#but not all “experiments” are like that (it's usually the cognitive stuff. that i loathe btw). some are just questionnaires with priming or

[bredforloyalty]

i wonder if it can be managed that i no longer live in that city but i do a research project during the fall semester

[meerkatpunk]

actually yes this would be very helpful:

she is a 43 lb year old pit mix with a very sweet temperament, I saw a video of her playing and she doesn’t even play bite, she just noses gently and cheekily, she had to give up her last foster situation because the bigger older dog kept attacking her, she’s apparently “leash aggressive” and loathes being on a leash which we intend to work on, in my experience with my last pit it took until he was three to develop proper leash manners, any tips

yeah of course! i have no idea whether this is enough information to be helpful - by length alone it is too much information - but i could keep going Forever. so based on that description what stands out to me is : -she’s an adolescent dog. ( 1 month -> 1 human developmental year, very loosely, until at least 25 months, when like humans they’re cognitively mature. ) so she hasn’t fully grown into her personality yet and like all teenagers she’s going to be prone to periods of risk-taking and possibly of anxiety, higher sensitivity about social concerns, and rapid shifts in preferences; she’ll also need a secure attachment base more than an adult dog would and will flourish more dramatically when one is provided. -like in humans, dogs develop trauma symptoms after being in bare concrete cages with minimal enrichment while surrounded by other stressed dogs who are all yelling; if she’s been in a kennel/shelter environment before, she may have issues with other dogs, the sound of other dogs barking, fences, stereotypies she developed in there, et cetera. this could easily be related to the leash thing. -with rehoming there is a weekish-long shocked period, followed by getting to know the home, followed by feeling at home there and possibly very safe; this is obvs generic but the big thing is that like in humans, when a dog comes into a safe place after a period of trauma they feel ( act ) worse than they seemed while shut down and dissociatey. so often rescue dogs will suddenly start to display anxiety-related behaviors after coming into a home, sometimes pretty dramatic ones. this is normal!

“leash aggressive” could be anything from lacking manners to some amount of actual aggression ( as in a bite risk ); i’m guessing it’s reactivity ( barking and lunging on leash, usually at other dogs ), which is also a very generic term but can be googled for resources. “leash aggressive and loathes being on a leash” sounds like barrier frustration, another word mostly useful because it can be looked up, meaning dogs that have a particularly strong anger response to being physically restricted by an object ( leashes, tethers, crates, sometimes fences ).

regardless of which of those things it is i would look at fundamental wellness stuff before anything else: enough exercise, time freely moving her body under the sky and on top of the dirt, environmental enrichment ( any combination of stuff to destroy and dissect, stuff to chase and bite, puzzles to solve, things to learn, explorable novelty ), enough food to satisfy hunger & the secure sense that there will always be enough, secure attachment to and communication with another person, safety from things she finds deeply scary to traumatic. getting ALL of those things in place solves a lot of behavior concerns and it is much harder to do learning or training or targeted rehabilitation without them.

with high-energy breeds like pitt bull terriers they often have trouble walking on a loose leash until they’ve had at least one to two hours of exercise per day, minimum; this exercise can be sprinting around a field, or chasing a flirt pole or tugging on a spring pole in the backyard, and in tight spaces like city apartments there are things like scent-based puzzles - the training conservation dogs do - that can drastically cut down that need for exercise as well as the time investment. ( i’m unsure why this works; most dogs just find scent-based training incredibly engrossing and tiring, and a lot of dogs bred for GOGOGO will actually pass out for a few hours after doing it. ) i know this is incredibly difficult for most nonrural people that aren’t rich; i can give you more detailed workarounds for it if you’d like.

with actual leash manners you can definitely get them down before age 3, but all manners are difficult & touch-and-go for teenage dogs. this is normal. ( age 3 is 36 months; like humans, dogs settle down emotionally in their thirties and everything becomes easier. ) you can teach them wholly without pressure/aversives/special collars but i also won’t shame you about any tool choice you do because a.) the history of what gets called abusive vs nonabusive in dog training is largely class-centric, and b.) relatedly, a lot of stuff in “force free” training uses the exact same principles, but in a more expensive and aesthetically pleasing and white way. use what tools you’re comfortable with. it is very hard to give you a specific method because there are a lot, and all dogs are different, and teenage dogs in particular often need different things at different times, but i can list the methods if you’d like and you can look into them.

my only favored generalist training book right now is When Pigs Fly by Jane Killion; her other work is not great, and i don’t like her as a human being or her mindset, but she has a unique clicker training system which gives a lot of agency and clear communication to the dog. it was originally developed for bully breeds because they act particularly self-possessed in comparison to the border collies and german shepherds that professional dog trainers usually have ( which is why professional dog trainers usually do not have them ). i can give you other recs but that would be my top choice for something that isn’t leash- or reactivity-specific. i’ve also heard a lot of good things about Coercion And Its Fallout, which i’ve been trying to get my hands on to read for the first time; it’s not intended to be a dog behavior book, but i’m mentioning it because it’s both highly recommended as one & overlaps with your other book hauls.

you can send me any questions at any time & i’ll do my best to answer them! good luck!

[ziracona]

Do you have your own headcanons for the newer characters? I try to imagine them interacting with the rest of the characters and after reading ILM everything you write is canon for me now (been dissapointed with the recent tome).

I have some! Though except for the Stranger Things kids, I don’t know any of the new ones as well and I haven’t written for them, so I don’t have a ton for most of them. 

I think for Ash, being in the realm is weird, because he’s been through his share of hell, but like, Ash is from a Horror-/comedy/? And there’s a lot of overlap, but if you lived in a horror comedy world and went to psychological horror torture horror world, it would be some whiplash, even for a seasoned dude. It’s not that he hasn’t been through horrible stuff, it’s that it felt different before. The realm is such a grind. It’s an unending cycle. And Ash is used to not being able to outrun trouble, but he’s used to that meaning life is a fight. Now, there’s nothing he can really do, and danger means constantly running and struggling and failing. So I think that would be hard to cognitively get used to. Because of his personality (as I understand it--I’ve only seen Evil Dead, & I’d do more research before actually writing him) though, I think he would weather it surprisingly well, and be the kind who can crack jokes and be cocky and fun even there. Because of that, I think he and Meg would vibe really well and get along, and so would he and Ace.

Ash likes to tell stories about all the wild stuff he did before the realm. Some of them believe him (Claudette, Meg, Dwight, Steve)--or mostly do but think he exaggerates (Laurie, Quentin, Nancy), some think he’s super lying (Jane, Jake, Min, Zarina), and a lot fall in between. They all enjoy them though, because he’s a great storyteller and very engaging.

Ash isn’t exactly a support unit /at all/, but the fact he lost a hand pre-realm is surprisingly helpful to the group in a support area. Any time someone in the group is wounded outside a trial and has to recover, he’s way better than anyone else at helping them get used to operating without whatever they’ve lost, and just seeing how well Ash can carry his weight doing complex stuff like fixing a gen even down a hand alleviates a lot of fear for them about what would happen if one of them got /gravely/ hurt. This is wild for Ash, because he sure wasn’t much of a support member/usually isn’t, but he goes with it and is glad to help.

Ash greatly dislikes going against Rin. She hits way too close to home. He’s pretty desensitized to gore and horror and violence from his life even pre-realm, but his first experience with horror involved his sister and his girlfriend being attacked and then turning into monsters and trying to kill him, and he was a baby--like 21 at the time, super young adult--and it was extremely traumatic. He almost died because his girlfriend kept seeming like herself and the horror and gore would vanish from her demon-zombie form and she’d be her again, and he’d think he could save her, but she was dead the whole time. The way that Rin looks like a horrible smiling monster viciously hungry for your pain and then will suddenly flash to looking like a heartbroken teenager crying over what she’s done is way too reminiscent of that. It’s literally the only thing in the realm that /really/ shakes him.

(Nancy, Steve, Yui, Zarina, and Cherly HCs under the cut)

Nancy and Steve are really glad they ended up there together instead of alone (I mean, they aren’t happy the other is in hell, but like, it really helps them both to have the emotional support of person they knew from before with them). Nancy adjusts to the realm faster than Steve as in takes it in stride and learns faster, because she’s more cool headed, but it’s about equal levels of awful and slowly eating at them both. They depend on each other a lot to keep up their spirits and to talk about old memories and the loved ones back home.

Nancy gets along really well with Kate, Claudette, Yui, Jeff, and Laurie, but pretty well with them all. Steve also fits in just fine, but gets along especially well with Claudette, Meg, David, Quentin, and Min and Laurie (eventually).

Laurie and the ST kids bond and get a lot of relief from being from similar times. This is especially nice for Laurie, who hasn’t seen anyone from her time in a long time, and feels very lost and last-man-standing because of it. Since the ST kids are from only a few years after Laurie, they get to talk about a lot of the same stuff.

Steve tries to pick Laurie up because he’s bowled over by how cool and strong she is. She doesn’t even notice. When she /finally/ does like a week after he starts trying, she goes, “Are you trying to hit on me /here/?” bc dating in the realm is beyond wild to Laurie who has been in survival mood since 1978 and not even /thought/ about changing that setting. They’re in a group at the time and Steve is so embarrassed that even though he’s flirty, he doesn’t flirt with anyone for like a whole month. This is actually really good for him, because Steve is the kind of person who doesn’t really know how to /not/ be in a relationship, and solo time helps him build a lot of self-worth and self-confidence outside of any kind of relationship at all. Laurie feels kinda bad he took it so hard and tries to be nice to him, and eventually they end up p close friends and it’s very good for both of them.

Nancy is excited to learn fighting tips from David, Yui, and Laurie and pursues it with a vigor. They are all impressed but especially Yui is. Nancy’s very passionate and forceful when she has to be and has a lot of pride, but is also very willing to be humble when she thinks she should be/someone knows more than her about whatever area, and Yui really likes that about her and is interested by it, and she and Nancy kind of slowly become best friends. They vibe really well because they operate similarly.

One of the ST kids mentions a song Quentin likes and he gets really excited they might be into his kind of music, and then finds out Nancy isn’t deep into any specific genre and Steve likes top 50 hits and they’re both like “It sucks for you it’s us and not Jonathan bc you have the exact same taste” and Quentin’s like :’-] “damn it.” He definitely teases Steve for some of the bops he likes, but like, in a lighthearted friend way, and it’s a rapport they get--throwing not-seriously-meant-at-all jabs about music that always devolves into “That one’s actually really good,” “Oh yeah?” “Oh totally you’d really like it. The baseline is like--” “--oh is it crunch?” “Oh, /hell/ yeah.” 

Yui is super unhappy about being stuck here, because she dedicated a lot of her life to being a spokesperson about violence against women and stopping it, and now she’s trapped in hell where she and everyone else get cut up and killed constantly and she can do very little to help them. That manifests as anger instead of depression though, and she is a /spitfire/ in trials. Girl will throw hands at the drop of a hat if it has even a small chance of helping the gang make it out. Some of the killers (Legion, Michael, Pig, Wraith) start to dread getting her because she /will/ kick their ass. Like, she won’t win, ever, because the realm is stacked, but she /will/ injure you. She’s like, the one killers start to request /not/ to get. 

Some of the killers fight back at this though, and Yui ends up getting super tunneled and injured and soloed out to be hurt, and even tortured a few times, and that is really hard for her. I mean, torture and violence are hard on anyone. But not only does she get punished for fighting as hard as she can for her friends in a hopeless situation by enduring a bunch of awful violence, she also feels like she can’t be candid about how bad it was or ask for much help because she doesn’t want anyone to think she’s beaten or weak or will be deterred by this, or for them to see her any differently--she /really/ doesn’t want to be seen as a victim. She’s a fighter. And she keeps fighting, though she slacks off a little gradually with how aggressive she is both to help the team and because how much she’s enduring as punishment is unbearable, which makes her feel a lot of self-loathing and like she’s letting herself down.

A lot of people try to help her because they know she’s not doing so well, but this makes her feel worse because she doesn’t want them to notice at all. Quentin finally is able to get her to talk a little by just being /super/ candid about how he’s felt about stuff that’s happened to him, even the ugly feelings, and sharing details/vulnerability with her, and that helps her a /lot/ because there’s at least one person she can talk to some. She doesn’t have anyone she tells everything or most of everything to until much later though, after Nancy becomes her friend. Once they’re really, really close, she eventually tells Nancy the truth, then immediately wishes she hadn’t, but Nancy handles it really well and gives her good advice and is super honest about how much Yui’s strength and selflessness inspire her, and that hearing all this she’s been going through and how awful it’s been and that she’s still doing all this in spite of what a war that is inside her just makes her even more impressed and see how utterly outclassed she is in bravery and how much work she has to do to get close to where Yui is, and it helps a whole lot, and they were already best friends, but they are /incredibly/ close after that night. Yui also opens up more to some of the others and is more okay asking for help, although she stays pretty guarded about how hard things feel.

Once she hears what Rin is, Yui feels terrible for her. She tries to keep small gifts on her she has no idea if Rin would like or even be /able/ to enjoy, and when she gets Rin in a trial, she’ll leave them for her/in her pockets. She has no idea if this means anything, but she’s miserable for the Onryo and wants to be able to help, even if she really can’t. She’s similarly very sympathetic to any killer she finds out was lied to or is not in control of their own actions, like Lisa and Philip. Detests all the serial killer/torture killers to a level on par with the vicious hatred the creator of the “ i fucking hate jurgen leitner “ video feels towards Jurgen Leitner. Gets along really well with Kate, Tapp, and David bc they similarly want JUSTICE and cannot get it.

Zarina shows up in realm and is like “Un-fucking believable. I try to uncover the truth about a cover up and I get kidnapped by an eldritch demon. That figures.” She’s distressed life has yet again been like “No, f you in particular Zarina,” but she is determined to help the others stuck there, and /very/ determined to find a way to escape. Gets along well with Jane, Jake, Dwight, and Adam right away, because she and Jane have a lot of “Oh something like that happened to me!” kinds of stories to share with each other, Adam’s curiosity vibes with hers, and Dwight and Jake lead the “Escape Planning Time” discussions.

After she learns enough second-hand about Dwight to know he was way less cool before and fixed his life, she likes him even more and has a kind of kinship with him and mentions how she kind of hid from who she was and lost herself in even feeling shame about her identity and how hard but invaluable becoming who she is now was, and how proud she is of herself. It’s a super relief for Dwight to meet someone as cool and good as her who comes up to him and goes “Hey we’re the same!” because he still worries about himself and how he’s doing. Gives him a lot of peace of mind and they are bros.

When she realizes Caleb Quinn is a killer in the realm, Zarina is thrown for a huge loop. She’s still curious if the stories about him are lies, but uh, getting murdered by him doesn’t exactly make her feel very warmly towards him and she kind of loses a lot of enthusiasm about it, until she hears him mutter his old boss’s name (which she remembers from her investigation) hatefully under his breath while attacking Jeff, as if he is talking /to/ his boss, and she starts running observation point with some of the others and figures out that he’s hallucinating who he sees. Eventually she executes an elaborate mid-trial “Hey you’re being lied to” that works well enough he actually figures out the Entity has been manipulating him hardcore. It does not change much on their end, sadly, once he knows? Caleb is out of rotation for a while, then goes back into it with very little change in how he hunts them, although he is somewhat less brutal/isn’t excessively cruel, and is more scarred than before. He also definitely avoids Zarina specifically and if he has a go after this person or her choice, always goes after the other person. He’s a long time violent criminal so he’s ofc not like, reformed by being informed he was being used, but Caleb hates being used more than anything else, and it’s happened a lot, so in a “honor among” something way, he tries to pay her back by only hunting her when there isn’t someone else to hunt. She is simultaneously annoyed by this and curious/hopeful that maybe it means there is some slim chance the dude has some humanity left, but she remains unsure.

Zarina joins the support squad of Adam, Claudette, and Quentin during trials, and enjoys hanging with them and picking up skills from the more seasoned members. 

She is also /super/ interested in trying to solve the realm and how it works, and asks people for detail on everything they know and takes copious notes. She’s fascinated by Benedict Baker, whom she hasn’t met, and starts collecting everything he has written that she can find, and begins journaling some in a similar fashion to record things she discovers or guesses. She likes to interview her friends about themselves, and they find it kind of awkward and odd at first, but get to really appreciating having their experiences listened to and recorded. It makes them feel more like their existences and suffering and hopes and pasts all matter.

Cheryl was traumatized before even /getting/ to the realm. She’s pretty closed off about her personal backstroy, because uh, it’s a /lot/, and it’s heavy af. She’s kind of nervous and paranoid people will want to use or hurt her if they know what she is, because it’s happened in the past, so she’s very skittish about deep relationships and divulging the truth.

This nature makes her click pretty well with Laurie, whose interests explicitly do not involve prying. They’ve also both been through a lot of trauma and don’t like people to know the details, so they are pretty happy just being silently in each others’ company.

After she has an especially bad nightmare she wakes up from screaming about the fourth time, Quentin hesitantly starts trying to get to know her and walk the balance beam of “I want to know what’s going on so I can help” and “I don’t want to pry.” He and she confide in each other some, albeit pretty vaguely, but it helps. They’ve both got a lot of guilt over stuff that isn’t their fault and endless nightmares and are very empathetic/altruistic people, and it’s probably that overlap that gets Min and Nea god-tier invested in Cheryl’s welfare after a couple months of her steadily proving she is not getting very close to anyone, and almost seems to think she deserves this hell and will never escape it.

On basically wild impulse alone and too much chaotic energy, Nea and Min decide to make looking out for and forcing Cheryl to hang w them a pet project. She’s super confused and nervous at first, and doesn’t want to drag anyone down with her, but the girls are nothing if not persistent, and she kind of slowly comes more out of her shell and starts to laugh and smile some and very slowly decides they don’t have any ulterior motives and so far nothing bad has happened to them because of her, so maybe it’s okay. David and Kate also like Cheryl a lot--initially probably because she reminds them some of Quentin, who they’re both very fond of, but then after they know her better just because they really like her herself as a person. Everyone likes Cheryl, but some are much better than others at trying to be friends with her. A lot of the high-energy ones kind of are overwhelming for her, at least at first, and she’s got so much despair and guilt and disappointment in herself that the less vocal ones she tends to read as not liking her even though they’re just quiet. This slowly improves though, and she ends up much happier and less alone.

When some of them finally get /part/ of her life story, everyone is overwhelmingly horrified for her. The whole group turns into a Cheryl Protection Squad for the next like 6 months. She is overwhelmed and confused and mildly distressed by this, but also happy and moved on a “I want to go find somewhere to cry alone” kind of level because after all she’s been through, it’s dragged back to hell again she’s the happiest she’s been since she was a kid.

I’m gonna stop here bc that’s a lot, but hope you enjoyed these! : )

[brokenfoetus]

I enjoy being vague often.... I also enjoy giving way way too much info about pointless things...... I enjoy wordplay and double meanings..... There’s some folks that have been following for a long while now.... In fact there’s some people that found me before I made the blog public.... It didn’t even show up in searches for tags.... when I even bothered to tag things. Which still boggles my brain.....but it’s a positive.  More or less wanted to throw some random content out for newer followers and friends....  I usually just blog art and music, or my own art and music..... or whatever the fuck is on my mind... and I feel like mentioning.... Which I suppose would be the purpose of any blog anyone has.... Generally most my content is hyper focused on art, music, and self expression. It’s usually also closely connected to Goth Subculture.... or generally Punk/Post PunK subculture... and other counter-culture what nots.... .....Always been that way personally.... even since I was a youngin’... Not much has changed here.... Not much will.... I’ll get new info... New wisdom.... new data to process.... it might change my perspective over time.... ...It won’t change my personality though... I have a neurological disorder that’s treatable via medication.... I also have ADHD..... I also did the typical shit people with mental illness do.... So... when my disorders or whatever you wanna call them... started to manifest into depression and mental illness because they had been untreated for 10+ years... (at the time) I ignored them and left them untreated for far longer.... spiraling down into a VoiD of isolation... self loathing...self hatred... despair... and a sense of hopelessness.... Because I wasn’t able to function like the average person... I couldn’t understand the why not... I could just see the difference... and I hated that.... rather than feeling it’s not fair that others can... I felt there was something wrong with me and me alone... and because I couldn’t make it work no matter how hard I pushed and tried.... I ended up just feeling I didn’t even deserve to be happy, or content, or receive what I’d like, or even be loved most the time.... All the while... explaining to myself and others that I didn’t want to use my issues as a crutch.... So I’d deal with them and press on forward.... it was a very convenient excuse to avoid dealing with my issues... since it was going to take a lot of paperwork and bullshit to get help since... I couldn’t ever afford to see the specialists required to treat my situation.  Then finally... while working at a pretty decent job... with humans whose company I actually enjoyed let alone could tolerate..... The stress of the work... on top of massive major depression symptoms.... My complete level of insane intense exhaustion....other health concerns as well as general frustration and previously mentioned self hate... I had a complete fucking mental break down.... That manifested as well as extreme depression manifesting...into physical pain... It’s general knowledge that stress and the mind can effect the body....  While there might be a small amount of doubt in some people’s mind as to how much it can effect physically....  Trust me..... take a psych101 course....  and/or listen to me from first hand experience.... When it finally does come around to bite you in the ass it isn’t pretty.... When your arms and legs feel like they’re on fire while being stabbed with needles... it’s no longer a silly concept or question.... It’s terrifying...  When you’re in a doctor’s office... and all blood test results are that you’re in perfect health.... When the doctor is explaining the pain doesn’t resemble nerve damage or neuropathy.... “we can see a neurologist to double check... but should look into these other things first since.... it doesn’t add up.” and you’re trying to explain what’s been going on.... but even thinking about what you’ve been feeling causes you to start openly sobbing in front of your poor Doctor as you say... “I don’t know what to do anymore...” You become pretty aware of how much stress and the mind can really affect you. Now.... what I’ve brought up... is pretty intense...  It can come off pretty depressing...  When suffering in some form or another becomes your norm... Those kind of things just don’t feel so sad anymore... it’s just... normal.... Creatures in those real situations... don’t typically want sympathy... I don’t... and I didn’t...  Empathy and Understanding.... totally cool... I like those things in general anyway.... Sympathy doesn’t really help....  Whatever the case... humans in general... are fucked up.. over one thing or another...  it’s best to try and stop... and realize... something is wrong... and bothering them when they are being unreasonable....  It doesn’t mean you need to subject yourself to abuse.... If anything when that’s the case... you need to understand they’re fucked up over something to a level where you need to leave... or also be mentally destroyed.  It’s fine if someone might not want to abandon another... Just keep in mind... pushing them to seek out help some... or at the least... pointing out that there’s help out there that might help them find a path to a happier more functional and reasonably balanced life in terms of mental health... Is totally a great thing.... but when they’re aware... and do nothing to get help... or... start to get help but instantly say it’s not helping before putting any effort in? You need to go...... and care for yourself.... at least in the situations where they’re being abusive that is.... Anyway... I digress... and let’s leave those concepts behind.... hehe anyway.... that’s a general vague sense of my cognitive being.... Here’s me...... and some of my work... It will be complete eventually... it’s taken me ages to get this far due to my past situations... and what not... but... now things are better... I’m okay.... doing well... in comparison to where I had been.... Not quite where I want to be exactly... but.. finally heading in the correct direction finally... Knowing all the things I now know in contrast to before... it’s still gonna take a good bit of work before the music is legit complete.  All my work has been DIY and a solo project... I do have a drummer friend who will most likely be playing live shows with me adding another layer of beats and effects onto my own stuff just for the live performance to make it that much more intense.... At least when he’s available... he plays for lots of people... and plays lots of styles. He’s an amazing artist and musician... so it should be great fun... We also have plans for other different styles and maybe even another electro industrial type project.... so those too will be fun as all hell since... I won’t be solo writing everything there... I do however love programming my own beats so... will most likely continue to do so for “The End of it All”. Anyway... hope this pointless rant finds you all well.... Flesh Bag Humans... <3 -The End <3

I’ll post another of artwork pics because... this is absurdly long already.... My apologies for hideously interrupting feeds I pop up in.... next post is artsy work time a-go-go.

[botanistlester]

Sweet Pea (23/34)

Summary: A nickname that goes bitter in your mouth. Cries for help that no one listens to. Gentle hands that make you quake on the ground you’re standing on. When Phil first met Nico, he thought he was a gift from the heavens. But behind the mask lies something daunting, something unnerving, that Phil never foresaw. Through his journey, he finds solace in Dan, the regular at his workplace, who seems to be the only one who sees through Nico’s mask to the darkness underneath. Warnings: Abusive relationship, violence A/N: the lyrics at the beginning are  from Everything Went Numb by Streetlight Manifesto. Thanks to @snowbunnylester for editing this for me as usual. And thank you to all of you who are still sticking with this story! I love each and every one of you!

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Read it on AO3 Read it on Wattpad

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Chapter Twenty-Three

Himself ain't a lot when he's got nothing left of what was once a man, loved and loving.

-

As it turned out, the act of going to therapy was much harder than just the thought of it.

Firstly, there was the fact that healthcare was free, which was a great and wonderful thing, but if he wanted to get therapy, he’d have to wait six months to be able to even get an appointment. That was six whole months of Phil feeling like he was empty inside and not being able to function like a regular human would, six months of random crying spells and nightmares and taking out his frustrations on Dan. He definitely didn’t want to do that.

So the second option was to call his mum for financial help to see if she could help him pay for therapy to get an earlier appointment. He didn’t really want to do that either, but it was either that or a six month wait, and after weighing his options and having about five panic attacks, Phil picked up the phone and called his mother.

Her voice was cheery when she answered, and it made him feel slightly nostalgic. He missed her and he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been neglecting her slightly, but he was just super depressed and not really okay, and talking to his mum when he was on the verge of a breakdown 24/7 wasn’t really on his list of top things to do.

“Child?” she said in greeting, making Phil crack a smile as he drummed his fingers nervously on his knees. He’d made Dan leave him alone in his room whilst he called, but he was questioning his choices now. “How are you doing?”

Phil’s first reaction was to say that he was doing fine, because that’s what you did when someone asked you how you were doing, right? But then he stopped himself, took a deep breath, reminded himself what he was calling for. “Hi mum,” Phil said in a shaky voice. “I actually wanted to talk to you about something.”

If he were home, he could imagine his mum sitting in her chair, the white cushy one with little pink flower buds on it. She would cross her legs and furrow her brows, leaning forward slightly to show that she was listening. “What’s wrong, love?”

Phil gulped, and took another deep breath. It was now or never, and he knew he needed to do this. His mum wouldn’t judge, she never did. Now was no different. “I haven’t been doing okay recently,” he said slowly, digging his nails into his leg. “I think I might actually want to get some psychiatric help, and I don’t think I’ll be able to wait six months for the free health care.”

His mum went silent for a moment, as though she were thinking, and Phil’s brain went into panic mode. What if she thought he was being stupid? What if she thought he was overreacting? Would she not help? But all of his worries washed away as soon as she spoke, as he should have known they would. “Of course I’ll help,” she replied easily. “Do you want to talk about what’s been going on? I’m worried about you.”

Phil didn’t mean to tell her. He really didn’t even want to tell her. But then he opened his mouth to say no and he ended up blurting out the whole story: The story of how he’d fallen in love with Nico and how Nico had slowly taken a turn for the worst. The slut shaming, the manipulation, the gas lighting and how it’d made Phil think he was crazy. How he still thought he was crazy. He mentioned how Nico had cheated on him with Chandler, how Nico slapped him, how Phil went to his mum’s afterwards. He mentioned how Nico was there when he went back, almost as if he were waiting for him, and how the police dragged him away after the neighbours filed a complaint. The restraining order, how Phil distracted himself with Jace, how Phil saw Nico in the cafe.

Finally, he mentioned his break down just the other day with the Sweet Peas, and how he’d made Dan cry. The ultimate reason why he had decided to get help. He didn’t want to see Dan cry anymore. He couldn’t take someone else down with him, and this situation was no longer just affecting him, but also everyone around him.

He needed help, and to do so, he also needed his mum’s support.

At first, he was robotic, as though he had memorised the entire speech. But after a while, he started to cry so hard that his mother had to keep asking him to repeat himself because she couldn’t understand him. When he was finished explaining, his mum seemed a bit speechless. She apologised for not knowing what was going on and for not intervening sooner, but he assured her that if she’d tried to intervene, it would have only made him more upset. He didn’t use the word loathe, but he knew deep down that if anyone had tried to block access to Nico without his consent, then Phil would have probably cut them off from his life as soon as they’d tried.

“I’ll put the money straight into your account, alright?” his mum promised, and Phil nodded even though she couldn’t see him. “Go find the best therapist you possibly can, and we’ll go from there. I’d also like to visit soon, if that’s okay. I’d like to meet your new flatmate.”

Phil agreed quietly, told his mum he loved her and that he’d have her over soon. With that, they said their mutual goodbyes and hung up the phone.

Phil was glad that he had his mum’s support, but he still couldn’t help but feel frightened. He knew that this was something he had to do, both for his sanity, as well as Dan’s, but it was scary and humiliating.

He felt as though he were lying when he tossed around the term abusive, felt that maybe he was overreacting a bit whenever he had a breakdown to do with Nico. Nico had only hit him once, and that hadn’t even been that bad. Most of the stuff Nico had done had been verbal and emotional. They didn’t feel violent, didn’t feel abusive.

But the websites told Phil otherwise. They told him that emotional abuse was just as bad as physical abuse, that it could even lead to post-traumatic stress disorder just like physical.

That didn’t make Phil feel any better at all, but at least the internet didn’t think he was crazy. That was new.

-

Dan had been the one who decided to do research on therapists because the idea of doing so himself made Phil want to pull his hair out and hide under his bed for a while. Dan was nice as he did so, looking through multiple websites and writing down different doctors, social workers, and psychologists who worked with trauma victims.

He didn’t say trauma, necessarily, but Phil had seen on the laptop that he was specifically looking for those who specialised in trauma. Phil didn’t know if he had really experienced trauma. That was a strong word to use and one that he associated with soldiers or victims of sexual violence. Not one that he associated with himself.

Dan wrote down all of the good therapy providers, wrote down their names, phone numbers, specialties, and what type of therapy provided. Looking through, Phil noticed that some offered cognitive behavioral therapy or mindfulness based therapy, and he didn’t know what they meant, but they sounded kind of scary. Dan had also put stars next to two of the people who he thought were the best to go to, with the most experience or just the ones who had the highest ratings for the specific area he was interested in.

Phil kept this paper for three days before giving one of the starred people a call.

The number went to an office, where they asked him personal questions: what he’d like to be seen for, if he had any medications, if he wanted to be psychologically questioned. He mentioned that he had been in an abusive relationship - those words never sounded right to his ears, made him feel as though he were lying - and that he hadn’t been doing well recently. They asked him if he had a specific person that he wanted to see, and he mentioned the name of the man, Nate Blackburn.

They went quiet on the other line for a moment and Phil feared that he was asking far too much of them. But then they spoke up again, asked if he would be available next Wednesday for an appointment. He said yes before even looking at his calendar, and then hung up the phone, letting out a breath.

He wiped off his face and acknowledged with a surprised expression that there were tears dripping from his lashes, an aftereffect of the stress that calling had triggered. He sniffled and dried his face, standing up and going to Dan’s room.

He didn’t knock before going in, even though he probably should have. Dan was just sitting on his bed on his laptop anyways. He was wearing headphones in order to give Phil some privacy, but he took them off when Phil came in, giving him a bright smile.

“You do it?” Dan asked, shoving his laptop to the side and scooting over to give Phil some space on the bed.

Phil fell onto the bed without question, groaning. “I did it,” he mumbled, his voice muffled by the covers. He was practically shoved to Dan’s side, getting comfort from that. Dan’s hand made its way to his back, where he rubbed in a soothing manner. “I’m exhausted.”

“But you did it! I’m so proud!” Dan exclaimed, and Phil didn’t have to look to know that Dan was grinning down at him with that stupidly fond smile of his. He would probably be glowing, like the sun itself, and it made Phil relax a bit. Dan was too good for this world. “Do you want me to make you some hot chocolate and then you can take a nap afterwards?”

Phil paused. Hot chocolate could soothe his nerves and make him feel nostalgic, like he was a little kid asking his mum for more marshmallows in his cocoa. He nodded as best as he could with his face shoved into the mattress. “Please,” he murmured.

The bed moved and Dan was climbing over him in order to get off the bed. Phil didn’t know why he didn’t just get off the other side rather than climbing over him, but he didn’t question it and he didn’t care. “I’ll be right back,” Dan said. Phil felt pressure on the back of his head and knew that Dan had given him a chaste kiss there, something motherly and caring. Phil liked the affection and Dan knew it, so he often kissed Phil’s head since Phil liked it so much. It was just a way for Phil to know that Dan was here, that Dan cared for him. “You just relax now, okay?”

Phil nodded and then Dan was gone, leaving him alone and absolutely exhausted. He tried to stay awake until Dan came back so that he could drink the hot chocolate, but he soon found himself drifting off to sleep, his mind deciding without his consent that he was already done with today.

-

The therapy site was located in a renovated house. Phil made Dan come in with him because he didn’t know if he could do it alone. Even though Dan knew he was going to have to sit in the waiting room for about an hour, he came anyways, skipping class just so he could be there for Phil during his time of transformation. If he could even call it that.

The waiting room was cozy. There was a brick fireplace that sat adjacent to a large black couch. There were two recliners in each corner of the room and a nice blue rug under the coffee table in the middle of the room. There was a corner where a toy table sat, waiting to be played with, covered with colourful blocks and children’s books. Phil’s eyes stayed trained on the staircase, where he had no doubt that his therapist would be coming down, the offices probably being contained to the second floor. It smelled like pine in the room, which was nice at least.

“You’re going to be okay,” Dan murmured, setting an arm around Phil’s shoulders.

Phil settled into him, well aware that they were sitting far too close on the couch, but he really did not care. He needed Dan to tell him that everything was okay, that he wasn’t going to die in here or something. “This is dumb,” he muttered back. It wasn’t dumb. He knew that. But he didn’t like this at all, didn’t like feeling as though he were vulnerable. He was horrid at talking about his feelings, especially when it was with someone he barely knew.

And yet, here he was. This was dumb.

After about ten minutes of waiting, Nate came downstairs and called out his name. He was a middle aged man with salt and pepper hair and smile lines on his face. His eyes were soft and filled with care and he stood tall, probably a couple of inches taller than Phil himself.

Phil stood from the couch, Dan’s arm dropping from his shoulders, but he felt as though the couch had grabbed onto him and was trying to drag him back over. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t know if he could do this.

“I’m Nate,” his new therapist said, holding out his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Phil.”

“You too,” Phil murmured, and they began to walk up the stairs, which suddenly seemed like they were a mile high. Phil was winded by the time they reached the top, and his hands were shaking as Nate led him into a tiny office with a desk, office chair, and another black couch, which was most likely reserved for Phil’s butt.

Nate was a nice guy. He held a clipboard as he talked, asked Phil questions about his past. They didn’t really touch on the subject of why Phil was being seen yet, mostly focusing on everything about Phil that made him into the person he was today.

He asked Phil about when he was younger and what his life was like. Phil told him that his mum and dad took care of him very well, but his father worked quite a lot so he wasn’t around too often. He asked about medication history, which Phil informed him that he wasn’t on any medications besides randomly used over the counter medicines. He asked about high school and how many friends Phil had, what he liked to do, if he went to college.

Nate didn’t bat an eye when Phil told him that he’d gone to college for English, but had recently dropped out due to personal issues. He just nodded and smiled supportively and asked Phil if he could explain.

This part was hard, this was getting into territory that Phil knew was upsetting. He knew that he was probably going to start crying if he talked about it in depth, so he decided to be as vague as possible in order to save himself. So he mentioned that he’d been in a relationship with someone who was toxic to him, and his mental health had gotten so bad that he ended up dropping out without a thought.

“I can tell that you don’t want to talk about it right now, and that’s okay,” Nate said quietly, scribbling something on his clipboard. Phil followed his movements with his eyes, worrying over what he’d written down. Was he writing down that Phil was crazy? DIdn’t respond well to questions? Worried over nothing? “We can talk about it when you’re ready. Do you want to talk a little about the now and what lead you to come get therapy?”

Glad that he didn’t have to talk about Nico yet, Phil told Nate that he had freaked out on his best friend right after he moved in with him, tearing up a vase of flowers that Dan had gotten him. He said that Dan was usually the person who had comforted him when he was down, but Dan had started crying and it was then that Phil realised he really needed help or else he was going to destroy the only person who loved and cared for him.

“Is Dan the one in the waiting room?” Nate asked. Phil nodded his head. “He sounds like a good source of positivity in your life. You’re really lucky to have him.” Phil knew that. He thought of that often. “But he’s also really lucky to have you. He wouldn’t be around you if he didn’t want to. He cares about you and just wants the best for you. That’s obvious by the way that he came to your appointment with you for the moral support. And it’s really admirable of you to recognise that you need help and actively seek it out. That takes someone with great strength to do.”

The only thing was that Phil wasn’t strong. He was a coward. How many months has it been since Nico had walked out that door? How many months has it been since Phil had properly felt something even close to happiness? He was dramatic, sure, but strong? Not in the slightest.

“I only sought out help because I didn’t want to hurt Dan,” Phil whispered

Nate smiled gently, putting his clipboard down. “Doesn’t change the fact that you still decided to get help on your own. My statement still remains true.”

Phil didn’t feel like fighting so he bit back his words and just nodded. He didn’t want to show his therapist just how screwed up he was quite yet.

They talked for a little bit longer and Nate pulled out a paper with information about abuse on it and the warning signs. Phil had already seen most of these online so he didn’t need to flip through it. He didn’t need to be told over and over again what had happened to him. He already knew.

They left it at that, and Nate scheduled him for every Monday at three o’clock for the next month. When Phil walked out of the office, he felt like he’d just lost twenty years of his life and he was now in his forties, exhausted and going through a midlife crisis.

When he saw Dan, he latched onto him silently. He didn’t speak, and Dan didn’t ask him to. He didn’t ask him what they’d discussed, and he didn’t expect Phil to inform him of what was going on in his brain. He just slung his arm around Phil’s shoulders and lead him through the payment process and then out to the car when they were finished with that.

Only when they were in the car did Phil start to cry.

They weren’t big tears, didn’t leave him gasping for breath, but Phil was exhausted from talking for so long and he didn’t quite know how to explain what had happened to him without downplaying everything. He still felt crazy, like he was overreacting, but the dumb sheet clutched in his palms told him otherwise.

Phil really needed to sort himself out once and for all.

Chapter Twenty-Four

[onisionhurtspeople]

hey!! just found this blog and saw you sayin some negative stuff about Lainey; I wanted to know if she was a bad person like Onion boy?? If you could link me to posts or something talking about whatever it is that she did i would appreciate it!!

Well, hmm. There’s a lot of controversy that surrounds Lainey, but it’s a little bit less straightforward than the controversy that surrounds Onision. In his case, he is being judged by his actions, the things he says and does in his videos, on Twitter, to other people (his fans and other content creators), and especially the things that he does in his personal life to his friends and romantic partners; but in her case, most of the drama that revolves around Lainey stems not from her actions, but from her lack of actions, and how conspicuously silent she is in the face of her husband’s negativity, bullying, harassment, belittling, insulting, and manipulation of others, especially of the teenage girls and minorities that she claims to stand up in defense of and care so much about. The general consensus is that although she is undeniably a victim too, she is also fundamentally complicit due to the fact that she never says or does anything to indicate that she does not support his actions, and many people get the impression from her behavior that as long as it’s not happening to her, then she doesn’t really care much - and I tend to agree with them. Just for one example: Lainey goes absolutely bonkers and gets super aggressive when people purposely or accidentally don’t refer to her as “they/them”, yet she says absolutely nothing when Greg puts out his 7th video “coming out” as transgender/biromantic/gynesexual/whatever gender or sexual orientation he’s pretending to be for views that week. They both claim to be advocates on behalf of feminism and the LGBTQ+ community, yet Onision continually mocks and even openly insults women and trans people, and Lainey says nothing. Unless it’s somebody else saying those things to her, at which point it becomes a problem and suddenly she’s going on self-righteous Twitter rants about transphobia and misogyny, and Greg is insulting them and telling them that they’re being a transphobic, misogynistic bigot for saying something that hurt Lainey’s feelings. (The lack of self-awareness is astounding to me, these people should be a case study for cognitive dissonance.) Lainey’s empathy seems to be very selective and is mostly reserved for herself or people that she can personally relate to. To my understanding, she also indulges in thinspo blogging, even while her husband continually harasses Eugenia Cooney and accuses her of influencing her fans to become anorexic - all the while, his own wife is reblogging photosets of anorexic women and adding pictures of herself to the thinspo tag on Tumblr.

Despite Lainey’s ~smol sensitive agender emo space prince~ persona, and aside from her positive traits (of which I genuinely believe there are many, which I have outlined in posts before), I tend to find that Lainey as an individual is an overly sensitive, self-absorbed, passive-aggressive, highly immature baby who lives in a bubble of perpetual self-victimhood. And in no way is this meant to minimize or undermine the deleterious effect that I’m sure Onision has had on her self-esteem, her confidence, her personal growth, and her very identity, but I also think that Lainey sees herself as a helpless victim who is at the mercy of a cruel, sadistic, and unkind world, largely because there is a not insignificant part of her that actually enjoys victimizing herself. There is a part of her that genuinely gets something out of being a suffering victim - I think it’s actually a part of her identity at this point, and she wouldn’t know what kind of person she was or how to see herself if she wasn’t constantly in pain for one reason or another. (My boyfriend is one of these people too, and it’s maddening. He goes through extended cycles of sabotaging himself and driving everybody he loves away from him, only to then hit the panic button and stew in the resultant depression, loneliness, and self-loathing that comes along with his actions. Because then not only does he get to suffer as a result, but he’s also then just given himself a legitimate reason to hate himself for hurting the people that he loves. It drives me insane. I see much of his behavior reflected in Lainey’s actions, and Greg has openly admitted that he actually likes that she’s so weak and incapable of defending herself, because it forces her to rely on him for “strength”, which makes him feel powerful and gives him total control over her. Ironically, this entire process actually makes people like Lainey more anxious and more depressed, as they slowly lose more and more control over their lives and their ability to cope with their own existence. I also think this toxic cycle is part of the reason why she’s so thin nowadays - she’s lost so much control over her life that she’s exercising her control in the only way that she’s allowed to: over her own body. But this is a different topic that I think deserves a post of its own, so I’ll discuss it another time.)

The other thing is that not only is Lainey passively complicit in Onision’s actions by refusing to speak out against him, but in many aspects, she is also actively complicit in his abuse too. One of most valid complaints that people have about Lainey is that she allows Greg to leverage her position as a bisexual woman in the LGBTQ+ community in order to queerbait other girls into a relationship with them under the guise of a polyamorous “trinity” in which all three of them are equal partners in the relationship. These girls are usually younger than Lainey and always younger than Greg (typically anywhere from 17 to 21), tend to be the kind of girls that are naive, sensitive, impressionable, and open-minded (just like Lainey is), are usually fans of Onision (and are often harvested directly from his fan base), and are almost always completely inexperienced when it comes to relationships, especially when it comes to the kind of constant and very specific care and attention that is required in order to maintain a healthy polyamorous relationship in which everybody feels happy, respected, taken care of, and an equal participant in the trinity. And so for this reason, many people view Lainey as just as much a predator as Greg himself is, and rightfully so. Greg literally uses Lainey as bait in order to draw in younger, pretty girls who are open to experimentation, in a way that seems less objectively creepy on the outside, because hey, that 17-year-old girl is actually dating Lainey, not him! That’s not creepy at all, there’s only a five-year age gap there. There’s not that much of a difference between 17 and 22, you know! Back in the day, it was totally normal to get married and have children by the age of 15, and besides, 17 is perfectly legal in her state and it’s not illegal and you’re just close-minded and oops now all three of us are dating (totally by accident, of course) and if you judge us then you’re just being an ignorant judgmental bigot. Lainey is only there to lend legitimacy to Greg’s predatory search for younger girls, because he knows that it would be perceived as creepy and inappropriate if he were to be actively recruiting 17-year-olds from his fanbase on his own. (And then he convinces Lainey that he’s doing it for her, so that she can experiment with her bisexuality - but she knows better at this point because she’s seen with her own eyes that he can’t be trusted around “her” girlfriends; she actually admitted last January that she knew Greg was only pushing her to date other girls because he would get something out of it too, and not because he actually wanted her to experiment. So she knows this, and still she goes along with it - because, like Greg, she gets something out of it too.) 

This post got waaay too long. Sorry, I’m high af. Anyway, there are a few other reasons why people criticize Lainey too, but I can’t remember them all and I’ve already written way too much on this topic, so instead allow me to direct you towards a few other resources that may have what you’re looking for. Here’s the Laineybot tag on the omeansion blog, and here is my Laineybot tag. I can’t promise you’ll find what you’re looking for on there, but you might get a better idea of the reasons why people hold Lainey culpable just as much as they do Greg. 

[insession-io]

An only child can change the relationship between parents

My Marriage Has a Third Wheel: Our Child

Here’s a typical weeknight scenario in our household: My husband, Tom, our 9-year-old daughter, Sylvie, and I feel like ordering in, and after a lengthy debate, we decide on pizza. Later, while the three of us are eating pepperoni slices and playing Bananagrams, Sylvie reminds Tom that our wedding anniversary is coming up and offhandedly mentions that my favorite flowers are peonies. After a few rounds of the game, we consider a movie. Sylvie proposes “Escape From New York,” a film that has piqued her curiosity after hearing her father repeatedly imitate Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken.

“I’ll look it up on Common Sense Media to see if it’s appropriate,” she volunteers, opening my computer. Unfortunately, she reports gravely, it’s for ages 16 and up. “‘Except for a severed head,’” Sylvie reads aloud, “‘there’s little explicit gore. An atmosphere of cynicism and darkness pervades, including a negative depiction of a U.S. President.’”

Tom points out that this sounds like his Twitter feed. But I balk at the severed head, which is a pretty big except for.

I would never have predicted that the hardest part of parenting would be that our only child would come to fully believe she is the third person in our marriage. This arrangement began roughly as soon as she learned to talk.

As family psychologists such as Dr. Carl E. Pickhardt, Ph.D., point out, only children often feel like one of the adults. As with our tripartite system of government, they view the daily running of the household as a three-way power-sharing agreement. This is an issue more parents may have to deal with, now that one-child families are gaining ground. According to a Pew Research analysis of 2015 U.S. Census Bureau data, today 18 percent of mothers at the end of their childbearing years have an only child — up from 10 percent in 1976.

Tom and I have fully enabled Sylvie to feel like one of the gang, because we go almost everywhere as a trio. We’re usually too cheap to hire babysitters, and tend to travel with Sylvie, too, as she slots fairly easily into our itineraries. As a result, Sylvie has gotten used to being included, consulted, part of our in-jokes. This is not uncommon, says social psychologist Dr. Susan Newman, Ph.D., who has spent decades studying only children — a term I loathe, as it calls to mind a kid alone in a shadowy room, whispering quietly to his sock puppet “friends.” (I think we should revive the much more sprightly “oneling,” used by 19th century author John Cole in his book “Herveiana.”)

But our efforts to “empower” our oneling and make her voice heard have begun to backfire. To paraphrase Princess Diana when asked about Camilla Parker-Bowles: There are three of us in this marriage, so it’s a bit crowded.

One reason for our fluid boundaries is physical. It’s almost impossible to maintain them in a Brooklyn apartment a realtor would euphemistically call “charming and cozy,” one with bizarrely porous doors that actually seem to amplify sound. But it’s also emotional: Tom and I, like many parents of our generation, make an effort to be open and communicative with Sylvie. (“You can tell us anything, sweetheart!”)

When I was growing up, I would never have dreamed of sharing anything remotely personal with my parents. I had two siblings, and our family dynamic was solidly Us vs. Them — my sisters and I were one unit, my folks another. I wanted a different kind of relationship with our daughter.

But one consequence of all this closeness is that our child feels insulted if Tom and I go out to dinner alone. If we’re on vacation, she balks at being “dumped,” as she puts it, in the Kids’ Club. She would be happy to Photoshop her picture into our wedding photos. If Tom and I give each other a hug, she has gotten in the habit of jumping in between us.

At least she doesn’t referee when we fight, as she did when she was smaller. A couples’ counselor put a stop to that when he advised me to put a photo of Sylvie in a drawer by my bedside table. Whenever I was about to lose my temper with Tom, he told me, I was to run to the bedroom, pull out the photo, and say to it: I know that what I’m about to do is going to cause you harm, but right now, my anger is more important to me than you are. I only had to repeat that brutal phrase a couple of times.

But Tom and I still squabble about minor stuff, like whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher — and when we do, Sylvie jumps in and takes sides. (“Mom, you did it last time.”)

As a self-flagellating parent, I was recently drawn to a book with the dire title “The Seven Common Sins of Parenting an Only Child.” Ooh, sins — what am I doing wrong? Among other iniquities — overprotection, overcompensating — Sin No. 6 resonated with me: Treating Your Child Like an Adult.

“It can become so pleasurable for parents of an only child to have a miniature adult by their side that they may lose sight of the fact that their kid needs to be a kid,” writes author Carolyn White, former editor of Only Child magazine. I read this aloud to Tom as Sylvie, nearby, perused the latest issue of Consumer Reports, ready to counsel us on our next car purchase.

Sylvie may be comfortable around adults, but she is still a child, one who lacks the reasoning abilities and experience of a grown-up — so I must catch myself when I absently reply to her questions about money, or other parents, before realizing, whoops, shouldn’t have told her that.

As Newman advises, “Before you allow your child to weigh in, take a pause and ask yourself, ‘Is this really a topic or an issue that a 9-year-old should be involved in, or is this a decision for adults?’ ”

Sylvie needs time away from us to be a kid — time to act silly and make jokes about butts and drone on about the intricacies of Minecraft. She has a group of good friends, but I do see her picking up on her middle-aged parents’ habits, such as calculating how many hours of sleep she got every morning. Her posse at home is squarely in midlife, as evidenced by her choice of songs for her ninth birthday party — among them, Barbra Streisand’s LBJ-era “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” We are not the kind of posse a 9-year-old needs. Maybe she hasn’t yet subbed out her school backpack for a WNYC tote bag, but the danger is there.

And all of this coziness hurts our marriage, too. So I have to remind myself, sometimes daily, to cordon off our relationship. Our marriage has needs that deviate from my needs as an individual, as well as our needs as a family. I have to constantly ask, what would be good for the marriage? It’s important, as a couple, to have your own roster of in-jokes. It’s refreshing to drop F-bombs with impunity, and to gossip freely about other parents without having to hastily turn it into a teachable moment for your eavesdropping child about How Gossiping Is Really About Feeling Insecure About Your Own Life Choices. And it’s nice — no, essential — to go out to dinner, just the two of you, and speculate on which members of the waitstaff are sleeping with each other. You know, grown-up stuff.

Jancee Dunn is the author of “How Not To Hate Your Husband After Kids.”

Kathryn McNeer, LPC specializes in Couples Counseling Dallas with her sound, practical and sincere advice. Kathryn's areas of focus include individual counseling, relationship and couples counseling Dallas. Kathryn has helped countless individuals find their way through life's inevitable transitions; especially that tricky patch of life known as "the mid life crisis." Kathryn's solution-focused, no- nonsense counseling works wonders for men and women in the midst of feeling, "stuck," or "unhappy." Kathryn believes her fresh perspective allows her clients find the better days that are ahead. When working with couples, it is Kathryn's direct yet non-judgmental approach that helps determine which patterns are holding them back and then helps them establish new, more productive patterns. Kathryn draws from Gottman and Cognitive behavioral therapy- when appropriate Kathryn works with couples on trust, intimacy, forgiveness, and communication.

[redefinethegrind]

Road Trip to Tennessee 2018

This was my fear and loathing run. I was to take a road trip with the love of my life to visit her family. I had run out of needs and wants. I simply existed and observed after I had dismantled my previous way of living. It was freeing. I was finally able to experience life as it should be and planned to do so on a short excursion. I would be traversing highways and watching the mile markers pass to convince me that I had indeed moved through space. Sometimes I need cues like these to keep my shoes planted in certainty's topsoil.

As we prepared to road trip I had realized that I had become an automaton in clockwork of consumer culture. Americans exchange bits of information via chip card and superstores render goods. I am able to provide ATP to my cells through granola bars and McDonald’s coffee due to an evolutionary shift. As I write, I am at the prime of my existence and though I know it I often forget that as the machine hums around me. I entered my vacation at a point in which I had been terribly distracted from any purpose that I may have had in my life. I hoped to take time away from my usual surroundings to recover that purpose.

Status check: I can feel my ribcage which means I’m not too far down the food rabbit hole. I fit into a size large men’s shirt and sweatpants. In America we are all large. I am assimilating with my fellow beings. In this culture we are all just swallowing what we are force-fed. I am no different despite my feelings of alienation. I know that I’m an XL at heart, but the times have changed to accommodate our ever- growing frames while retaining an unearned shred of dignity. Yes, they swapped my tags for a large. In three years I will wear a medium, but it will have the same measurements. Americans preserve their self-esteem by simply relabeling and rebranding.

We were into the first leg of our journey and I was drifting in and out of daydream. Somehow highway 71 south seemed longer than I previously remembered. I had been bombarded with thoughts of escape from my daily actuality versus longing for my bed. As we moved forth I was uncertain what to take from this trip. I had feelings that my view of life and the extent to which I had been participating was is disappointing those around me, yet I rarely have felt a longing to change. I am ever confused as to what I have done to become this awkward man with so little to offer in times of angst. The difference between me now and me 5 years ago is I used to not notice how little I fit in. Maybe I hid from it.

When I burned my safety net I too let go of any sense of security. I entered this drive with nothing more than uncertainty. There was little of my life that I had control over. I am no longer uncomfortable with this. I am simply an observer. I am here, in this life, to take it all in. I am still processing and trying to make sense of it. There is no better environment to process in than a long care ride.

I am in a relationship in which I am not sure of my role. I am ever dropping the ball, yet I rarely know when it is my play. It is interesting to me. I have been leading this life now for 8 months without any expectations other than what comes to me. I have absolutely no expectations of anyone or anything. I am no longer disappointed nor am I surprised. It has become a life without hills and valleys. My life is as lackluster as Iowa, yet I am not disappointed. See, I expect nothing, and nothing is what I receive in return. Interesting is this predicament to be in: calm breeding calm.

As the trees and bridges steadily passed me in a blur I could truly say I had no idea what I was doing or why I was there. I don’t say that as a smart ass, I simply had no idea where I was going or what I was doing. I had chosen not to look past the end of my nose into the future. I wanted to just experience life as it approached. I wanted to let life have the driver’s seat while I was an unimpressed passenger for a while. I don’t know what that means but it certainly felt comfortable to me at the time.

I knew that soon enough the stress and anxiety would be back. I would be wondering where my money went and why I still didn’t have a decent job. I would still be waiting on the board of nursing to deliberate and render some sort of decision on my future. I would take it as it came. I knew all of this and remained calm and peaceful despite it. I wasn’t sure if I would ever have a position of control over my life again and honestly didn’t know if I even wanted control. It was easier and more comfortable to lay down and nap. I felt as though that was what I was longing for, sleep.

Apparently, I am as good at navigating as I am picking prize winning roses. I turned out to be a terrible wingman on this trip secondary to my overactive imagination and the flight of ideas which persisted despite the cessation of external stimuli. I had consumed sufficient amounts of caffeine to treat for ADHD but continued with a nonstop pattern of thought for the first few hours of our journey. I had also eaten meat twice in two states, though it was too early to give any input as to whether this had affected my cognition or not. I am leaning toward it had not.

I am sincerely just tied to the internal world with but a hint of an anchor to the external, and road tripping didn’t change that. I remained calm and relaxed as we continued forth. Anxiety had not been an issue whatsoever. In fact, the further I grew from my usual stomping grounds the lighter my load felt. I suppose this was just another way to prolong the inevitable, but it felt about right in our first day of travel.

I had my faithful Cyndi at my side. She was doing her best to remain confident and in good spirits. She truly loves me, this I can tell. I fear that I may be a lot more than she expected mentally. I wish it were an act or a choice when dissonance overtakes my consciousness. I wish I could just turn into the perfect partner without any cognitive restructuring or medication… but I am afraid it isn’t that simple. I do know that she understands as she deals with many of the same issues that I do. I don’t pretend, though, that this makes it any easier on her. It simply isn’t fair at times to act the way I do but I can assure you, I am as controlled at this time as I have ever been. That frightens me because I have still been having episodes of missing time, auditory hallucination (funk bass lines that pound into the night, 8-bit music that is sometimes louder than the television, and at times inaudible children’s voices). I don’t know what these symptoms mean. My ears also felt itchy the further south we trekked and were more full than usual. There was occasionally a lump in my throat and I had been producing extra phlegm. This could have been allergies I suppose, but my mental focus had been on my constellation of symptoms as a whole and what they meant.

As night fell the highway became a familiar landscape of white and yellow lines. Blinking lights from fellow traveler’s vehicles darted left and right just out of my periphery. I was blinking periodically to moisten my contact lenses. I’m not sure who these wayward voyagers were or where they were going, but I can assume that they all had a better idea of that than I did. I was hoping that somewhere along this journey I would get some idea of what the hell it was that I was supposed to be doing with my future.

I am terrified of the idea of working a 40 or 50 hour a week job that means nothing to me. I don’t care about money anymore. I have completely detached myself from the monetary system of power exchange. Possessions no longer hold any emotional value to me. Not a single item in the stores we visited enticed me in the slightest. I was only interested in the provisions of travel. My love of belongings all dissolved in mid 2018. What used to give me some sense of brief satisfaction is now just a nameless product that does little to even draw my attention. The external world has become that of gibberish and nonsense.

Save for a few interpersonal relationships I see almost no purpose in even opening my eyes at times. I don’t mean that to sound morose or depressed, it is just a simple fact. Once every piece of matter has lost all meaning to a man he does not wish to possess or even examine these substances anymore. The stuffs of materialism are simply collections of molecules and no longer hold emotional value. The only effects which provide me with emotional stimulation at this time are intangible. Relationships are where I must focus in my future. Candidly, to do that, I do not see why I would need anything other than modest shelter and food.

Conceivably, other than relationships, I am fond of nature and the beauty of natural creation. I still enjoy exploring this world with the eyes of a child and gazing first hand at the remarkable expressions of the golden ratio which nature effortlessly reproduces time and time again. If I could simply have enough means to realize my ambitions of exploration, I see no reason that I would be any less happy than the time when I earned a six-figure salary. This fact makes my goals simple and my life straight forward. God, family, friends, nature: love and cherish all of them. Occam’s razor.

We had made it soundly to our first lengthy stop on this expedition. A 3-star hotel with a pool which we were just minutes too late to enjoy. Then again, there would surely have been other confused humanoids looking awkwardly at one another as if to wonder what sort of soup they are communally fashioning from their shed cells, incalculable quantities of sweat, and the occasional two-day old Band-Aid. There would have been silver haired patriarchs scowling at their grandchildren; salt and peppered vultures looming from the rafters of their once in a lifetime megalomaniacal expressions of illusory freedom. These sorts of creatures pick apart the carcasses of family vacations in search of control. They are the kind of animals that rape the amusement from their loved-ones in the name of making good time. Yes, it was a blessing masquerading as disillusionment when the pool closed an hour before midnight.

Following a beautiful night of staring into Cyndi’s adoring eyes and genuinely appreciating even her most understated embrace, I drifted to sleep without much difficulty. I, of course, had taken my usual regimen of Benadryl to combat my higher than usual intake of caffeine. Before long I awoke well-rested with thoughts of “what in the hell will I do when this trip is over.” I tried to distract myself by entering our well-appointed bathroom which was much cleaner and more modern than what I was used to at home. I was impressed with the texture molded into the commercial grade bar of soap which is designed to keep from slipping off of the lipless ledge on which it rested. Cyndi said it was to massage the skin, but I know the passionless mind of an engineer and this explanation was not practical enough to make any sense to me. The soap ledge was low enough to be a bench but too small to label it as such. I remember being American enough to scoff as I bent at the waist to retrieve my implements of acceptable hygiene. After using my pubic mound as a white trash loofa, I washed away my feelings of angst as the speakers in my mind blared the chorus to November Rain. Within minutes I was ready to explore the extraterritorial fatherland of country music.

As day two of our road trip drew to a midpoint I had begun to feel a bit of angst. My bank account was not as flush as I had imagined it to be mentally, I had spent just a few hundred dollars more than I had intended. This was not a great deal to me, however, I intended to curtail my spending further as my future was at this point still uncertain. My approach and general word choice when presenting my conundrum to Cyndi caused dissention. It was and never has been my intent to be deliberately disrespectful, and it never is, yet I often find myself wading in the murky waters of awkward silence and inflammatory squabble. I am never sure what to make of this, though as I had been generally happy it did not affect my mood as it normally would have on a down day.

It seems that in all of my observations over the years, finances seem to cause the most arguments to otherwise close couples. I have never been preoccupied with money or the material, and as this trip pushed on I found myself even less interested in materialism. That being said, I was genuinely concerned for our future well-being and felt it necessary to at least voice my opinion on the continuation of depleting our ever-dwindling funds. In typical Ernie fashion I mentioned this in a crass and insensitive manner. It wasn’t long before I realized that regardless of my intentions, I am destined to say and do the wrong thing.

It is times of stress like the ones we lived through in 2018 that are truly trying to couples, particularly young ones. I am confident that we will work through even the toughest of times because we are truly in love. I will, no doubt, say some ignorant bullshit and she will, no doubt, have some emotional outbursts; but, we know one another well enough to give and take where necessary. I find that comforting.

At hotel number two we prepared to take Cyndi’s sisters and nephews to the heated indoor pool. Upon inspection just after check-in there were no other patrons enjoying the rectangular collection of chlorinated communal swill and we fully intended to stake our claim to the entire room despite its lack of a hot tub. My feelings of being a disenchanting life partner were again beginning to fade as I approached my evening optimistically and wearing the rose-colored glasses of vacation. Cyndi’s phone continued to tremble and chime throughout our pre-swim rendezvous, the screen ever illuminated with the names of middle-eastern and African men attempting facetime. She had made the mistake of posting a Facebook picture with a pink lollypop and forever lamented her decision as telecommunication grids bogged down from Pakistan to Nigeria.

The temperate climate of October 2018 in Tennessee had proven to be the perfect backdrop for a relaxing vacation. My mind had been browsing the local cuisine. Comfort food had long been my wheelhouse and when traveling the south, I imagined myself restaurant hopping. Pals provided a comforting lunch, and I again ignored my better instincts and consumed more animals.

As evening arrived we had made our way back to the Morristown mall to retrieve a carrot-cake inspired Persian kitten with curious and empathetic eyes. She knows the absurdity of her thumbing a ride back to Ohio with us, it is palpable in her ever-present purring and sniping meows. This is not a trip for reason, logic, paying bills, or rotating tires. This is a whimsical expedition: an escape. We dissolved into the surroundings of a Quality Inn with a faint breeze in our sails and the sunset now an hour behind us. Cable television had become a luxury to me reserved for vacation and I had left it on as mindless background chatter as I got to know my lovers family a little bit at a time.

After some small talk we settled on pizza for dinner and I drove these kind-hearted women to pick it up. We listened to Elton John’s timeless falsetto through the tinny speakers in my leased Honda Civic as I wove through smeared red and yellow lights posing as light traffic. I felt a sense of belonging in a foreign town, and frankly it was not so different from my own hometown. The highlight of my trip was seeing a genuine smile adorn Cyndi’s beautiful face as she interacted with her best friends, her two sisters. Her sincere happiness is what I had dedicated my entire life to and I knew when I saw her eyes light up and her dimples pop that everything I had traded in to be with her was worth it. Our lives culminated together in that moment, and though she didn’t know I noticed, she was truly happy. My actions this year had seemed reckless and were certainly impulsive, but they did lead to a smile on Cyndi’s face. I had achieved my goal.

From that moment on I knew that I wanted to grow deeper in love with that girl. I wanted to know every facet of her. I wanted to have the deepest connection possible between two human beings. My goal had become to share everything with her and to know everything about her. Then began my true life’s goal. I had finally found it. It was to uncover the deepest spiritual connections in this reality with my twin flame. I sought to grow closer to understanding our human experience and to share it with another human being intimately. My life’s work shifted in that moment. I then understood why Cyndi had truly crossed my path. I had touched on this before, but this trip solidified my belief in our purpose.

We woke up too late again on our final day in Tennessee and an Indian woman was pounding on our hotel room door. Cyndi, her sisters, and myself were slowly stirring. I answered the door and requested a few moments to collect our belongings. I was feeling calm and tired all at once. I showered, and we spent a slow morning bonding after negotiating a later checkout time and letting Cyndi’s nephews swim in the hotel pool. The vacation was winding down. We now had a new housemate in Cakeboss the fluffball kitten. We loaded into the Civic and headed North through a dreary and rainy evening.

The drive home proved uneventful. Cyndi and I bonded over podcasts and standup comedy. I held my new four-legged friend as she slept most of the ride in a cottony mound. The Bellville exit was a welcome site as all six of our collective eyes were weary. As I unloaded the trunk I felt a sense of calm wash over me. I quickly entered my familiar home, it was quiet and clean. I let the dogs out to do their business and my first vacation in a long time, albeit a short one, was over. I will carry several of these memories with me as they are life changing.

All in all, I learned more about myself and my relationship on this trip. That is what I wanted more than anything and I accomplished it. As for my future, I did devise a loose plan. I have also solidified new faces into my circle of those I trust which is always comforting to me. I am at a pivotal point in my existence, I can sense that. I feel the tides shifting. I am done living for anything I don’t believe in. No more phoning it in. It is a time of urgency for me. Many of the emotions I am feeling are firsts. I will turn in tonight and attempt to sleep soundly. Tomorrow I begin planning the rest of my life from my hometown.

[aliceviceroy]

“I am 30 years old and I am struggling to find sanity. Between the Christian schools, homeschooling, the Christian group home (indoctrinating work camp) and different churches in different cities, I am a psychological, emotional and spiritual mess.”   –A former Evangelical

If a former believer says that Christianity made her depressed, obsessive, or post-traumatic, she is likely to be dismissed as an exaggerator. She might describe panic attacks about the rapture; moods that swung from ecstasy about God’s overwhelming love to suicidal self-loathing about repeated sins; or an obsession with sexual purity.

A symptom like one of these clearly has a religious component, yet many people instinctively blame the victim. They will say that the wounded former believer was prone to anxiety or depression or obsession in the first place—that his Christianity somehow got corrupted by his predisposition to psychological problems. Or they will say that he wasn’t a real Christian. If only he had prayed in faith believing or loved God with all his heart, soul and mind, if only he had really been saved—then he would have experienced the peace that passes all understanding.

But the reality is far more complex. It is true that symptoms like depression or panic attacks most often strike those of us who are vulnerable, perhaps because of genetics or perhaps because situational stressors have worn us down. But certain aspects of Christian beliefs and Christian living also can create those stressors, even setting up multigenerational patterns of abuse, trauma, and self-abuse. Also, over time some religious beliefs can create habitual thought patterns that actually alter brain function, making it difficult for people to heal or grow.

The purveyors of religion insist that their product is so powerful it can transform a life, but somehow, magically, it has no risks. In reality, when a medicine is powerful, it usually has the potential to be toxic, especially in the wrong combination or at the wrong dose. And religion is powerful medicine!

In this discussion, we focus on the variants of Christianity that are based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. These include Evangelical and fundamentalist churches, the Church of Latter Day Saints, and other conservative sects. These groups share the characteristics of requiring conformity for membership, a view that humans need salvation, and a focus on the spiritual world as superior to the natural world. These views are in contrast to liberal, progressive Christian churches with a humanistic viewpoint, a focus on the present, and social justice.

Religion Exploits Normal Human Mental Processes.

To understand the power of religion, it is helpful to understand a bit about the structure of the human mind. Much of our mental activity has little to do with rationality and is utterly inaccessible to the conscious mind. The preferences, intentions and decisions that shape our lives are in turn shaped by memories and associations that can get laid down before we even develop the capacity for rational analysis.

Aspects of cognition like these determine how we go through life, what causes us distress, which goals we pursue and which we abandon, how we respond to failure, how we respond when other people hurt us—and how we respond when we hurt them. Religion derives its power in large part because it shapes these unconscious processes: the frames, metaphors, intuitions and emotions that operate before we even have a chance at conscious thought.

Some Religious Beliefs and Practices are More Harmful Than Others.

When it comes to psychological damage, certain religious beliefs and practices are reliably more toxic than others.

Janet Heimlich is an investigative journalist who has explored religious child maltreatment, which describes abuse and neglect in the service of religious belief. In her book, Breaking their Will, Heimlich identifies three characteristics of religious groups that are particularly prone to harming children. Clinical work with reclaimers, that is, people who are reclaiming their lives and in recovery from toxic religion, suggests that these same qualities put adults at risk, along with a particular set of manipulations found in fundamentalist Christian churches and biblical literalism.

1) Authoritarianism, creates a rigid power hierarchy and demands unquestioning obedience. In major theistic religions, this hierarchy has a god or gods at the top, represented by powerful church leaders who have power over male believers, who in turn have power over females and children. Authoritarian Christian sects often teach that “male headship” is God’s will. Parents may go so far as beating or starving their children on the authority of godly leaders. A book titled, To Train Up a Child, by minister Michael Pearl and his wife Debi, has been found in the homes of three Christian adoptive families who have punished their children to death.

2) Isolation or separatism, is promoted as a means of maintaining spiritual purity. Evangelical Christians warn against being “unequally yoked” with nonbelievers in marriages and even friendships. New converts often are encouraged to pull away from extended family members and old friends, except when there may be opportunities to convert them. Some churches encourage older members to take in young single adults and house them within a godly context until they find spiritually compatible partners, a process known by cult analysts as “shepherding.” Home schoolers and the Christian equivalent of madrassas cut off children from outside sources of information, often teaching rote learning and unquestioning obedience rather than broad curiosity.

3) Fear of sin, hell, a looming “end-times” apocalypse, or amoral heathens binds people to the group, which then provides the only safe escape from the horrifying dangers on the outside. In Evangelical Hell Houses, Halloween is used as an occasion to terrify children and teens about the tortures that await the damned. In the Left Behind book series and movie, the world degenerates into a bloodbath without the stabilizing presence of believers. Since the religious group is the only alternative to these horrors, anything that threatens the group itself—like criticism, taxation, scientific findings, or civil rights regulations—also becomes a target of fear.

Bible Belief Creates an Authoritarian, Isolative, Threat-based Model of Reality

In Bible-believing Christianity, psychological mind-control mechanisms are coupled with beliefs from the Iron Age, including the belief that women and children are possessions of men, that children who are not hit become spoiled, that each of us is born “utterly depraved”, and that a supernatural being demands unquestioning obedience. In this view, the salvation and righteousness of believers is constantly under threat from outsiders and dark spiritual forces. Consequently, Christians need to separate themselves emotionally, spiritually, and socially from the world.These beliefs are fundamental to their overarching mental framework or “deep frame” as linguist George Lakoff would call it. Small wonder then, that many Christians emerge wounded.

It is important to remember that this mindset permeates to a deep subconscious level. This is a realm of imagery, symbols, metaphor, emotion, instinct, and primary needs. Nature and nurture merge into a template for viewing the world which then filters every experience. The template selectively allows only the information that confirms their model of reality, creating a subjective sense of its veracity.

On the societal scale, humanity has been going through a massive shift for centuries, transitioning from a supernatural view of a world dominated by forces of good and evil to a natural understanding of the universe. The Bible-based Christian population however, might be considered a subset of the general population that is still within the old framework, that is, supernaturalism.

Children are Targeted for Indoctrination Because the Child Mind is Uniquely Vulnerable.

“Here I am, a fifty-one year old college professor, still smarting from the wounds inflicted by the righteous when I was a child. It is a slow, festering wound, one that smarts every day—in some way or another…. I thought I would leave all of that “God loves… God hates…” stuff behind, but not so. Such deep and confusing fear is not easily forgotten. It pops up in my perfectionism, my melancholy mood, the years of being obsessed with finding the assurance of personal salvation.”

Nowhere is the contrast of viewpoints more stark than in the secular and religious understandings of childhood. In the biblical view, a child is not a being that is born with amazing capabilities that will emerge with the right conditions like a beautiful flower in a well-attended garden. Rather, a child is born in sin, weak, ignorant, and rebellious, needing discipline to learn obedience. Independent thinking is seen as dangerous pride.

Because the child’s mind is uniquely susceptible to religious ideas, religious indoctrination particularly targets vulnerable young children. Cognitive development before age seven lacks abstract reasoning. Thinking is magical and primitive, black and white. Also, young humans are wired to obey authority because they are dependent on their caregivers just for survival. Much of their brain growth and development has to happen after birth, which means that children are extremely vulnerable to environmental influences in the first few years when neuronal pathways are formed.

By age five a child’s brain can understand primitive cause-and-effect logic and picture situations that are not present. Children at this have a tenuous grip on reality. They often have imaginary friends; dreams are quite real; and fantasy blurs with the mundane. To a child this age, it is eminently possible that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole and delivers presents if you are good and that 2000 years ago a man died a horrible death because you are naughty. Adam and Eve, Noah’s ark, the Rapture, and hell, all can be quite real. The problem is that many of these teachings are terrifying.

For many years, one conversion technique targeting children and adolescents has been the use of movies about the “End Times.” This means a “Rapture” event, when real Christians are taken up to heaven leaving the earth to “Tribulation,” a terrifying time when an evil Antichrist will reign and the world will descend into anarchy.

When assaulted with such images and ideas at a young age, a child has no chance of emotional self-defense. Christian teachings that sound true when they are embedded in the child’s mind at this tender age can feel true for a lifetime. Even decades later former believers who intellectually reject these ideas can feel intense fear or shame when their unconscious mind is triggered.

Harms Range From Mild to Catastrophic.

One requirement for success as a sincere Christian is to find a way to believe that which would be unbelievable under normal rules of evidence and inquiry. Christianity contains concepts that help to safeguard belief, such as limiting outside information, practicing thought control, and self-denigration; but for some people the emotional numbing and intellectual suicide just isn’t enough. In other words, for a significant number of children in Christian families, the religion just doesn’t “take.” This can trigger guilt, conflict, and ultimately rejection or abandonment.

Others experience the threats and fear too keenly. For them, childhood can be torturous, and they may carry injuries into adulthood.

Still others are able to sincerely devote themselves to the faith as children but confront problems when they mature. They wrestle with factual and moral contradictions in the Bible and the church, or discover surprising alternatives. This can feel confusing and terrifying – like the whole world is falling apart.

Delayed Development and Life Skills. Many Christian parents seek to insulate their children from “worldly” influences. In the extreme, this can mean not only home schooling, but cutting off media, not allowing non-Christian friends, avoiding secular activities like plays or clubs, and spending time at church instead. Children miss out on crucial information– science, culture, history, reproductive health and more. When they grow older and leave such a sheltered environment, adjusting to the secular world can be like immigrating to a new culture. One of the biggest areas of challenge is delayed social development.

Religious Trauma Syndrome.  Today, in the field of mental health, the only religious diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual is “Religious or Spiritual Problem.” This is merely a supplemental code (V Code) to assist in describing an underlying pathology. Unofficially, “scrupulosity,” is the term for obsessive-compulsive symptoms centered around religious themes such as blasphemy, unforgivable sin, and damnation. While each of these diagnoses has a place, neither covers the wide range of harms induced by religion.

Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS) is a new term, coined by Marlene Winell to name a recognizable set of symptoms experienced as a result of prolonged exposure to a toxic religious environment and/or the trauma of leaving the religion. It is akin to Complex PTSD, which is defined as ‘a psychological injury that results from protracted exposure to prolonged social and/or interpersonal trauma with lack or loss of control, disempowerment, and in the context of either captivity or entrapment, i.e. the lack of a viable escape route for the victim’.

Though related to other kinds of chronic trauma, religious trauma is uniquely mind-twisting. The logic of the religion is circular and blames the victim for problems; the system demands deference to spiritual authorities no matter what they do; and the larger society may not identify a problem or intervene as in cases of physical or sexual abuse, even though the same symptoms of depression and anxiety and panic attacks can occur.

RTS, as a diagnosis, is in early stages of investigation, but appears to be a useful descriptor beyond the labels used for various symptoms – depression, anxiety, grief, anger, relationship issues, and others. It is our hope that it will lead to more knowledge, training, and treatment. Like the naming of other disorders such as anorexia or Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), the RTS label can help sufferers feel less alone, confused, and self-blaming.

Leaving the Fold. Breaking out of a restrictive, mind-controlling religion can be liberating: Certain problems end(!), such as trying to twist one’s thinking to believe irrational doctrines, and conforming to repressive codes of behavior. However, for many reclaimers making the break is the most disruptive, difficult upheaval they have ever experienced. Individuals who were most sincere, devout, and dedicated often are the ones most traumatized when their religious world crumbles.

Rejecting a religious model of reality that has been passed on through generations is a major cognitive and emotional disruption. For many reclaimers, it is like a death or divorce. Their ‘relationship’ with God was a central assumption of their lives, and giving it up feels like an enormous loss to be grieved. It can be like losing a lover, a parent, or best friend.

On top of shattered assumptions comes the loss of family and friends. Churches vary with official doctrine about rejection. The Mormon Church, for all the intense focus on “family forever,” is devastating to leave, and the Jehovah Witnesses require families to shun members who are “disfellowshiped.”

The rupture can destroy homes, splitting spouses and alienating parents from children.

For Women, Psychological Costs of Belief Include Subjugation and Self-loathing.

Christianity poses a special set of psychological risks for people who, according to the Iron Age hierarchy found in the Bible are unclean or property, including women. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the combination of denigration and subservience takes a psychological toll on women in Christianity as it does in Islam. Not only do women submit to marital abuse and undesired sexual contact, some tolerate the same toward their children, and men of God sometimes exploit this vulnerability, as in the case of Catholic and Protestant child sexual abuse. But most of the damage is far more subtle: lower self-esteem, less independence and confidence; abandoned dreams and goals.

Why Harm Goes Unrecognized.  What is the sum cost of having millions of people holding to a misogynist, authoritarian, fear-based supernatural view of the universe? The consequences far-reaching, even global, but many are hidden, for two reasons.

One is the nature of the trauma itself. Unlike other harm, such as physical beating or sexual abuse, the injury is far from obvious to the victim, who has been taught to self-blame. It’s as if a person black and blue from a caning were to think it was self-inflicted.

The second reason that religious harm goes unrecognized is that Christianity is still the cultural backdrop for the indoctrination. While the larger society may not be fundamentalist, references to God and faith abound. The Bible gets used to swear in witnesses and even the U.S. president. Common phrases are “God willing,” “God bless,” “God helps those that help themselves,” “In God we trust,” and so forth. These lend credence to theistic authority.

Religious trauma is difficult to see because it is camouflaged by the respectability of religion in culture. To date, parents are afforded the right to teach their own children whatever doctrines they like, no matter how heinous, degrading, or mentally unhealthy. Even helping professionals largely perceive Christianity as benign. This will need to change for treatment methods to be developed and people to get help that allows them to truly reclaim their lives.

This article was adapted from “The Crazy Making in Christianity” Chapter 19 in Christianity is Not Great: How Faith Fails, edited by John Loftus, Prometheus Books, October 2014.

______________________________________________________________________

Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant in the San Francisco Area. Winell is the author of Leaving the Fold – A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion.

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org. Subscribe at ValerieTarico.com.

[djatoon]

Bogeyman (or ‘Identity’) Politics (My View)

Something has changed in my politics. I can’t put my finger on when it happened, although I have a strong suspicion that the EU referendum has been the strongest catalyst. Perhaps it was the magnitude of the decision, the complexity of it, my uncertainty about my ‘Leave’ vote, or the way the debate has raged (and it has raged) since the vote. Maybe it also has something to do with my long-time practice and interest in negotiation, and how in that domain success is usually predicated on deeply understanding the interests of both/all sides in the negotiation. This is at the heart of my work as a consultant and trainer, but its influence goes beyond the business of negotiation.

I remember in my late teens (and the late 70s), regularly debating politics with friends Mick, Phil, and Kevin over pints of cider in ‘The Percy Arms’ in Walbottle (a village west of Newcastle-upon-Tyne). All four of us were far from sure of our views, our arguments usually weak and contradictory, and our political allegiances mostly unformed (and uninformed). Nevertheless, these drinking sessions were an opportunity to think, to construct an argument, and learn. When I reflect on the forty years that have since passed, it’s preposterous to believe for a moment that we knew what we were talking about. Our collective life experience was childhood, puberty, and bugger-all else. Still, these sessions became the blueprint for how I’ve approached political understanding and debate ever since, and there’s not much I enjoy more than a robust debate in good company, especially so when those involved are open-minded and fairly knowledgable.

But I think this is perhaps a rose-tinted-spectacled view of my debating skills. I’m sure, despite my supposed desire to think and learn, I was as bad as everyone else in picking sides, lauding those I supported and loathing the others. At the time it probably seemed appropriate (who wouldn’t want to come out against whatever the ‘bad guy’ says?) and besides, it’s undoubtedly easier. Because I’ve now grown older, I’m more experienced and, believe it or not, wiser, I’ve found myself less keen to take sides than I have done in the past. And before anyone feels like highlighting that I can still become animated, argumentative, and partisan, you may be right. I’m not trying to re-write history (or my understanding of the present) here; merely trying to articulate why politics feels different to me now.

One of the things not mentioned so far is that I’m also more cynical about politicians. I’ve seen the ‘great hope’ Tony Blair shred his own reputation over Iraq, and I’ve witnessed a procession of so-called ‘heavyweight’ politicians demonstrate gross incompetence when it comes to policy execution. Almost every policy area (Health, Education, Welfare, Transport, Energy, to name but a few) has been twisted, broken, partly re-built, before being broken again by politicians who, it seems, have never built or run anything outside of Westminster. It’s like the inflated ego required to take on prominent public office turns to hubris and a disregard to what research and experience tells us (and them) what works, and what doesn’t work. Holding the office seemingly gives them a free pass to ignore what others have researched and learnt. Who needs experts anyway? someone famously said.

Returning to Brexit, I’ve already said that my views were uncertain (I was no student of European political institutions, and don’t know anyone who was) and so I was open to debate with the wisest of my friends and colleagues, whilst reading-up on and watching *everything* associated with the topic. It was always going to be a decision of historical importance. But that debating period was torture. Time after time, despite wanting to discuss the substance, I was faced with people taking sides based on their dislike of a particular politician or politicians. The usual suspects came in for a hammering: Farage, Johnson, Corbyn, Cameron, Osborne, and a few others. It was like if you didn’t reject every utterance from one of these toe-rags, you were somewhat in cahoots with them and their followers. I was once even accused of having racist tendencies when I challenged one of my fellow-debaters to make the case for open borders, in opposition to those that desired more control. Just make the case, and win the argument, because the argument for greater control is gaining traction. The response was always the same: those bad people are good-for-nothings and anything they say must be rejected (evidently with high emotion) and any difficult policy details glossed-over. Cognitive dissonance here, there, and every bloody where. And even though the much-touted control of immigration was merely one of a number of policy (and principle) areas, it was a good one as, in recent times, it exposes the rupture in the politics of the EU almost more than any other. 

Sensible people judged the Leave or Remain choice on a number of bases, most notably sovereignty in policy-making, but abuse was routinely hurled at anyone who even countenanced a discussion on any topic that challenged the debaters’ self-image, political affiliation (usually those on the Left were particularly energised), or an idealised view of the EU’s benevolence. I named this desire to identify and then recoil from the ‘bad guy’ as bogeyman politics. Others call it ‘identity politics’ where group affiliation is at least as important as an individual’s viewpoint. It doesn’t matter that much but, in some cases, ‘bogeyman’ works better - it’s not the group you belong to (who you’re for) that matters, it’s who you’re against that’s of overwhelming importance.

Naively I thought that, once the referendum vote was over, we would all kind of shrug our shoulders and move on, like most people do after a General Election. How wrong I have been. The debate is now hyper-polarised, trenches have been dug, and no quarter given to those on the other side of the argument. This has all been exacerbated by government ineptitude in the negotiations with the EU, and plainly some (often high profile) politicians will not give up EU membership without a fight (to the end?).

And so, just a couple of weeks ago I found myself visiting and old and trusted friend in London, to hang-out for a day or two. He and I have always discussed politics, and we’ve rarely disagreed vociferously, even though we have differing outlooks (I’m more for individual autonomy, and he’s more collectivist in his viewpoint). Almost always we’ve respectfully agreed (or agreed to disagree), and it’s helped that he is normally laid-back in his approach to discussing difficult topics, whereas I tend to be more forthright! It’s not that he cares less than me, he’s just less loud about it. Anyway, we didn’t fall out or anything. Far from it, I always enjoy spending time with him and we’ve always much to catch-up on (important stuff, like music, football and cycling). But I was reminded of that bogeyman politics idea when he (and his wife) were a bit loose with their slagging off of the usual suspects when it came to Brexit (and Trump, not surprisingly, but then most people have strong, often adverse, opinions about him).

I don’t aim to criticise my old mate, but the way we discussed Brexit felt symptomatic of where the debate has got to in the UK, and I think it’s probably not ‘them’ (i.e. other people, not necessarily my mate) that’s changed, it’s me.

Relatively speaking, between working assignments, I often have quite a bit of time to read the political press and, outside of my work generally, I prioritise politics because it interests me. I like to think I am committed to listening to both sides of the debate, both to understand it better, but also because I’m still far from certain how things will work out, Brexit-wise. In truth, the rights and wrongs of staying or leaving the EU mean much less to me now than does the huge issue of whether or not the vote is going to be respected by Parliament. Both sides of the Remain/Leave debate may still argue about the merits of their choices (I’ve long had my say, so usually opt out), but both have failed miserably to accurately predict the future, and so I’m determinedly suspicious of anyone who claims with certainty to see that future. However, I’m angry as hell with the people who won’t respect the fact that their ‘side’ came second, and are doing everything they can to undermine the process of extraction from the EU. They represent an existential threat to democracy in the UK, and if they were to be successful then it would affect politics for a generation or more. They know not what they do, and are blindly playing with fire. 

Compared to others, my available capacity to follow the day-to-day politics of Brexit is the exception, not the rule. Most people have way less time, and undoubtedly less interest too. Who wants to be a politics anorak anyway? Few invest the intellectual energy required to try and stay up-to-date. They could be accused of being lazy in their thinking, but even though that is probably true in part, that’s their legitimate choice. After all, there’s plenty of other things to concern yourself in the stuff of life than to get exercised by politics. So it becomes easier and convenient for people to pick sides, and follow what those you support say, rather than ‘waste’ time digging deeper into the substance of various policies. But this approach, forgivable in individual cases, has come to dominate the Brexit (and other) debate(s). We are dealing with a political class that seemingly has a lamentably poor grasp of the policy details associated with Brexit, and a not much more sophisticated understanding of where we’re all heading than the average well-informed citizen. Leadership? What leadership? many have asked for a long time now.

There is talk (and a campaign) for second (really it would be the third) referendum, supposedly on ‘the deal’ the government is able to reach with the EU, but the idea that the population would be any better informed about the substance than previously is risible. Most people have moved on. It’s painfully obvious that another referendum is merely a vehicle to try and reverse the result of the 2016 vote.

I thought by the time I reached my 50s, not only would I understand more, and be more useful, but crucially that more of the problems needing to be addressed by our politicians would be in (mostly) good hands. How wrong I was about that.

Check this out:

Bogeyman politics is explained very nicely by Jordan Peterson at 1 hour 4 minutes here, following a good question. ‘Low resolution ideology’ replacing deeper thinking. To expect more of most people is futile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZMIbo_DxJk