Chapter 1030 Bell

On the thirteenth floor of the office building, the elevator door opened, and what appeared in front of her was the white corridor that Chen Wenwen was familiar with.

Half a month has passed, and nothing has changed here. It is just like the last time she came here, with birch floors, white tiles, dust-free ceilings, and vine-like patterns on the wallpaper climbing wantonly in this extended tubular space. Climbing. The more you walk in after getting out of the elevator, the more you feel like you are walking into a white thorn garden. At the end, there is a bouquet of red roses decorated there, with crystal dewdrops, which reflects the corridor, the girl in the white dress, and the collapsed The whole world.

Standing in front of the white office door, the rose in the vase on the stand beside the door was so red that it was incompatible with the corridor. The brighter it was, the more desolate the corridor seemed. Chen Wenwen looked at it and stood outside the door for a long time before making up her mind. Determination knocked on the office door.

"Deng Deng Deng" knocked on the door three times, and then the person inside said: "Please come in."

The door opened, and behind the door was a simple office with no unnecessary decorations. The desk, bookshelf, sofa, coffee table, and at most an ink painting with the word "heart" hanging on the wall were all that could be seen. . In addition, what is worth mentioning is probably the fully opened floor-to-ceiling windows. The entire wall is covered with light-transmitting glass. Outside is a bustling city. Buildings are squeezed together and the remaining sky is like a jigsaw puzzle. Missing and unfilled gray blocks.

There was no one outside the corridor. The glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows was soundproof, and the only window was not opened, so it was very quiet in the office. Chen Wenwen could hear her clear footsteps walking forward, as well as the faint sound of wind exhaled from her nose.

She quietly closed the door, took off her shoulder bag and hung it on the plastic hook on the wall beside the door. She walked to the white sofa in the middle of the office, sat down, and looked at the man sitting behind the desk three meters away. The woman at work said, "Hello, Dr. Lin, I'm here for a follow-up consultation."

Chen Wenwen's eyes reflected the look of the woman behind the desk. Today, she was still so beautiful. She wore a Hepburn-style caramel-colored waisted trench coat, and the collar was naturally open without restraint, revealing a large amount of skin and collarbone. , so white that it dazzled her eyes, making Chen Wenwen involuntarily avert her eyes and dare not look at it more, for fear that she would appear rude after looking at it for a long time.

This woman is Chen Wenwen's psychiatrist. She just returned from overseas some time ago. She has held academic seminars in the domestic psychotherapy circle. Her unique insights into cognitive behavioral therapy and the special cases she has accumulated have made many colleagues sigh. , Chen Wenwen's parents also spent a lot of effort to make an appointment with this psychiatrist whose clinic happened to be in the city where their daughter studied at university.

"Sorry, I heard you say on the phone that you might be late, so I wanted to deal with some other patients' cases in advance, but I didn't expect you to come on time." The woman finally raised her head and closed the ballpoint pen in her hand. Hanging it in the front pocket of his windbreaker, he put away the medical record in front of him and looked at Chen Wenwen who was sitting on the sofa with a smile, "Wenwen, I'm glad that you can come for a follow-up visit. I haven't seen you for a while. What's going on recently? Did something good happen?"

"Good thing?" Chen Wenwen unconsciously rubbed her wrist, "What is a good thing?"

"Things that can help relieve your tension and allow you to temporarily divert your attention are considered good things. For example, if your favorite TV series has a sequel, a good movie is released, and the price of your favorite clothes is reduced, it is considered a good thing. .”

"Doesn't this count as having passed the literary history exam in my school?"

"Of course. Does successfully passing the exam give you a sense of accomplishment?"

"A sense of accomplishment? A little bit, right?"

"Does this help you relieve your anxiety and tension?"

"."

Chen Wenwen on the sofa did not answer this question, so her answer was self-evident. The woman behind the desk nodded lightly, "Have you done the three tests we did before recently?"

"Did it a few times."

"Can I see the results?"

Chen Wenwen took out her mobile phone, flipped out a few pages of documents, stood up and handed them to the woman behind the desk.

After browsing for half a minute, the woman turned off the phone screen and placed it on the table. "The situation does not seem to have improved much. Your anxiety index and depression index have even increased a bit. The last, most serious index also made me I’m worried about your current situation.”

The most serious index is probably the despair index, and the three tests are naturally the Beck Self-Assessment Scale. The first two indexes mentioned by the woman are naturally literal, but more or less modern people are here The indexes of both scales will reflect some problems, but the final despair scale is a scale that directly reflects the tester's negative emotions or suicidal thoughts about the future.

Since women say that Chen Wenwen's current situation is not optimistic, it means that the girl's psychological condition is indeed on the verge of crisis. Women's diagnosis of psychological problems almost does not need to be questioned.

Chen Wenwen didn't know how to answer or what to say. She chose silence and sat there quietly. The gray skylight outside the floor-to-ceiling window shone in the office, bright and gray.

"How was your sleep in the past week?" The woman took the initiative to start a new topic.

"I didn't sleep well." Chen Wenwen put on some light makeup when she went out, mainly to modify her unattractive complexion and dark circles under her eyes. When she looked in the mirror in the morning, she couldn't even recognize that the person inside was herself. For the first time, she felt very Ugly, so ugly that it makes people sick.

"Can't sleep, or can't sleep well?" The woman asked an intriguing question, but Chen Wenwen understood the meaning.

"Both." Chen Wenwen replied.

"Which one is more frequent?"

"I couldn't sleep." Chen Wenwen said, "I couldn't sleep because I was worried about not sleeping well."

Vicious cycle.

The woman didn't react much, just nodded, took out the ballpoint pen from the front pocket of the windbreaker, turned it twice and wrote something on a new page of the medical record, "Are you still having nightmares?"

"Yes."

The woman put down her pen, then looked at the girl in a white dress with her head hanging on the sofa and said, "Wenwen, we all know that the incident has passed."

Chen Wenwen did not answer. Her eyes fell on the coffee table, where a newspaper was prepared. Judging from the folds of the newspaper, it was already a very old journal. The year, month and day on it also confirmed this. This was a A year ago, in the news, the headline in bold black font on the front page read "Binhai Police cracked the country's largest malignant human organ smuggling case", and the subtitle in black font and slanted below it was "The remains of hundreds of victims were found, survivors All have symptoms of drug poisoning and have been collectively sent to the hospital for emergency treatment]. The picture accompanying the newspaper is of a tall tower on the seaside. The gray and black photo shows the towering spire submerged in the clouds, and the bright lights spiraling up the tower like a sky. of stairs.

The moment Chen Wenwen saw the photo, her breathing began to gradually become faster. The sound of her heartbeat gradually became clearer and faster in her ears. It seemed that there was something in her throat that she couldn't cough out and was choking. The trachea was blocked and the brain began to lack oxygen, and the sound of the heartbeat also began to impact the eardrums and brain.

It's over. she thought.

It’s really terrible. When did it start? No matter how many times I see relevant reports, the feeling of panic and nervousness will come over me like a tide, flooding the land and sky. My whole mind will be filled with an ocean, and I will involuntarily sink into the black water. She also told herself several times that the past was past. Reason sounded so nice, but sensibility covered her ears and raised her uncontrollable emotions as a shield.

"Wenwen, don't be afraid, you are safe now." The woman's gentle voice sounded.

Along with it, Chen Wenwen suddenly smelled a nice smell of incense, the smell of white jasmine and coffee. The smell was like a straw falling on the vast ocean. She couldn't help but grab the straw and follow it. The guidance of that gentle voice was like a beacon, and he gradually found his way back to the land of peace.

Her breathing began to slow down, and her heart rate gradually returned to a safe range. However, the cold sweat on her forehead and the back of her dress reminded her that her previous panic was real, and that feeling of powerlessness and suffocation still lingered in her mind. It stays inside for a long time.

The woman looked at the girl in the white dress who was breathing heavily and sighed softly, "Your symptoms have worsened."

Chen Wenwen's hands, which were supporting the hem of her skirt, grasped the folds of her clothes, but they didn't seem to have much strength. Her snow-white face was also trying to suppress the helplessness and sadness.

"It seems it's too early to enter the next step of treatment." The woman stood up, walked to the coffee table and put away the newspaper on it. She also squatted in front of Chen Wenwen on the sofa and wiped the sweat from the girl's forehead with a tissue. "Have you taken any medicine recently? Your physical condition seems to be in serious trouble."

"I"

"No need to lie. You know no one can lie in front of me." The woman said, "Just tell the truth. What medicine you took and the dosage. I will not tell your parents. You also know that I will not tell anyone lie."

Chen Wenwen was silent for a moment and then whispered, "Imipramine, five times a day."

"Does that help? Or is it that after taking the medicine, you are still like your parents said when you came last time? You don't dare to approach people or talk to any strangers. If someone approaches you, you will lose control of your emotions?"

"."

"Stop it." The woman reached out and gently touched the girl's slightly pale side face, "Even if you need to prescribe medication to assist the condition, this is not the prescription. Imipramine is indeed a good antidepressant, but for It is of little use to you now, but has very strong side effects. It is largely responsible for your poor mental state."

Chen Wenwen looked at the woman in front of her blankly, looking at her brown and clear pupils. She felt a strong sense of peace of mind from the intellectual eyes and the warmth conveyed by the white and warm hands on the side of her face, and her breathing also He finally calmed down completely and nodded slowly in agreement.

"Good boy." The woman smiled slightly, stood up and touched the girl's head, as if she was stroking some small domestic animal. The girl did not avoid it, but felt warm in her heart. During this period of time, No one had ever been in such close contact with her. She avoided crowds and was afraid of any strangers. Only the woman in front of her, whom she had only met twice, could not make her feel any rejection.

The woman walked back to the desk and sat down again. She spun the ballpoint pen in her hand twice and rested the closed pen tip on the table. "Although we talked last time, the interval between follow-up visits is a bit too long now. I need to re-examine it." Identify the specific symptoms that are bothering you now. Tell me, are the things that are hindering and confusing your normal life the same as before? Are there any changes?"

"There should be no changes." Chen Wenwen whispered when she saw the woman looking at herself leisurely.

"The same thing. Nightmares, crowd phobia, claustrophobia?"

"Yes."

"When did these symptoms first begin, and when did they begin to deepen and reach their peak?"

"I actually had some symptoms from that accident, but it wasn't until the summer vacation of my freshman year that I accidentally fainted from a heat stroke and things started to get serious."

"Fainted due to heat stroke. I remember you said this last time. You were attending a class reunion and when you left the party early to go home, you fainted on the side of the road because of heat stroke. Later, your classmates found you after leaving the party and sent you there in time. Hospital emergency department. All your conditions actually began to gradually worsen and become pathological after that heatstroke."

Chen Wenwen was noncommittal.

"Your first nightmare also started from that heat stroke." The woman said, "Can you tell me about the nightmare that bothers you and keeps you awake at night?"

"Okay." Chen Wenwen was a little hesitant at first, but after seeing the woman's reassuring look, she mustered up the courage to recall in a low voice, "There are always many people around me in my dreams. People took me up and up the stairs, and I was crowded among them and couldn't go anywhere."

"Please rate your resistance and panic in your dream on a 10-point scale. 0 means no feeling of panic at all, 10 means fear to the point of collapse."

"10 points." Chen Wenwen gave the answer almost at the same time, her voice slightly unnatural.

"I think if there are 11 points, you should change your answer without hesitation." The woman said slowly, "You are not the first patient who is troubled by nightmares. When I visited New York, the United States, I also met a patient who also suffered from nightmares, which caused numerous complications and caused huge problems in his quality of life."

"In terms of sleep, his condition should be more serious than yours. His highest record was that he didn't sleep a wink for three days, and he fell asleep on the sofa many times during the home consultation."

"Then he must trust you, Dr. Lin." Chen Wenwen said subconsciously.

The woman paused for a moment, then looked at the girl in the white dress and chuckled, "Maybe. Yes, he trusts me."

"I trust you too, doctor." Chen Wenwen took a deep breath and whispered, "Can you help me?"

The woman looked sideways at the girl sitting upright like a lily on the sofa, nodded and said, "I will help you. I promise you, I will definitely cure these diseases of yours because I am professional in this regard. During this time I have actually studied your case, sorted out my thoughts, and understood what you need now."

Chen Wenwen's originally dim eyes became brighter. The woman behind the desk gently crossed her legs and subconsciously took out a box of women's cigarettes from her pocket. When she shook out the tail of the cigarette, she suddenly realized something and raised her head to look at the sofa. The girl on the bed tilted her head and asked, "Do you mind?"

"I don't mind, there are people smoking in our dormitory, but this is the first time I know that you, doctor, smoke too."

"I don't like smoking because I don't have the symptoms of nicotine addiction." The woman picked up a matchbox on the table, folded out one of the matches with her long white fingers, pressed it on the lighter paper and twisted it. Smoke and flames rose along with the smell of sulfur dioxide.

As Chen Wenwen watched, the lady's fine mole smoke was burned into flames. As she inhaled and exhaled between Yingbo's lips, white and slightly fragrant smoke was exhaled from her tongue and teeth. She didn't quite approve of the act of smoking, but she completely It didn't affect her watching the woman behind the desk smoking, which gave her a hazy sense of beauty. It was like white jasmine hiding in the morning fog, and those fogs contained not only deadly and tempting nicotine, but some fascinating and deep emotions that she could not understand but did exist.

"Pressure. Wenwen. Everyone will have pressure. Pressure is the source of everything, and it comes from many sources. When it accumulates to a certain level and is eliminated without any purpose, people will begin to suffer from psychological diseases. Collapse and madness , suicide, etc., there is only one culprit for all mental illnesses, and that is stress. The pressure of love, the pressure of livelihood, the pressure of study.”

The woman moved the thin cigarette away from her lips and lightly lit it in the wooden ashtray containing coffee grounds.

"I am no exception. I also have stress. Some people release their stress through sex and love, and some people drink alcohol. These are unhealthy ways to relieve stress, but I am not qualified to criticize them. Because as you can see, my method of relieving stress is not healthy, nor recommended, and even has little effect. However, this is my previous habit. You must know that once a person forms a habit based on a certain behavioral logic, it will be very difficult. Then change it, so the method of choice must be scientific and cautious.”

"I guess the antidepressants you are taking include more than just imipramine. Imipramine is stimulating and antidepressant, but your symptoms are not applicable to this drug, so after taking it for a period of time, you find that If the effect is not good, I will definitely try to change the drug, I guess estazolam, diazepam, or perphenazine tablets?"

As the woman talked, Chen Wenwen's head lowered, but the woman didn't really want a definite answer. It seemed like she was just talking casually, "To treat many patients, the common methods used by psychiatrists are to follow Use the framework and conceptualization in cognitive behavioral therapy to treat your own patients. This is the most common approach in short-term psychotherapy and the most efficient approach. But I don’t like this approach. To be precise, I don’t like it. Follow this step by step."

"Understanding the patient, empathizing with the patient, and then guiding the patient to make correct cognitive changes are the real core of cognitive therapy. So I always like to get to the point directly, but there are often people who can't stand this directness and fall over. No offense intended. Just let her go last time. You are already sitting here, which means you have accepted my treatment." Halfway through, the woman looked at Chen Wenwen and smiled.

"Back to the main topic, we mentioned stress. The nightmares, panic, and other symptoms you are experiencing now are all caused by one thing."

The woman paused for a moment, leaving a blank space for a while. She looked at Chen Wenwen. After confirming that the girl did not have a stress reaction during this period of time, she continued, "...that is, the person you were involved in last year." In that human trafficking case.”

“I don’t need to go into details about the egregious nature and horror of that case. The overwhelming reports have spread to every journal and newspaper in every city. It was a vicious case that has not been seen for a long time, with hundreds of innocent victims. The victims were kidnapped in an organized manner and controlled with drugs for the purpose of selling organs and people and hid them in a high tower called the Pearl Tower. Later, when the police uncovered the case and secretly raided the Pearl Tower, a fire was accidentally caused, which changed the situation. Becoming more critical and haunting.”

As Chen Wenwen listened, her hands that were tightly grasping the skirt of her knees gradually began to move, as if looking for a more secure place to hold her hands.

"Yes, you are one of the victims. Although you were safe after being rescued, about 90% of the other hundreds of people who were rescued with you died of overdose of injected drugs. In the end, very few people survived." The woman's expression slowed down.

"This is the origin of your panic. You are special and you are lucky. Although the police blocked the news media, they have protected the identities of all survivors, including you, so that you can return to normal life and forget about it as much as possible. It was unfortunate, but you still can't help but be afraid of what happened during that time."

"You have lost your sense of security." The woman stared at Chen Wenwen and suddenly asked, "Have you ever raised kittens or puppies?"

"You mean to suggest that I keep a pet? But we don't allow it in our school dormitories."

"No, you misunderstood me. What I want to discuss is that anyone who has raised kittens or puppies will definitely have the same experience, which is being accidentally scratched by their own pets." The woman clicked Touching the back of his delicate and unscarred hand,

“Although owners are sure that their pets are not sick, such as rabies, they will involuntarily start to feel uneasy over time and start searching for rabies and other related knowledge online to compare their own situations. This uneasiness will increase over time. It gets bigger and bigger until they actually rush into the emergency room overnight to get the vaccine, or they forget about it at some point and it ends.”

"What do you mean?" Chen Wenwen was stunned.

"A sense of security." The woman chuckled and said, "The period when they were frantically collecting rabies knowledge symbolized the time when they were most insecure, and the fragmented knowledge on the Internet was their source of security - there was People who feel safe enough will be able to relax, while people who don't feel safe enough will choose to get further vaccinations to enhance their sense of security."

"Wenwen, isn't your current state similar to this example? The bad thing last year ended, but your lack of sense of security has never been restored, so you have been having nightmares about that period. You happened to be facing the college entrance examination at that time, which temporarily distracted your attention, so the panic of lack of security was temporarily suppressed. It was not until after the college entrance examination that your symptoms reappeared and accumulated until they completely exploded."

"But I have been normal throughout my freshman year." Chen Wenwen couldn't help but say.

"Yeah, why was it so normal in the first year, but suddenly broke out recently?" The woman turned her head and looked at Chen Wenwen, her fingertips filled with smoke.

Chen Wenwen looked at the other party blankly and did not answer. The woman continued:

"Stress will accumulate, and then it will explode at a certain point because of something. It's just like breaking my vow to quit smoking and starting to smoke cigarettes again." The woman looked at the thin lines on her fingertips out of the corner of her eye. Yan said, "In the first year, your nightmares that continued but did not affect your quality of life already meant that stress was accumulating. The fact that there was no recurrence throughout the school year after the college entrance examination meant that you gradually forgot about this incident. Things are like a scratched owner who has forgotten about rabies, but suddenly there is a moment, a node, and you encounter something that reminds you of everything."

"Human memories are never fixed entities. Whenever a memory is reactivated, they enter an unstable state, and they can be modified or updated with new information within a 4-6 hour window after reactivation. You passively activated the same memory countless times during the night of that year, subconsciously adding fear to that memory, and when all of this memory was suddenly retrieved at some point in the future, the related emotions would also be revealed to you. It rushes towards you with claws and lingers in your mind, and all the accumulated pressure completely explodes at this moment, filling your life ten times and a hundred times."

"You said that the origin of your emotional control and the rapid worsening of your condition was the class reunion last summer vacation?" The woman looked at Chen Wenwen on the sofa, "I think something must have happened at that class reunion. What trigger caused you to completely ignite all the stress accumulated over the past year, triggering a series of subsequent mental illnesses."

"Inducement?" Chen Wenwen was a little stunned.

"Yes, you mentioned that you left the class reunion early. I noticed this and left early. It was summer vacation at that time. With your grades, you could be admitted to the Chinese Department of Peking University. It seems that there is no need for additional cram school. You chose to attend the class reunion, which means that there will not be any major schedule conflicts, unless it is an emergency - or something happened at that class reunion that forced you to Leave midway." The woman said slowly.

Chen Wenwen quietly avoided the woman and hid her eyes. She finally remembered why she ran away during the last consultation with her parents. It was because of this spicy anatomical questioning.

Is she really a qualified psychiatrist? Do any psychiatrists really treat patients like this? Chen Wenwen had thought about it before.

But the final answer is that perhaps it is this style that makes this doctor's reputation so unique in the industry. This is an era where only being unique can make you stand out.

After all, judging from his resume, this doctor has indeed cured many patients. Even if many people will slam the door and leave in the middle, at least those patients who are willing to get lost and return again are eventually cured, without exception. Isn't that also the reason why she made up her mind to come back to find him again?

Chen Wenwen feels that this beautiful woman is like a cutting knife wrapped in petals. When you are attracted by her tenderness and beauty, if you reach out to play with the petals, you will inadvertently get a cut. But she was so reassuring that people couldn't help but press their cheeks against hers at the risk of bleeding.

"Something did happen at that class reunion." Chen Wenwen's eyes were a little red, but she finally relaxed.

"I think it's not a pleasant thing. After all, class reunions are accident-prone occasions. You can tell me about this slowly. We have one afternoon." The woman nodded and said,

"Actually, according to the process of cognitive behavioral therapy, we have now reached the conceptualization stage. I should teach you a 'technique' to solve the problems you are experiencing now. After thinking about it, since I have abandoned the form of therapy , but you still have to respect the core to make suggestions to you.”

"I pointed out before that your biggest problem now is a lack of security. I don't know yet what you are still afraid of. Is it the fear of a recurrence of the past, or is it suffering from 'PTSD', which we will slowly discuss next. Dig slowly. But generally speaking, the best answer to the problem of insecurity is to find something that gives you a sense of security."

"Actually, I think, even if I haven't analyzed all this, people who are in panic will subconsciously look for things that can give you a sense of security. This is a person's instinct when they are helpless, and it will drive you subconsciously Grasp the thing that can help you stay calm and not fall into collapse when you are in the crowd on the way here, and it is also the thing that can really make you feel at ease for a moment."

After the woman finished speaking, she became quiet and looked at Chen Wenwen silently. To be precise, she looked at Chen Wenwen's wrist.

I don’t know since when, the girl with red eyes in the reflection of the floor-to-ceiling windows has been holding on to the pearl necklace on her wrist, as if she was grasping at the last straw in the gray sea of ​​gaps between the city buildings.