Chapter 1127 - 838: Master of Your Own Thoughts

That night, Jie Nianzhou returned to his dorm.

He hadn’t slept until late at night.

Jie Nianzhou’s roommate was already accustomed to his schedule—doctoral students tend to be very tolerant of all sorts of oddities, especially psychology doctoral students—thus he was already sound asleep.

Meanwhile, Jie Nianzhou sat at his desk, with the table lamp beside him and his phone in front of him.

The screen of his phone was lit, with a disk-like icon slowly rotating.

He wore headphones, reviewing all the recorded records from the day.

Bi Yanling’s voice kept pouring into Jie Nianzhou’s ears, each sentence clear as though it had just been spoken.

["The lab borrowed?"]

["Then you will be responsible for collecting data for this experiment. Since you’ve made the trip, you should also handle future liaisons over there."]

["Didn’t I tell you to modify that experiment before? That design had major flaws, did you fix it?"]

["Since you’ve been to Bai Qinghua’s place, chat more with the people in their project group regularly, communicate a lot."]

["You should focus on collecting data over there for the next two weeks, and I’ll find some time to help you revise your experiment; it’s not a big issue."]

["..."]

At one end, Jie Nianzhou pursed his lips, dragged the progress bar back, and listened again to the second round.

Then came the third round, and the fourth round.

As time passed by second by second, the roommate’s snoring became increasingly hard to ignore.

Jie Nianzhou silently increased the volume, starting the fifth round.

Usually, Jie Nianzhou would repeatedly review recordings of the day’s conversations with Bi Yanling, while also retrieving their chat content from messaging apps.

At those times, the purpose of his reviews was to confirm that he hadn’t missed hearing anything, hadn’t misunderstood what Bi Yanling meant, whether his responses were appropriate, and whether he had offended his teacher.

He would dissect each segment of dialogue sentence by sentence like dismantling a machine until he confirmed he hadn’t done anything wrong.

But this time, Jie Nianzhou’s purpose was not that.

Clearly, a recording was playing in his headphones, but Jie Nianzhou’s pupils remained unfocused; he wasn’t seriously listening to the contents of the recording, only mechanically repeating the action, or rather—he was using this recording as a kind of white noise background.

In his mind, he initially swirled around Bi Yanling’s words from the day, and afterward, Nan Zhubin and previous conversations from psychological consultations with Nan Zhubin started appearing involuntarily.

Even without recordings, those words still lingered sharply in his ears as if they were happening now.

["What you need to do isn’t eliminate those thoughts, but make them less important."]

["We’re not eliminating the recording behavior, but getting you to control it."]

As time passed, the voice in Jie Nianzhou’s mind grew louder, gradually overshadowing the recorded playback in the headphones.

Eventually, all he could hear was Nan Zhubin’s voice.

At this moment, the fifth round of recording playback ended. Relying on muscle memory, Jie Nianzhou started the sixth round.

["The lab borrowed..."]

"Beep"—Jie Nianzhou suddenly pressed to stop the recording.

He took a deep breath, pushed his phone aside, feeling a change happening within him.

Like a huge stone in his heart had landed, he climbed into bed, pulled up the covers, and his body relaxed like a puddle of soft mud.

In less than a minute, Jie Nianzhou’s breathing became steady and long, entering dreamland.

The next morning, Jie Nianzhou woke up.

Without checking the time or any voice recording files, he directly opened his contacts and dialed a number.

"Hello, Teacher Nan?" Jie Nianzhou’s voice was somewhat tense.

"Yes, it’s me." Nan Zhubin’s voice came from the other end of the phone, "What’s up?"

Jie Nianzhou took a deep breath: "Can I book a temporary consultation, today?"

After saying this, the other end paused for a moment. Jie Nianzhou held his breath, almost able to hear his own heartbeat.

He heard Nan Zhubin say "hold on" at the receiver, followed by the sound of light keyboard tapping.

After a while, Nan Zhubin replied: "There’s a slot today from 2:30 to 3:30 in the afternoon, can it work?"

"Sure, if it’s convenient, can it be an online consultation?" Jie Nianzhou asked.

"Of course."

"Great." Jie Nianzhou nodded forcefully, "2:30 in the afternoon."

-----------------

At 2:25 p.m., Jie Nianzhou sat in front of his desk in advance.

Three minutes later, he sent a message to Nan Zhubin and received confirmation.

At 2:30, he promptly pressed the video dial button.

The background of the psychological consultation room at the mental health center appeared on the screen instantly. Nan Zhubin sat in the office chair in front of the camera, almost in the same position as he was last time in the consultation room.

"Teacher Nan." Before Nan Zhubin could speak, Jie Nianzhou took the lead, "This time...it’s very abrupt. Thank you for agreeing to the consultation."

"I’ve experienced something these past two days...or should I say, yesterday. I feel that I must talk to you about it."

...

On the other side of the video call, Nan Zhubin looked at Jie Nianzhou and nodded slightly.

Compared to the previous series of consultations, Jie Nianzhou presented a completely different state.

In the past, consultations always started with the consultant, Nan Zhubin, asking questions to guide, and then Jie Nianzhou would respond; but this time, Jie Nianzhou, as the visitor, proactively started the conversation.

This indicates that Jie Nianzhou’s sense of control over the consultation space is increasing.

He’s not just answering questions anymore, he’s starting to choose what to say.

In the treatment of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, the visitor regaining control over their own speech is a key stage indicator in cognitive-behavioral therapy. It signifies that the visitor is no longer dominated by anxiety-driven behaviors but is beginning to act according to their will.