Therapy Quest

by Janina Scarlet

Genres: Dragons & Mythical Creatures

Synopsis

Did you ever want to be a hero? Have you ever dreamed of going on an epic quest to destroy monsters, defeat evil forces and fly on the back of a dragon?

This interactive new self-help book puts you, the reader, in a fantasy world where every decision you make and every path you take will influence the outcome of your journey.

When the seer Anka spirits you away to the world of Here, you find yourself proclaimed the Chosen One - the hero everyone is relying on to defeat the evil sorceress Mallena before she destroys everything. But you don't feel like a hero, do you?

If you choose to accept this quest, you will have an opportunity to learn the skills that you need and put together a crew of loyal friends and companions to help you with your journey. The skills are based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), which has been shown through research to help people overcome depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic pain, addiction disorders and many other common problems.

Your journey will be full of danger, loss and strange creatures, but it will also be full of excitement, adventure and fun, and will let you form life-long bonds of friendship, which no curses can break. This book is your call to adventure, an invitation to be the hero in your own story.

Release date: February 1, 2018

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 208

Sample

This is an interactive book where you become a character in a psychological quest through a magical world. This quest requires you to make decisions along the way about how to proceed with your mission. Like many role-playing games (RPGs), you will have opportunities to earn or lose points along the way.

The points you earn are broken up into three categories defining your character’s basic qualities. You start out with 10 free points, which you can divide in any way you choose between the categories. I recommend that you keep tallying your points throughout the book.

The three character quality categories are:

Courage          Wisdom          Inner Strength

You need a total of 50 points to face your main challenge at the end of your quest. Psychologically adaptive decisions earn points in these categories while maladaptive decisions may result in lost points (your points total can even be a negative value in a category if an action forces you to drop below zero points) or your quest being blocked, forcing you to regress to an earlier point. Lose all your points and you’ll have to backtrack or just start over. Some choices can even cause your character’s death, so be careful!

In this story, you will discover how to use and apply various magical spells, charms and potions based on research-supported psychology therapies, primarily from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and self-compassion interventions. These skills are intended to help you learn to better cope with your internal monsters, be they dragons of anxiety or your demons of depression.

I wish you a healing and magical journey.

 

 

 

 

It was the Tuesday before the end of the world. Although, to be honest, it started out as a perfectly boring Tuesday.

Until THEY showed up . . .

 

 

 

 

You yawn repeatedly as the sound of the rain gently taps on the glass of your window. The alarm clock goes off for the sixth time, and you turn it off with a groan.

One tired foot on the floor and then another. You stayed up until 3 a.m. last night, replaying yesterday’s conversation with your friend, Lisa, in your head. You had asked her how she felt about your presentation, and she paused for a moment, forming a letter ‘O’ with her mouth before replying, ‘Oh, you were fine.’

Fine? What in the world did that mean? OK, sure, you stumbled a few times, but that doesn’t mean your presentation sucked. Or did it?

It did! You know it did.

The more you thought about it, the worse the presentation seemed to you in retrospect. After all, Lisa yawned not once but two times during it, and your friend Matt checked his watch several times. And you didn’t answer that one question exactly as you’d wanted to, as you know you should have.

Yep. You completely messed it up. Like you always do . . .

You yawn once more. This isn’t the first time you were up all night because your mind insisted on pointing out all the things you did wrong the day, the week, the year before.

You stand up. Then, as thoughts about the presentation return to your mind, some habitual sensations settle in: your heart starts beating fast; your hands and neck are sweating. You’ve been through this before. Sometimes people tell you to calm down, to get over it, as if you are doing this by choice. They don’t understand the loss of control that happens when your emotions become too strong. They don’t understand what it’s like to try to appear functional while you’re battling your demons every single day. You sigh and get ready for another fight, looking for ways to distract yourself until it passes, but this time the familiar feeling of doom is somehow stronger. It feels . . . darker.

You take in a breath, hoping to calm down, only to then suddenly and violently cough. It feels as if you’re breathing ash. Chills spread all over your body. Your vision blurs. Something’s really wrong this time. Your stomach’s sick, as if you’ve just got off the world’s fastest roller coaster.

Is this the day you actually lose your mind? Your life?

Is this a heart attack?

You reach for your phone to call an ambulance but it blocks you with a message announcing, almost with a sneer, that it’s in the middle of an update. When it restarts moments later, your passcode is not recognised. Several attempts later you are locked out of your phone. Shaking and breathing heavily, you try to call for help but no sound comes out. You can’t even swear.

There is a hiss above your bed. It’s dark, but it looks like there’s a small hole in the ceiling. And something is seeping through it. Oil? No . . . a dark, thick mist.

You watch, holding your breath in horror, as the mist forms into a shape of a dark skeleton enveloped in black smoke.

You try to shout, ‘What are you?’ but your voice still won’t come.

The mist creature circles around you, engulfing you in its darkness as it hisses, sounding as if the words are projected directly into your brain: ‘I KNOW YOU. I SEE YOU. YOU ARE A FAILURE. A LOSER.’

The words feel like cold hands pressing against your head, squeezing your mind. You close your eyes but the monster appears to be even bigger in your mind now. You open your eyes again, see the monster is still there, and sprint out of the room. You race down the hallway and toward the front door, only to see a second mist monster already there, blocking your exit. You quickly turn into the kitchen, hearing the two dark mist creatures hiss as they chase after you.



Quickly, you grab a knife from the counter, the largest one you can find. The creatures loom over you and, acting on instinct, you stab them with two quick motions, one and then the other.

The creatures stop their hissing and dissolve on to the floor, the mist now replaced by twin piles of ash. You sigh and lean against the counter in relief. What were those things?

The ashes move and whirl around, and there’s that hissing noise again. You curse under your breath as now, instead of two, four mist creatures rise before you. As a chorus, they all loudly hiss into your mind: ‘NOBODY LOVES YOU. NOBODY WILL EVER LOVE YOU. YOU WILL DIE ALONE. YOU ARE A FAILURE. YOU ARE A LOSER.’

You hack and slash and jab and stab. Once more, the creatures lose their forms and fall as ash, only to rise again moments later. Once more they’ve doubled, their voices louder and louder, their words hitting your body harder than before. Your heart is heavy. Your stomach feels as if it’s been repeatedly kicked. You’re surrounded and desperately make another series of attacks, earning moments of short-term relief before the monsters multiply and grow even louder, their voices causing the dark thoughts to encircle you. After forcing them to become ash again, you kneel on the floor, exhausted, and quickly consider your options.

When you try to run, they block you or follow you. Destroy them and they multiply. But they haven’t actually attacked, even when they’ve had you surrounded. Maybe . . . Maybe all they have is words and mist. If you stand up to them, maybe they won’t attack and you can find another option? Or maybe they’re teasing and will kill you the moment you let your guard down?

If you choose to face the monsters, go to page 89.

If you choose to keep stabbing these monsters, go to page 51.

Gain 4 courage points

Congratulations! You have elected to begin your magical quest. Along the way you might face dark spells of insecurity and the pits of vulnerability. But you will also learn healing spells and obtain new potions to help you fight against dark magic.

Are you ready? Proceed to page 137.

 

 

 

 

You purse your lips as Michael curses out loud.

Hoffman shouts again, ‘Put your hands up and surrender yourselves!’

Lex reaches for an arrow, but Hoffman reaches for his club at the same time. Lex curses and puts the arrow back in the quiver.

‘Put all your weapons on the ground and surrender yourselves,’ Hoffman repeats.

No one moves.

‘All right, that’s it,’ a tall Minotaur says. ‘I’m going to count to three. If the weapons don’t start dropping, we start clubbing you all, starting with the ugly one.’ He points to Gherk. You recognise this Minotaur as Tyreck, Hoffman’s boss.

You clench your fists, feeling the tension around you skyrocket. Lex is the first to put down the bow and arrow. Michael grunts before dropping his machete.

‘You, fugly one!’ Tyreck shouts to Gherk. ‘I know you have knives in there. Drop ’em.’

‘Hey, you can’t talk to him like that!’ Michael snaps.

Gherk puts his enormous hand on Michael’s shoulder. ‘It’s, uh, OK, Michael,’ he says.

The two men look at one another and take a breath at the same time, with a profound sense of support and understanding. They both nod at one another and Gherk takes out four cooking knives from his apron.

‘You too, Lyke!’ Tyreck smirks at Blake. ‘I know you’ve got something in that disgusting suit of yours.’

Your shoulders tense even more, you feel your eyebrows narrowing. You want to shout at this indignant brute but you know that it will not do any good.

‘I have nothing,’ Blake says, looking to the ground.

‘I think some friends of yours might disagree,’ Tyreck says. He then turns to Hoffman. ‘Get the exterminators.’

Hoffman looks back at him. ‘Exterminators, sir?’

‘Yes, Hoffman! Exterminators! Why do I always have to do everything around here? Get them! Now!’

‘Yes, sir.’ Hoffman nods and turns to the rest of the SAMs. ‘Make way for the exterminators.’ He briskly walks through the parting Minotaurs and whistles.

The ground begins to vibrate and tremble with the sound of hundreds of tiny feet stomping on it. You and the rest of the legion members exchange panicked glances.

Hektor and Hera hiss at Tyreck and arch their backs. Tyreck threatens them with his club. ‘You’d better calm those animals before I let their skulls meet my trusted club.’

Katrina’s eyes well up with tears and her fists tighten. She takes a breath and turns toward the dragopurrs, her voice shaking. ‘Hektor. Hera. Down.’

The dragopurrs slowly lie down on the ground and look up at her with their big, sad eyes.

The ground is still shaking and, through the opening crack between the Minotaurs, you can see tiny red figures fast approaching.

Tyreck gives Blake a vicious smile. ‘Here they come.’

As the creatures get closer, you see that these are short little imps, each pale-skinned, wearing white trousers and cardigans and tall, pointy red hats.

‘Redcaps,’ says Blake.

‘Welcome, Covetyl,’ Tyreck says to the biggest imp wearing the tallest hat. ‘We have a surprise for you.’ He points to Blake with his club. ‘He claims he’s clean but will need to be searched.’

‘Gladly.’ Covetyl grins a nasty smile, revealing his yellowish-black teeth, as he walks around Blake, almost as if checking out a cow for purchase. The imp’s eyes are gleaming with malice. He then turns to the rest of his imps. ‘All right, boys. This is for all our brothers and sisters who were brutally killed by these filthy Lykes. Our caps are painted with their blood and we won’t stop until every single one of them has bled out. We will not stop until all our hats are uniformly red with their grimy blood.’ He then turns toward Blake. ‘Now, let’s see what this one is made of. Let’s shake him out.’

At least three dozen imps run up to Blake. They lift him up and turn him upside down, turning his pockets inside out, pinching and biting him. A pair of little pink gloves falls out of his pocket and on to the ground. Blake screams in agony, his eyes flashing red, but he holds himself back from turning.

‘Let him down,’ Covetyl orders, and the imps drop Blake on the cold cement. ‘What’s this?’ Covetyl asks, picking up Blake’s pink gloves with one hand and pulling up Blake’s head by his hair with another.

‘My winter gloves,’ Blake says, his left eyebrow bleeding.

‘Disgusting, just like you,’ Covetyl says, dropping the gloves back on the ground and smashing Blake’s head against the cement.

Blake groans and lifts his head again. His left eye is swollen and his nose is bleeding. The imps are grinning their grotesque yellow teeth at him.

Covetyl then turns to the imps still standing among the Minotaurs. ‘My brothers and sisters. This is a clear win for us. Our friendship with the Minotaurs has indeed been proven to be fruitful. Now, Whitecaps, come forward.’

Thirteen imps wearing white caps step forward. Two of them look like children, their caps looking more like giant white hoods, as opposed to hats.

Covetyl addresses them. ‘You know the rules. Whoever gets a silver stab in the werewolf gets to wash their hats in his blood – but only the stabs made while he is still conscious enough to feel the pain count.’

‘Wait,’ Hoffman says to Covetyl and then turns to Tyreck. ‘Sir, with all due respect, Mallena’s orders were—’

‘I know what Mallena’s orders were, Sergeant. But don’t for a second forget your place here. Don’t for a second forget who’s in charge of you.’

‘But, sir—’

‘Shut it, Hoffman!’ Tyreck hisses, and then speaks quietly so that you can barely hear what he is saying. ‘This alliance with the imps is a very important political move. Don’t mess this up.’ He then turns to the imps. ‘So sorry for this interruption. He’s . . . new. He’ll get a talking-to, don’t you worry. Please, proceed.. . .