I met my whole family through Baidu Tieba.

All of Li Ziming's notes were written down in a key-point format in his notebook, and in his mind, they formed a clear overall understanding of the content within his knowledge structure.

But I didn't tell that "Ms. Wang".

As a psychologist, Li Ziming doesn't need to explain these things to his patients; his job is "treatment." Just like a cancer expert, he doesn't need to impart the same cancer knowledge to his patients; he only needs to cure them.

Just as Li Ziming was chatting with the other party while pondering what strategy he should adopt next.

The other person's voice came from behind the curtain.

"...That's all for today."

The voice was very calm.

Li Ziming clearly remembered that when the other person first arrived, their voice was not calm, and he could easily hear a sense of bewilderment in their tone.

But now it has become very calm, with an undeniable confidence beneath.

The other party even made a joke.

"I made soup at home, but I forgot to turn off the heat. I'll go back and turn it off."

Li Ziming seemed to be deep in thought.

As a psychologist, he needs to decide whether he should let the other person leave or talk to them a little longer.

This requires you to have an accurate assessment of that "Ms. Wang".

First, there is the basic judgment of personality.

The first signal Li Ziming noticed when "Ms. Wang" entered the room was that she was a person with an extremely strong desire for control and a high degree of self-responsibility.

Her first reaction upon entering an unfamiliar environment was not to confide in someone, but to ensure her safety. She spent a considerable amount of time questioning him about his background, his connections, and the level of confidentiality, verifying everything before finally opening her mouth.

This shows that she is extremely wary of "revealing her weaknesses to others".

Perhaps in her daily routine, vulnerability is not something that can be displayed. The fact that she was able to sit in this confessional room is itself an act of self-preservation under extreme circumstances.

Her language habits are also very obvious.

When she speaks, she often uses "my friend" as the subject instead of "I".

Using the third person to narrate one's emotional predicament is a typical strategy employed by people with highly defensive personalities when seeking a psychological outlet.

She needs to detach herself from the story before she can allow herself to see it.

However, the removal is not thorough.

When she talks about her "adopted daughter," her speech slows down, her vocabulary becomes more specific, and she uses a lot of detail and vivid imagery. This shows that her emotional investment in the "adopted daughter" storyline far outweighs her self-defense. She can't completely detach herself from the role because it contains her most genuine attachments.

Li Ziming also noticed that when she mentioned "adopted son," her speech would speed up, her tone would become shorter and more concise, and she would occasionally express a hint of disdain and sarcasm, which contrasted sharply with her slow and gentle tone when talking about adopted daughter.

This difference is quite interesting—if you only look at her language patterns with her adopted son, you might think she's more distant from him. But if you look at the whole conversation, you'll find that she only uses this almost willful tone when talking about people who truly make her feel relaxed.

Behind her "disdain" for her adopted son lies a familiarity that requires no pretense. In contrast, her "gentleness" towards her adopted daughter carries a certain cautiousness, as if she were handling a fragile object. This caution reveals her self-awareness: she knows she must be strong in front of her adopted daughter, while she can be unreasonable occasionally in front of her adopted son.

Secondly, there is the trajectory of changes in emotional state.

When she came in and sat in the confessional, Li Ziming could hear that her breathing was shallow and her speech was sometimes fast and sometimes slow, with a sense of uncertainty and slight irritation.

She often speaks incomplete sentences, frequently stopping halfway through a sentence and then veering off in another direction after a few seconds.

This style of speech is not characteristic of someone who cannot express themselves clearly. On the contrary, judging from her concise tone and precise word choice, she is someone with extremely strong expressive abilities in everyday situations. Therefore, this incoherence is not a matter of ability, but rather a result of emotional overload.

Her cognitive system was overloaded at the time.

The turning point came when she began to recount the daily details of her relationship with her adopted daughter; it was the first time that afternoon that she entered into a coherent, long narrative.

Her breathing became steady, her speech became even, and her tone became softer and more certain.

This change shows that those specific details of daily life were not the source of chaos for her, but rather the tools she used to anchor herself. By recalling these images, she reconnected with the identity she cared about most—mother.

When she talked about her adopted son, although her tone became sarcastic and disdainful, it remained fluent. This indicates that as she spoke about the two of them, she was slowly becoming certain of something herself.

After she finished speaking, her emotions had calmed down.

Her final statement, "There's soup still cooking at home," can be interpreted psychologically as her using a very everyday, family-oriented image to reassure herself that no matter what just happened, she is still a member of that family and still has a place she wants to return to.

This "soup" is her anchor.

Her speech is now steady, and she can even joke, which indicates that she hasn't been healed; rather, she has reactivated her psychological defense system through self-expression. And this defense system is what she is most familiar with and what gives her the most strength.

She doesn't need anyone to hand her a cane; she can stand up and walk again on her own.

Finally, there is an assessment of the degree of dependence on the person being spoken to.

One very interesting point is that she hardly needs Li Ziming to "do" anything.

Her biggest need for him during the conversation was his "presence".

She doesn't need to be educated, persuaded, or even receive much feedback. What she needs is simply a safe, faceless object, a dark opening through which she can pour out the tangled mess in her heart.

She said these words to herself, while Li Ziming just happened to be sitting on the other side of the cave entrance.

This is actually a form of "structured expression," which is equivalent to higher-level self-awareness processing.

What she needs most is a safe environment, not a smart doctor.

In other words, the most useful thing Li Ziming provided was actually the environment itself, not his professional judgment. That's why she suddenly decided to leave.

She got what she wanted, so there was no need to linger.

Having made this judgment, Li Ziming already knew what his next strategy should be.

He quickly reviewed his professional training in his mind—for a client with such high functioning, high defense, and extremely strong self-awareness, the best strategy is not to intervene deeply, but to respect her pace.

She has said everything she needed to say; keeping her for another hour wouldn't be as effective as the previous hour.

She's not the type to need constant reassurance to feel secure; her security comes from herself and her ability to regain control of the situation. Forcing her to stay would only make her feel like this is another situation that needs to be dealt with, thus undermining the relaxation she had just established.

"OK."

Li Ziming smiled at the other side of the curtain, as if he could convey his smile through the curtain.

"If there's a need again, I'd be happy to hear more about your friend's story. Goodbye."

"goodbye."

From behind the curtain, one could hear the sounds of someone getting up, a chair shifting slightly, footsteps, a door opening, and a door closing.

Finally, silence fell over the other end.

It was decisive and efficient, without any hesitation or delay.

After Ms. Wang left, Li Ziming did not leave for the time being.

He sat there, deep in thought, going over the entire conversation from beginning to end.

Li Ziming has met many customers. Some people come ten times and still can't explain why they feel unwell, while others talk a lot but keep going in circles.

But this "Ms. Wang" is different.

She arrived in a state of disarray, but left having sorted herself out, all in less than two hours.

From the moment she sat down until she left, she neither cried, nor became agitated, nor lost her composure.

Her emotions weren't dug out; they were expressed by her own words, one by one. By the time she finished speaking the last word, those words had already been arranged and archived in her mind.

"If all customers were like this, my job would be much easier."

Li Ziming sighed deeply, then chuckled to himself.

Of course he knew it was impossible.

That "Ms. Wang" was clearly not an ordinary person, but a very powerful, elite figure, a rare breed.

Li Ziming shook his head, then lowered his head again and continued writing in his notebook.

What he is writing down now is his last thought about today's meeting—about Ms. Wang's current state of mind.

In Li Ziming's view, "Ms. Wang" clarified the problem, but did not solve it.

Her departure was because she "saw things clearly," not because she "let go."

She is still in a state of "identity suspension," meaning that her position at the dinner table and in the family has not been redefined.

She will carry this problem back to reality and confront it repeatedly for a long time to come...

"The self-repair process of high-functioning controlling personalities in the face of sudden family role crises."

Finally, Li Ziming wrote down this final judgment in his notebook.

After finishing writing, Li Ziming picked up the notebook in front of him, which contained a lot of writing that day, and looked at it with satisfaction and admiration, as if he were admiring a fine trophy.

As he was looking at it, he suddenly slapped his forehead.

"Hold!"

Li Ziming suddenly realized, why are there only three people? Isn't there also a "husband"?

When I fully understood the structure of this extraordinary family, wasn't I still thinking about digging out the story of the "husband"? How come I forgot about it while we were talking?

"A miscalculation, a miscalculation."

Li Ziming sighed with regret.

I don't know if I'll ever have the chance to have another "confessional talk" with that "Ms. Wang".

If so, she must dig out information about her "husband" as well.

……

The other end

Zhou Man pushed open the door to the confessional and walked into the nave of the church.

The stained glass windows had darkened, with only two wall lamps by the door casting dim yellow light on the stone floor.

She stood between the two beams of light, looked up at the crude dome, and suddenly realized it wasn't so crude after all.

It's not a perfect replica, the stone isn't fine enough, and the stained glass isn't transparent enough, but it's still a church, and that's enough.

She walked to the door and pushed open the heavy wooden door.

A cold wind blew in from outside, carrying the cloyingly sweet smell of popcorn and cotton candy from the amusement park.

Night had begun to fall, and the streetlights at Universal Studios Park had been turned on ahead of time, illuminating the ground in patches that looked like gold dust had been sprinkled all over it.

She walked towards the parking lot, her high heels clicking steadily and clearly on the stone pavement, no longer carrying the vague and unsteady feeling she had when she arrived.

As she reached the parking lot entrance, her phone lit up.

It was a message sent by Xiao Bonian.

"When are you coming back? I happen to have some free time today, and I'm planning to practice making a new dish. If you're coming back, I'll cook it a little later, and you can try it and give me some feedback."

Zhou Man stood in front of the car door, looking down at the text message.

She roughly understood that Xiao Bonian wanted to personally cook a welcome dinner for Shen Kang and He Qiuzhu on the day they returned, so he was taking the time to practice new dishes.

Zhou Man hasn't replied yet.

She opened the car door, got in, put her phone on the passenger seat, and started the car.

The car's high beams cut a bright path through the night, illuminating the empty parking lot exit ahead. She turned the steering wheel, and the car slowly turned out, merging into the sparse traffic, its taillights casting two soft red streaks in the night.

The city outside the car window was sinking into the same rhythm it does every night, with neon lights lighting up one after another.

Zhou Man rolled down the car window a crack, and a blast of cold air rushed in, jolting her awake as if she had just woken up.

The car drove off the side road of Universal Studios and turned onto the main road leading to the city.

The evening rush hour was over, and there were just the right number of cars on the road, scattered in twos and threes along the lanes, their taillights forming a patchwork of varying shades of red.

Zhou Man kept the car speed steady at around 60 mph, her right hand on the gear shift, her fingertips tapping lightly unconsciously.

She wasn't actually thinking about anything specific.

She was just driving, watching the GG sign, streetlights, bus stops, and fruit shops that were still open flash by outside the window. Everything was in good condition, orderly and in its place.

She felt that she was no different from these street scenes, running forward on a predetermined track, with no end in sight.

As the car passed the exit of a large supermarket parking lot, she glimpsed a young couple coming out of the supermarket. The man was carrying a full shopping bag in one hand, and his other hand was naturally on the woman's shoulder. The woman was turning her head to talk to him.

Zhou Man glanced at it and then looked away.

While waiting at the first red light, she picked up her phone and replied to Xiao Bonian with three words: "On my way."

The car continued moving forward.

She gripped the steering wheel, staring at the endless stream of cars ahead, lost in thought.

……