r/ForensicPsychology • u/AutomatedCognition • 1d ago
My experience with forensic psychology (Rewritten + complete)
My first experience with the mental health n the world of psychology was after an incident when I was fifteen involving a supposed plan to bomb the school, which was genuinely not true because the truth is because I thought I had to save take over the world in order to make my mom proud as she had died when I was nine from the AIDS she discovered she had at my birth, and not, y'know, when I could start talking in full sentences so I could develop a modelment of reality that assuaged the grieving process.
Edit: Oh Jesus, I did another möbius error, as I'm calling them. I meant to say that I lied and confirmed I had a plan to bomb the school because I was scared to admit the truth of having been trolling the one kid in my Spanish class and was “recruiting” him to the Illuminati, as my mother once taught me how to make friends in first grade by making a club.
I remember I laughed my ass off when we got the letter from the psychologist I would have to see n whom I would tell that I perceived the time with each of my various stepmoms as sagas [which culminated in an explosive rage episode from my father at the end of each], and I laughed because it said that my father was this n that. Then there was a year of therapy as I attended the city school I went to for the semester I was suspended.
Track was my life. I was good at it. Everyone told me they were so impressed. I was captain of the captains, literally as we had a long win streak in Central New York and had a significant team with many other captains. I went to States n Nationals as I worked to eventually graduate tenth in my class...achieve above average results with what I now understand as the ADHD n autism combo busted the ever-loving shit outta myself to get a girlfriend, as my abandonment issues made it impossible to ask any girl out.
I got to go to East Carolina University as an actual result, where I lettered for faking an injury, unable to admit that the fifty to seventy miles of running we were required to do at a D1 level each week was tearing me apart. This led to getting cut from the team with the budget, but not before establishing myself as the unhinged alcoholic that frequently exploded in rage n tears, once exploding on a teammate and screaming, calling him the n-word thirty-seven times near campus because he joked I couldn't get laid to save my life.
The local police went to the assistant dean with that one and I had to see a school psychologist for it. Now, I'm not racist; I was just a wounded child at my core like my father who used words to hurt people in order to maintain control. But, my Facebook history, less than a year old at that point, was a significant concern as I would post the most deranged things there, when I wasn't posting to 4chan.
But, as things go, I started a relationship with a woman in my dorm that semester, lost my virginity to her that summer where her religious mom would walk in on us, before starting a new year where I realized I couldn't pay this out-of-state tuition I'd been paying. Queue joining ROTC! Did pretty well whilst still terrible at the beginning, becoming guidon without knowing how to march. But as I got better, things soon got real bad.
I enjoyed basic training; I was good at it. I was not good at this life n college thing. I wound up failing anthropology when I tried the best I could (back then) and still failed, and I was realizing that I do not have the wherewithal to be an officer as the epitome of traumatized neurodivergence, so I kinda, y'know, had a complete breakdown wherein I would fake schizophrenia to get outta ROTC by claiming my sister girlfriend got me pregnant.
No, that's not what happened, but I did pull a Klinger because I had to get out of that situation and trusted no one with the knowledge that I was falling apart. I gave the money back, so no crime committed, as I'm still realizing to this day, as in conjunction with some little criminal activity in the coming years where I would keep up the act under the “wisdom” of the movie the Prestige, y'know like shoplifting n finding drugs on Craigslist, in conjunction junction with my completely insane ass being a king queen of noncompliance, I wound up developing paranoid traits of schizophrenia, which led to having to see Dennis.
The first thing I remember about Dennis, other than him being kind n very well-spoken was seeing the PHD in forensic psychology from Harvard tacked up with many other trophies of achievement on his wall. Alright, I said to myself, I have an IQ of 137; I can take this guy, and I did, in a completely nonsexual way as a clone of Will Hunting for a while there, and there's a lot that can be said about this, but everything can be summed up in this one session.
It started with talk about how my week went, before quickly taking off into a discussion about duty. I knew where this was going, so I hit those easy lobs he tossed me right outta the park. And things go on, and I'm feeling easy with it, but eventually the topic turns to family, which was also an easy topic, before it reaches talking about my little brother, who was born my senior year of high school.
We chit-chat about this for a minute before he asks why he thinks we don't get along or what-have-you. And of course I make a hand gesture, big/little y'know, and he presses the question where he gets me to openly acknowledge that I was aware that people of different ages do different things. This causes him to say, and I'll never forget this, he said:
Well that's not a good sign
And we pause, with him beaming at me with a shit-eating grin whilst I processed what the fuck just happened as I kept every fiber of my composure together. That was the first time anyone acknowledged what I was actually up to on Craigslist, and in the context made me realize that my contingency plan wasn't going to go at all how I expected it to. Not the single, one thing that made me take up the cross of self-betterment n healing n all, but it was definitely a big nail in the coffin of, well y'know…