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dysphxtric · 3 years ago

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Mental Illness - My Mental Health Story

TW: Depression, Anxiety, Self harm, Suicide, Sexual Harassment

“You should smile more.”

“It could be worse.”

“Just don’t think about it.”

These were the phrases I heard throughout all of my elementary and high school years. There was never a time when my peers and teachers, would not mention some bizarre, ignorant statement revolving around mental health. Not to mention, my family also contributed heavily to the stigmatization of mental health issues. Essentially, my family approached the subject of mental health with extreme hesitation, they refused to talk about how it affects people of all age, gender, ethical background (etc.) Every time I would say “I’m feeling lost” my family would automatically dismiss my frantic worries and it was not any different when I went to school. My peers would continuously remind me that my pain was not valid and that I need to stop being so sensitive. My primary parental figures, my mother and brother did not have the adequate knowledge or tools to be able to hold space for me. I would frequently hear my mom say, “I could understand someone suffering from PTSD feeling upset or sad but you’re so young and healthy honey, you have nothing to worry about” or the old classic “Someone else has it worse than you”. Whether I was at home or at school, I heard the same ignorant statements spewing out from what felt like everyone. And I could never comprehend what was the point of these falsely “encouraging” statements and why profusely use them? These kinds of statements do not uplift, nor do they empower those struggling with mental health issues, if anything it makes it extremely debilitating when your emotions are not acknowledged nor validated. One cannot expect to simply brush away another person’s emotion, thought or feeling as though it means nothing.

With that being said, growing up, I lived in a dysfunctional household alongside my mother, my older brother, and my grandmother. My mother would always be juggling work, schooling, and her dating life. My brother was very reluctant about staying home so he would always vanish after school, hang out with friends, party hard and engage with various street substances. Now my grandmother? It was not long after she immigrated that she began to immerse herself within the Jehovah’s Witnesses ideology and “religiously” strayed away from us as my mother likes to say. My mother was never fond of religious practices that were not “orthodox”. My grandmother wanted to indoctrinate my mom, brother, and I into joining her religious little club but failed which resulted in countless fights, yelling matches, and multiple dents left in our walls. The back and forth with the yelling was what scared me most in my childhood even if it was over something as small as not closing the cabinet door. I think it was around this time period I experienced violence/ trauma at home and truth be told I was extremely stressed and anxious all the time as a kid. My mother would cover the punched indents by taking magazines and sticking pages onto the indent. Often times my stomach would turn as I looked at the pages covering the area where my brother punched the wall with brutal force. Moreover, I felt impending sadness because all I ever wanted was for everyone in my family to be able coexist and not argue. I was trying to keep the peace between everyone, yet I was always the one that got caught in the middle of everything whether I liked it or not. I would get blamed a lot for trying to mend things for everyone. Even though all I wanted was the best for all my family members.

Fast forward to my pre-teen/ teenage years. By this point, my brother and grandmother were no longer living under the same roof as my mother and I. My brother was living with his ex-girlfriend while working as a security guard meanwhile my grandmother was living in her own little subsidized apartment preaching the word of Jehovah. At that particular time, my mother and I lived in a marvellous urban semi-detached house in a peaceful neighbourhood. My mother’s boyfriend had moved in with us and for the most part I was really happy because at least it was not just me and her.

My mother’s boyfriend lived with us while I was going to school. He was a really nice, caring and warm-hearted individual although I could never understand why my mother argued with him so much. I once told him “You should propose to her, I can see you two together forever” to which he replied with a welcoming smile.

But eventually just like with all good things, there comes an end. The inevitable breakup my mom went through was very bitter and I had to be there for her. Afterall, I was technically the only child that was around to emotionally comfort her. Ironically, the breakup occurred during the time I was being bullied in school. And it was difficult to be fully present for my mother while dealing with a lot of negativity at school. I had been experiencing cyber bullying on MSN by a bunch of peers calling me “weird”, “ugly” and “different”. To make matters worse, the group of kids that bullied me online ended up following me everywhere I went for recess which posed as a big obstacle for my well being. I had to eat inside the portables when teachers weren’t around or inside the girl’s bathroom stall just to avoid being teased. I never felt like I had a safe space to myself where I could be vulnerable and open up. Not to mention, it was a difficult time and there was practically no one I could confide in. I didn’t have a social circle of supportive friends, after all I was an antisocial person. Fear washed over me as I worried about disclosing my unpleasant experience to my mother because she was already dealing with so much, the heartbreak, the bills, work problems (etc.), it was then and there that I decided to lie instead of telling the truth. Ultimately, lying became my cooping mechanism to deal with the ongoing pain.

I kept up the lying for a long time in order to make it seem like everything was okay. I lied to everyone from family members to school peers to the teaching staff to principals to counselors.

For the longest time, lying sheltered me from all sorts of unnecessary questions. No one could really tell whether I was truthful or disloyal because I was able to make it sound believable. When I was a teenager, I continued to go down the same destructive path by being dishonest with myself and others. Many times, the thought of suicide crossed my mind and when I started to think about it and plan/coordinate the intricate details it did not hit me that something was very wrong, and I needed urgent help. A big part of the problem was that I was so used to downplaying my pain, given my family circumstance and stigmatization I experienced growing up with. There is no denying that I would engage in negative self talk convincing myself that I deserved the pain and suffering for not being likeable enough or for not being smart enough.

Sometimes I think that is the thing… people do not understand that I lied because that was what I was required to do in order to survive my childhood. I, myself do not tolerate lying and I think it is a form of betrayal and if I were to be completely honest, I would have NEVER lied to my mom had it been safe for me to express myself authentically in my household.

I did not live in a household where it was safe to speak my mind freely and disagree with my mother. Disagreeing was always the last thing I wanted to do, disagreeing meant I got the belt, my devices would get confiscated or that I was going to get grounded. They say, “Honesty is the best policy” and I do not disagree however, it is not as black and white as one may think. In my situation, lying was not only an adaptive coping mechanism but it became a survival mechanism to keep me safe from harm/threat.

I did not have very much individuality growing up. I felt as though having an opinion of my own was bad. In order to perpetuate this fixated mindset that I had, my mother constantly deemed certain attributed behaviours or thoughts as “good” or “bad”. So, say you were upset about a recent breakup with your partner, my mother would scoff and say, “You know life isn’t just about love right?” and play it like it means nothing to the person affected by the situation.

The first time I ever felt depressed was when I was 13. At that age I did not understand why I was feeling what I was feeling. All I knew was that there was something wrong with me. It did not help when I was being picked on by my classmates telling me “Go die”, “You belong in a ditch ugly bitch.”

The moment when things started getting out of hand was when I was first started my Art and Family Studies class in the same semester. In both classes I was placed into groups amongst other students. In Family Studies I had to be in a collaborative group that would divide responsibilities and tasks accordingly. When it came to cooking, my group consisted of four snobby, rich yet immature peers who were unwilling to help and contribute in any shape or form, I had to become the bigger person and sure enough I took all the responsibilities on myself. Though, it was not a smart move. But I was super shy and felt anxious to do anything different least to say speak up and advocate for myself, so I did what I had to do which was prepare meals, clean, and wash the dishes. At the end of the day, none of my peers thanked me, the only thank you I got was getting groped while washing the dishes and getting laughed at.

After what happened I ran to my best friend in tears to tell her what happened just to find her say “It’s not that bad, you’ll be fine” I felt like my blood was going to boil and I was about to start fuming. I stood thinking “Huh, that is so weird, is this how you comfort a person after being sexually harassed?”

Not to sound all grim but that experience showed me that no one really cared about me. No one cared that I got groped or how I felt in that moment. Let alone not even my “best friend” who was supposed to fulfill her role and be there for me. All I wanted was comfort and to be heard out. I could not even tell my mother about this experience until I turned 21 because of how ashamed I felt carrying around that experience and not having the ability to open up and mourn what happened that day and to be able to heal that damaged part of myself. I carried that incident with me for 7 years in silence because I was scared of being honest.

That specific experience was very detrimental to my mental health. Everything began to spiral out of control, I sprawled into a dark depressive state. I began to have intense panic attacks, insomnia, forgetfulness (etc.) After a certain duration of time, I had thoughts of suicide lingering at the back of my head. I questioned my worth, my identity, my culture, my everything.

The bullying and name calling persisted and became so intense that I ended up missing weeks of school time. Some of the boys in my Art class found it funny to make fun of my last name and call me “Prostitute”.

One day in the early springtime, my Art teacher noticed the marks on my wrists as I was painting and had not said anything until I made it to my last period class. I was called down to the guidance counselors office and was interrogated with questions.

“It has come to our concern that one of the staff members noticed cuts on your arms.”

I sat in silence trying hard to contain my anxiety.

“Are you struggling with depression or low mood? Is everything okay at home?”

It came to the point when I got so tired of lying about my pain that I admitted “Yes, I am struggling, I need help”. I dived into the bullying occurrences, the cat calling, my low grades, my self-esteem, the groping, my home situation (etc). After that, I was told that my mother would have to be called down to the school for “safety” reasons even though my counselor promised not to disclose any personal information to my mother. My greatest fear was that I did not want my mom to know that something was wrong.

Of course, my mom came to my school. She was told everything that had happened. I met her at the counselor’s office just to find her wailing in distress “You are such an embarrassment” and “Your counselor told me what you did, how could you do this?”. When the counselor gave us resources for help, my mother grabbed the papers and shoved them into the trash, got up and yanked me out the office.

The next three days that followed, my mother withdrew into her room not saying a word to me. I felt really uneasy and upset. She had her right to be alone but locking herself away from me and avoiding communication altogether? Didn’t make much sense.

I felt extremely guilty for not opening up to my mother sooner. But instead of choosing to be compassionate and caring she chose to resort to anger. She furiously blamed me for being “quiet” and “not trustful” which all landed on my shoulders again. It was “my” fault I thought.

Bottling this up resulted in a full-blown mental breakdown. I could not focus or concentrate because of everything building up. It came to the point where my mom had to choose between living in a toxic community or starting fresh elsewhere.

And even though my mother kept subjecting me to her harmful stigmatizations, the transition from my old school to my new one helped me greatly. When we moved away, I gradually started to feel better emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Very quickly, I ended up adapting to my new high school where I finally made friends.

One thing I cannot deny is that there definitely was a silver lining to all of this. Although I went through severe bullying and torment at school and home, I managed to reclaim my power and through that I discovered my inner peace after being extracted from my toxic high school. The new school that I ended up attending completely changed me and inspired me to become a more authentic version of myself. It was almost as though I did a complete 180°

My new peers and teachers were enthusiastic, open-minded and caring. The new community I was surrounding myself in was a very positive one that broke down stigmas and encouraged deep understanding and acceptance. My mind was blown when I found that it was easier to conversate with girls and guys at my new school, I was gradually becoming confident and more vocal, and I liked the feeling of not hiding myself away from the world. It felt rejuvenating to finally be heard and seen by others.

Slowly but surely, I began to partake in various activities at my school. I joined the Poetry Club which I would have never considered joining had I stayed back in my old school due to fear of how I was perceived. Ultimately, I started caring and nurturing myself more. My new friends supported me, and teachers began to openly listen to my stories and encouraged me to write. When I started writing, I realized that I could use this medium to cope with my depression and anxiety. The acknowledgment made a major difference in my life like never before.

If it were not for the transition from my old high school, I would have not made progress in developing into the woman I am today. I know that I am not my pain, I am not my mistakes.

Do I still struggle and have bad days? Yes, of course. Just like any human being I have my days when I am not feeling the greatest however, I am more open to learning about how to engage with my mind, body and soul in order to soothe myself during turbulent times. I still have that inner critic however, I have been engaging with activities such as bike riding, painting, drawing, and reading to help occupy my mind which as a result has reduced the time that I spend ruminating. Occupying myself has worked magic, I am now able to reduce and control how much time I spend self-loathing, criticizing, and judging myself. Rather than judging every thought, I’ve learned to slow down and observe.

If you stuck along until the end of my story, I want to thank you for reading through my experience. My hope is that my story can shed some light on the myths and stigmas surrounding mental health, especially within the Eastern European community. I want you all to know that you are ALL valid and I wanted to be able to share my story so that my readers know that they are not alone.

#mental health #mental health awareness #depression #mdd #mood disorder #anxiety #gad #my story #hope #bullying #narcissistic parent #end the stigma #recovery #fyp

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poychachi · 4 years ago

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How to Write About PTSD

@writinghaven on instagram [source: https://lisahallwilson.com/how-to-write-about-ptsd-in-deep-point-of-view/]

PTSD is featured in many fictional works, primarily as a source of internal conflict for a character. However, many writers simply research symptoms and run with it. There is so much more to PTSD than flashbacks that can add emotional layers, depth, and connection to readers, as well as increase the accuracy of the representation. Here are some important things to remember/consider when writing about PTSD!

What do writers get wrong about PTSD?

Giving characters a traumatic past and an ongoing condition that hinders their ability to move on is great for character arc if you can pull it off. Otherwise it can come off sounding trite or melodramatic. The character struggling with PTSD is facing overwhelming odds, and any character who stands up to a bully of any kind (even when it’s a mental illness) is someone readers will cheer for.

Do more research than just symptoms. Flashbacks seem to be the most appealing aspect of writing a character with PTSD, but actual recurring flashbacks are a symptom of very severe PTSD which is absolutely debilitating in every way. Try talking to someone who struggles with this. Read blogs written by those who live with or struggle with this, or have a loved one who struggle with this. Know that the symptoms don’t encompass the whole struggle but are simply the tip of the iceberg.

What else is there to PTSD other than flashbacks?

Yes, flashbacks can happen with PTSD, but here’s the truth about flashbacks – not everyone has them frequently or even at all. Most writers love the idea of using flashbacks, I’ll admit they’re fun to play with, but where writers often miss the mark with PTSD are all the OTHER symptoms that are debilitating and soul-crushing. Far more common are triggers which require more subtlety and art to really convey how devastating they can be.

PTSD is a filing problem – basically. Where most brains are able to process and appropriate file away a traumatic memory, for whatever reason – a particular memory or file gets left out and never gets filed away (processed). It’s kept front and center for easy access essentially rewiring the brain.

When triggered, (a smell, a place, a feeling, a person, etc.), the inner-most part of the brain (the amygdala – stay with me) sounds off like a fire alarm. When that fire alarm goes off, the rest of your brain diverts all power/energy to that alarm center. So, once the fire alarm goes off, you’re incapable of “thinking” your way out of a situation. Instead, you’ll instinctively react in the way that’s most likely to “save you” whether it’s fight, flight, or freeze.

When PTSD rewires the brain, that fire alarm (which is useful, which is necessary) is now super super sensitive. It’s like placing a fire alarm over your toaster. You’re going to get a lot of false alarms. So, in real life we might take the battery out of the alarm, move the alarm or move the toaster. But with PTSD, because the brain can’t figure out where to file that memory, you’re kind of stuck with these constant false alarms. So most or at least a lot of energy goes into avoiding setting off that fire alarm.

This creates a near-constant hyper-vigilance that is exhausting. Utter, soul-draining, bone-weary exhaustion. To the point where you can’t think clearly – you struggle to order your thoughts or prioritize things correctly. It’s debilitating and can very thoroughly undermine your self-confidence. Every small task or outing gets weighed against the emotional and physical and mental toll it could exact. And let me tell you, this foggy thinking makes life seem pretty hopeless pretty fast.

And while only the most severe cases have persistent flashbacks, that hyper-vigilance and exhaustion is pretty common. The mental fog caused by the hyper-vigilance or a trigger is common. The frustration and internalized shame of not being able to sort your thoughts, or trust your own thinking is intense.

Give your character a coping mechanism

Most people learn coping mechanisms to manage the symptoms of PTSD simply to function, but those mechanisms wear out, their effectiveness wanes over time, our tolerance of them grows thin. If a trigger is the fire alarm, the coping mechanisms are essentially the broom being used the fan the fire alarm to prevent it from going off.

If that “broom” is the only way you can manage life at all, you’ll go to some pretty extreme lengths to prevent having it ripped from your hands. Now, that “broom” can be expressed in a wide variety or combination of ways: anger or violence, self-medicating with drugs or alcohol, workaholism, eating disorders, becoming a hermit, suicidal, etc.

At the same time, someone with PTSD is going to cover up their pain at all costs. People stare. They avoid you. They whisper. And all of that gets internalized over time. They’ll be fine in a social situation until they aren’t and they react in (what might appear to be) an irrational or erratic way, but internally they’ll have clamped down and “soldiered up” as long as possible.

Show the consequences of how ineffective that bloody broom strategy is! Show what happens when the broom is taken away (alcohol, a person, a schedule, etc.).

Show don’t tell a PTSD Trigger

You want to show and not tell, right. The person struggling with these kinds of anxiety or PTSD is going to go to great lengths NOT to think about the original traumatic event. Who consciously relives traumatic events? Nobody.

More likely, the traumatic memories are shoved to the very back of the mind and actively avoided, and numbed when avoidance isn’t possible. They’ll be ruled by emotions, and unless they dig down into the WHY of their strong emotion, the PTSD may go untreated for a very long time.

Instead, show the coping mechanisms (the broom) used to control the symptoms or turn their mind off (escapism, fantasy, porn, drugs, alcohol).

“For me there’s a predictable progression that happens that tips me off to that fire alarm detecting smoke. I feel it in my gut first, a clamping down, a tension, a tightness, and a feeling like I don’t want to be in that place. Then I start to blush, my face feels like it’s on fire. Then I start to tremble. I’ll look down and notice my hands trembling, but at times it won’t feel like I’m looking at my own hands at all. Then my last warning is profuse sweating – regardless of the environmental conditions.” - Lisa Hall-Wilson

When PTSD is triggered you’re at war with yourself quite literally. It will seem to come out of nowhere or can build up slowly to a crashing crescendo. A moment ago you were rationally able to recognize there wasn’t any danger, but then the switch is flipped and your body is absolutely convinced you’re in mortal danger.

Know what your character’s primal goal is when they’re triggered. Is it safety? Is it survival? Is it escaping? Have them seek that out at all costs.

They could have a mantra they recite to control their thoughts. They might have a safe person, someone they trust to watch their backs in new or upsetting situations. The slow removal of their dependence on their grounding techniques or coping mechanisms is a great way to show growth.

Those who know what their triggers are will actively avoid situations that might set them off. This is a potential for conflict – force them into a situation where they’re uncomfortable, where they feel threatened or unsafe. Spring it on them. Put them in new situations.

“I wasn’t aware that exercise fatigue mimicked my PTSD symptoms, so I was triggered by a jerk at the gym and couldn’t feel it coming on because I was in the middle of a workout. The times when you’re triggered without warning are the worst. Being blindsided sets you back days, weeks, even months.”

A blindsided character could be an “all is lost” moment

Being blindsided by a trigger at any point. A situation that’s been fine a thousand other times can trigger you that one day because someone new is there, because you can’t get your usual seat by the door, because someone’s wearing the cologne that your attacker wore. This is a great device to save for a pivotal conflict.

It’s like a two-by-four to the head. Show their emotional wounds bleeding all over the floor and have them keep going anyway. Show them growing stronger, trusting people again against their instincts, forgiving themselves because they couldn’t get a hold of themselves again, etc. Let the whole process be messy, two steps forward and one step back. The stories that end in a pretty bow and leaves everyone “cured” simply aren’t authentic.

SOURCE: https://lisahallwilson.com/how-to-write-about-ptsd-in-deep-point-of-view/

#writingtips #ptsd #ptsdawareness

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fasterthanmydemons · 4 years ago

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fellow comic book reader here and I also agree that Pietro was annoying in the comics, I remember just rolling my eyes everytime he was on a page LMAOO. but then MCU Pietro came along and he was the bravest, purest, most adorable boy. I was like "oh I actually really like his personality?" and then "oh.... he ded ._." LOL. however, what are some personality traits that your Pietro shares with comic Pietro? I'd say the temper and arrogance (and love for his turtle) but that's it.

{out of breath} *sigh* Okay. I’ve been debating actually writing about this particular topic for about a month now because I was afraid it would offend some people somehow with regard to mental illness, but... since you asked. Yes, I would say that MCU!Petro has Comic!Pietro’s anger and arrogance. Definitely Hands down. I feel like there’s one other thing he has sort of in common with Comic!Pietro, but whereas it’s intentional for Comic!Pietro, it’s unintentional for MCU!Pietro. Under the cut because LONG.

One of the major things that made Comic!Pietro a jerk was the way he made Wanda feel like she wasn’t mentally competent to make her own decisions. Part of it was that he was very controlling of her. It started out as a need to protect her, but then it just became a function of his own ego, like... well I know better, so I’ll just decide and shhhh, don’t talk. But a part of it later on became also that he realized he could manipulate Wanda into doing or not doing things he wanted by making her feel like she wasn’t mentally capable or strong enough to make decisions for herself. The results was that she depended on him emotionally to a debilitating degree, and he absolutely took advantage of her because of it. Wanda had self-confidence issues and she was very much aware of her mental fragility and afraid of going insane, something that runs in her family. Pietro fed off that fear and basically manipulated Wanda by saying well, I’ll take care of you and make decisions for you and all you have to do is rely on me. It was not only not healthy for Wanda, it was abusive.

Now... let’s talk about MCU!Pietro for a bit. I will never ever say that MCU!Pietro was ever intentionally abusive to Wanda. Never. He never meant to be, he was only ever trying to help her and protect her. However, some of the things he did while he thought he was protecting her ended up not being so great for her emotional, social, and mental development in the long run. It stunted her ability to function independently and enabled her to be extremely dependent on him as she preferred. I first became aware that this was an actual real side effect of trauma that some people have, referring to Wanda, when I came across this post. I read that and I thought... wow that sounds really similar to how I’ve described the twins’ relationship. I did some more research on the subject since then, and I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a thing that definitely happened with the twins. It isn’t really either of their faults, it more just like... they were using each other as a crutch and a coping mechanism in different ways because of traumas they had suffered, and didn’t realize it was actually harming them developmentally.

This might take a while to explain, but I’ve been wanting to do this and get these headcanons down for a while so I’ll try to explain in as much detail as I can. When Marya and Django Maximoff were killed, the twins reacted differently. A big part of the reason for their different reactions was, unfortunately, due to their different upbringing because of their sexes. Wanda was raised by her mother to take care of her family, to watch over them, feed them, tend their wounds, and defend them conversationally. Pietro was raised with the idea that the men were the strong ones who protected the women physically. They didn’t cry or show weakness, they were physically there to protect and shield. Basically, the men were the physical strength and the women were the emotional strength. Although this seems positive on the surface, it is confining the twins to gender roles and is defining those roles in limiting and outdated ways. Pietro grew up feeling that he was less of a man for crying or needing a hug, and Wanda grew up feeling like she could depend on men to do what she couldn’t... as if there were things she couldn’t do herself. I mean... I don’t want to overly judge this because it wasn’t done with malice, it’s just that Marya and Django were more old world, traditional parents. That’s what they grew up with, so they taught it to their children. It’s easy to be outside looking in and say it’s wrong, but until the age of ten, the twins were happy and well taken care of and thought they were doing fine.

When their parents were killed, suddenly they were their own parents. At age 10, the twins had to do the best they can with foster homes and living on the streets. So what did they do? They fell into the roles they were taught. Pietro, as the man of their family now, felt like he had to take care of and protect his sister. Wanda, and this is where that post I read comes in, had a much more severe trauma reaction in which she retreated from the world, into herself, and gave control over to Pietro. What I mean by this is that Wanda, partly due to things suffered as a very young child and partly because Pietro was all she had left in the way of family, reacted to losing her parents by retreating behind Pietro. So they both fed into their own learned roles a bit, if that makes sense. Pietro thought he should take control and protect his sister, and Wanda was content to let Pietro be her shield and filter between herself and others.

This created an interesting power dynamic between the twins as they got older, because Wanda actually has a very assertive and at times dominant personality, she just didn’t know it at a young age. Losing her parents, being a witch, having been assaulted in the past and almost burned alive as a witch, Wanda trusted her parents to protect her. Without them, all that hope got transferred to Pietro. Pietro, who already felt guilty for not protecting Wanda from her assault, felt doubly responsible now to step up and protect his sister. The result is that Pietro would handle any and all daily interactions between people and themselves, and Wanda would hang back and largely be silent, just observing.

Wanda felt threatened by people getting too close to her, especially men. Pietro knew this and would always put himself physically in between Wanda and anyone who approached her. Wanda learned that her brother would always do this, and two things started to happen: 1) she relaxed when he was around because she knew he would always be her interface to the world, she would never have to talk to anyone she didn’t want to, and 2) she could say whatever she wanted from behind him and not have to deal with the consequences. This, in some ways, fed her assertiveness, because it let her express herself and voice her opinions in a safe way. If she opens her mouth and upsets someone, it doesn’t matter because Pietro will be right there to keep them from getting too close.

So as the post mentions, there’s sometimes a loss of autonomy that occurs with trauma in which a person questions everything. The decisions they make, where their food comes from, they feel like they need permission to do anything, eat anything go anywhere. If alone, they hesitate to do things, and if with someone else, they look to them for permissions and approval. It’s borne of anxiety over not knowing what to do and feeling like they can’t make good decisions on their own. In Wanda’s case, it was easier and more comfortable to give control over everyday decisions and interactions to Pietro. He decided what they ate and gave her the food. He decisions where they went, where they slept, who they talked to. He did most of the talking. Pietro was all too eager to fill this role because he thought it was the right thing to do.

Wanda just held his hand and stayed a step behind him, watching and listening, because what happens when someone is in this kind of secondary role is that they feel safer and more comfortable in the shadow of someone they trust and can think more clearly. Because they don’t have to look out for things on their own, they can more calmly think about other things, notice what others might not, and take in the details of their surroundings. This is the root of Wanda being quieter and more observant than her brother. If Wanda was on her own, she’d be worried about everything. Looking everywhere, wondering who would hurt her, trying to find food, not knowing what to say when others spoke to her. But because Pietro was there to handle all of that, Wanda could relax, hang back, and think calmly about bigger things. That meant she could make more long-term decisions about the directions of their lives.

It may seem counterintuitive, but the twins’ relationship developed into Pietro handling all the little, everyday decisions, and Wanda handling all the big, life-changing decisions.... such as volunteering for the experiments, opposing the Avengers, and supporting Ultron. Pietro just went along with those decisions because he trusted her to make them. Pietro mistakenly thought his sister was much smarter than him, for one thing, and also he trusted her as a female to make major decisions for their family, as their mother did. This was part of their emotional co-dependence. Pietro was comfortable in his role and Wanda was comfortable in hers. It eased their anxiety after the loss of their parents and the traumatic circumstances that surrounded it.

Coming back to your question, in the comics, Pietro manipulated and controlled Wanda into thinking that she was mentally unstable and incompetent and needed someone to make all her decisions for her. And she believed that, because she trusted him. In the MCU, Pietro kindof did the same thing, but not intentionally. Until Pietro’s death, Wanda would have said that Pietro was in control, he made the decisions, he was the strong one, etc. She would have said that she was not assertive, and couldn’t handle all these things herself. But anyone looking at them and reading the power dynamics of their relationship could easily tell that she was the leader and the one calling the major shots. However, this is not at all how Wanda felt mentally. She really believed that she could not survive without her brother, and that she was mentally very weak without him, because she felt that way, ever since her parents died. It took Pietro dying - and her protective buffer between herself and the world disappearing - for her to realize how strong she was on her own and that she was perfectly capable of navigating the world by herself. In some ways, she transferred her emotional need to be dependent on someone to Vision after Pietro’s death, starting to attach emotionally to him the way she did to Pietro, but she realized this wasn’t healthy. I believe that’s part of a complex mess of reasons why she was afraid to commit to him. But, I digress.

It’s interesting that both twins gave up control to the other, but in different ways. Wanda let Pietro control the minutiae of everyday decisions while driving their overall direction in life, and Pietro took control on a daily basis but followed Wanda wherever she wanted to take them. Both of them found comfort in this dynamic, which can be seen in the scene discussed in this post. Wanda is a lot stronger emotionally than her brother, but she unfortunately does not realize it until he’s gone and she’s forced to be more independent. So I think that MCU!Pietro does share this with Comic!Pietro, in that they both had Wanda in this emotionally dependent relationship where she felt she couldn’t or shouldn’t make decisions on her own, or at least was more comfortable letting him make the decisions, but their reasons for doing so are completely different.

Alright I think I’ve rambled long enough about this. I hope I made sense, haha. These are some headcanons I’ve wanted to get written down for a while. If anyone has any thoughts on this, feel free to reblog or reply to this post. I would love to hear what others think about this.

#{ out of breath } ᵒᵒᶜ #tw: loss of automony #tw: emotional co-dependence #tw: emotional manipulation #tw: trauma

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we-are-inevitable · 4 years ago

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modern art // javid (ch. 1)

A/N: hi !! so some of you may remember an old songfic i did in march of last year, titled ‘modern art’ after the song “IDK You Yet” by Alexander 23. well, i’ve always thought that that one shot would work great as a stand alone fic, and here we are! i have ch. 1 edited and SO MUCH of it as changed- like, for example, the fic is a chapter fic now !! regardless, i hope you guys like this !!

WARNINGS: depression, anxiety, self-deprecation, past addiction, mentions of addiction, just general Bad Times- pls be mindful when reading !! it’s just very Not Happy rn ADDITIONAL INFO: all characters are in their mid-twenties in the fic. oh also this is probably important but it’s a soulmate au !!

Read On AO3!

tag list: @bound-for-santa-fe @wannabecowboypunk @shippingcannons @yahfancyclamwiththepurlinside @smallsies @deliciouspeachpirate @newsies-is-my-erster

Jack doesn't know what’s going on with himself, but he knows that he could really use his soulmate right about now.

They’ve communicated before. Never verbally, and never enough to reveal who they were. Perhaps they are both just... dealing with some unspoken fears, dealing with the worry of rejection sitting heavy in their chests. Perhaps they both like this mystery- the uncertainty that came with the notes scrawled across their bodies in a handwriting that isn’t their own.

Or perhaps they just aren’t ready to take the plunge. To grow up and face the harsh fact that, as soon as they meet, wherever and whenever that may be, a new chapter of their life will unfold. Consume them. Change anything and everything they’ve ever known or held dear.

They had been braver when they were children, that much was true. Jack remembers staying up late often, writing notes on his skin and watching in awe as the replies appeared. He remembers the giddy rush of trying to quickly wash off the ink on his wrist when they ran out of space to talk, and, oh, how they talked. There were school days when Jack would go to class exhausted, feeling like he’d been walking through quicksand for miles on end, but all of it had been worth it. The exhaustion he felt had been worth being able to talk to them until two, three, four in the morning. Sometimes he regretted it, of course, but only because it was harder for him to focus in class. Never because he was upset at them.

He could never be upset with them.

Even now, Jack remembers a lot about his soulmate. They liked music. They knew how to play the piano. They were into a few video games, even some that Jack had never played, and said that they always tried carrying a book with them wherever they went. Jack remembers that, as a younger kid, they liked Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, but also liked analyzing Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe and a bunch of other fancy authors that Jack had never even heard of. They were intimidatingly smart, and sometimes, would carefully correct Jack’s grammar whenever he misspelled a word or something- but they were never mean about it, they were just… there. A steady presence that he could count on.

Fifteen year old Jack dreamed of finding them one day. But now, twenty-five year old Jack is losing hope.

He can’t exactly help it. For starters, he and his soulmate haven’t communicated in… well, shit, it had to be nearly a year. Maybe nine months or so, but there’s no way to tell for sure, and even then, their conversations since reaching adulthood have been dull, for lack of a better word. A few positive comments here, a ‘have a good day’ there- it’s all so mundane, and neither of them can be blamed for it. They both have busy lives- or, well, Jack does, at least. His job as a graphic designer is hard enough on its own, but the added pressure of doing freelance work and commissions on the side has been eating away at him for weeks, coupled with debilitating self-doubt and lack of motivation for… anything.

Saying that he’s overwhelmed is the understatement of the century.

There is always another design, another client, another meeting, another deadline, another sleepless night as he stares at a blank canvas and prays for a spark of inspiration from whatever God is listening. Usually his inspiration comes from the world around him- his friends, city life, even the quiet confines of his apartment, but right now... Jack is stuck. He had holed himself up in his room days ago, trying and failing to get out of bed every morning when the time came to work- and thank God that the majority of his work could be done from home. His boss was understanding, too, to an extent.

Still, though, there’s a constant heavy weight on his chest that prevents him from moving most days, and he’s lucky if he even gets up long enough to shower or eat or do literally anything aside from lie in silence and count the cracks in his ceiling.

Nothing had happened to him recently to bring this on, from what he can tell. Jack has always been the happy-go-lucky leader, the man with a plan, the guy who always knew just what to say to motivate others into doing the best thing for themselves, but when that responsibility is reflected back onto himself, Jack feels helpless. There are words waiting to be said, sketches waiting to be drawn, designs waiting to be sent to clients… yet Jack lies there, motionless in his room for three days before he even has the energy, the willpower, to pull back his curtains and allow the sunlight to shine through. There is so much he wants to do, so much he needs to do, but he can't bring himself to do any of it.

In all twenty-five years of his life, through all of the things he’s been through, the ups and downs and foster homes and graduations and birthdays and funerals and therapists and rehab facilities and whatever the fuck else life decided to throw at him, Jack has never felt so worthless, so… lonely. His closest friends are all moving on with their lives. Many have already found their soulmate, have settled down and hidden their rowdy, rambunctious pasts behind skeletons in a closet. They’d all gotten their adventures done and over with in high school and college, and most are moving onto bigger and better things in life. They have careers. Families. Some have children, others have pets, a few have an insane amount of plants to care for.

All have seemingly left Jack behind in the dust.

No one told him when to flip the switch.

No one told him when he had aged out of adventure.

Now, they would never say it, but Jack knows. He knows. Saturday hangouts and trips to the bar had been replaced by Sunday church services and playdates for the kids. Rather than hearing yelling from his living room after his friends had all been teetering just on the edge between tipsy and fucked up, Jack hears the news, and documentaries, and podcasts, and the ghosts of a past life that he still seemed to be desperately clinging on to.

Katherine had been the one to tell him that he needed to grow up, though she didn’t put it in such a blunt manner. No, she’s just.... gently urging him to find a bigger apartment, or buy matching furniture from a place that is not a thrift store, or purchase dishes that weren’t of the plastic Walmart brand. She says it was because she wants to see him in a more professional, "adulty" lifestyle, but he knows it’s really because she can see that he’s a mess.

Deep down, Jack knows she’s right. She’s always right.

He just can’t help but feel cemented in place, dreaming of the past while dreading the new future ahead of him.

Jack never asked to feel so broken for no reason. All of the hope and optimism he had felt as a teenager was gone, lost in a sea of uncertain plans and shitty jobs and bill extensions and canvases dropped onto the floor with no rhyme or reason. And, yes, maybe Jack would look dramatic to someone who didn’t know his situation, but Jack knows what dramatic feels like. Dramatic feels like watching his best friend, Charlie, belt onstage in front of a backdrop that he helped create for the school play. Dramatic feels like laughing at the top of his lungs while walking through a random gas station at two in the morning, joined by Race and Al, all while higher than a kite. Dramatic feels like driving to the outskirts of the city with Katherine, climbing onto the roof of an old building and screaming about all of their stress, their anxiety, their insecurities, just to have some form of emotional release.

Dramatic doesn’t feel like sadness. It’s not supposed to.

Not for Jack.

He had been so… so happy, as a teenager. Proud and defiant and carefree. He was the kind of guy to skate and smoke weed in Central Park until midnight and take a math test at eight in the morning the next day. He was the kid who stood on a table in the cafeteria and came out as bisexual to everyone around him, just because of a dumbass bet that he didn’t even get paid for. He was the boy who wasn’t at all good in an academic sense, but who always knew how to talk himself out of trouble, who always came up with the most ridiculous- or most believable- lies to cover his ass when he needed it, who was always the class favorite, the teacher’s pet without meaning to be.

Jack had felt on top of the world back then, but now he’s struggling to even get off of the ground. The longer time goes on, the more lost Jack feels inside his own life. He feels like something was missing, something big. Something bigger than himself.

When his mother was alive, which now felt like lifetimes ago, she would often echo this old wives’ tale about how it’s best to find your soulmate while you’re younger, just to save them- and yourself- the pain of being alone for a long time. Jack had always kind of believed her; logically, he knew it was true, but he had always told himself that it wouldn’t happen to him. That he would be fine alone, though it wouldn’t be ideal, and that he would have plenty of time for soulmates after he got out and made a name for himself.

He’s starting to think, though, that maybe she was right. Maybe Jack had waited too long to make a move, to make contact again, because now, he just feels nauseous even thinking about it.

Don’t get him wrong, he knows the negative effects of self deprecation and not taking his own mental health seriously, he’s been to rehab before, blah, blah, blah, but, fuck, how could he put his soulmate through something like this? This fucked up state of mind he has now. Jack can’t even imagine talking to Katherine about this, and Katherine had been his best friend for over a decade. He can’t just meet his soulmate now- it’s been too long, he’s too messed up, they won’t like him, they’ll hate him for not trying hard enough, and Jack will just end up alone again, wasting away in his bedroom because no one fucking cares. No one cares. He has nobody.

That’s not true. He has Medda, his mom, his savior, his impulse control, but the thought of telling her that everything is acting up again makes him want to scream. He has Tony, but Tony has Al, and Tony and Al have a kid- a sweet little five year old girl who calls Jack ‘Uncle Jackie’ and takes no shit from anyone. He has Katherine, but Katherine has her soulmate- this dude named Darcy, who Jack doesn’t have much of an opinion on because they just met, like, a month ago, and Jack hasn’t exactly been emotionally ready for a hangout session between the three of them. He also has Charlie, and Charlie has certainly seen him in worse times- like when Jack was kind of hooked on pills for the entirety their freshman year of college- but Charlie has grad school to worry about and Charlie would hate him if he bothered him with this.

Still, there are other people who would listen, probably. He could easily talk to Elmer, or Romeo, or Specs, or Jojo or Finch or Sean or a fucking therapist but that’s just it, isn’t it? If he talks, he burdens, and Jack Francisco Kelly would rather run himself into the ground than be a burden anyone.

So, he makes a vow.

He makes eye contact with his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He’s gripping onto the sink, holding on for dear life, as he stares into his own sunken eyes. He takes in his appearance. Damp, messy hair, falling down to cover his forehead. Pale skin, which isn’t normal at all. Dark circles have taken their place around his eyes, and his smile- one of his favorite things about himself- is… nonexistent.

Distantly, Jack registers himself dumping a full bottle of ibuprofen into the sink. And then, he does the same thing with the bottle of melatonin from his medicine cabinet. The valium follows. He lets the water run for a long time. It's not that he doesn't trust himself- he'd done so, so good in rehab, and he doesn't even feel urges that often anymore- but it's better safe than sorry, especially since he's like... this.

This is not the Jack Kelly he’s used to anymore. This is not the Jack Kelly he wants to be.

But this Jack Kelly is the one who vows not to reach out. The one who vows to only answer when his soulmate is ready, and maybe not even then.

He doesn’t have to wait long, though.

Not when a heart appears on the back of his hand the next morning.

It’s there when Jack wakes up, and, honestly, it almost brings Jack to tears- but not necessarily for happy reasons. Sure, Jack wants to be happy. Who wouldn’t be happy after seeing something like this? A lopsided heart drawn in red ink, right on the back of his left hand- it was the definition of a symbol, of a romantic gesture, and Jack wants so badly to write back, to strike up conversation, to draw a goddamn heart, but… he can’t.

He can’t, and that’s horrible of him, and he knows it.

Right now, though… Jack can’t even work up the courage, the energy, to call his mom.

His soulmate, whoever they are, is going to have to wait.

#if u wanna be added to my tag list just let me know !!#newsies #jack kelly #david jacobs #davey jacobs #javid #javey #newsies broadway #newsies musical #newsies fic #newsies fanfiction #newsies fanfic #livesies #toursies #jac writes #jac txt.

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all-of-the-above · 4 years ago

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Anxiety

Many people out there struggle with anxiety, severe or minor, others struggle with anxious thoughts from time-to-time, whatever it may be, it sure can be overwhelming. When you feel this way it’s normally and abundance of emotions…

a) Upset

b) Scared

c) Angry

d) Frustrated

e) Stressed

f) Worrisome

g) Lonely

h) Frightened

i) Panicked

j) All of the above?

Yes. Anxiety generally causes us to feel so many emotions at one given time until it makes us feel totally overwhelmed, and well, anxious. It’s okay to have anxiety or anxious thoughts, but it’s not okay when someone doesn’t respect this. For example, telling you it’s all in your head, that is unnecessary because it is inside your head, but not in the wrong or crazy way that they make it out, it’s in your head in a debilitating, frightening, battling way. If someone refuses to understand this, or even wants to understand, even though it may hurt, being without them can prove better in the end. Some people will be there through your anxiety and will support you, others won’t, and having the right people around us is so important in all these things I’ve been talking about.

Now, what I really want to get into is you, me, us and anxiety.

Anxiety can intrude in so many parts of our lives, like studying, jobs, friendships, relationships and just everyday life. So, let’s look at relationships, when you’re anxious in a relationship you may worry about them leaving, or that you’ll mess up, or everything will go wrong, or all your worrying will actually be the cause because nothing else was wrong in the first place. You may worry about finding someone, opening up, being alone. All these worries are ok, it’s all about addressing them. If you have worries and you’re in a relationship, communicate with your partner so they understand, try and teach them how you are and allow time for them to get to know that part of you. But as I said, if they refuse to understand, or arguments are consistently caused because of your anxiety, that’s not ok. That can be difficult to get to grips with if you’re with someone, however, I think eventually we all get that feeling something is wrong, and no matter how long that takes its okay, and its also ok to still be sad after, you were with them for a reason and although they hurt you by refusing to understand, it hurts you more that they didn’t give you that energy or care or love that you put into them. If you’re with someone with anxiety, learn about it, be there for them, come to know what you can do for them when they can’t always be there for themselves…remember their battling their own mind and its not easy. Don’t hold back on a hug, or some form of physical affection, normally it can bring a sense of peace in a time of panic. Being patient is so key, things won’t get better in two seconds, and learning to manage their anxiety won’t change overnight, so don’t rush them, just be there for them and respect that their behaviour can seem hurtful or rude even, they don’t mean it, they are struggling inside and it’s nothing personal…well unless you triggered it…. but their triggers are something you can come to learn too. It all takes time, for the partner with anxiety and the partner without. Be patient with one another, be there for each other and communicate.

When studying you can be anxious about your workload, deadlines, exams, assignments, and then having a social life on top of that. It’s not easy! And hey, that’s alright, take it one step at a time. A great way I’ve learnt is writing to-do lists so I’m not thinking about what’s happening this time next week, I’ve planned what I need to do, and I can get on with it and even have the satisfaction of ticking it off as I go. So maybe give lists a try. Meditation is also good to bring you back to the present, or a mindful walk to focus on the now. We all can think about the future, but it can cause so much unnecessary stress, if you don’t need to think about it, try not to. Care for your mental health and relive stress where its unnecessary. It’s always easier said than done, but practice makes perfect, try all sorts of methods until something sticks, you will get there, do some research, and just be patient with yourself and don’t think you’ll just cure it overnight, it wont just go away I’m afraid, but the more you understand yourself and your anxiety, the easier it will be to live with it.

If you’re someone who’s grieving then anxiety can really get the better of you, you’ll be anxious about the fact that person is gone, you’re lonely and afraid of other people leaving your life in any way. All of that is very normal to experience so it’s important to remember what you do have, who you do have around you and to communicate your anxieties with them so they can help in any way that they can.

Anxiety can make social gatherings utterly terrifying, or just going to the shops even scary. Remind yourself of all the things that higher your vibration…that outfit doesn’t define you, that make-up looks good, but you don’t need it anyway, you have confidence in yourself and who you are, what someone else thinks who isn’t in your life doesn’t matter because you won’t ever need to interact with them anyway. I know I know, it’s not so simple but if you want to help yourself you will try, you will do your research, you will learn managing mechanisms, you will come to understand your triggers and you will be there for yourself. We are under pressure from everyone and everything around us, so we should alleviate some of that which we actually put on ourselves. Self-love and self-care people, it goes a long way. Learn to calm yourself, deep breaths, drink water, replenish your body, take a nap, take a walk, mediate, read, draw, watch tv. Act in a positive way when negative anxieties take over.

I want to remind people its okay you feel like this, to be like this, your feelings are so so valid and true, and I may not have all the wisdom in the world, but even if I’m just a friend to tell you it’s okay, to support you and empathise when maybe someone else wont, then I’m glad you’re here and reading this.

If you think I should touch on other things, please let me know, whatever it may be, I’m here for you <3

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a-court-of-healing · 4 years ago

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Disaster Steve Rogers x Reader fanfiction

A/N- like, comment, and follow if you like it!!

A complete disaster, that’s what it was. Nothing went as planned and they barely made it out alive. She felt extremely guilty because innocents died on her watch. It broke her heart as she thought about all of those people: men, women, and children dying because of her. She was still at this “fighting evil” thing. She was good at practice. She kicked some serious butt in practice. She could take on Natasha and Steve at hand-to-hand combat. She didn’t have any powers like Wanda does, but she was still kicking her ass as well. Everyone thought she was ready, hell she thought she was ready to fight with the Avengers. It was a no brainer that she is great at what she does, but nothing could have prepared her for what had happened. Everyone was there, all ready to fight the escaped pirates, but no one knew they were that good at fighting. The Avengers said this was going to be an easy job, but it wasn’t easy at all. No one was able to fight side by side, because these pirates were keeping everyone too busy. Even Nat and Steve were struggling with their opponents. They even said they would be with her, making sure she was okay, but that was a joke. She at least expected the love of her life to be there, but Steve was busy saving everyone else. Wanda, who had her powers, was even struggling with these non-powered opponents. They were at a debriefing and everyone was basically licking their wounds. She honestly couldn’t bear to look anyone in the eyes. She just stared down at the table as everyone walked into the room to let Coulson inform everyone about the pirates. Suddenly, a water bottle appeared in front of her and she looked up and saw Steve there. He smiled softly at her and sat down next to her. She knew he could tell that she was upset. He might not be good with girls, but he still knew when people were upset. He took her hand and squeezed it gently and she just shook her head as she thought of the last few hours.

“Well...honestly, this wasn’t very helpful. You all killed all the pirates, but thanks to...um...someone...there were more casualties than expected….” She lowered her head lower as she thought of all those people. Dead.

“And umm...there was about 1.7 billion dollars worth of property damage...an-”

“That’s enough.” A deep resonating voice called out and she turned to look at Steve as he spoke for her.

“Captain…”

“We know what happened....is this really necessary?” It was really sweet when Steve did this for her. She honestly couldn’t speak for herself. She has social anxiety and even with people she considered friends, it was still really hard for her. Steve always keeps this in mind whenever they are with the whole group. Also he tries to take off all of the attention from her. Like if she is supposed to walk in a full room, he will go out of his way to go walk with her. If she needs to make an announcement, she tells Steve and then he’ll do it for her. It’s not like she hates everyone....she actually really likes everyone. She enjoys being with them...if she isn’t worried about embarrassing herself. Everyone else finds it really hard to keep up with her. Mostly because they don’t understand it. They are nice about it though. They all treat her like a normal person, and they make an effort never to call her out or embarrass her. Natasha works with her one on one to help practice her fighting so she doesn’t get corrected in front of everyone. Even Tony doesn’t make any jokes at her expense. They even understand her need to be alone. It helps her recharge and helps her be able to interact with them more. Even Vision, who struggles with human interactions, knows when to shut up and when not to say something or when to talk to her. So Coulson basically calling her out on...on...MURDERING people, makes her want to curl up in a ball and die.

“Well, that is what a debriefing is all about…”

“So no, we don’t need this. We don’t need a debriefing.” Nat said and smiled softly at her. She was completely embarrassed and guilt was tearing her apart. She felt a familiar tightness in her chest and she begged herself to calm down. She didn’t need to have a panic attack right here in front of everyone. That would be even more mortifying than this debriefing. Steve’s grip tightened on her hand as he tried to ground her. She shook her head as her mind began to cloud, her mouth was dry as cotton, her hands were sweaty, and her breath was coming out in little pants. She felt a hot breath on her ear and she flinched as she realized that Steve was whispering in her ear, but her hearing was too fuzzy to actually hear what he was saying to her. She felt her cheeks heat up when she noticed that everyone was staring at her. Oh could this get any worse? Apparently.

“Well...um...they um...well they want a public apology…” Public speaking. Her biggest fear.

“Well, they’re lucky that we even fought those pirates. The police and the military weren’t doing anything.” Steve spoke and everyone agreed and she tried to will herself to breathe normally. Her heart was pounding faster and faster and she felt like she was going to pass out. Her brain shut down and she blocked out everything else as they spoke and eventually she couldn’t handle it anymore.

“I….I’m...I’m sorry...I...I can’t….” She was able to gasp out as she stood up and ran out the room. Great. She made an even bigger spectacle of herself. She spends the majority of her life trying to make herself disappear and she made herself run out in front of everyone. But she couldn’t stay there anymore. She was going to have a breakdown if she did. She ran as quickly as she could to her room and closed the door, forgetting to lock it. She was shaking uncontrollably and she was in the grips of a debilitating panic attack. She went to her bed and rocked back and forth as she willed herself to calm down, but all she could do was think about all those people.

This is a disaster. I’m a MURDERER.

She couldn’t stop the thoughts racing through her head as the day’s events were on rerun. This is the worst panic attack she has had in a long time.

“Hey, are you okay sugar?” She didn’t even know when Steve came into the room, but all she could do was shake her head. Tears were flowing and she knew she looked like a complete maniac. She felt the bed shift as he sat on the bed and he took her hand and tried to bring her to calm down. Eventually he was in front of her, telling her soothing things as she calmed down. When she did, she felt humiliation course through her veins.

“I’m...I’m so...so sorry.” Her rough voice spoke as she covered her face with her hands.

“I’m not...I’m glad I could be here for you darling.” Steve wiped her tears away and sat on the bed and pulled her to him and he kissed her forehead. She sat in his arms for a long time, just breathing as much as she could. Steve didn’t seem to mind as she relaxed in his arms.

“It’s not your fault, I repeat. It. Is. Not. Your. FAULT. This job . . . we try to save as many people as we can. Sometimes that doesn't mean everybody. But if we can't find a way to live with that, next time . . . maybe nobody gets saved..” Steve pulls away and smiles at her and she nods slowly and sighs.

“I made a complete fool of myself...the way I ran out of there…”

“No you didn’t. Everyone is just worried about you. They really do like you more than you think.” She smiles and kisses him and she laughs when she sees his face.

“I love you Steve. I really do.”

“Remember, whenever you’re out there fighting for the weak. A single individual who has the right heart and the right mind, that is consumed with a single purpose...that one man can win a war.” A deep blush comes on his cheeks.

“I love you, too darling.”

#Steve Rogers #steve rogers x reader #Captain America #mcu #social anxiety #captain americaxreader #the avengers #natasha romanoff

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talabib · 4 years ago

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How to Break Free From The 9 to 5 Grind And Find A More Meaningful Life.

What did you do last week? Was each day about getting up, going to work and coming home exhausted?

Is your house filled with gadgets and toys meant to distract you from the dreadfulness of those 50-, 60- or 70-hour work weeks?

In case you haven’t realized this for yourself, there’s little happiness to be found in devoting your life to a job that only provides you with a paycheck. And to make matters worse, the meaningless things we buy to make the job easier to cope with only serve to clutter up our lives and cause more anxieties and distractions.

As these post points out, it’s time to reprogram our minds and bodies away from the corporate culture of fast-food, disposable goods and instant gratification. With some simple techniques and a bit of effort, you can reclaim your life, declutter it of all that’s hollow and useless, and refill it with meaning and purpose.

Money and stressful jobs are not keys to happiness.

Many people grow up with the expectation that getting “a good job” is everything. From this perspective, true “success” is based on how good the job is – which is largely dependent upon the size of the paycheck. But the truth is: money doesn't buy happiness.

Even rich people will tell you that more money comes with more problems, including being so stressed that you resort to comfort eating, waste money on meaningless gadgets and constantly think about the future while never enjoying the present.

Success often comes at another great cost: very few hours to spend with loved ones. Hired help raises many children from families of success-oriented adults, just so their parents can spend more time earning money.

So, more often than not, the thing that money really buys is unhappiness. Ask yourself this: Is any stressful job worth having?

Ryan Nicodemus asked this question while working at what many would consider to be a great job. He was even on the rise, getting promoted to a managerial position, but the role came with 80-hour work weeks and huge amounts of responsibility and pressure. What it added up to was debilitating anxiety, stress and depression.

Nowadays, Nicodemus believes there is no amount of money to justify the toll a stressful job has on your mental health. However, when you’re wrapped up in the job-is-everything mentality, it feels like you always need to make more and more money.

Both Nicodemus and his friend, Joshua Fields Millburn, thought they would be happy once they hit $50,000 a year. But after reaching that milestone, the goal quickly crept up to $75,000, then $100,000 and so on. At no point did they feel satisfied.

Part of the reason for wanting more was that, as their paycheck grew, so did their financial commitments and responsibilities – in the form of loans, cars and mortgages. Eventually, enough was enough and they both quit their jobs and decided to live on less money.

It was at this point that Millburn and Nicodemus finally experienced happiness. All thanks to their decision to adopt a minimalist lifestyle of working and consuming less.

But as we’ll see, the minimalist ethos is about more than money and work; it’s about letting go of everything that holds you back.

To begin your shift to minimalism, pay off your debts and declutter your surroundings.

If you were to ask yourself “What are the anchors that are dragging me down?” the answer might not be readily apparent. But there’s a good chance that you have some form of debt, be it a mortgage, credit cards or student loans, that weighs heavily on your well-being.

That’s why the first and most crucial step to minimalist living is to pay off all your debts.

At some point, you may have been fooled by credit-card ads or a banker telling you to take advantage of a certain mortgage, but let’s be clear: there’s no such thing as “good debt.” All debt is bad, plain and simple.

As Joshua Milburn was preparing for a minimalist existence, he followed a strict budget and spent two years saving as much as he could to pay off his debts. This meant a hundred weeks of no vacations, no restaurants and no luxuries of any kind. But it was worth every minute for the relief he felt in finally paying off his debts. He was now free to live the life he wanted.

While you’re decluttering your finances, you should also turn your attention to reducing your material clutter.

First of all, it’s important to recognize that your possessions aren’t a meaningful statement about who you are as a person. Instead, you should ask yourself whether your belongings truly help you live in the present or if they prevent you from doing so.

For decades, Joshua Milburn’s mother had four sealed boxes in her home that she never opened. They contained every scrap of work John had brought home from elementary school, from handwriting tests to drawings.

Millburn understood that she was hoarding these things in an effort to hold on to her little boy, but the cherished and meaningful things in life aren’t objects, they’re our memories and relationships. This doesn’t mean you need to throw away everything, but Milburn’s mom could keep one meaningful drawing in a frame rather than four sealed-up boxes.

By decluttering, we not only give ourselves more physical breathing room, but we also provide more mental breathing room. Having objects everywhere vying for our attention can easily weigh us down mentally.

Minimalism is also about reducing the amount of junk you put into your body.

There’s no shortage of diets or fitness programs out there. In fact, the sheer amount can seem overwhelming. But you can avoid trendy diets and temporary fixes by reprogramming the way you think about your body.

From now on, think of it as a machine: when you give it high-quality fuel, you’ll allow it to perform at its maximum potential. With this frame of mind, it should seem obvious that junk food, like processed and prepackaged goods, should be avoided.

This kind of food is full of additives and preservatives that add zero nutritional value to your diet. All they provide are empty calories, especially sugar, which are terrible for your health. Sure, these foods may taste good in the moment, but they can often make you feel awful afterward. So any temporary pleasure is far outweighed by the long-term damage they can cause to both your physical health and your mood.

A good decluttering regimen should also include dairy and bread. We’ve been eating wheat and pasteurized milk for a relatively short period in human history – only since the invention of agriculture. Our bodies were never designed to digest the vast quantities of dairy and bread contained in the average modern diet.

So, whether you have a gluten or lactose intolerance or not, you can benefit from cutting back on these foods and replacing them with natural whole foods like vegetables, fish and beans. Once you’ve made this adjustment to your diet, you’ll soon find yourself with a surplus of energy. And this is a good thing to have for the next step: getting the most out of your body.

Fitness is something that works best when you have a constant growth mind-set, which means you’re always aiming for more than last time – whether it’s a faster running time, more repetitions or heavier weights.

To adopt this mind-set, you need to demand more from yourself. To help make this happen, you can reprogram your thinking away from “I should...” to “I MUST...”

Don’t tell yourself “I should go out jogging three times this week;” instead say “I MUST go for a run tomorrow at 8 a.m.” With some persistence, you can even make yourself accomplish new things.

Maybe you can’t do a single pull-up now, but you can probably hang from the bar for 30 seconds. So, do that and then tomorrow, hang for 40 seconds, and then continue doing more until you build up enough arm strength to do a pull-up.

Change and improvement don’t have to impact your authenticity; they can lead to better relationships.

Friends and loved ones are important. If you’re currently feeling isolated or unhappy with your relationships, it may be time for another round of reprogramming, this time to become more accepting of others as well as appearing more acceptable to others. The first step to making this happen is to have a willingness to change.

It’s hopeless to try and change other people – in fact, it’s cruel to even attempt to do so – but it is possible to improve yourself.

However, you may be resistant to the idea of change if you think that there’s nothing wrong with being your “authentic self.” But it’s important to take an honest look at your behavior and recognize when you’re doing something that upsets people or is a turnoff.

If you’re unhappy about being shy, a poor listener or overweight, don’t think “that’s who I am.” Instead, do something about it and be proactive in your self-improvement.

Changing yourself isn’t betraying your authenticity; it’s simply a way to attract better relationships. Would you rather be lonely or would you rather work on yourself so that you’re a better conversationalist and a more appealing person?

Another avenue toward self-improvement is to be more accepting of those with different opinions than your own.

Don’t think that you’re meant to find someone who thinks and shares the same opinions as you – this is just another fallacy. Relationships aren’t about hobbies and tastes; they’re about love, so you should accept that people are going to think differently than you.

If more people were open-minded about whom they hang out with, there would be far fewer lonely people in the world!

So, don’t just tolerate and accept your loved ones' peculiar habits; respect and appreciate them!

Let’s say your loved one has a hobby you find annoying, like collecting action figures. After all, isn’t a silly collection the opposite of minimalist living? Actually no, especially if they get a lot of meaning and pleasure out of that collection. So don’t deter them; understand that the collection enriches your partner’s life and therefore should be cherished as part of what makes them the person you love.

With this in mind, here are the four steps to help you better tolerate, accept, respect and appreciate the person you’re with:

Tolerate their unique hobby or passion;

Accept that it will always be there;

Respect the effort your partner puts into their pastime;

Appreciate the hobby as a part of your life because it is an important part of your loved one’s life.

Don't let work define you as a person.

Just as we saw the importance of breaking away from the idea that money and work are the most important things in life, so too should we avoid thinking that our jobs define us.

Think of it this way: You’re a complicated person with a variety of interests and talents, some of which make money, some of which cost money. So you’re far more than just your job. Nevertheless, it's easy to fall into the trap of letting your job title define you.

Many people will find a job in a certain industry and feel they should stick with that industry for the rest of their lives as if it's a part of who they are. But remember, a job is just a job. In fact, your job might even be an anchor that weighs you down.

Consider this: your job isn’t even one of the top five most important aspects of life. Those are: your health, your relationships, your passions, your personal growth, and your contribution to society.

These are the aspects of your life that make sense to measure yourself against, not your job title or how much money you make.

This is why you should avoid the annoying small-talk question of “So, what do you do?” This is often asked early on in a conversation as if it were the most important characteristic of someone’s life and not just a different way of asking, “So, how much money do you make?” Instead, why not ask them, “What are you into?” or “What are you passionate about?”

And if someone asks you, “What do you do?” you can redirect the conversation by saying something like “Oh, I do a lot of things, but my current passion is gardening. How about you?”

For more freedom, reduce your dependency on money.

One of the primary purposes behind minimalism is to spend less of your life working at a job. Naturally, this means finding ways to become less dependent on a big paycheck.

There are a number of ways to help with this, including learning how to make things yourself rather than buying them, and selling off the needless clutter in your home. But the next reprogramming you should learn is how to live on a small income.

The first step here is to create a monthly budget and stick to it. So start by making a list of needs, which includes all your fundamental household costs, such as food, pet food, gas, electricity, insurance and transportation. These are basic needs that have to be met, so there’s no getting around them.

Next, start a second list of wants, which might include categories like new clothes and entertainment. Now, at the start of each month, separate your extra money so that both of these categories are given a budget. And to make sure you don’t break the budget, you can separate them into different spending accounts.

Remember, every dollar in the budget should be accounted for. So, if you dip into the entertainment budget to buy new shoes, you’ll have to wait until next month to go out to that restaurant.

To reduce hard feelings and make things fair, get the entire household to agree on the budget. Since everyone has a say, there should be a feeling of mutual responsibility for making it work. For example, by making the kids part of the process, they’ll know not to bother trying to get extra money for video games when that money is being set aside for school supplies. But it’s still wise to set up a safety net.

Once you get yourself set up, you’ll find that it isn’t hard to live comfortably with less money, but that doesn’t mean life won’t surprise you with something unexpected, like an illness or the car breaking down.

This is why it’s smart and sensible to establish a safety net of at least $500 to $1,000 at first. You should not only do this as soon as possible, but you should also put the money in a place where it isn’t easy to spend.

Once you're out of debt, you can add to this safety net. And with your new found powers of budgeting, you’ll find that this fund can grow quite quickly.

Make life more rewarding and purposeful by taking on difficult work that contributes to society.

So you’ve cut all your anchors and are finally free from your dependencies. The only question now is: What are you going to do with your newfound freedom?

Sure, you have your new plans to get healthy, fit and friendly, but you won’t get far without a strong purpose in your life. And true purpose only comes from a meaningful life that allows you to actively contribute to society.

You might think that donating money to a charity means doing enough for society, but you can only have it be meaningful and purposeful if you’re directly involved.

What you’re sure to find is that the most rewarding activities are the ones that are the most challenging.

Some activities are easy, like reading in the park or swimming in the pool, and while easy activities are fun, they aren’t very purposeful.

Challenging activities, on the other hand, might make us feel uncomfortable while we’re in the middle of them, but afterward, they make us feel fantastic. This can include child rearing or running a marathon – there are a lot of difficulties involved, but the rewards make these efforts feel worthwhile, and they become the most significant experiences in our lives.

That’s why these are the kind of events we should seek and build our lives with, especially when we don’t just contribute to our lives but to society as a whole.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of charities looking for volunteers for this kind of meaningful work, whether it’s building affordable homes for the poor or turning vacant lots into community gardens. This is tough work, but it’ll be extremely rewarding when you’re looking back on it.

You can still make these tasks fun, too. If you’re building homes for the needy, there’s a good chance some days will be rainy or cold, and morale might take a dip, but you could rally together to sing songs. Or you could have an emergency supply of hot chocolate with marshmallows.

But unlike a cushy office job, where you may not even understand how your work contributes anything of value, this difficult work comes with a strong sense of purpose that will make your days a lot easier to get through – no matter how bad the conditions might get.

You are not your job, and you don’t need as much money as you think. You can restart your life by dispensing with all the “stuff’ you don’t need and the relationships that are dragging you down. Living simply will help you open up to and relish a more meaningful life.

#How to Break Free From The 9 to 5 Grind And Find A More Meaningful Life.

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professionallmhc · 4 years ago

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Anxiety is My Favorite Color

Just saying the word alone makes me feel overwhelmed with all things uneasy. Probably one of the bigger demons I’ve been facing throughout my life so far. Anxiety. In its simplest form--it’s our body’s physical response to our perceived fear. It’s our apprehension about what comes next. And while it’s so easy for us to spell it out that way, it’s probably one of the most complicated issues many of us face..I believe. Sometimes anxiety isn’t only our irrational worry about being late or missing a meetings, but it’s our intrusive thoughts that tell us that our friends don’t really like us, it’s our daily obsessions with why our S.O. liked someone else’s picture on Instagram, it’s feeling inadequate around others, it’s our ruminating thoughts and obsessive behaviors that lead us to drink, use drugs, self-sabotage and ultimately withdraw from life.

So where the hell does it come from?

First off, it’s important to remember that our brain’s primary function is to protect us. So basically, when we’re faced with a perceived or actual threat or harmful stimuli, our brain and body go into “self-protection” mode, otherwise known as our “Fight or Flight response.” Sometimes, as children, if you grew up in a chaotic or unpredictable environment, chances are you might have been conditioned, or learned to live in a constant state of stress. For example, you might have not formed secure attachments with your caregivers, maybe you’ve suffered a traumatic experience or lived in an unsafe environment. Without learning proper coping skills or receiving treatment, you may get to adulthood and wonder why you’re live in a constant state of worry, fear and insecurity. In this case, your stress response is still “on” and you’re reacting to everyday life as if you were in life threatening danger. Now of course there are healthy levels of stress and appropriate situations in which our flight or fight response kicks in however if you’re someone that finds yourself in a crippling state of anxiety over daily stressors and daily decision making, you may be in need of an intervention.

Now, am I saying that anxiety only occurs if you’ve suffered from childhood trauma? Absolutely not. There are many more causes for why anxiety takes place however I can only speak from personal experience from that of myself and my clients.

So what does it all mean?

It seems that the more we desire to tackle these issues, the more uncomfortable we become with being uncomfortable, if that makes sense. Many times, our anxiety causes us to make things harder than they actually are, and it may cause us to paint these exaggerated pictures in our minds of how situations are going to play out when in reality they might not actually be so hard or big at all. A personal example is that as a child, and even as an adult, I despised being late to things. Even now, I cringe at the thought that I might not be on time somewhere. Of course, some might tell me to “leave early” or “plan ahead,” which I do however none of those things ever seem to really take away the physical symptoms of being anxious. However, what does work, is to make a conscious effort to remind yourself that THINGS ARE OUT OF OUR CONTROL. No matter how upset or anxious we get, or how many times we replay a scenario or obsess, it will never change the outcomes of things that we cannot control. Anxiety is something that is very real, daunting, and sometimes debilitating, however if you can get into the habit of being present and reminding yourself that no matter what you do, it will not change the outcome, then its possible that you can retrain your brain to stress a little less and breathe a little more. Managing anxiety is a skill that requires patience and consistency. It is always a work in progress, and many times you may never be able to completely rid yourself of it, but you can learn to manage. Even alleviating the smallest amount of discomfort from your daily life can make a big difference.

So how do I “fix” it?

Well there’s no cure or magic spell that you can do to get rid of anxiety but there are some techniques you can try to help yourself to manage. Some of my favorites are journaling, listening to music, and repeating positive affirmations such as “I can do this” or “It is what it is.” Many times, writing helps because it can help to declutter your mind. Listening to music helps because there are so many genres that can match your mood or what you’re thinking. Positive affirmations help because the more consistently you repeat them, the more you can actually reprogram your brain to automatically think about the positive instead of the negative. It’s also been recommended to try Progressive Muscle Relaxation. YouTube is a great resource for this because of how many videos you’ll find on the subject.

It’s important to remember that there are no guarantees in life. As cliche as that sounds, it’s true. We are not promised tomorrow, and we can’t change yesterday, but we can focus on this moment right now. Most things are out of our control, however we can control where we allow our minds to go. My therapist once explained to me this analogy about surfers and how although there are hundreds of waves a day, only they choose which ones to ride. I like to think of anxiety as all of those waves, and as of myself, the surfer. And you can do the same. Choose which waves to ride, or don’t.

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addictedtostorytelling · 5 years ago

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Hi !So,took me an embarrassing amount of time to realise you’re the one who wrote”something in you..”.I left a comment about spending 4 days reading it & I did it again with your meta.You could write a whole book about subtext using only CSI & the world would be nothing but grateful.It’s a real treat,I love everything about it.Idk if you wrote anything about Grissom’s reaction to Sara’s depression in S7: his little side glances,his worried face.I’d love to hear your opinion about it.Again thanks

hey, @clarissemcc!

sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you!

thank you so much for your kind words, both here and on ao3! i’m so glad you enjoy my fic and my meta. (i’d love to write a whole book about gsr subtext, tbh.)

re: your question:

do you by chance mean sara’s depression in s8?

i ask because s8 features a prominent “sara depression” story arc, whereas (at least in my view) s7 sees her experience something more of an upswing.

if so, then i’ve written a little bit about how her depression is treated within the context of the overall gsr storyline here, here, and here.

however, i haven’t really focused specifically on grissom’s reactions to sara’s depression in themselves.

if you really did mean to ask about s7 and i’m just being obtuse, send me another ask, okay?

my short-ish answer is that i think that what we see in s8 with regards to grissom noticing sara’s depression is this: a man who knows ~something~ is up with his fiancéebut who lacks the context and evidence necessary to fully understand the extent to which she is in crisis until it is too late.

sara is someone who has had depression, anxiety, and cptsd for most of her life and whose symptoms only worsen after she experiences a traumatic kidnapping and near-death experience at the hands of the miniature killer (see episodes 07x24 “living doll” and 08x01 “dead doll”).

sara is also someone who instinctively conceals her pain and downplays the true depths of her misery, both because she developed certain coping mechanisms as a child due to growing up in an abusive household and because (as an adult) she fears what might happen between her and grissom should she prove to him that she is “irreparably broken.”

she doesn’t want to worry him or cause him heartache, and she also doesn’t want him to convince himself that he has to “fix her” when doing so may not actually be possible, so she tries not to let on to him just how poorly she’s faring.

because she is still deeply in love with him (depression notwithstanding), mustering smiles in his presence isn’t actually too difficult, most of the time; he’s one of the few things that truly makes her happy anymore, so usually she can mask her suffering well enough when she is with him—and particularly considering that throughout s8, the time they are able to spend together is actually fairly limited, due to them working different shifts.

maintaining a façade is fairly doable when one only has to maintain it for a few fleeting minutes or hours at a time.

so for a while, grissom only has the vaguest idea that anything might be wrong with sara. there are the occasional instances when he notices she seems a little melancholy, but she almost immediately covers said instances over with very genuine shows of affection toward him, obscuring his sense that what he has observed is part of any larger mood pattern on her part (see, for example, their conversation in the car in episode 08x02 “a la cart”).

but, of course, the center for sara cannot hold. as time goes on, more and more stressors start to pile up around her, from her frustration on the job to her despair over the depravity of the cases she works to the more debilitating symptoms of her cptsd, which eventually become omnipresent. soon, her mask starts slipping, and for the first time grissom glimpses how deeply unwell she is (see episode 08x06 “who and what,” when sara becomes inconsolably upset by the senseless, random violence of the homicide she and grissom are investigating). for as much as she tries to downplay, both the number and the intensity of these incidents clue grissom in to how much she’s struggling.

—but not in time for him to put everything together and offer her the support and help that she needs.

he is just about to “solve the mystery” in episode 08x07 “goodbye & good luck” (and specifically in the scene where he follows her down the hallway and she all but sprints away from him), but before he can sit her down and have a real discussion, she’s fleeing the city in a taxi cab, leaving nothing but a letter behind for him.

albeit one that finally contextualizes the situation and fills in the gaps in his understanding.

only in retrospect does he fully realize just how bad off she was before she left and when he does, his heart breaks for about a million reasons, including that she felt that skipping town to protect him from her “darkness” was ultimately the only option that she had.

if you click on the “keep reading,” i’ve got a much, much longer answer, if you’re interested.

_________________

first, we need to talk about sara.

bear with me here, because i have an analogy i’m going to be working with:

so when dogs are hurt, they whimper, whine, limp, bellyache, and “baby” their injuries. they’re not shy about letting whoever is around them know that they are sick or in pain because they are inherently social animals who learn from puppyhood that if they express their vulnerability, the other members of their pack (be those members canine or human) will take care of them and keep them safe from outside dangers while they recuperate.

cats, on the other hand, instinctively hide their injuries. unlike dogs, they are naturally solitary creatures. beyond kittenhood, they have no expectation that they will be cared for by members of their own kind, no matter how vulnerable they may be. they learn early on that vocalizing when they are in pain serves no purpose but to attract potential predators. ditto for showing weakness or revealing wounds. for this reason, sick and injured cats will not meow or limp around unless they are in a severe state and near death; instead, they prefer to quietly slink off to an inconspicuous corner where they can lie low until they either recover or die. if another animal invades their hiding space when they are feeling vulnerable, they will likely lash out (insofar as they are able), going into “attack mode” so as to stave off the unwanted attention.

ask any cat owner and they can tell you: one of the hardest things about caring for a cat is knowing when it is sick or injured because it will do everything it can to pretend that it’s not. unless a cat has gotten to the point where it is hiding under the bed and refusing to eat or drink, determining how it is really feeling inside can be extremely difficult because it will mask whatever ails it, trying to “act normal” at all costs.

even a cat with severe arthritis will continue jumping up onto high places (and holding back its winces) until it absolutely cannot do so anymore because it doesn’t want anyone to realize that its mobility might otherwise be limited.

so here’s a thing about sara:

sara is a cat.

—and by that i mean that when she was a child, she learned that in order to survive, she had to mask her vulnerabilities and never let on when she was hurt or upset or had needs.

her parents were alcoholics caught in a cycle of abuse and dealing with severe untreated mental illness. because they were inept in caring for both her and themselves, and anything that caused even the slightest bit of tension in the household could and often did precipitate violence, from a very young age, sara learned to be entirely self-sufficient and, even more to our point, conceal her troubles as much as possible.

in her experience, confiding a problem in a parent could (and often did) end up setting one or both of them off—so whereas a child with healthy, secure attachments might run to mommy or daddy for care and sympathy when she fell and skinned her knee, sara learned not to do so, because if her mother saw her father putting a bandaid on her, her mother might have a paranoid/self-loathing meltdown, and her father might lose his temper, and her mother might end up at the hospital for reasons much worse than the original skinned knee.

even barring violence, expressing needs or vulnerabilities could result in other kinds of disappointments, as well; there were probably innumerable times during her early childhood when she would ask her mother a simple question and end up getting sucked into a delusional rant rather than being given a tenable answer or when she would request milk money from her father only to have him forget and spend the cash on booze instead. both of them were so caught up in their own issues that they didn’t have the wherewithal to deal with hers, or at least not with any degree of consistency.

not being able to count on her parents to fill her basic needs taught her that it was best to just take care of things herself: to work out the answers to her homework questions without their help; to take money straight from their wallets when she needed to buy things like school supplies or new shoes; to sign her own permission slips for field trips; to bandage her own scrapes; to set her own appointments; to make her own sandwiches; to deal with her own playground bullies; to never complain about unhappiness, lest she trigger some kind of catastrophic reaction; etc.; etc.

though perhaps not solitary by nature, she became so by nurture (or lack of nurture, as it were). even as young as she was, she realized that her parents were unreliable in their roles as providers and protectors and that they couldn’t be trusted to meet her needs or respond appropriately at times when she was in distress.

in fact, there were probably even occasions when she had to fill their needs, playing the role of the “adult in the house,” by making sure that the bills still got paid and put in the mail when mom and dad were on benders or smoothing things over with the neighbors after they had had yet another knock-down, drag-out fight on the lawn for everyone to see.

consequently, she grew up having little expectation that she would be cared for, no matter how vulnerable she was, a notion which her time spent in the notoriously spread-too-thin u.s. foster care system undoubtedly only reaffirmed and even exacerbated for her.

so, like a cat, sara became conditioned to keep her discomforts to herself, masking her ailments both physical and emotional, and trying to “act normal,” no matter the costs. since voicing her needs would result in disappointment at best and violence at worst, she began to shield her needs, and particularly at the times when they were most pressing, turning inward when under duress.

she had to look out for herself—and since she did, she couldn’t afford to waste a lot of time or emotional energy dwelling on her trauma or feeling sorry for her own situation; she had to swallow down her pain and keep moving forward, because if she didn’t, there was no one to press on for her.

she had no safety net.

her m.o. essentially became “don’t ever let anyone know that you need help or have weaknesses of any kind. either fix your own shit or die with it.”

—and even as an adult, that is the mantra she still lives by.

that’s why she expends so much effort hiding her past from her coworkers, never letting on to them that she grew up in an abusive home or that her mother killed her father or that she spent time in foster care, even when these past traumas come to bear in her work.

that’s why, even at times when she is very visibly shaken and distressed or even hurt, her customary answer to questions about her well-being is “i’m fine.”

that’s why, in s4, she goes to such lengths to conceal her drinking problem (and even flat-out lies to brass’s face when he tries to talk to her about showing up buzzed to work). it’s also why she runs herself practically into the ground, working through her depression, despite grissom offering her time off.

and, ultimately, that’s why in s8 she is at least semi-successful in keeping the true extent of her ptsd from grissom, despite his general attentiveness to her and deep-seated desire to fill her needs.

like a cat, she has mastered the art of “playing through the pain.”

that depression is a widely misunderstood condition works to her advantage.

lots of folks think that depression looks a certain way: like an unkempt person in sweatpants curled in a ball on the couch, unable to get up and go to work or participate in family activities. to many, depression means “being sad all of the time.” they believe the primary symptoms are crying often and sleeping too much. the person who has depression is supposed to be a wreck pretty much 24/7.

of course, depression is a spectrum, and for some people on the depression spectrum, the experiences described above are the reality: they are debilitated, unable to hold down jobs, maintain basic hygiene, get out of bed, and/or commit to relationships.

however, for other people with depression, the disorder manifests differently.

for these folks, their depressive disorder doesn’t impede their performance of responsibilities such as work and home duties (or at least not outwardly). they still have depression symptoms, such as persistent sad/anxious/empty moods, feelings of hopelessness, loss of pleasure in daily activities, fatigue, headaches and body pains, and even suicidal ideation, but they are nevertheless able to achieve at a high level in their personal and professional lives, at least for a while.

sara is one of these so-called “high-functioning depressives.”

make no mistake: sara is depressed (and likely also has a form of cptsd).

but she is able to get up to her alarm, groom herself, dress in professional clothes, and perform well at a challenging and competitive job where she is constantly being evaluated. she completes necessary life tasks both on time and to the required standards for an adult of her age and life position: she pays her bills, buys groceries, keeps her appointments, cares for house plants, and gets through most days without any kind of breakdown or incident—and all while maintaining a long-term, committed romantic relationship with a man she loves.

to the outside observer, she generally seems like a put-together and “with it” person. she’s not like what you see in cymbalta commercials.

—and because that is the case, most people, including many of the people closest to her, have no idea that she’s struggling.

sure, after the events of episodes 07x24 “living doll” and 08x01 “dead doll,” her friends at the lab might notice that at times she seems skittish or has a thousand-yard stare, but who, having gone through what she did, wouldn’t occasionally experience an “off” moment? and, besides, she never seems to stay “faraway” for long; she always bounces back, cracking a smile and joking right afterward (see, for example, her conversation with greg in episode 08x03 “go to hell”).

she still seems like sara—who has always had a bit of an edge, after all.

only upon close inspection would one notice any “cracks in her veneer,” and, even then, those cracks might be hard to place.

for example, one might note that her enthusiasm for her work seemingly dwindles once she switches over to swing shift. on the one hand, professional burnout in someone who formerly loved their job is often cause for concern. but on the other hand, given that she worked the graveyard shift for years and that all of her friends (including her boyfriend) still work it, that she might be less than enthused about having to switch shifts would also track.

her change in attitude could be a symptom of depression (“loss of interest in the activities one formerly enjoyed”), or it could be a natural reaction to a shitty situation, and there’s really no way to tell from the outside.

it’s schrödinger’s mental health crisis.

so now let’s talk about grissom.

out of everyone in sara’s life, grissom is the one who is best positioned to potentially see what’s going on with her “from the inside,” not only because he spends the most time with her out of anyone—including time spent off the clock—or because he knows her best, but also because he is the person in the world that she trusts the most, so if she were going to drop her guard around anyone, it would be him.

precedent is even on his side in the matter.

over the years, sara has repeatedly purported to trust him, regardless of their current relationship status (see here). it was also to him that she finally confessed the truth about her childhood and continued struggles with mental illness way back in 2005, even though, previously, she had always hidden those parts of herself from everyone.

he is her most frequent confidante and someone she allows to “see her” more than anyone else, whether she is upset or angry or emotionally exposed.

they have a connection. they have history. she knows that he is on her side.

so wouldn’t it make sense for her to be truthful with him again? shouldn’t she want him (as her fiancé) to know what’s going on with her? shouldn’t she trust the man she is going to marry enough to reach out to him for help when she needs to?

*sigh*

if only things were so simple, right?

as stated above, sara does typically trust grissom—and certainly more than she trusts any other human being on the planet. he has proven to her, time and time again, day in and day out, that he is there for her and that he will be gentle with her secrets. she knows that he can be counted on.

that he can means the world to her.

but as discussed above, sara also has years and years of conditioning working against her in this case, and, consequently, her impulses are at odds. on the one hand, she wants very much to confide in him. but on the other hand, she honestly has no idea how to. the same coping mechanisms she developed in order to survive as a child have become maladaptive now that she is an adult and her circumstances have changed. while keeping her suffering to herself used to help her get by in the world, now it’s preventing her from reaching out to her fiancé and expressing to him her needs.

if we go back to the cat metaphor for a second, when a cat is in the wild, living on its own, the “silently slink off under a shrub to lick wounds and hide from predators when injured” behavior makes good, biological sense. it is a pro-survival technique.

—and that’s why it has been passed down as an instinctual behavior in cats for generations.

but that behavior evolved in cats back before they were domesticated.

nowadays, it’s less helpful, and particularly for indoor cats.

for a house cat with human caretakers, silently slinking away to hide when ill or injured can be dangerous and even detrimental to survival. a pet cat who never lets on to its owner that it is very unwell but rather crawls into the back of a closet where it is unlikely to be found may miss out on critical and potentially life-saving veterinary care. if the cat just meowed or indicated to its owner that it was in pain, it could get the medication or treatment that it needed to recover.

but of course the cat can’t help but do what cats do.

it’s going to mask its pain because that’s how its instincts tell it to behave, even though those instincts are currently “outdated.”

it’s a vestigial behavior left over from wilder, lonelier times.

and that’s sara.

she developed her masking behaviors to cope when she was on her own, and back then they were pro-survival. but now she has someone in her life who cares for her and who would be both willing to help her and capable of doing so were he in fact aware that she needed help. what that means is that those same behaviors that once benefited her are currently a detriment.

logically, then, she should give them up! she should realize that she doesn’t have to suffer in silence anymore! she should give voice to her pain and let grissom know what’s going on!

but just because she logically should do something doesn’t mean that she will.

like a house cat, she is still going to hide in the proverbial closet and hope that the issue resolves itself.

it’s not that she consciously wants to lie or shut grissom out.

the impulse to conceal her pain is just so deeply ingrained in her that she almost doesn’t know how to do anything else—and especially not when she is scared that she might end up hurting grissom, particularly if he “can’t save her.”

her letter to grissom in episode 08x07 “goodbye & good luck” is especially illuminating on this matter.

she writes:

“no matter how hard i try to fight [off my ghosts], i’m left with thefeeling that i have to go. i have no idea where i’m going, but i know ihave to do this. if i don’t, i’m afraid i’ll self-destruct, and, worse, you’llbe there to see it happen.”

remember: sara has had depression her whole life and has gone through various “ups and downs” over the years.

back in 2004-2005 (during the events of s4 and early s5), she is at a low point, feeling stalled in her career advancement, lonely without adequate personal connections, and bereft of the companionship of the man she is in love with and whom she knows to be in love with her, but who refuses to be with her (because, apparently, he is more afraid of ruining his career than he is motivated to spend his life with her).

but then she opens up to grissom (see episode 05x13 “nesting dolls”), and things get better for a while—for long enough and to such an extent that she even starts to believe that maybe everything will be okay from there on out.

she starts to find joy in her work again, first in serving as greg’s primary trainer and then once the team is reunited following the events of episode 05x25 “grave danger” pt. ii. her friendships at work deepen and become realer to her—even with catherine, with whom she had always experienced a certain degree of interpersonal friction before. most importantly, she commences a romantic relationship with grissom, who shows her unconditional love and support, just like she had always needed but never had previously.

so between 2006 and 2007, she is on an upswing. she feels happier than she even realized that she could, and she allows herself to start thinking that maybe the good times can last forever—

until she is abducted by the miniature killer and left for dead in the desert (see episode 07x24 “living doll”).

though she escapes the ordeal alive (see episode 08x01 “dead doll”), her depression and cptsd return with a vengeance thereafter.

she tries to tell herself to just snap out of it—she has made it out alive! she still has her job! she still has her friends! she still has grissom! and now she doesn’t even have to hide her relationship with him anymore!—but she can’t just snap out of it, and the fact that she can’t panics her, because if she can’t be happy now (with the dream career and the dream man and the found family and the support network and the high-end condo with a dog and 2.5 academic libraries’ worth of books inside), then how can she ever be?

is she destined to just feel shitty forever? is there no escaping her trauma?

this harrowing line of questioning leads to an even more harrowing question still:

what if she can’t deal?

she had been on the brink of a real breakdown before, back in ’04-’05, and had grissom not taken an interest in her mental state after she got pulled over for driving drunk, who knows where she might have ended up?

best case scenario: fired for coming into work loaded. worst case scenario: possibly in jail; possibly dead.

that was supposed to be her rock bottom.

but what if this time around she goes lower? what if she gets back to the place where she’s out-of-control again?

god knows grissom will try to save her—because he always tries to save the people he loves, especially when what they need saving from is themselves; because he’s always saved her before; because he’s her knight in shining armor; because that’s just the kind of person he is.

but maybe she can’t be saved.

maybe she’ll end up hurting him, not in the very literal way that her mother hurt her father, but in the sense that she’ll say or do something so horrible that it will break him. she has a tendency to act out when she’s hurting. (recall the cat lashing out with its claws when someone invades its recuperative hiding place.) she can make herself really repugnant sometimes. she wouldn’t necessarily intend to, but she might go for the “sucker punch to the feelings” on instinct. she might say something she couldn’t take back.

she doesn’t trust herself not to.

—but even if she were to keep herself in check, there’s also the possibility that she could hurt grissom in another way: by simply not being salvageable.

even if she never said or did anything actively horrible, what if he poured all of his love and devotion into fixing her, but she still didn’t get better? what if she never was able to be the person she was back in ’06-’07 again? she knows from personal experience how draining being a caretaker for someone with long-term debilitating mental illness can be and how much having to care for a loved one can alter the shape of your relationship with them, not necessarily for the better. she would hate to hold grissom back or deny him the kind of happiness he so fully deserves. she would hate to pull him down into the darkness with her. she remembers what happened between her mother and father, and the last thing she wants in the world is for her and grissom to go that same route.

so even beyond being conditioned to mask her pain due to her childhood experiences, sara also has this additional motivation to conceal how she’s feeling from grissom: namely, she doesn’t want him to feel guilty over her or to think that he has any kind of obligation to save her. she doesn’t want to make him party to her suffering.

she also secretly fears that for as wonderful, patient, and loving as grissom is, even he has his limits, meaning that he might eventually become disgusted by how “broken” she is and reject her. (her father got to the point where her mother disgusted him, after all.) if grissom were to leave her, she doesn’t think she could survive. she wouldn’t necessarily blame him, of course. but she would wither.

if she ever saw that love in his eyes go out, she might actually die.

deep down, she’s holding on to hope that maybe she’ll be able to turn things around before he actually realizes that anything is wrong—and that having a discussion about how she’s feeling will (consequently) become a moot point because she’ll just suddenly be “recovered” before her mental state even becomes an issue between them.

the possibility isn’t necessarily a forgone one, as, even given the extent to which she is depressed, she does still on occasion experience happiness—like when grissom proposes to her, and for a few days thereafter she is over the moon (see episode 08x04 “the case of the cross-dressing carp”).

but, unfortunately, as time goes on, the kind of “breakthrough” that she’s seeking starts seeming farther and farther away.

what she realizes is that it’s not that as a depressed person, she never feels any kind of happiness; it’s that depression is a baseline that she somehow always settles back to. that blank, empty sensation is the way she feels most often, followed closely by a steady course of terrible, gut-wrenching lows. but there are occasional highs, as well. euphoric moments, even. she ends up chasing those moments. rarely does she catch them. when she does, she knows they’re fleeting. depression rides like a passenger in the back of all of her otherwise happy occasions. and then when the happiness inevitably dissipates, it immediately becomes almost impossible to remember, as if it never happened; as if it will never happen again.

and that’s the thought that is so demoralizing and even frightening: being with grissom makes sara happier than anything else, but is it fair for her to ask him to be responsible for her happiness? or, even if she doesn’t ask him to, is it fair for her to stay with him when she knows he’ll feel responsible, regardless?

a sara in this state of mind (and heart) isn’t one who is about to open up to grissom and tell him what’s ailing her. rather, she is going to try her best to mask her heartache and to lean into her happiness with him as much as she can while she’s around him, while also—in the back of her mind—planning an emergency escape route for when she gets to the point where she can no longer keep up the pretenses and her mental illness starts to negatively impact their relationship.

of course, she finally reaches that breaking point in episode 08x07 “goodbye & good luck,” which is why she tells grissom in her letter that she “tried very hard to stay” but ultimately felt that fleeing was her only recourse to keep him safe.

now.

all of this discussion is just to explain what grissom is up against when it comes to noticing what’s going on with sara.

it’s a lot™.

the good news is that grissom wants to notice.

of all the people that sara has ever known, gil grissom is the one who has paid the closest attention to her and has done so consistently since they first met. even before they start officially dating in vegas, he has been tuned in to her moods, taking note when cases upset her and realizing the ways in which his own actions affect (for better or for her worse) her well-being.

he isn’t always a perfect observer and there have been times when he has very much missed the mark in reading sara and even been painfully obtuse regarding her—such as, for instance, during the events of episode 02x15 “burden of proof,” when he remains ignorant to the true reason that sara is upset with him until both she and catherine call that reason unmistakably to his attention—but to his credit he continues to hone his skills over the years, and particularly after sara confesses her family secrets to him (see episode 05x13 “nesting dolls”), he starts to make a very conscious and deliberate effort to be aware of where she’s at, emotionally. his goal is to support her as much as he possibly can.

so now let’s lay out a timeline:

the events of episode 08x01 “dead dolls” take place on 05.18.07 within the universe of the show.

the events of episode of episode 08x02 “a la cart” take place on 10.04.07 within the universe of the show.

that means that approximately five months pass in-between the time when sara escapes the miniature killer and is rescued in the desert and the time when she returns to work at the lab (see here).

during these five months, it would seem that grissom takes a leave of absence from work to care for her (as he seemingly has not talked to ecklie about what kinds of disciplinary actions will be taken in regards to him and sara concealing their romantic relationship from the department prior to the events of episode 08x02 “a la cart”).

it is unknown in what ways sara’s depression manifests at this time (if it does so at all). it is also unknown to what extent grissom may notice the signs of sara’s depression, if he does so at all.

our first on-screen evidence of sara’s depression comes from episode episode 08x02 “a la cart,” and from that point forward we (as the audience) are party to myriad instances of sara’s depression manifesting in almost every episode in which she appears throughout s8. however, grissom is not always present for all of these instances. sometimes it’s ronnie or greg who catches a glimpse of her “mask slipping.” sometimes it’s only us (as the viewers).

in total, we see grissom witnessing evidence of sara’s worsening depression on screen only about six times, with most of those instances taking place right at sara’s “breaking point” in episode 08x07 “goodbye & good luck.”

in episode 08x02 “a la cart,” sara turns a bit melancholy when discussing her decision to switch to swing shift with grissom in the car.

in episode 08x06 “who and what” (which takes place on 11.01.07 in-universe) the case details of the serial murder she and grissom are working together visibly upset her, and when grissom asks her if she’s okay, she starts crying and ends up stalking off, despairing over the depravity in the world.

in episode 08x07 “goodbye & good luck” (which takes place between 11.14.07 and 11.16.07 in-universe) sheperseverates on the west case and pleads with grissom to let her be part of the investigation.

at one point, after she discovers that hannah west has potentially planted evidence, she appears flustered and on edge, and so grissom attempts to offer her an out, telling her that nick can finish up the investigation without her, if necessary. however, she turns his charity down, promising that she’ll be okay. grissom’s expression suggests that he knows she isn’t being truthful, though.

later on, after hannah west gains the upper hand over her in the investigation, sara angrily storms out of the interrogation room at pd, only to encounter grissom in the hall. seeing her obvious upset, he expresses worry for her, but she immediately shuts him down, saying that she can’t talk about “this” right now and hurrying away before the conversation can progress any further.

a while later, sara visits grissom in his office, where they start to have a much calmer conversation about what is going on with her. she begins to apologize for being so frazzled as of late, but a phone call cuts her sentiment short.

the next time grissom sees sara, it is when she comes to kiss him goodbye at the end of the episode.

looking at this timeline, it would seem that early on, grissom is perhaps only peripherally aware of sara’s distress, if he is actually aware of it at all. the fallout from sara’s kidnapping and consequent injuries probably serves to cover or camouflage her depression at least somewhat, and then the happy occasions that are her return to work and her and grissom’s subsequent engagement further obscure her larger mood patterns from his view. ultimately, it is only as sara is on the brink of a total breakdown that the signs become too obvious and regular for grissom to miss. he only fully recognizes what she’s dealing with as she is on her way out from las vegas.

to break things down a bit more closely, then:

we don’t know exactly what happens during the nearly five in-universe months between the events of episode 08x01 “dead doll” and the events of episode 08x02 “a la cart,” but it seems that grissom is sara’s primary caretaker during this time, when he likely takes an extended leave of absence from work in order to stay home and be at her side as she recuperates.

to what extent he may notice that something is ~off~ with sara while they’re at home together is impossible to say.

on the one hand, he is around her almost constantly, which means that he has plenty of opportunities to observe her (and even to do so in her most unguarded moments). surely given this level of access, he witnesses at least a few things from her that would suggest that she is unwell—a disassociative “zone out” here, some whimpering in her sleep there.

even someone as practiced at concealment as she is can’t be “on guard” all of the time, after all.

there has to be some occasional sadness or frustration or panic that slips through, and when there is, grissom—as both a trained observer and someone who is deeply interested in all things sara—certainly notices.

but, on the other hand, during this period, that sara might be out-of-sorts would also be very expected. she nearly died in the desert and has a rough road recovering from broken bones and other serious injuries, perhaps even having undergone surgery. she is cooped up in the house and unable to work (which is typically something that’s an outlet for her), and she knows that when she does finally get back to work, the status quo is going to change because she and grissom won’t be allowed to stay on the same shift with each other. anyone would be at least somewhat on edge, were they in her situation.

so the question then becomes: during this period, would grissom recognize sara as being clinically depressed and having cptsd based on the behaviors he observes in her, or would he instead draw the (very reasonable) conclusion that she was just reacting to having undergone a trauma in the same way that anyone else would, carrying the expectation that she would eventually “get back to normal” (and particularly as she healed of her physical injuries and was able to resume her former life activities)?

i tend to think that sara would do everything in her power to convince him that the second option were the case.

for instance, if grissom were to walk in on her crying on the couch after he got back from a grocery run, he would ask her what was wrong, and she might admit to him that she was having a rough day, but then she would probably also immediately say, “i’ll be okay, though. let me wash up, and then we can start making dinner,” and pop up and start being her hyper-functional™ self, before long starting to smile and tease him, putting on her best show that she was fine, fine, fine. and you could rest assured that it would be a long while before she allowed herself to “slip up” around him again. for the next few days or even weeks, she’d be nothing but upbeat. she’d have her “game face” on.

she might also be able to use her physical injuries to cover for her mental illness symptoms somewhat, writing off depression naps as “lying down because she has a headache,” for instance.

and grissom isn’t a stupid person or easily deceived at all.

but sara can be a good actress when she needs to be.

besides, for every one piece of evidence grissom collects in support of the “sara isn’t all right” theory, he also collects two or three pieces of evidence more to support the opposite conclusion.

there are lots of times when she seems very genuinely happy—where they’re lying in bed, naked, wrapped up in each other and laughing; out taking the dog on walk around the block, arm-in-arm and reveling in just being together openly; even sitting in the living room, reading books in companionable silence, occasionally glancing up and smiling across the room, because this? this is nice. there is real joy to be found in having so much uninterrupted time together in a way that they never have before.

and, of course, grissom ultimately wants to believe that sara is improving and getting back to her old self after her kidnapping (because he is so invested in her happiness and well-being), so in some ways he sees what he wants to see and allows himself to be taken in by her assurances that she’s all right.

so cue the events of episode 08x02 “a la cart,” when grissom and sara finally return to work. as discussed above, it is from this point forward that we start to see major evidence of grissom getting wise to sara’s depression.

however, it’s not a realization that he comes to either quickly or all at once.

and understandably not.

there are still a lot of “obfuscating factors” in play.

for one thing, sara is still trying to put on a brave face.

for another thing, around grissom, she’s still oftentimes succeeding.

i mean, that one-million watt-smile she gives him in episode 08x02 “a la cart”? her sheer unbridled joy when he proposes to her in episode 08x04 “the case of the cross-dressing carp”? he still sees her looking happy just as often as he sees her looking sad, if not more so, particularly in the “early october” part of s8.

for yet another thing, once they get back to work, the amount of time grissom is able to spend with sara dramatically decreases, and not seeing her as regularly as he used to makes it so he has fewer opportunities to observe her mood.

it’s not just that they’re working different shifts (and so not rubbing elbows as frequently as they used to at the lab) but that they’re working swing and grave shift specifically, which means that their sleep schedules are incredibly incompatible, with one or the other of them needing to sleep for the majority of the few overlapping hours they have together at home.

still.

i do tend to think that it’s only after they both get back to work that grissom really starts to observe incontrovertible evidence that sara isn’t all right—which makes sense, given that she encounters triggers more frequently when she’s out in the field than she does when she’s at home.

the net effect here is that while grissom has less time to notice how sara is doing, in what little time he does have with her—such as when swing and grave team up to work cases together or when she pops into his office to visit him before she heads home for the night—there is actually an increased likelihood that she will be exhibiting distressed behaviors because, as mentioned, her work is often triggering to her.

he sees her less, but sees her sad more.

and so that’s where those side glances and worried expressions you mentioned come in.

as october shifts into november, sara slips deeper into a funk. even when she’s smiling, grissom can see traces of sorrow lingering at the corners of her eyes and mouth. it runs too deep for her to fully suppress.

the trouble is that grissom still doesn’t know how to contextualize what he’s observing in her. life is rough, and there are lots of things that could potentially be getting to her. is she burning out from work? does she just hate working swing? is it that they don’t get to spend enough time together? is it something more clinical? he doesn’t necessarily know where to locate her sadness—and, unfortunately, she doesn’t seem eager to enlighten him.

between episodes 08x06 “who and what” and 08x07 “goodbye & good luck,” we see at least a couple of occasions on which grissom asks sara if she okay, trying to engage in real conversation with her, but she either dodges his question, lies and claims she’s fine, or else their conversation gets cut short by interruptions.

consequently, the watershed moment, in terms of grissom really starting to put two and two together regarding sara, doesn’t seem to come until late in the game, circa episode 08x06 “who and what,” when finally sara can hide her distress from him no more.

as i talk about in the s8 shipper’s guide,

[during the course of the day,] sara and her swing shift team discover another victim in grissom and jack’s serial murder case, and grissom arrives to help sara process the crime scene… the whole time, sara appears sad and subdued (see episodes 08x03 “go to hell” and 08x05 “the chick chop flick shop”).

eventually, grissom and sara arrive at the conclusion that the husband was likely forced to watch as the serial murderer raped and killed his wife in front of him, and doc robbins confirms as much. sara’s lip starts to tremble, and she becomes impossibly quiet. grissom watches her, concerned.

sara exits the house, grissom at her heels. she moves like she’s running away from ghosts. “hey, sara,” grissom says, “you okay?” his voice is small and worried.

sara isn’t okay, and her gestures show as much.

“i don’t know,” she says.

she asks grissom if he and jack know how the killer selects his victims, and grissom tells her that the victims appear to be random easy targets. what grissom says causes sara to tear up. really? these heinous murders are just senseless, then? she can’t stand the thought. if the rapes and murders are random, then they could happen to anybody.

“they were spending a night on the sofa, watching a movie,” she says, trying desperately not to cry. she meets grissom’s eyes. that’s how they spend many of their nights off (see episode 07x22 “leapin’ lizards”), and that’s how many good, normal, unsuspecting people outside of law enforcement and crime scene investigation spend their nights off, too.

it seems like murder can happen anywhere and to anyone without any rhyme or reason behind it, and, if that’s the case, then what’s the point? how can anyone be expected to live in a world like this one?

“it’s just—,” she stammers, “it’s just wrong.”

she stalks off, and grissom watches her go, heartsick. there is something not well with sara, and he knows it. but what can he do?

solving murders is their job.

the events of episode 08x06 “who and what” take place within the universe of the show on november 1st, 2007. in their immediate aftermath, grissom briefly travels to new york city, ny to help special agent jack malone wrap the case. he is presumably only away from las vegas for a day or two at most.

still.

my sense is that he doesn’t really have much of a chance to talk to sara about her reaction to the case before he flies out—time is of the essence, particularly given that the case involves a child abduction element—and that, by the time he returns home to vegas, she has probably managed to pull herself together enough to convince him that she’s bounced back. the concern he felt for her at the scene either gets lost in the transition or else is something she quickly dismisses. (imagine her saying something along the lines of “the case was ugly, but you and jack solved it. i’m just happy you’re home now. and i’m fine—i promise.”)

it takes another two weeks before grissom gets his next clue regarding just how severe sara’s mental health crisis has become.

—and that’s during the events of episode 08x07 “goodbye & good luck” (which take place within the universe of the show on november 14th through 16th, 2007).

episode 08x07 “goodbye & good luck” is where sara hits the ground, hard, after a long while spent in free-fall. to this point in s8, every time she has slipped and allowed grissom to glimpse the pain she’s been concealing, she has always been able to subsequently “recover” and convince him that what he’d witnessed was an aberration. she has always gotten “back to good,” at least for a few more days or weeks yet. the gaps between near-meltdowns have been long enough to throw him off the scent. there’s been sufficient joy to balance out the sorrow, at least from his perspective.

but this time around, she’s unable to pull herself back together.

the 425 call that she and ronnie respond to at the start of the episode marks the beginning of the end for her. where sara is concerned, domestic violence cases have always been triggering, but given how depressed and traumatized she now, this particular case hits her even harder than might be expected—and especially because the details smack very much of her own home experiences.

she isn’t emotionally equipped to deal with having the cycle of domestic abuse shoved in her face at the moment.

of course, sara’s distress level only escalates as this trigger is immediately followed up by another—namely, an unexpected encounter with the siblings west (see episode 06x18 “the unusual suspect”).

hannah west is sara’s proverbial white whale—the criminal mastermind who got away and left sara frustrated and humiliated in her wake. sara never got over the experience of hannah playing her for the fool. two and a half years on, and she’s still stewing. she’s always regretted being unable to put hannah (and her brother) behind bars, despite knowing their guilt. she’s always wanted another chance to set things to rights.

but sara’s connection to hannah goes even beyond a simple case of a law enforcement official wanting to bring a dangerous element to justice for past sins.

on a psychological level, hannah represents much more to sara, in that she’s also her own “dark mirror”: a girl with a genius-level intellect who got early acceptance to harvard, whose precociousness impedes her ability to form normal social relationships, and who therefore clings to the one person in her life she believes is able to accept her as she is.

in hannah’s case, this person is her brother marlon. in sara’s, this person is grissom.

both hannah and sara have analytic minds. both hannah and sara become aware of the way the world works from the time when they are very young. both hannah and sara are consummate survivors who will do what they need to get by.

but whereas sara grew up fearing that she carried a propensity for violence inside of her and so did everything in her power to remain “on the straight and narrow path,” hannah embraced antisocial behaviors, helping her brother to beat a murder rap, despite her knowledge his guilt. though she and sara are possessed of many of the same “powers”—intellect, resilience, pragmatism—she used hers “for evil,” and she did so in the most calculating way possible.

in sara’s mind, hannah represents a version of what sara herself could have been, if not for the grace of the universe—namely, someone who has realized how utterly screwed up the world is and decided to actively contribute to the screwed-upedness rather than fighting to make things better. seeing her upsets sara because sara knows that if just one more thing had gone wrong in her own life, she could have very easily turned out to be just as cold, manipulative, and selfish as hannah is, and that understanding disgusts and scares her.

hannah is that natural-born killer sara has always worried existed inside herself, and she hates being reminded that such a possibility exists.

so given how strongly (and adversely) hannah affects her, sara would be smart to avoid working the new case in which hannah is somehow involved, yeah? i mean, technically it’s nick’s case anyway; graveyard is working it. sara isn’t obligated to be a part of the investigation. knowing herself, she shouldn’t want to be. not logically.

but in this case, sara doesn’t go with what’s logical.

she goes with her gut-reaction and plays the masochist, begging grissom to allow her to join the investigation, which he, despite his better judgment, does.

unsurprisingly, the case gets under her skin in a big way—and particularly as hannah starts playing mind games with her, bringing up the details of her trauma at the hands of the miniature killer in an effort to throw her off her game (“i did some research. i read about what that serial killer did to you out in the desert, under that car. it must have been so terrible, being trapped like that, all alone. did your life flash in front of your eyes? you must’ve been so sad knowing you were going to lose everyone who mattered to you”).

sara was already triggered by working her earlier domestic violence case with ronnie, but now she’s on the brink of an absolute meltdown—to the point where she can’t hide it anymore, even though she wants to.

she loses her temper while interrogating hannah at pd and then immediately runs into none other than grissom after she storms out into the hall.

even someone who wasn’t an expert in all things sara sidle wouldn’t have trouble reading her in this situation, not when she is so obviously upset. so grissom, preeminent saraologist that he is, picks up on the vibes she’s throwing down immediately.

as i describe the scene here,

as sara steps out into the hall, grissom flanks her.

“hey,” he says.

his presence surprises her. “what are you doing here?” she asks.

grissom tries to walk beside sara, but she backs away from him, keeping distance between their bodies. the scene parallels the one from episode 07x15 “law of gravity,” but this time grissom and sara’s interactions aren’t played for comedy.

“i was going to ask you the same question,” grissom says. “listen, i’m worried about you—” it’s a big admission from grissom, who often has difficulty verbally expressing his feelings to sara. maybe that’s why it so jars her.

“—that just makes this worse,” sara interrupts, holding up her hands as if to ward grissom away. she continues to retreat from him down the hallway. “i-i can’t talk about this right now. i can’t.”

she makes a hurried exit, leaving grissom behind in the hallway. he stares after her, heartsick.

this scene also parallels the one in episode 04x16 “getting off.” now as then, grissom knows that there is something very not well with sara, but he feels helpless to do anything about it.

that sara feels she can’t talk to grissom about how upset she is serves as a big, flashing neon sign to him that something is NOT RIGHT beyond the matter of her involvement in the west case.

if she were only upset about the case, she wouldn’t shut him out completely. she’d be able to verbalize that she was frustrated by her inability to prove hannah’s guilt or tell him that hannah’s mind games are getting to her.

but now she’s actively running away from him, and grissom is scared of what her inability to look him in the eyes means.

maybe if he had more time to gather his thoughts, muster his courage, and invite sara to sit down and talk with him, he would be able to express his concern in such a way that she could understand (and maybe even be receptive to whatever help he might offer her).

in fact, that’s what seems to be happening later in the episode when he coaxes sara into his office and asks her what’s up, and she starts to apologize to him for being so standoffish.

only.

a phone call preempts whatever discussion they were going to have before they can have it—and not just any phone call, but one to tell sara that marlon west has committed suicide in jail, collateral damage in the machiavellian game that his younger sister was playing.

as i talk about on this gif set, in a better world, grissom and sara would have been able to “finish their conversation. sara’s phone [wouldn’t] ring. [there would be] no bad news. [there would be] just an uninterrupted discussion between two people who love each other. she [would admit] that she’s been having a rough time lately, ever since her abduction. grissom [would talk] to her about her needs. together, they [would] commit to getting her the necessary help. they [would] do so. a few months later, they [would] get married, as originally planned. no one [would leave] vegas. everything [would work] out.”

but in canon, that’s not what ends up happening.

grissom is right on the edge of realizing how all of these little glimpses he has seen over the last six months all add up to something bigger and more terrible than he realized, but he doesn’t get the chance to make that final confirmation, much less to take action on it.

before everything clicks into place for him, sara’s walking up and planting the world’s most heartbroken kiss on his lips. he’s so stunned that he can’t work up the words to ask her what gives. he just stands there, watching helplessly, as she pulls away from him and hurries down the hall, out the door from the lab.

we don’t know exactly how much time elapses between that scene and the one in which grissom claims sara’s goodbye letter at reception, but in any case, he’s too late to do anything to recall sara or convince her to stay. by the time he fully recognizes what’s happening, she is gone.

sara’s letter answers some of grissom’s questions about what’s been going on with her, certainly.

however, he is also undoubtedly left with many unanswered questions, one of the most pressing of which is what is going to happen to her now that she’s off on her own.

she’s off doing her solitary “cat” thing—and cats that crawl off on their own to lick their wounds sometimes get better and sometimes don’t.

he wants more than anything for sara to be okay, but as long as she’s away from him, he can do little to help her. though he undoubtedly longs to go after her, be believes that she doesn’t want him to. and as he tells catherine in episode 08x08 “you kill me,” his prerogative is to respect sara’s wishes.

because, ultimately, he just wants her to be happy.

conclusion

people don’t always behave logically or in ways that are in their own best interests, and god knows that’s true of sara sidle throughout s8.

watching her suffer in silence—without any help from the people who love her—is difficult.

watching grissom worry about her without knowing what’s really the matter or how he can help is difficult.

knowing that had sara been able to overcome her hang-ups and give voice to what she was feeling, she might have been able to spare both herself and grissom lots of pain in the long run is difficult.

but the good news is that the cathartic part of the story comes later.

gsr isn’t ever about love overcoming mental illness or about grissom and sara surmounting all of their inhibitions to become completely emotionally functional people. rather, it’s about two people, one of whom is chronically mentally ill, both of whom are chock-full of inhibitions, stubbornly and unwaveringly choosing to love each other through everything and learning to understand where the other person is coming from, even in cases where that person is behaving illogically or out of fear or in a way that’s counter-intuitive. sometimes they inadvertently end up causing each other real pain and heartache.

but ultimately they have each other’s best interests at heart.

anyway, i waaaaaaaaaaay overwrote this answer, and i don’t know that i particularly answered your question (especially if you really did mean to ask about s7), so, if not, i apologize. in any case, thanks for the ask! please feel welcome to send another any time.

#csi #csi cbs #gsr #gil grissom #sara sidle #sara x grissom #otp: gsr #**#my meta #meta: csi #meta: gsr #meta: sara #answered #clarissemcc #asks: csi #let's talk shop #season eight #csiverse

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