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Helga swears by Dr. Bliss and her amazing ability to bring her anger from 10 down to a solid 3 on a good day. Helga still hates how much Brainy creeps up alongside her when she wants a moment alone.
Arnold doesn’t think he needs therapy until his parents come back to San Lorenzo. It’s simple, really, he thought, about his parents' decisions to go back to San Lorenzo, leave him behind, and never come back. Arnold knows rationally that they were under the influence of the sickness, but he was left alone and raised by his grandparents. He’s not the kind of kid who will act out and punch his parents out, but there are moments when they try parenting him, and he doesn’t want to listen to them because what do they know? About anything. Being abandoned at a young age and having to be far more grown-up compared to his classmates, it’s tough, and he realized he has so much hidden anger inside him that he doesn’t understand where it comes from.
It’s not like the anger is like how Helga has anger, her anger is different because her family doesn’t pay attention to her at all, to the point she reminded him that the first day they met in preschool, she had to walk by herself through the streets to get to the preschool and a big dog stole her lunch box hence why he shared his snack with her. But he sees how much progress Helga has made, and he knows, realistically, that he, too, should probably let go of his anger towards his parents.
Helga walks with him to the therapy room; she’s already told him the basics about how Dr. Bliss will keep everything confidential. He wonders if Helga ever discusses their relationship. He’s pretty sure that Dr. Bliss helped Helga be able to confess (not once but two times) to him. Arnold knows he was in denial about his own feelings towards Helga, but still, he wants to know how much Dr. Bliss knows about him.
When he’s called in, she leads Arnold to a chair, reviews that everything he tells her will be kept confidential, and then asks him a series of questions about inkblots and free association.
“What do you want to work on in therapy?” Dr. Bliss asks him.
“My anger,” he responds.
“What about your anger?” Dr. Bliss.
“I am angry all the time about my parents leaving me,” he tells her.
“How does that make you feel?” she responds back.
“It makes me pissed off that my parents left me for so long, and I know they were doing good, but they left me behind, thinking they would come back when they didn’t, and after rescuing them, they think they can try to parent me when my grandparents raised me and practically became an adult as well…” Arnold explained.
After they were done with the session, she gave him homework where he had to use a daily logs to track every time he felt angry or pissed off around his parents, he had to write down what happened before, the event itself, how he responded, what thoughts he had and to rate his anger level, 10 being the most angriest to 0 being he was fine and able to go throughout the day. He wasn’t sure how this would help him, but it seems to be a step in the right direction.
He felt better coming out of the therapy session and seeing Helga lying on the seat in the waiting room, reading a magazine.
“Let’s go to the pier,” Helga suggested to him.
“Even better, let’s go get ice cream and walk on the pier,” he countered after kissing her on the cheek.
And that’s what they did together.