don't open your eyes [unlimited]

the other side.

Yan Xun and the hypnotist also turned off the microphone, and they managed to calm the shadow down again, but neither of them looked relaxed.

In the dream, the consciousness that appeared in the form of a shadow has almost lost most of its "human" instincts.

The memories, emotions, and ego that Sombra cannot retain will continue to escape to the outside world.

And once other people get too close, they are very likely to be disturbed by these scattered memories and emotions, and even uncontrollably substitute into the perspective of Sombra, and their behavior and thinking may be affected by the other party.

In room 313, the reason Yan Xun was in danger suddenly was because his consciousness was infected by a black shadow, and he was trapped in a state that he couldn't even understand.

"How about it?"

The hypnotist assisted Yan Xun to adjust his state, and asked, "Has it been cleaned up?"

Yan Xun took a few deep breaths, nodded while pressing his forehead.

Although the infected consciousness has been cleaned up... But even now, the oppressive feeling of suffocation still lingers.

He has been unable to tell whether those thoughts are black shadows or his own. They still seem to be hidden in an undetectable corner deep in his mind, and once he finds the right time, they will jump out uncontrollably again.

This situation is not new to counselors at all.

It is frequently seen in cases of obsessive-compulsive and anxiety disorders.At the same time, it’s a feeling that’s all too familiar to many who suffer from depression, bipolar disorder, or PTSD.

"Intrusive thoughts."

The hypnotist was thoughtful: "Until now, we still have no way to clearly explain the cause of this phenomenon."

In fact, most of us have felt that way at one point or another—an intrusive, disturbing and uncomfortable thought popping into our head without warning.

The erratic urge to break the rules, the unreasonably intense fear for the safety of yourself and your family, some hurtful and aggressive thought, the incessant feeling of bad premonition...

Once entangled in these thoughts, it will bring intense pain-and the more you try to forget and ignore them, the more frequently they will break into the consciousness level, and they will come and go with great fanfare, and you will not notice it. possible.

"You don't mean to say..."

Yan Xun twitched the corner of his mouth, and made a rare joke: "The so-called intrusive thinking is actually the scattered fragments of the 'black shadow' floating around, staying in everyone's dreams, right?"

"At least it can be used as a hypothesis." The hypnotist shrugged. "If we are all islands, in the invisible deep sea, who knows how many undiscovered undercurrents there are?"

Yan Xun put away his teasing look, rubbed his forehead vigorously, and didn't answer.

The hypnotist continued: "For example, our client—a middle-aged male, has no relevant genetic history in the family, no clear environmental triggers, and no drug abuse."

"Even so, there is still a chance of the disease." Yan Xun interrupted, "It may be a problem with the biological rhythm, or it may be an imbalance of neurotrophic..."

"Yes... that's true."

The hypnotist was already used to his partner's personality, raised his hands, and smiled helplessly: "Then why don't you consider the possibility that the 'endless torture of intrusive thoughts' itself is a stressful event? The probability of this situation is also greater than zero, isn't it?" ?"

Yan Xun was startled, and slowly frowned.

"Your concept has always been that the treatment should start from yourself, rather than push the cause to the outside world-this is because your will is strong enough, self-disciplined, and self-awareness is clear."

The hypnotist had long wanted to discuss this with him, but never had the right opportunity: "Remember when the administrator knocked on the door? Of all of us, you were the only one who questioned his unreasonable behavior."

"That's because the behavior is inherently irrational."

Yan Xun said: "If you have [-] complaints, you will leave. This kind of rule should not be accepted even in reality."

"Who will guarantee the fairness of the complaint? Is it possible that all the residents together exclude one person?"

"What if the person who complained heard the wrong direction and judged the wrong room?"

"If the resident has paid enough attention, but the neighbor is not satisfied, is it his fault if he insists on complaining when he hears the slightest sound?"

He frowned and said, "I can be responsible for what I did wrong. But if I didn't do it, or if I don't think I was wrong, I won't accept unreasonable accusations—"

The hypnotist smiled bitterly: "But some people don't have this ability, that's why our industry exists."

Yan Xun froze for a moment, then stopped talking abruptly.

"There are a lot of people ... who just aren't equipped enough to protect themselves."

The hypnotist continued without waiting for him to speak, "Of course you can teach him the most effective method."

"You can tell him not to be bothered by these negative thoughts and continue what he is doing. You can tell him to learn to accept and relax, tell him to stop those meaningless reactions and behaviors. You can give him the right medicine and the right guidance... "

"These are all correct and effective." The hypnotist said, "But we must allow and accept one thing, that is, some people cannot do this."

"It's not that they don't cooperate, it's not that they don't have a strong willingness to treat, it's not that they resist and don't trust us... They just can't do it."

The hypnotist said: "No matter how hard you try, you can't do it, and you can't support your family after taking medicine."

Yan Xun fell silent.

He also knows his partner.The hypnotist said this, not to open up old accounts or discuss who is responsible, but simply to remind him of a situation.

Of course, this situation is not the responsibility of psychological counselors—no matter how hard they try and how comprehensive their information and cases are, they will always encounter helpless visitors.

This kind of thing happens, of course, cannot be attributed to the psychological counselor, there is no need to question it.

The hypnotist mentioned this just to remind him of another thing——

"It's also not the visitor's fault."

The hypnotist looked at the black shadow, and slowly said: "It's not your fault that you didn't get cured, and it's not your fault that you can't get better no matter what..."

The hypnotist said softly, "It's not because you didn't work hard enough that you couldn't get better."

The black shadow remained motionless, still squatting on the spot with its head in its arms.

No expression could be seen on his empty facial features, and the vague, low-pitched, dream-like voice gradually turned into a hoarse hum that could not stop trembling.

The hypnotist stopped talking, exchanged a glance with Yan Xun, and his expression became serious.

Their cognition of the dark shadows in the dream is not perfect, and they are not sure what the consequences of doing so will be.It was just out of professional instinct that he couldn't let his client fall into a nearly frozen feeling of depression and suffocation.

Even... Yan Xun and the hypnotist are actually very clear that this part of the remaining consciousness may be difficult to return to normal life.

Whether it is the main body left outside by the person concerned or the part trapped in the hotel, a certain almost cruel consensus has been reached - they are also willing to accept this status quo.

It's okay to be incomplete, and it's okay to drink poison to quench your thirst.

In the moment of being eroded by Sombra's emotions and memories, Yan Xun was also trapped in that intense pain.

The extremely dazed reality, the nightmare of waking up in the middle of the night, the rented house that was evacuated, and the missing wife and daughter.

The happy and peaceful life that was forcibly erased.

"Even if this kind of stripping is carried out, the part of the consciousness that remains outside... I am afraid that it will have to maintain long-term follow-up visits and psychological counseling."

The hypnotist kept an eye on the movement of the shadow, and said in a low voice, "The incomplete consciousness is probably the nest where intrusive thoughts live."

The "black shadow" in the dream, in a sense, can actually be understood as a kind of projection and concretization of an overly abstract concept.

Even without the connection of dreams, the highly informationized society has already involved everyone in the same torrent.In the depths of this flood, there are countless unknown undercurrents, and once they find the pores and cracks in the consciousness, they will quickly occupy them.

"Take it as a lesson, and I will learn from it in the future."

The hypnotist patted Yan Xun on the shoulder, and tried to make a joke to cheer up the atmosphere: "Except for the incident at the beginning, you have grown up so much, you have never tasted the taste of making mistakes and setbacks a few times, right? A rare experience…”

Halfway through his speech, he found that Yan Xun's expression was still too serious, so he stopped talking: "What's wrong?"

"I may have made a big mistake." Yan Xun frowned and whispered, "The design of the first generation model..."

As one of the internal designers of the program part of the first-generation personality assessment model, Yan Xun actually knows more about Ling Su than others.

As an academic talent who had just left school, Yan Xun was not qualified to participate in the discussion of the entire personality assessment.

He is only responsible for secondary writing based on the database provided by the association, combined with the content of cognitive neuroscience, and designing a set of programs that can be used smoothly-for example, the work content is actually different from that of a programmer not big.

In that set of programs, there is a small link that is not very eye-catching at all, written with only a few lines of neural code.

When the tester gets the "unqualified" evaluation, he can choose to enter the correction process.

The process is designed to be simple.As long as the tester agrees to correct those unqualified parts, the program will assist the tester to suppress that part of consciousness into the subconscious that does not involve daily life.

It may sound like overstepping the line, but that's just because the first impression is disturbed by a different way of describing it.

In fact, this is actually the most traditional and standard routine process of psychological counseling.

——After knowing the details of the visitor, by changing irrational concepts, correcting irrational thinking, and replacing wrong behavior patterns...help the visitor smoothly integrate into normal life.

With sleep cabins and consciousness uploading technology, the exploration and development in the field of cognitive neuroscience has long been sufficient to support this idea.This step can be achieved equally effectively without long-term and complicated psychological counseling and treatment.

Within the association, this link is not without controversy, but the effect of actual application is indeed obvious.

This part of consciousness has not been erased, it has only been adjusted to the depths of the subconscious, temporarily "can't remember", and still belongs to the tester himself, so the tester will not feel any abnormality.

And the testers are sober and independent throughout the whole process, and they have the right to refuse. It is completely fine if they don’t want to modify or change. The program itself will not take any coercive measures.

Yan Xun was silent for a moment, then whispered: "It's just..."

"It's just that if you choose to refuse the correction, the result will of course always be unqualified."

Zhuang Die came from the other side of the wall: "Is that so?"

Yan Xun froze for a moment, then raised his head abruptly.

He didn't expect Zhuang Die to come over at this time, his eyes swept over Ling Su who was following him, and then subconsciously focused.

"Sorry, you're thinking too loudly." Zhuang Die walked up to the black shadow, knelt down, and took out the rusty key, "I didn't lose it, we hid it."

Having guessed that the puppets would empty every room, Zhuang Die and Ling Su collected most of the things of each tenant when they were digging around.

There are also some items, probably because they are too deeply connected with the residents, and have become some kind of obsession, which cannot be taken out of the room.Ling Su conveniently removed a few pieces of floorboards, hid the things under them, and nailed them all up as they were.

Probably because he has a lot of experience in finding jobs on the street, Ling Su is also very good at punching holes in walls and dismantling floors.After a little practice a few times, I can already resurface the floor so that I can't even see it.

...Because they couldn't see it, they searched through every floor in Room 313 just now, and finally found the ones that had been pried open before.

Probably due to the counseling of the hypnotist and Yan Xun just now, Sombra's obsession finally eased, and the power to bind the objects was also weakened a lot.

This time, they successfully brought these things out of the room.

Zhuang Die took out those things, put them all in front of the black shadow, and took out a worn-out doll.

The next moment he saw the doll, Hei Ying suddenly stretched out countless hands, almost eagerly snatched it from Zhuang Die's hand, and quickly and carefully hid it in his arms.

Holding the doll in his arms, he paced around anxiously, shaking and babbling coaxingly, and constantly beating himself vigorously with his "hands".

Although it was impossible to distinguish those ambiguous mumbles, it was still not difficult to guess what he was scolding himself for.

……

Yan Xun's brows furrowed tighter and tighter.

His eyes were fixed on the black shadow, and he didn't move for a while, until he was patted on the shoulder by the hypnotist, and he came back to his senses.

"These..." Yan Xun suddenly felt that his articulation was a bit difficult, "it should be corrected."

Sombra attached great importance to his family.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with this emphasis in itself, but too extreme emotions trigger a strong sense of guilt, which further stimulates pessimistic emotions of self-blame and self-loathing, which in turn brings strong mental pressure.

If it is allowed to develop without any correction, sooner or later the person concerned will be completely destroyed by this pressure, leading to certain irreparable consequences.

"Isn't that what we do?"

The hypnotist said: "We are always looking for suitable methods... Those wrong methods also need to be eliminated."

Every era has its own unique limitations.

When science and technology have developed enough to be corrected at the level of consciousness, when human beings have not yet fully prepared for this ability, there will inevitably be certain fallacies and errors that only appear in the moment. detour.

The development of any discipline is also a process of constant trial and error, and constant correction of these detours, in order to stumble and fumble forward.

"……you're right."

Yan Xun was silent for a while, then looked at Zhuang Die: "If it is the first generation personality model, if the tester chooses to refuse to modify it, of course the result will always be unqualified."

This will happen no matter how many times you repeat it.

The program is not flexible, as long as the content has been set, it will not be modified by itself.

"I don't know what he refuses to revise...I don't know what he refuses to forget, even if it's in his subconscious mind and he can't recall it temporarily."

"But the information we announced to the public is actually concealed. In order to make him qualified, the association has been letting him take the test during that time."

Yan Xun looked at Ling Su: "In the same process of repeating the cycle, he rejected a total of fifty times."