🌀 Episode 10: Therapy, but Make It Kaleidoscopic and Also There’s a Tap-Dancing Toad

 Welcome to the part of healing where logic quietly exits the room, and Carl replaces your coping mechanisms with jazz hands.



So, Carl—my monocled cactus life coach, who once made me meditate on a pile of tangled chargers—declared it was time for “psychic jazz therapy.” I didn’t ask what it meant. I simply showed up in my bathrobe with a tea that may or may not have been brewed from expired hibiscus and whispered regrets.

Carl handed me a kaleidoscope. “Focus on your fractals,” he said.

“Do I have those?” I asked.

“You have baggage, don’t you?” he replied, adjusting his monocle and lighting a candle shaped like Saturn. “Same thing.”

And so began what I can only describe as an improvised deep-healing performance art piece orchestrated by a sentient succulent and a toad named Gregory who wore tiny, patent leather tap shoes.

🐸 Gregory the Tap-Dancing Toad

Let’s talk about Gregory. He’s not just a toad. He’s a vibe. He tap dances to the sound of memory—your memory, to be specific. Carl claimed the rhythm Gregory makes is synchronized to your emotional blockage frequencies. Every shuffle-ball-change unlocks a suppressed feeling, and if you hear a pirouette, you’re probably finally forgiving your fourth-grade bully or at least that time you said "you too" to the waiter who told you to enjoy your meal.

The room dimmed. The kaleidoscope flickered with memories I forgot I owned. A mixtape played faintly—music that only plays in your repressed memories. I heard the ghost of a saxophone solo I once choreographed heartbreak to in my teenage bedroom.

“Let the rhythm stir your inner child’s weird cousin,” Carl whispered, which didn’t help, but also kind of did?

I stared into the kaleidoscope and saw:

  • My eighth birthday party, but everyone was a sock puppet.

  • My ex, apologizing… but in Morse code via glitter.

  • A carnival ride labeled “Should Have Set Boundaries.”

I blinked. Gregory spun into a soft shoe number and somehow my fear of intimacy became a fog that rolled out from under the couch.

“This is like if Freud and a lava lamp had a child,” I said, dizzy.

Carl nodded solemnly. “Jazz therapy is not linear.”

Neither was the room. The walls now looked like melted candlelight and decisions I wasn’t ready to make.

🧠 Breakthroughs & Brass Sections

Around the 45-minute mark, I found myself crying into a pillow shaped like a saxophone while Gregory softly tap-danced on my shoulder. I whispered, “I think I’m afraid of being seen.”

Carl snapped. “LOUDER! Own your spotlight! Your inner theater kid is dying!”

So I shouted it. Into the kaleidoscope. Into the void. Into the face of my own reflection in a disco ball that seemed to know everything.

Carl began speaking in what I assume was emotional scat:

“Bop-bap! Trauma’s got a trap!
Zip-zow! Let it out now!”

I sobbed. I laughed. I regretted my life choices. I forgave myself. I developed a mild crush on Gregory.

And just as suddenly as it began, it ended.

Carl bowed. Gregory curtsied.

The room returned to normal. Kind of. My plant looked smug. The mirror was fogged. The kaleidoscope now only showed me an old Ikea receipt and a glimpse of hope.

“Growth occurred,” Carl said, smugly adjusting his monocle. “Probably.”

✨ Takeaways from Psychic Jazz Therapy:

  1. Don’t fight the tap-dancing toad. Let him into your heart. He has rhythm and wisdom.

  2. Your trauma will always find a new way to speak. Sometimes in jazz. Sometimes in vegetables. Sometimes in the dream where you’re late for a math test but you’re also a goat.

  3. Healing is not linear. Sometimes it rhumbas.

Also, I now own a kaleidoscope that whispers affirmations if I tilt it just right.

🪞 Teaser for Next Week:

Episode 11: My Mirror Self is Hotter and Meaner and Totally Took Over My Life for a Weekend
During Carl’s “Reflections & Projections” exercise, things got… shiny. My mirror self came to life, wore high-waisted jeans with confidence, and threw a self-love rave in my living room. She speaks French. She doesn’t apologize when she means no. And she signed with a modeling agency without even asking for my skincare routine. Carl insists this is “healthy envy.” I suspect it’s a hostile inner makeover.

Stay tuned. Bring glitter and boundaries.

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