Karan Patel was fine. When people around him said he was always sacrificing himself for others, he never disagreed. It was fine. Because to disagree might have made someone upset. One evening, after his partner called him crazy for mistakenly serving red wine with oily fish, Karan decided to work on himself. That's when he discovered BetterLYF, the online self-paced therapy startup promising greater fulfillment for the selfless. As a result, he started weekly video chats that escalated to three daily sessions after he earned the "Habit Hero" and "Participation" badges. His sessions left no bandwidth for arguments with his boyfriend or anyone else. In a satisfaction survey, he even checked that his life was more optimized, and he had the trophies to prove it.
After his virtual counselor diagnosed him with latent madness, she suggested kicking things up to five sessions a day. Karan didn't disagree. By the time he reached the stage of dealing with his in-utero trauma, he decided to go all in for a truer "BetterLYF" upgrade. To do so, he ordered the full home-therapy package. This allowed him to convert his den into a plush padded cell, complete with self-restraining gear. "And if you decide," his therapist added, "you can pick from several add-ons to improve your recovery, including high voltage electrodes or our sensory-deprivation strobe lights, to name a few."
When the kit arrived and was all set up, Karan twisted into the straitjacket on his own. His partner had refused to help, saying, "I'm not going to participate in your madness." Something Karan did not disagree with. So he wedged himself onto the floor for optimal wall head-thumping, as suggested by his virtual counselor, and watched some TV. There was a story on the news about BetterLYF's founder being accused of fashioning a Molotov cocktail from a rare 1945 Romanée-Conti at a Napa Valley vineyard after being served oily fish.
The news made Karan question the overreaction. If the founder behaved in such a way, was the therapy even worth all the money he'd spent? The realization caused him to bang the back of his head against the wall three times which earned him the Steven He "Emotional Damage" badge. After receiving that, Karan was sold and asked his virtual counselor to sign him up for the optional faux-feces splatter add-on to authenticate his padded loony den even more.
POV: When your boyfriend calls you crazy after a disagreement over wine...