‘Your problem is linguistic,’ said my therapist.

‘What?’ I hadn’t even told her my issues yet. She was the last in a long line of practitioners. So far I’d been diagnosed with ADHD, autism, Lyme’s disease, a gluten allergy and a leak in my third chakra.

I thought she was talking about neuro-linguistic programming, which I’d also tried, with as little success as every other suggested treatment.

‘You have no irrealis modes and no negative polarity,’ she said. ‘Everything for you simply is. Everything exists. And the intensity of all that existence is oppressive. Am I wrong?’

She wasn’t wrong, but when I tried to tell her she held up her hand to silence me. ‘Drink this,’ she commanded.

There wasn’t any question of refusing. The prospect of imbibing the foul potion had already formed itself as a real proposition in my mind. As my astute diagnostician had observed, I was constrained by the compulsion to comply.

I downed it in one swallow.

The resulting display of gagging and retching delighted my therapist, who was now pounding my back with hearty open-palmed thumps. ‘Go ahead and cough it up,’ she said.

When eventually I heaved an acerbic excretion into the paper bag she’d pressed before my face, she gave a bright cheer.

‘Good for you!’ she enthused, wiping mucus from a small shiny object. ‘Just as I suspected.’ 

The unlikely midwife of this revolting mystery presented my issue to me with unadulterated glee.

It was the size and shape of a fifty-pence coin, and it was embossed like a coin—not with the queen’s head, but one word in stalwart capital letters.

YES.

Intrigued, I flipped it over, expecting a ‘no’ on the other side. Instead I found the same word on both faces. 

YES/YES.

A profusion of affirmation, with no way of distinguishing heads from tails, no negative denial to balance the positive assertion.

Positive polarity, my therapist confirmed, with a profusion of realis.

‘It never gives you a break. Everything you imagine becomes real—or you suffer until it does. And you suffer after it does, too.’

‘Am I cured now that this is out of me?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘It’s a linguistic problem, remember? There’s only one way to cure a linguistic problem, and that’s with more language.’

She produced a small square envelope made of something that looked like silk. ‘Get that back down you, as soon as you can.’

Mercifully, the glass she now proffered was filled with water, and I swallowed the silk-covered coin with ease.

I felt better instantly. ‘What was that?’ I asked. The omnipresent, relentless urgency had been replaced by some more calming, more hopeful state—a curiosity, perhaps.

‘I wrapped those devilish yeses in a little blanket of maybe,’ she explained, and sent me on my way.

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Would you like to know more about this story? I discuss it in Episode 76 of Structured Visions and in a behind-the-scenes post on Patreon.