Patient #11-A-7 (Caleb), Session 9 is the second episode of The Bright Sessions Season 1.
Synopsis[]
"Session 9 with Caleb Michaels, a 16-year-old with the abilities of a highly advanced empath. So far he’s made very little progress in controlling this ability. Sessions have been quite challenging as a result, for obvious reasons."
Session Summary[]
Caleb comes in for his ninth session with Dr. Bright. He hasn't been making much progress in previous sessions. Dr. Bright greets him kindly, asking about how football is going for him. He replies indifferently and almost curtly. The topic shifts to school and leads to a discussion on Macbeth, eventually changing tone because Caleb reveals that he feels as if he's "made something worse" for someone. From here, he begins to talk about an "emo" boy in his class named Adam whose sadness is quite overpowering for his empathy powers. Caleb vents about being able to feel everyone's emotions.
We learn that although school can be stressful, he doesn't want to do home tutoring since he would have to give up football. Caleb expands, stating that he doesn't like hanging out with one individual all day since his feeling starts blending with the other's person's feelings, which he doesn't like. Additionally, Caleb elaborates on how he enjoys playing football because most of the players are feeling the same thing.
Caleb goes back to complaining about Adam's emotions overwhelming him. Dr.Bright steers Caleb into figuring out why Adam is feeling sad. Through this, the audience learns that Caleb can distiguish subtleties in people's emotions based on why the individual feels that way. Caleb thinks that Adam's sadness is because of loneliness but expresses that it feels diffrent from "normal" loneliness.
Dr. Bright moves the conversation back to clarifying why Caleb thinks he made something worse this week. Caleb explains that after the Macbeth presentations, some of his teammates were giving Adam a hard time about his presentation. Caleb stopped some of his teammates from being cruel to Adam but seemed to have said the wrong thing in doing so, causing Adam to become embarrased and more upset. Caleb is disheartened, believing that all he can do is mess everything up, including helping others. Dr. Bright reasuress Caleb that he is being too hard on himself and decides that an acceptable way of trying to help Adam would be by first becoming his friend. Reluctantly, he agrees and seems to be more focused during his meditation exercises because of it.
Post-Session Summary[]
"Interesting progress today. Subject showed increased focus in his exercises after venting about a fellow student. I’ve encouraged him to pursue a friendship and I posit that the results will be very telling."
Featured Characters[]
- Caleb Michaels
- Dr. Joan Bright
- Adam Hayes (mentioned)