How does Jeanne-Marie help Alison when her OCD gets bad?
thank you for the ask, i love this question!!!
so, a lot of headcanons and speculation at play here, but i've been preparing this answer for a while now, i hope it works 🙏
i would say that between the two of them, jeanne-marie would be more educated or aware about disordered thinking and other patterns or signs and symptoms of mental or psychiatric conditions since she's been in therapy for some time and doing a lot of work to understand herself and her own traumas and how her brain and body react to it or to things that trigger her trauma; dazzler, by comparison, likely have not been in intense or in-depth therapy, and i think it'd be likely for people to dismiss her overthinking as "just anxiety", and again, the irony of her OCD would lead her to not push it because she'd hate to be a burden or take up resources that other people need, hospitals are already crowded so she shouldn't be wasting doctors' time and just deal with it herself; i also don't think dazzler would feel comfortable or confident about seeing a therapist now at this level of fame, because what if they're biased due to already knowing her? or what if they break confidentiality and leak something about her? in general, celebrity therapists seem to be an interesting role to me, but i'm not saying they're inherently ineffective
i think alison may have panic attacks here and there, but over time, she's learned to just not externalise that side of her anymore for various reasons; people can't help her or keep up with her emotional intensity or overthinking, the world is chaotic and dangerous and there's no safe space or time for her feelings to be coddled, she's a bigger singer now and great power means great responsibility -- people are looking to her for answers and direction, so she should be the calm one and absorb her stress for later, right? and i think over time, she learns to stop asking for validation from people too, so it looks like dazzler is stable, but really, she's gone from worrying about if she's a bad person to concluding she's a bad person, now her job is to focus on what she can do to keep people safe,
get better security, ensure better venues, ensure more accessibility, get more information, more information, more safety nets, more planning about anything and everything to make her concerts a safe place
text her friends or check in on them regularly, make reminders and post it notes and mark calendars, get information if her friends go on a dangerous mission, always keep an eye out if a friend is missing for too long
more information, more planning, more research -- she keeps the loop running by feeding these thoughts and getting more and more research as a way to feel in control, but really, she's just poking at the thread and still overthinking the thought even if she's trying to be productive or rational about it, and she keeps on shifting the goalposts
on top of that, alison is more likely to forgive others easily but blame herself, and she won't even say self deprecatory things out loud because one) she's not as self loathing, two) she doesn't want to make other people validate her or uncomfortable with her negativity, and three) she doesn't think she's self loathing if she holds herself to high standards in terms of being responsible and taking accountability
alison generally deals with her spirals by distracting herself, usually by interacting with people, especially hanging out with her friends or watching a documentary with an engaging narrator or anything of the like, to just let her thoughts become background noise as she listens to people talk about what they're passionate about or hear her friends laugh and just go into other people's worlds and borrow their stable nervous system, because alison is an extrovert and genuinely likes people and she feels more stable around them
in worse cases, her coping mechanisms would involve more substance abuse or self damaging acts ranging from biting her nails to worse
i think it's difficult to help alison because she'd hate to ask someone for help and then they don't help her how she needs it, and now she's stuck between feeling mentally ill and not wanting to be mean to this person who's just trying to help by being like "you're a shit listener" or something like that, if that makes sense
but i think aurora would get access to this side of dazzler naturally when they become partners, and i think it's not difficult to notice certain quirks of alison even before she experiences a spiral; jeanne-marie does appreciate that alison is very thoughtful, creative, capable of holding multitudes and contradictory thoughts or conflicting emotional truths, considerate, helpful to other people, responsible, emotionally open, productive, and so on -- but a part of jeanne-marie is wondering how dazzler is offsetting the costs these all take
because you could be rich and stable and free, yes, but being that emotionally open or generous or too considerate about other people's well-being and offering so much of yourself among other things has to get exhausting at some point
and jeanne-marie would notice that alison has a tendency to overthink which is in line with her tendency to ramble, and since alison trusts her, she'd feel comfortable rambling around aurora, so aurora would over time learn how dazzler's mind works; where most people would feel lost trying to keep up with alison or thinking "??" when she says something insane, jeanne-marie can trace her roadmap of thoughts, like "oh, she didn't jump from point a to point e, she went from a to b to c to e and is telling me about a and e out loud"
so when dazzler does have OCD spirals, i feel what jeanne-marie can do is
be gentle, use her inside voice; she knows she doesn't want to be yelled at or be told "to just get it together" or "calm down" when she herself is struggling, so she won't do that to alison
ask alison questions, offer but not force physical affection or anything like that depending on how alison is feeling physically
let alison ramble, like don't try to correct her thoughts because her brain will prolong the loop or create more loops by shifting the goalpost, and also because alison just wants to be heard and not fixed, and she deserves to be heard, so jeanne-marie will hear her out and not be afraid to see the "ugly, difficult sides" of alison
this is the delicate part, but say the simple logical things or offer a grounded perspective that provide alison comfort and not make her defensive or escalate; for example, if alison is worrying about a friend not responding to her texts, jeanne-marie can maybe say that the friend is in a different timezone atm and it's 3 am there, and alison sent that text at 1 am, so maybe they're asleep, and she can postpone her concern to the next day and circle back to the situation
explain alison's thought patterns back at her without patronising her, if it's clear; like "you take the blame yourself because you don't want people to unfairly critique your team for not being able to fend off against sentinel attacks, and it's easier that way because you fear that people will say you're making excuses if you try to point out how the government shouldn't be allowing sentinels in the first place, and you want your fans to have faith in you and make their money worth it"
validate her feelings, like yeah, dazzler is allowed to feel scared or guilty and just want a show to not end up with violence and injuries and deaths for once
indulge alison when she wants a distraction, like showing dazzler what she's reading or talking about her time at NASA and explaining astronomical related topics to alison; especially when things are really bad emotionally, just help get alison to a point of less distress, then try to troubleshoot her feelings or the problem at hand
of course, it's not always perfect, but i think at the end of the day, neither of them can really blame the other for the coping mechanisms they've developed as a result of their traumas; jeanne-marie can understand why alison feels so strongly like this, and it sucks that dazzler directs so much of the blame inwardly and often feels alienated for not being able to explain her overthinking coherently always, but jeanne-marie would have empathy for her -- because yeah, DID and OCD aren't the same thing, but jeanne-marie knows what it's like to be misunderstood by people who think they need to "fix" you when really, you just want to be heard or supported or have someone by your side
so yeah, aurora and dazzler will be there to sit with each other in the trenches even when the worst comes, because every storm too will pass eventually, and it's okay if it doesn't either, so long they know they have someone to count on
