"Huh. Do people have different, hmm, ratios of strength between different talents here? I mean, are there some people who would also have telekinesis and telepathy but their telekinesis would be stronger than yours is and their telepathy weaker?" 

Oh, yes. There are subtle artists who have only pyrokinesis, or very weak telepathy and enough teekay to wreck buildings; and there are telepaths who are bad at fiddly little therapy stuff and good at combat arts, or bad at defense and good at reading memories; and some subtle artists are born incontinent in some or all of their powers, which is as bad as it sounds; and all the combinations you can think of.

"...What are telepathy combat arts?" 

I can knock people unconscious, if they're not shielded, but if I got in a fight with another telepath subtle artist it'd turn into this whole psychic combat thing? I'm not especially good at that, I have good natural defense but a specialist would wreck me.

Vanyel gives her a cross-eyed look. "Um. What happens if they win? Do you just die, or something else?" 

That would depend on whether they were trying to kill me.

"If they weren't?" He's frowning. "I can knock people out, hells, I can kill people with Mindspeech – it's really horrible, I wish I couldn't, I did it by accident the first time because I have stupidly powerful Gifts – but it doesn't sound like the thing you're talking about. Even if I was fighting another strong Mindspeaker only using Mindspeech for some reason, I think we'd just whack at each others' shields until one of them came down and then they'd get knocked out and maybe die." 

I'm not really an expert and everything I remember is from a long time ago and half of it was from fiction. My strategy was going to be not getting into any fights.

"That's fair." Vanyel sips his tea for a moment. "Are people in your world born with powers already active? You said some people are born with them...not controlled?" 

Yeah, they usually get it figured out sooner or later if they don't burn their house down or something but some incontinent mindreaders wind up with a lot of attitude about it.

"It's nice that most people don't have that, though?" Vanyel shrugs. "Here, people get Gifts as kids, and usually they're kind of uncontrolled. Mine were...worse than average. Also I have a lot of them. It was pretty inconvenient for everyone." 

That does sound inconvenient. I don't know anything about what the process of controlling Gifts is like; with subtle arts it's sort of like learning not to - fidget. But I wasn't born fidgety so I don't have personal experience.

"Mainly I had to learn how to shield." Vanyel squirms a bit; it doesn't seem to be the world's most comfortable topic for him, but he still seems interested. "Then I wasn't doing things by accident all the time. Then I had to learn how to actually do things on purpose in a controlled way. Until I'd done that I would still do uncontrolled things if I was startled." He plays with the rim of his teacup. "Most people have an easier time because their Gifts awaken slowly, so they're not that strong at first and they have a chance to get used to it." 

That sounds really scary.

"It wasn't great." 

Do you want me to give you the therapy intake spiel now or is this just making conversation?

"...Sorry, what? Oh." He re-focuses on her. "Um, yes, I think I want that." 

She repeats the speech she gave Lancir.

Vanyel listens, gets a speculative expression when she hits 'am not perfect at absolute information-theoretic insulation against very curious people good at using very tiny clues', and then is silent for a while.

"That's very...thorough," he says finally. "They have compulsions in your world too? Um, I wonder if a Mindhealer here could fix things you did – or if you could fix things they did, I don't know if it's just a different kind of magic though. Anyway. I'm...supposed to think of goals now? I probably need a minute to do that." 

They have compulsions in my world but therapists aren't usually first line to deal with them; I picked up that exception in Arda after talking it over with Elves, who can make inviolable oaths. It's possible another Mindhealer could fix or at least route around things I did. Take all the time you need.

He frowns into space for a while, retrieves a scrap of paper from his desk and turns it over, looks at it, then looks helplessly at her. "Er, what kind of goals am I supposed to have? I...haven't done this before." 

Uh, as a jumping-off point if not a rigid template, what was Lancir - uh, did he not even tell you whatever it was he was driving at?

"There were specific things sometimes? Like when I left Haven by myself on a mission the first time, and he wanted to talk through it and make sure I would...be all right and not do anything stupid. Um, and then afterward we talked about how my risk assessment is off. A lot of it was just trying to make it so I could do more of my duties and not, um, get upset by as many things."

He fidgets with the sleeve of his tunic. "I'm trying to remember what he said the first time, when I got back to Haven. He said..." Vanyel twists away from her to face the wall. "I guess he said he wanted to make sure I was...still alive in twenty years...because I'm really powerful and they need me. And...a bad thing happened to me...and most people it happens to don't survive." 

Okay, uh, I'm not going to be approaching this from a perspective of wanting to be able to point you at a greater number and variety of responsibilities. That's in tension with generally getting you more comfortable in your head. It's not that a generally happier and more mentally organized you won't be able to do more things but it will tend to be discouraging if you feel like you're obliged to immediately spend down any slack you build up. Also, one of the mistakes Lancir was making was mixing his position of authority and responsibility with his therapeutic role; you're not supposed to do that, because it incentivizes... are you okay?

Vanyel is staring at her like he can't quite parse any of what she's just said. 

"I, um, I just..." He pulls his knees in to his chest. "I don't – I can't – can I talk to you in Mindspeech it's easier."