Date Written: December 22, 2011
Word Count: 2 141
Summary: A psychiatrist decides to bring six of her patients with her to a summer camp for a month in order to bond with them and try to help them. Sometimes, this works. Other times, however...
Warnings: Potentially touchy topics and genderbent characters
Disclaimer: Hetalia does not belong to me.
Pairings: I will try to keep this story reasonably pairing-free, however my supported pairings may eventually seep through...
Genderbent Characters: Germany, England, France, China, Spain, Canada
I'm a little uneasy about some of this chapter, but...hopefully it works?
Entry 3 – September 1, 20XX
Well, seeing as how I'm going to be using this journal to document my patients for this month, I might as well write a bit about all of them. Starting with Feliciano Vargas (it's still the first day, by the way, I'm just writing this after supper [I still have this feeling like something's going to happen…]).
Let's just say that Feli is absolutely adorable in a maid dress. Which is totally relevant to this topic. Of course.
Anyways, back on track.
He was diagnosed with schizophrenia about three months ago. So far, the only thing that keeps the 'shadows' (that's what Feli insists on calling them, for some reason) away is a few people he's especially close to. I don't exactly want to try any medication or anything, partially because I don't like to and partially because he's just so happy and bubbly all the time, something that could very easily be changed if I were to put him on medication. So, for now, I'm trying out different ways that could make the 'shadows' go away. And so far, very little has actually worked. I've also been trying to determine what could have 'triggered' the schizophrenia (if it was triggered, which I think it might have been). That's working even less.
As well as the 'shadows', Feli also tends to use what could be called 'knight's-move thinking', which could be best explained as jumping from one idea to another completely different idea that has absolutely nothing to do with the first. It gets incredibly irritating, especially when he does it in the middle of a sentence.
I also have the (dis)pleasure of having Feliciano's brother, Lovino, as another one of my patients.
Lovino and Feliciano are like night and day. Feliciano is open and happy most of the time, while Lovino is withdrawn and aggressive. Seriously, if they weren't nearly identical, I would never believe that they are actually related. I have also made a lot less progress in one year with Lovino than in just three months with Feli. It's a stretch to get Lovino to open up about anything at all, much less what could have caused the post-traumatic stress disorder he has been diagnosed with having. He can barely stand to actually come to my office for our sessions; I think Feli might have forced him to go most of the time. I honestly have no clue what I can do to help Lovino. Hopefully, this trip to camp will help. I really don't know what else to try for him, actually.
With Feliciano usually comes Monika Beilschmidt (or more like the other way around).
Monika has dissociative amnesia (I also think she could be a least slightly OCD, but she insists that she just likes a clean house). For Monika, almost her entire past up until the age of fifteen is a blank. It's as if she fell asleep one night, then woke up the next morning with no memory of anything that happened up until that point. Monika is probably one of my easiest patients to deal with, being reasonably helpful to a point and almost always readily answering my questions to the best of her ability. I have been trying hypnosis to get her to remember, but the memories never seem to stick for very long. She'll be able to remember bits and pieces during the actually hypnosis, but those memories disappear shortly after stopping the hypnosis. Sometimes, if Feli or Gilbert is in the room with us, Monika has said that there's a strong feeling of nostalgia, like she should be remembering something but can't remember what she's supposed to remember (wow that sounds horribly convoluted).
And with Monika comes one of my more…intriguing patients. Her brother, Gilbert.
Ah yes, the 'otherkin-ism'. Well, Gilbert has not actually been diagnosed with any sort of mental trouble that would warrant him seeing me. But he says it makes him feel like it's easier to make more sense about what he says he does have and he's a paying patient, so it's not like I'm going to turn him away (even if I would like to hit him over the head with a frying pan often…numerous times…anyways…). Now, I have a very limited knowledge of otherkin myself, so I will just restate a little more eloquently what Gilbert has told me.
He said that it's almost like having an animal sharing the space in your mind, with the same instincts and reactions that that animal would have. Although, Gilbert also mentioned that sometimes it's different for different people. For example, some people have moments where the animal side almost completely 'invades' their mind and the instincts of said animal become more strongly rooted in the person's mind. But Gilbert also told me that some people are sort of in a constant state of partially human-partially animal mentality (that's what he said it was like for him). He also briefly mentioned something about 'phantom limbs'.
To tell you the truth, I'm a little skeptical about the whole thing. In my mind, there's very little evidence to support this. However, I will acknowledge the fact that there could be some truth to this, just based off of what I've seen/heard about with Gilbert. He says that his 'kin-side' is a bird of some sort, possibly a canary.
Feliciano and Monika are close friends, but they have one more part to their little 'group'. Kiku Honda.
Kiku is subject to dissociative identity disorder. He has one 'host' personality and one other personality (which we have taken to calling his 'dark' personality or 'dark-side' just to distinguish between the two [also, I find the whole 'dark-side' thing to be a bit amusing]). Kiku is another case of 'patient-refuses-to-open-up-about-what-could-have-caused-disorder' (that was a lot of hyphens, sorry). He's only really speaks when spoken to first and is polite to a fault. This makes it quite difficult to determine a) how to help him and b) what could have caused the disassociation in the first place.
There's a reason why we call Kiku's alter his 'dark' side. His alter is ruthless and sadistic, and will not hesitate to harm others. If you will pardon my language for a moment, Kiku's 'dark' personality is very much a cruel and arrogant bastard. It's like he's the complete opposite of Kiku's usual polite disposition.
Honestly, he's a bit scary.
And now we have one of my most un-scary-est (yes, I do realize that's not actually a word, but just bear with me for a moment) patients, which would be Alfred Jones.
ADHD with a hero complex as large as he is tall. For Alfred, I've mainly been focusing on how to get him to improve his concentration and impulsive-ness. He has to be one of the most distracted people I know. We've made a reasonable amount of progress for the three years that Alfred has been seeing me. I do not have any significant problems with him, but I figured that the whole camp thing would be a lot of fun for him and might help some of my other patients, so I brought him along.
Unfortunately, in doing so, I forgot about the rivalry between Alfred and my next patient, Ivan Braginski.
Ivan has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. This creates quite a few problems when I bring all my patients together for something such as this camp, rivalry with Alfred not-with-standing. Ivan does, however, open up easier than many of my other patients. He has already shared quite a bit about his family and I already have a fairly good idea as to what could have started the borderline personality bit. He has two sisters and used to live house that often took in foster children. I've met both his sisters as well as the other children that had stayed in his house while he was growing up. Katyusha is nice enough, a bit emotional but still nice. Natalia, on the other hand, is…well, a bit scary. I have tried to talk Ivan into convincing her to see me, but he tends to try and stay as far away from her as possible. I think Natalia is actually the only person who can make Ivan scared, even while in one of his 'rages' (I honestly don't know what else to call them, even if Ivan is smiling the entire time…just a tad bit creepy, if you ask me).
Ivan is also a bit stalker-ish towards Chun-Yan, one of my other patients.
It took a lot of convincing to get Chun-Yan to come on this trip with me. You see, she has agoraphobia. Which is the primary reason as to why I wanted her to come with us, to get a little more used to being in open spaces and places she deems 'unsafe'. I've managed to get her to walk a little ways away from her home or my office, but never out of sight of either building. I believe she's gone farther on her own as well. Chun-Yan is somewhat open to me, but tends to talk down to me sometimes, as if she is older and knows better. It can get a tad irritating.
Which brings us to Rosa Kirkland, the next patient I will discuss.
Rosa is a pyromaniac, plain and simple. She likes fire and has set places on fire in the past. This is what I am mainly trying to help her with. However, Rosa is one of the harder patients to work with. She is cynical and usually gruff towards me, and is secretive. If anything, we have been going backwards in the progress department. I have to be a bit harsher towards Rosa than I would towards some of my other patients, but that's in order to help her with the impulse to set things on fire. I know she has the willpower to resist, she just needs to find it.
I actually have a really bad feeling about bringing Rosa to this camp. Camp. As in, out in the middle of the forest. What are the odds that something's going to end up on fire by the end of the month, hmm?
Rosa is yet another one of my patients who has found themselves an arch nemesis. For Rosa, that nemesis is Francoise Bonnefoy.
Francoise is subject to narcissistic personality disorder. Thus, making her possibly my most difficult patient to treat/help. She will show up to appointments with me and all that, but will constantly remind me of her importance and beauty. Francoise can talk for hours on end about herself and her life, which makes learning more about her, no difficulty. However, actually getting her to admit that she has a problem…Well, she's been showing up to therapy for roughly two months now, so I guess that's a start. That is my main goal for Francoise at this camp, for her to admit her issues.
I believe I mentioned in the last entry, our resident 'bad friends trio'. That would be Francoise, Gilbert, and Isabel Carriedo. They are the worst troublemakers in the history of ever (or maybe I'm just biased because I would love to give both Francoise and Gilbert a hefty whack with my frying pan…).
Isabel is a little like Ivan. Except, Isabel has bipolar disorder while Ivan has borderline personality disorder. However, they are still quite similar in the 'rages' that they can both get thrown into. With Isabel though, you can clearly tell that something has set her off. She usually is quite happy normally. There are a few things that can almost definitely spark her anger. One of which is anyone threatening her family, and sometimes Rosa. Isabel likes to use axes as weapons. And she can use them quite well. I've only started seeing Isabel for a few weeks, so I'm hoping to learn more about her and how I can help her while we are at camp.
Which brings me to my very last patient that will be accompanying us to camp. The shyest and quietest out of every single one of my patients, Marguerite Williams.
There is a reason for Marguerite's near-invisibility. She has selective mutism, which causes her to have difficulty talking to strangers or to just talk loudly in general. Meg can talk somewhat normally to me, and I've even seen her yelling at Alfred (whose her cousin, if I remember correctly) before, but usually just whispers to anyone else. This is a huge reason why I'm bringing her to camp with us, so that she can get used to people and being around/having to talk to them.
Oh wow, is it that late already? I should probably go to sleep now, big day tomorrow and all that, now that I've recorded my patients into this journal.
I guess I should kinda clear up all the characters human names... ^-^"
Feliciano - Italy Venezanio
Monika - Germany*
Kiku - Japan
Alfred - America
Rosa - England*
Francoise - France*
Ivan - Russia
Chun-Yan - China*
Lovino - Italy Romano
Isabel - Spain*
Marguerite - Canada*
Gilbert - Prussia
Elizaveta - Hungary
(* - genderbent character)