//------------------------------//
// Chapter Nineteen 
// Story: The Little Filly Who Could 
// by Boopy Doopy 
//------------------------------//

The rest of the questionnaire went about how Ivory Spark expected.
Emily admitted to impulsive behavior, and said she did have occasional flashes of intense anger, neither of which Ivory Spark had seen but took the filly’s word for. She didn’t need to ask about whether or not she had trouble sometimes recalling important personal information, but the filly agreed she had trouble with it, and that it sometimes made her anxious when it happened. It was all interesting to hear, and by the time she was finished and looking over a separate sheet to score her answers, Emily looked annoyed and somewhat dejected. She did not get any more happy when, after looking over her notes, Ivory Spark confirmed the cause of her cursing.
“Of course, there’s other possible diagnoses, like Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder, or less likely, Borderline Personality Disorder, which can cause dissociative behavior. But I think DID fits best for now, and we should treat for that.”
Emily sighed again when she heard it. “So what now? I go into an insane asylum or a mental hospital and take pills for the rest of my life and be dumb and stupid and act like a complete idiot more than I already do?” Ivory Spark hadn’t seen the string of self deprecation from the filly until then, but wasn’t that surprised by it. She tried to be reassuring.
“Nope. No insane asylum or mental hospital for you, and certainly no other medication outside of what you’re already taking.”
“Really? Then, like, what do you do?”
“Therapy, silly filly,” Ivory Spark smiled. “Dissociative Identity Disorder is a trauma disorder, so working through trauma is how we help you get better. Things like grounding strategies for when you feel like you’re dissociating will help, just like being able to properly process traumatic events in a healthy way.”
“Wow, that’s… less intense than I thought it would be,” the filly said, mild surprise in her voice. “Is it really as easy as therapy and I’m fixed of whatever I have?”
“Well, no, because it can and probably will take years of therapy. It’ll be an ongoing process, but it’s good to see things like this now, because the younger you are, the more able you are to receive effective therapy.”
“Oh. Well, that’s still not as bad as being on ten million pills, I guess. When do I get to start therapy with you? Also, you know, since I wrote a story about you, I gotta admit, it’s kind of cool that you’re gonna give me therapy.”
“Well, I think next Friday would be a good day to start, and then every two weeks after that. But on the topic, do you think you can show me that story you wrote? I’d love to read it.”
“Sure, I wrote it down at my house!” Then the filly looked confused for a second, like she had no idea what she was saying. “Wait, no I didn’t,” she clarified. “I wrote it online, on… fuck. I know this! I know I didn’t write it down in a book, but like… aah!”
“It’s going to be fine, Emily,” Ivory Spark said calmly. “Just take a second to close your eyes and breath, okay? I’m sure if you take a second to breathe and think about it, you’ll remember.”
“I can’t remember something that didn’t happen though! I didn’t write it on paper!”
“Well let’s try, okay? Think you can try for me?”
“Okay, I guess, but I’m not gonna be able to.”
“Just close your eyes, take a breath, and see if you can try to remember.”
Ivory Spark watched Emily do exactly that from where she sat, the filly really taking her time to breathe deeply as her eyes closed. Her body was still for a long moment, Ivory Spark keeping silent until the filly suddenly gasped, opening her eyes and spreading her wings in excitement.
“I remember!” she declared. “I actually remember! It’s in my bedroom on my bookshelf!”
“That’s good, Emily,” the doctor spoke kindly with a gentle smile. “I knew you would be able to.”
The filly beamed for a second, and then blinked and put down her smile. “That doesn’t make sense how I would remember something like that though. That’s not what happened. I wrote Mind Over Matter online on my... my... gosh dang it, I can't remember! But like, I know I didn’t write it in a book. But also, I know the book is in my room.”
“It can be confusing to think you did one thing but really did another,” the mare explained, “but you should remember to stop and breathe whenever you’re feeling confused. It’ll help a lot.”
“Yeah… it doesn’t make sense though. It only makes me feel more crazy when I can remember something that I know for a fact didn’t happen. But that happened in the story I wrote, too.”
“What’s that?”
“In the story, Leo slowly got the memories of the kid he replaced, and since that’s happening to me, that means I’m in the same story I wrote.”
Ivory Spark smirked. “Or it means that you wrote about your experiences in your story, silly filly,” she said as she patted Emily’s head. 
The filly sighed. “It’s not fun to feel like I’m going crazy though…”
“I know, but I promise, you’re gonna get better,” the doctor assured her. “We’re gonna do some therapy, and before you know it, you’re gonna be feeling a lot better.”
“Okay, I’ll trust you, even if I don’t really believe it. I mean, you are Ivory Spark, after all.”
Ivory Spark didn’t press or argue with that, and instead brought her out of the office and to the group home that she would be staying in. There were other foals there, of all age ranges up to fourteen years old, although right now, the main room was mostly empty. All that there was were a couple of colts and a smiling red pegasus, one that looked much older than Ivory Spark. He looked as though he could be somepony’s grandfather.
“This is gonna be your caretaker, Riding Reign,” Ivory Spark explained. “He takes care of all of the fillies and colts here, and he’s gonna be taking care of you, too, for the next few weeks. After that, you’re gonna go back home and live with your parents again. How does that sound?”
“Great!” Emily replied enthusiastically, sounding like an excitable little filly again. “And then I’m gonna see you every two weeks, right?”
“Mhm,” the unicorn nodded. “Until you go back to your parents though, I think it’ll be once a week, and then we’ll move to two weeks after you go back home.”
“Okie dokie!” the filly smiled happily. “I think you’re my favorite pony so far, even though I’m about sixty three percent sure I don’t have DID. I know it’s down from earlier, but you’re such a good therapist that you’re starting to convince me.” Before Ivory Spark could comment, she continued, “Do you think they have any spicy food here? Or do they only keep bland food for fillies and colts?”
Ivory Spark smiled. “I’m sure if you ask Riding Reign very nicely, he’ll be able to make something special. Also, it makes me very happy I’m your favorite pony. I love being able to help you, Emily.”
The filly beamed and flapped her wings happily, giving a small thank you before heading off to explore. Ivory Spark didn’t stay for much longer, other than to give the head stallion a brief update about her before walking down the street back to her office. She had a lot of paperwork to file.
She sat down at her desk with a small sigh, and looked over the diagnostic test she filled our for Emily, as well as the information that was sent over by Peace Keeper regarding previous treatment. If she had to settle on one thing to diagnose Emily as, it might be something like Partial DID, depending on if everything the filly told her was correct. If she just went by her own observations, she’d go with either DID or DPDR. It was a little bit iffy attaching a diagnosis like that to a foal before they turned fourteen, but being just a year away likely wasn’t going to harm anything.
A check through the file Emily's psychiatrist sent over showed that she was prescribed both dexmethylphenidate and risperidone like her parents said. The low dosage of the latter made the prescription make more sense to Ivory Spark, but what was more surprising was the prescription of mirtazapine for help with falling asleep. It wasn’t a choice Ivory Spark would’ve made for a foal, even at a low dose, but she couldn’t argue against it. It made Ivory Spark more assured however that her diagnosis was correct if Emily was still having trouble after taking all of this stuff. Psychotherapy instead of psychiatry would definitely be the best path forward for her.
The workup she read from the psychiatrist was about what the unicorn expected– ruled out for bi-polar type 1, diagnosed with autism and ADHD, had sleeping issues and trouble with concentration, and had been going to psychiatry since she was eight. There were a few brief mentions of anger issues and controlling behavior listed in the report, as well as reports of things like stealing and lying that Ivory Spark saw. There were also a couple of mentions of memory issues scattered throughout the reports, but nothing like what the mare saw of the filly listed. That was one of the issues with diagnoses like this so young– behavior that seemed normal could be a symptom of something more, and what seemed like symptoms could just as easily be regular behavior for a growing foal. 
It was nothing terribly shocking she read about, which was good. The things Emily and her parents said about her could be trusted. It made it just that much easier for Ivory Spark to be able to help the filly, a task that would begin when she saw her again on Friday. She had high hopes for what could be accomplished in helping her.
But before that, she wanted to read that story Emily kept talking about, Mind Over Matter, when she got a chance. She had a feeling it would provide a lot of insight into what the filly was thinking, and didn’t waste any time in sending a message to her parents to drop it off at her office tomorrow.
The story was on her desk, waiting to be read by the time Ivory Spark got into her office in the morning, and what a story it was. Emily wasn’t lying when she said she wrote about Ivory Spark helping an abused foal named Leo, and it felt a little bit jarring to read about at first. It became less so as the doctor read through, and by the time the story reached its conclusion, if the unicorn had any suspicion about Emily not being from Equestria, it was thoroughly dismissed now. 
It was remarkably well written for a foal, but the details showed that Emily didn’t really know as much about Ivory Spark and Equestria as she thought she did. There was no town called ‘North Star’ near Baltimare, nor was Redwood Forest anywhere close to the city, the one Emily described being around two hundred miles away in the real world. There were lots of other little things in the story that weren’t correct, like how Emily described magic working or how not using it made you disabled, things the filly would of course get wrong since she was a pegasus. 
The story also showed that Emily didn’t know Ivory Spark much beyond her name, appearance, and general attitude. Subtle details like a hint at the unicorn herself having a rough foalhood here and an attitude that could be a bit cross there weren’t correct. It also in general wouldn’t have been how she handled the situation with the character Leo if it really was her. If it was her dealing with a five year old foal in the same situation, she’d take her time and establish trust with them and let them speak when they felt comfortable rather than push to get to the heart of the issue like she would with somepony Emily’s age. It was remarkably like how she would treat Emily, and how she had been so far, but very little like how she’d handle a five year old.
What she wrote about Leo going through was almost exactly like how the filly described her sexual abuse, and it almost seemed like she just inserted herself into the story plainly, a thought that made Ivory spark sigh sadly and close her eyes. It gave her a couple of things to follow up on, like drug use and self harming behavior, but even outside of that, it painted a stunning and tragic picture of what was probably going on inside the filly’s head, whether Emily intended to paint it or not. If she was just writing about her own experiences like the unicorn thought, the diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder would only become that much stronger, especially coupled with the trauma she described both to the mare and told in the story.
Ivory Spark noted that the long and the short of the story was that a creature called a ‘human’ turned into a pony and went through the motions of learning to deal with trauma and addiction. In the story, just like she saw from Emily, the main character seemed to understand the seriousness of what happened to them, but was unaware of the full gravity of the situation. Eventually, by the end of the story, the colt seemed like he was healed, a period of time that looked to be about two or three months.
If only trauma normally healed that quickly, Ivory Spark thought as she finished the story.
It certainly gave the unicorn a few different starting points for talking to Emily on Friday, something she quickly wrote down before getting to work on her notes about the filly. It seemed like the whole picture was now painted for her, and she could start working on getting to the heart of helping the filly.