>>100284884tl;dr back when they were kids, she and her sister did not get along at all, and would often end up in arguments or fights (including throwing things at each other). Their parents had the two of them go into daily counseling/therapy, but it always overlapped her math class, which set her way back in learning. Because of that, her brain gets absolutely fried when she has to do mental math (particularly when it involves multiplication), and it triggers her past trauma with her sister.
Back to Balatro: she didn't know how to play poker going into the game, so when she was tasked with mentally adding up the chips of the cards she was going to play, matching up against poker hands, and incorporating multipliers in order to reach the required amount of chips, her little mind just locked up and she went to go cry in the bathroom. But she came back, pulled herself together, and pushed her way through it. (It was only some of the intro rounds were this was an issue, since you don't have any jokers giving you huge chip/mults that end up negating the need to mental math)
