"Try… arguing myself, consciously, out of fretting over how my mother will actually respond to the scenario."

"Yes, that's what I said."

"… Still not sure I can do that."

"Yes we've determined this already."

"But like– I am not sure I know what you mean by consciously arguing myself out of it, because just going 'this isn't going to help' doesn't actually, uh, stop it."

"Repeat it inside your head? 'There is no way this is going to help, there is nothing I can do about it, this feeling is not serving any purposes and is making me upset for no reason, I will not feel it.'"

"Does it need to sound convincing? I'm assuming yes, but the 'I will not feel it' part won't."

"No it needs to sound like an assertion not a prediction. You're telling your subconscious what to do."

"… Uh." Pause. "And now I'm not sure how to check whether I have successfully stopped fretting."

"You seem to have stopped fretting a while ago."

"That was mostly because I was focusing on other things, I think…?" he says, slowly.

"Yeah, probably."

"So I don't know if the telling myself to stop thing actually works."

Matt raises an eyebrow at him.

"No, you don't, so maybe we should shut up and see if you start fretting again."

"… While I try or do not try to continue not fretting?"

"Don't try, if you try you'll be contaminating your experimental results!"

"I was checking that the experiment was– seeing if I'd return to fretting while not trying or seeing if I'd do it even while trying not to. Checking if it was to check if I was no longer fretting, or if it was to check I would not return to fretting while trying not to."

"No it's to check whether you can stop fretting after you have started fretting."

"… But we need to first get into the point where I am, again, fretting, which I am not currently doing – I wasn't clear that we were trying to return me to fretting so that I could then un-fret, I thought it might be that we were seeing if I could or could not return to fretting while trying not to. Yeah, okay – return to fretting by trying in no way to affect whether I am fretting, then try unfretting?"

(Ugh.)

"Yes pretty much, that's why I said we should shut up. But it appears you're fretting again about something."

"Maybe?" he says. "I don't know – my emotions haven't gained handy little labels or scales or anything for me to work out if I'm fretting any more easily than, I don't know, fretting a lot and it being extremely obvious."

He giggles. "You should get that fixed."

"Would be nice if I could."

"Would be nice if I knew how to teach other people to do it."