The Mob (System)

Chapter 8 - Alters: 100% Negative 2

After years of working with patients with DID and OSDD, it was easy for Reigen to notice many things on cue. He had experience and knowledge that many of his colleagues didn't have and for this reason, he was able to read his patients like an open book sometimes. Of course, most psychotherapists had this ability. More or less, but most of the people working in this field were able to say, if and what was up. It made them present as if they knew their patients better than they knew themselves but... To be honest, Reigen knew that it was only due to his studies, passion for his profession and the will to help those with dissociative disorders.

Sure, he was fascinated. When he started the university, he didn't really even know what he was going to study. All throughout his high school, Reigen had been kind of a dumbass, how he would get called. The one funny kid that didn't care much about classes, studying or anything in particular. He wrote the final exams and got good grades, but it was nothing special or genius... Having chosen biology as one of the final subjects, only out of laziness and the fact he had this class extended in his high school, he struggled a bit with choosing the university degree for him. He didn't know, what even he was interested in.

Psychology was the choice he made also because of his laziness back then. He didn't have any particular interest in science, per se... So to study biology, wild life or ecology was never a thought for him. And since psychology sounded like it was close to sociology, and sociology was said to be an easy study... He decided to go to the university and study psychology there.

Reigen realized now that it had been a stupid choice. But after all, his carelessness and laziness as well had led him to be who he was today – a well-known and respected dissociative disorders professional, who helped people with his will to make them feel better.

Even the start of his interest for DID and OSDD was now somehow that he wasn't very proud of. For the first two years of his studies, he would just get by, pass the exams and revise only when necessary, thinking that he'd end up in some international corporation anyway. One day, however, he went to a lecture that was somehow different from the others – they discussed a mental illness, obviously. But this time, they discussed a case of it. An example of a living human.

The case was the story of a DID system. Reigen found it surprising, but he actually listened to the whole lecture that day. He wanted to know more about this disorder – at first not to help people who had to deal with it, but to satisfy his own need of knowledge and further research. He basically wanted to get to know more about it, and the people with it. It was fascinating for him that such a disorder existed. That it was a way brains sometimes decided to cope with the overwhelming trauma and abuse. He felt the need to find some individual with it and interview them. He wanted to hear how they coped, worked, cooperated and how it all began. Why? How to take advantage of it? What it allowed or disallowed a certain person to do?

Soon after, Reigen's lowkey selfish craving to just know some people with the disorder turned into a thought that maybe he could be the one to diagnose such conditions and give therapy for systems. To help them. Thinking about the traumas they had to go through made him realize that it wasn't just a fascinating coping mechanism that their brains played. It was a serious mental disorder that was developed to protect, yes, but on the other hand still remained the cause of trauma that, being hidden from some parts usually, stayed untreated what resulted in many C-PTSD symptoms. It was an amazing disorder, but it was still a disorder.

What made Reigen now think about it all was The Mob System showing up in therapy. The first thing that he noticed thanks to his experience – when the body stepped in the room and the fronting alter said that he was Shigeo, Reigen immediately marked that something was wrong. He knew that he was talking with Shigeo, indeed, but he also saw how dissociated his patient was. He wanted to ask him, if he maybe felt particularly switchy that day or if something else happened but he didn't manage to, because – to his surprise – suddenly he saw Shigeo going silent and beginning to experience derealization really heavily.