapies? Often kids that end up consuming such heavy medication as you describe have equally heavy mental health problems if they take chemos for mental health problems. And child abuse or other childhood traumas often triggers mental health problems in the kid that last well into adulthood and medications with it. Many patients of that kind can be troublesome for them to open up to you: they often tend to fall back on themselves and it can be frustrating. It can be difficult"

Often when mental health problems are diagnosed at a young age, it often seems to be that the patient will be medicated for the long haul, if prescribed meds. But since Curupira mentioned heavy medication, it is actually rather common in people with borderline personality disorders. Because you see, each med in the cocktail of medications treat one or two facets of the problem each. Cathul knows what it means to deal with an unresponsive patient: these are some of the most troublesome to cure. She herself seemed rather responsive, rather nimble mentally.

"As for the second facet of the question, how often that occurs seem to depend a little on the planet where the patient lives, and not just because of the planetary environment. If your younger daughter lives on a planet like Mandalore, where therapy is very difficult and expensive to get, I would have to say that it may be out of misplaced priorities on the therapist's part, especially if therapy is more appropriate for the patient than medication, as is the case with BPD. Often patients with BPD that are medicated are medicated with a lot of different types of medicines because each medicine acts only on one or two symptoms of BPD apiece"

Having received confirmation by the Crusader government that there was no therapist in operation on Echoy'la, however disreputable, this means she can't refer disgruntled patients there. That leaves Wayland or Alderaan. The last therapist that operated on Echoy'la left when the Primeval went under, and felt compelled to prescribe meds once the diagnosis is made so that this particular therapist can continue to take on patients and keep up with the demand. And even on Mandalore, before she arrived, that would be a problem, on which Cathul never yielded. There was one reputable therapist on Mandalore or on Concord Dawn: her. Everyone else that did therapy in the Mandalore system were more or less charlatans.

[member="Curupira Hawk"]

 

[Curupira Hawk]

Baat' what? Mandalorian was weird. And she was willing to say that out loud even though her native tongue wasn't the least bit typical in the galaxy. Languages became the least of her problems as the doctor explained that medicine could cause heavy mental health problems, causing her to blink repeatedly a few times. She felt a silent rage building him up her right now, for herself primarily. The more the woman spoke, the issues she had built up. "My daughter wasn't abused." She could say that sure of herself. No one would have abused Katrine, not her nor Ket, and no one else would have dared. "What kind problems could years of taking those meds cause?"

Nothing Curupira had seen so far made her thing anything was wrong with Katrine right now. She talked to herself, she had mood swings but then who didn't? "The meds were prescribed for...," she had to remember the exact term Katrine had told her, "Borderline personality Disorder." That was what she'd said, before saying it just meant her mood changed too much. Opening up wasn't the problem for her though. "She doesn't have a problem talking. In fact, she talks a lot. Like a lot. Like I talk a lot but she talks way more. And she forgets she's not supposed to talk about the future. So she does. She just seems to... not talk too much into detail about her conditions or how to deal with them."

She shook her head quickly as Cathul suggested Katrine was living on Mandalore. She didn't. "Right now, it's Dathomir, with me. She's lived in other places as well." She'd always mentioned living on the Lupine moon, where Curupira had never gone though she chose to leave that out of this conversation. Whereas Dathomir tended to be known, especially here when they were under the protection of Mandalore, Figaro Favoura VII was a whole other matter that had nothing to do with why she was here. It was accurate to say that her daughter lived with her now, for the most part. "She hasn't said but if I have to take a guess, I will have most likely taken her to Coruscant." It was home after all, where she'd spent the best parts of the childhood years she did remember. She always returned there, no matter what was happening. Of course, it was only a guess.

[member="Cathul Thuku"]

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"Antipsychotic agents, mood stabilizers, these are the kinds of meds your daughter take. Side effects of these meds may include: headaches, weight gain, breast discomfort due to breast engorgement. And either drowsiness, or alternatively restlessness, insomnia. Fortunately for you, these items aren't addictive the way some antidepressants are. Sudden withdrawal from antipsychotics, especially from high doses, however, can cause increased fidgeting and make the symptoms reappear within a few weeks: tapering off their use is safer to do"

Benzodiazepines, however, do cause addictions from time to time. They are antidepressants, and these tend to kick in faster than SSRIs, but they also cause similar side effects compared to mood stabilizers or antipsychotic agents. But these assume that the meds weren't some kind of witch brew and the prescribed meds were meds prescribed by shrinks across the galaxy. Cathul had a love-hate relationship with medicines.

"Do you recognize your daughter in anything I have said about the long-term side effects of medications for BPD? Do you feel it is safer to renew your daughter's prescription for meds?"

[member="Curupira Hawk"]

 

[Curupira Hawk]

Headaches, weight gain, breast discomfort, drowsiness or restlessness, insomnia. Curupira just kept staring at the woman as she listened all the possible side effects Katrine had told her she had to take for years. But the drugs weren't addictive. That hardly seemed like a thing she needed to worry about now since Katrine didn't really care for any of them. There was also fidgeting or symtoms appearing could still appear weeks later.

"She can be restless but I don't think she has any of the other issues. At least not now. It goes well with her overall personality so might jut be her." She honestly had no clue whether or not she had them before, since this was the one topic she seemed to be avoiding.

Did she feel it safeer to renew her medication? Curupira narrowed her eyes all of a sudden. "No. I developed the need to go punch my future self right in the nose," she said first before she inhaled a breath and closed her eyes. 10...9....8...7...6....5.... Curupira counted backwards in her hand, feeling like she was getting upset, with herself, of all the people in the galaxy. Katrine might have said she would be born sixty years from now but that didn't change the fact that she was still here. How could she have put her daughter on this meds? Why?

"No. I'm not putting her on the drugs anymore. She's twice as hyper than I am, twice as happy, she does have a lot of mood swings but honestly, this happens in people, right? She's always be weird to anyone around her, she has me and her father for parents, how could she be anything but?" Curupira wasn't talking to Cathul now, just processing out loud. She did focus on the woman again though. "I just want to know how do I do with her mood changes. How do I calm her down or help her? This was the important bit, what Curupira needed help with.

[member="Cathul Thuku"]

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"That one is tricky to deal with. But you mustn't be overprotective of her - oftentimes parents will attempt to shield their kids from after they have seen what damage can be wrought from incurring the patient's wrath. And ask them if she wants your intervention, should issues arise: do not intervene before they ask for it. Even they deserve respect: often BPD worsens if the patient's close ones treat them with a lack respect. But if they throw tantrums: you can either ignore them or take them to a psychiatric facility"

It is vital to understand how much people with BPD struggle emotionally - often insensitive people will lack respect towards them and many people with BPD can become controlling of them especially if their close ones got themselves hurt by the patient in the process.

[member="Curupira Hawk"]

 

[Curupira Hawk]

Tricky. Don't be overprotective. Don't shield. Ask if she wants her intervention. Don't intervene without permission. Respect her. Tantrums. Ignore or take to a... Curupira had been taking in all the things Cathul was telling her carefully, memorizing the tasks one by one, however, the moment she heard psychiatric facility. "Psychiatric facilities are out of the question. Our madness is a gift, those people would try to eradicate it out of her." It was a gift, Curupira truly believed that. Beautiful state of mind that freed them from the mundane galaxy everyone else allowed to enslave them.

"But okay, I can do all the other thing. She's pretty lucid during a shift." Ruu could only explain it as a switch. Something simply shifted in her mind and she became a different person. It could be a minute, less or more. Kat's default setting seemed to unbelievably happy and upbeat, with lots of high pitched tones and happy screams, but the other emotions would pop up completely at random. But then she'd just switched. But from what Curupira had seen, she seemed pretty aware of everything.

The part where Katrine was in fact extremely attached to her and her strong idolization of her father flew right over Ruu's head however, as she herself was pretty intense when it came to her loved ones. Ruu just assumed Kat's focus on any and all relationships was just how he was, just somewhat extreme to her own. "So, anything else I should keep an eye on?" She asked then. Cathul was pretty useful to her though she'd merely wanted to talk to her for some advice. Curupira regarded the woman as nice but someone like her, raised by someone by Seth, mated to someone like Ket... not that she believed there was anyone else in the galaxy like Ket Van-Derveld, Curupira just didn't think a shrink was all that useful to her, especially not long term.

[member="Cathul Thuku"]

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"Most people I've heard about that claimed that their own madnesses were gifts usually have some creative drives. Or combat skills. Which creativity outlets does she have access to? Whatever outlets she does have, just do not try to curtail their access to creative outlets, or to combat opportunities"

Soldiers with BPD were daunting to face, but she knew comparatively little about treating BPD itself. Sometimes a BPD can hide a PTSD and vice-versa. She was a shrink, all right, but Mandos were often reluctant to actually acknowledge the symptoms in full. How much she learned about equipment and their uses in combat by listening to patients either blame or credit their equipment all day, every day. She feels that she could handle herself in combat if she had a chance to practice a thing or two about sharpshooting or fencing. But many of the great artists that she knew had some mental health problem: schizophrenia, BPD, OCD, depending on the art they practiced. The artists with BPD were visual artists and the schizophreniacs leaned towards the written word more. OCD people were holovid makers or architects instead.

[member="Curupira Hawk"]

 

[Curupira Hawk]

Creative drives or combat skills? Cathul was curious at which creative outlets did Katrine have access to. "Why must be either or? Why can't madness be a gift in its own right?" Curupira asked in all seriousness. To her, it was. It was a freedom like no other, to be able to see the world in the eyes that most didn't. To be able to see the mundane like or the black and white of life. Curupira really didn't understand why it was either or. Both Chloe and Katrine were gifts to her as. As Katrine often said she'd said later, Chloe was more than gifted, she was a gift. Katrine was proving to be no different.

[member="Cathul Thuku"]

(Sorry, my Curupira muse has been severely on the sidelines lately.)

 

[Cathul Thuku]

"I really meant or in a logical sense, which meant that they could have it both, without necessarily actually having it both. I really talked about how people I knew with BPD used their gifts for. Madness is a gift all right, properly using it is tricky, but madness as a gift is unique to each person, and one's gift may be another's poison"

It was a gift that made "thinking outside the box" easier, or divergent thinking as it is known among the profession. Psychopaths, sociopaths may have some ideas that could work at times, sometimes "crazy enough to work" as Curupira inferred. But Cathul definitely knew more about how people used their conditions in the BPD spectrum than about how to treat them - plus not all patients would fit with a given therapist, no therapist would. Some charlatans operating on Mandalore claimed they could cure any mental sickness, but were later found to be more effective at certain areas than others. Her specialty was mostly PTSD which was by far the most common thing on Mandalore. But Mandos long held the image of the crazy shrink, especially in the Crusader capital of Echoy'la, despite the latter not even having shrinks in the first place. Yet Curupira wasn't a Mando the way Cathul was: she might be considered to be aruetii or dar'manda to Mandalorian society (or even law).

"Perhaps I'm crazy, too, just different from your daughter"

[member="Curupira Hawk"]