A/N: Thanks very much to Sharpe, AsahixMe, Black Dragon Master, Doctor Mau, IrishDreamer4, Tertius711, Guest, Raider, FireLordAziz, StevenBodner, devilfiredog18, a couple more Guests, and Robert for your feedback!
59. Wash away the thoughts inside that keep my mind away from you
"Come in, Mako. What brings you here today?"
He walks inside Erin's office with some uncertainty. They have never, ever discussed this before, but it's been weighing more and more heavily on his mind recently and he knows he needs to deal with it.
"I need to talk about…my parents' deaths."
Erin's expression barely twitches. "Ah. I was wondering when this would come up."
He narrows his eyes in suspicion. "Do you already know the story?"
"No, I don't. But from the way you always behaved whenever it was mentioned, I know there is a story." Erin scoffs at his incredulity. "Mako, give me some credit. It is my literal job to read people."
"If you knew, why didn't you ever bring it up before?" They've discussed practically everything else — even things he'd been initially reluctant to talk about or completely unaware of.
"You weren't ready," Erin states calmly. "A good mind healer knows when to push, and when to let things be. Everything I pushed you on, you were ready to confront, even if you needed some help doing it. But whenever I so much as hinted about this matter, you shut down. That told me it wasn't time to address it yet.
"Any child would have some trauma from losing their parents so young; but you've clearly had a great deal more than that —so whatever the story is, it is not a pleasant one."
"No, it's not." He rests his elbows on his thighs and carefully tells her the same story he told Korra twelve hours ago, though more coherently. After already being through it once, it is a little easier to get through it again.
Erin is quiet when he finishes, her hands resting lightly on her clipboard. That surprises him; he'd thought she would be scribbling furiously throughout his tale, but she's only jotted down a few notes.
"Mako, have you ever forgiven yourself for being a firebender?"
He frowns. "I guess not. I mean, logically I know that what I did for the triad wasn't because I was a bad person, but it still haunts me."
"That's not what I mean," Erin says patiently. "Those are things you did — and yes, you will have to learn to accept them and forgive yourself for them — but I'm asking whether you've forgiven yourself for being a firebender."
His frown deepens. "I'm not sure I understand."
Erin leans forward. "Close your eyes for me."
Thoroughly puzzled now, he nonetheless does so.
"I want you to pretend for a moment that you've never done anything questionable with firebending. Pretend you have a clean slate and you don't have anything to feel guilty about."
"That's hard."
"I know, but try anyway."
He inhales and tries to imagine it: he and Bolin, actually found by Natsumi and raised with Sulanna, not having to scrap for survival with the triads. No Shady Shin showing up to recruit him to the Triple Threats, no Lightning Bolt Zolt forcing him to burn people's possessions.
His relaxation at that idealised life must be reflected in his posture, because Erin speaks again.
"Now, can you see yourself firebending the way Iroh does? With that level of power and force?"
He tries, and internally recoils. Erin notices him flinch and says, "Okay, open."
He opens his eyes and peers at her, slowly beginning to comprehend her point.
"Even if you have nothing to be ashamed of, you still can't imagine bending too much fire. Because deep down, you feel guilty just for being a firebender. And I think, if you can learn to forgive yourself for who you are, you can then forgive yourself for what you've done."
Put that way, it makes a certain sort of sense. The only reason he was able to do all those things for Zolt and the Triad was because he was a firebender. Water- and earthbending can definitely also do damage, but fire is the most aggressive and intimidating of the elements.
And it all comes back to how fire killed his parents. He knows enough by now to understand that without that catalyst, there would be no — or at least, far less — self-loathing for the type of bender he is.
He looks at Erin with a measure of desperation. "How?"
Erin stands and tucks her clipboard under her arm. "Come with me."
Perplexed, he follows the mind healer out of the building to the small garden at the back. Erin gestures with her clipboard at the wall surrounding the compound.
"Bend your strongest fireball at the wall."
He stares at her. "Are you sure?"
"That wall is solid rock. Last time I checked, your brother was the lavabender. Trust me, you're not going to do much damage." She cracks a smile. "And if you do, just bring Bolin to help fix it."
He shrugs and moves fluidly into his bending stance, flinging an impressive fireball that splashes vividly against the wall before petering out. It's the first time he's bent in front of Erin, but she doesn't bat an eye.
"Now think of the man who killed your parents, and do it again."
He grimaces, but obeys. The fireball this time is distinctly smaller, and breaks against the wall with less force.
"There; do you see what happened?" Erin points out. "Your form was exactly the same for both strikes, but on the second you withheld your chi. Why the difference?"
"My mentality?" he guesses.
"And what, specifically, was different about your mentality between the first and second strikes?"
"I was reliving a bad memory for the second."
"Not for the first?" she prompts.
"No…" But even as he says it, he knows that's not true. It wasn't as salient, perhaps — but the reality of his parents' murders has always lurked at the back of his mind whenever he's bent fire. Ever since that night, when he thinks of what fire does, he thinks of Mom and Dad dying before anything else. "…maybe a little."
"You said firebending reminds you of your mother," Erin notes. "When you think of her, what's the very first thing that comes to mind?"
She died. "Her face."
Erin looks at him sceptically. "Really?"
Burned and lifeless, lying on the street. "Her body," he admits.
"Your mother," Erin tells him, "is the source of your fire. Both literally and figuratively. You inherited firebending from her, and she is who you think of — whether you realise it or not — whenever you firebend. For you, firebending and your mother are intrinsically linked. How did she train you?"
He blinks at the sudden switch, but he trusts Erin has a reason for asking. "Um…we used to get up a bit before dawn, and do breathing exercises until the sun rose. Then she'd drill me in the basics before we worked on more complicated forms."
Erin nods. "Do that, then." At his blank look, she elaborates, "Run through your breathing, and your drills, and whatever forms you want — but imagine that you're back there in your garden with your mom. I'll stand over here." She steps back so that she will be well out of his line of sight when he starts bending towards the wall, using her clipboard to shade her face. "Forget about me, and focus on your mother's lessons. And bend."
Self-consciously, he turns so that he's facing the wall. The late morning sun is far too yellow and bright, but he closes his eyes and pretends its the warm, soft glow of the pre-dawn.
"Firebending comes from the breath."
He starts regulating his breathing, drawing deep, slow inhales and exhaling with controlled force.
"The more you can control your breathing, the more powerful your chi will be. It's not about exhausting yourself by putting all your energy into one strike; it is the measured, concentrated release that will sustain your fire."
Naoki demonstrates for him, exhaling all her breath with one blast. It's a wide, splashy blaze of fire, but it diffuses in all directions and does little more than singe the training dummy in their backyard. She resets her stance and breathes in again, and now she releases the air slowly as she performs the same kata. This time, her fire is compressed and concentrated, with clear direction, and it sets the dummy on fire with ease.
He is four years old and he watches with awe as his mother proceeds to siphon the flames away, leaving the dummy smoking but without much damage.
"Now you try."
He opens his eyes and runs through the same kata, directing his stream of flames at the compound wall. With his mother's demonstrations firmly in mind, he then moves into two or three more complicated manoeuvres — and with each step, his fire pours out, bright and gold and with enough heat to change the colour of the rock; the section of the wall bearing the brunt of his assault has a distinctly reddish tinge. He looks sheepishly at Erin, who doesn't even glance at the wall; her gaze is fixed intently on his.
"I'm no firebender, but that looked and felt powerful."
He casts another glance at the reddish wall section, appreciating more fully how hot and concentrated his flames had to be to do that. "Yeah."
"So what was different?" Erin prods. "What was your mentality?"
He thinks for a few seconds. "I was…calm," he realises. "I was only thinking of Mom's instructions…just focusing on making her proud."
He moves the way Mom shows him, wishing his stubby arms and legs were longer so he could execute the form as gracefully as she does. His jet of fire is much thinner than hers, but it strikes the dummy right where he was aiming, and she beams in proud approval.
Erin smiles, and he feels that he's made her proud. And he knows why; what was missing from the most recent firebending exercise. "I wasn't getting flashes to the night they died."
"You are absolutely correct, Mako." She sums it up for him: "You hold back because you subconsciously remember the way your mother died every time you firebend. But once you deliberately shifted your focus to the way she trained you — an earlier, happier memory of firebending, before it was tainted — you were able to bend far more powerfully than you normally do." She hums thoughtfully, regarding the wall. "And I don't think that was your full potential, either."
"You don't?"
"Not at all. I believe you can do even more." Erin looks back at him. "Mako, you will always remember how your mother died. That is part of your history — it's tragic, but you can't change it. But that doesn't mean it has to hold any power over you. There are other parts of your history with firebending — better parts — that you can choose to recall instead."
"I do recall them."
"Yes, but how often do you recall them compared to the bad things?" Erin questions archly; and he doesn't have an answer for that. He knows it's only recently that he's begun to remember more of the good things, and he still dwells on the bad more.
"What matters, Mako," says Erin gently, "is not what happened in the past, or what you've seen of fire outside. What matters is your mental state inside. This requires first becoming aware of your thought processes — which I think you've started to do — and then consciously altering them. You essentially have to train your mind to default to your positive memories with firebending — instead of the negative — in order to bend at your best. When you're able to replace your foremost memory of your mother with her, instead of her death — then we'll see how powerful you actually are."
"But…" He hesitates, looking at his hands. "I don't know if I can do that on a regular basis."
"You already do."
For the umpteenth time this session, he is bewildered. "What?"
"Glassmaking," Erin reminds him. "To make fire hot enough to be useful in glassmaking, you have to bend at temperatures above a thousand degrees. Which you do with ease, don't you?"
Holy crap, I do, he reflects. It had been difficult at first, of course — though he attributes that to the fact that his arm and his chi were still healing when he first started — but with Hyung's guidance, he'd soon mastered the art of firebending for glassmaking. Hyung, however, was no firebender, and could do nothing to aid him in firebending techniques or power — merely offer feedback based on whether the glass was malleable enough. The fire itself, and the power thereof, had all come from him. He doesn't even have to think when heating glass now — it just comes naturally to make his fire that hot in the workshop.
Spirits, he's never even considered that before. He regularly bends at temperatures above a thousand degrees when glassmaking, but has trouble producing less concentrated strikes in combat?
"So, you see, Mako, the fact that you can bend fire for glassmaking makes it quite clear that you are capable of more than what you've shown me today," Erin concludes. "What you need to do now is extend that state of mind beyond glassmaking into all areas of your bending. That's your homework till our next session. Think you can manage that?"
He nods tentatively. "I'll try."
"Excellent! I'll see you again in —" Erin lifts a page on her clipboard. "— two weeks." Then she smiles at him. "You've really come a long way, Mako," she says sincerely. "I couldn't be more pleased with your progress. And I'm sure, if you tackle this issue with as much determination as you do everything else, you'll come out on top again."
He smiles back gratefully, feeling accomplished and enabled. "Thank you, Erin."
"You're most welcome."
A/N: And we're back to mental health info time!
Many people are reluctant to go to therapy because they seem to think they'll be forced to expose all their deepest darkest secrets. That's not what therapy is for. A good therapist will not force you to reveal more than you are comfortable with, and to focus on what you are prepared to deal with at any given point in time, while working with you to try and get you to a place where you will be able to talk about the big issues. Forcing treatment is counterproductive — it violates the trust of the client, causing them to be closed down and wary, and even less likely to follow the treatment plan.
What Erin is teaching Mako to do here is cognitive restructuring — i.e. replacing maladaptive thought patterns (in this case, his mind defaulting to the memory of his parents' murder every time he firebends) with healthier ones (focusing on Naoki's training). Many mental illnesses stem from disordered or unhealthy thinking that has become subconscious and automatic; cognitive behavioural therapy (the prime treatment for many mental illnesses) aims to make the patient aware of this thinking and help them re-adjust it to be more adaptive and resilient. Changes in thinking then result in changes in emotion and behaviour.
This is also a good place to mention that I have concluded, after further research, that Mako's exact condition is not PTSD, but rather Complex PTSD (C-PTSD), which is a recently recognised variation similar to but more encompassing than normal PTSD. C-PTSD is said to better explain the variety of symptoms experienced by those who have endured chronic repetitive traumas (i.e. trauma that is prolonged and keeps happening) than PTSD alone. C-PTSD shares many of the same symptoms as PTSD, but also possibly includes:
- difficulty controlling emotions
- cutting oneself off from friends and family
- feeling angry and distrustful towards the world
- feeling as if one is different from others
- feeling as if one is permanently damaged or worthless
- avoiding friendships or relationships
- relationship problems
- finding it difficult to trust
There is also something called 'traumatic grief' that occurs when one loses a loved one in an inherently traumatic (usually violent) manner, which clearly is what happened with Mako's parents. Traumatic grief can even lead to the development of PTSD or prolonged grief disorder, which involves a deep longing for the person one lost and constant thoughts about them that can interfere with everyday life. Mako's traumatic grief is tied to his mother, and has been overshadowed so far by his more obvious PTSD symptoms, but has always been lingering in his suppressed firebending - and is only now being properly addressed.
And that is it for today's psych lesson! The song for this chapter is 'Remember When It Rained' by Josh Groban.
See y'all next week!