#context i have experience with lost time dissociation etc. bad

[nikkashidashipper]

about to watch the s4 finale houses head/wilsons heart im scared why did they called the episodes that

edit:

another lost time trope. great! i hate it

my mans tfym you want him to risk his life for her with that look on ur face goddamn

ooooohohoho wilson is so the losing dog. now he just looks like a sad wet losing dog

is he now going to blame house. he is isnt he

ooh. ohoho. oh. house is gonna remind him of her

good fucking god what a season finale

[eloignetoi]

My opinions and overall throughts about Netflix Wednesday because people (including me) are obsessed with it but there is very little content about it (beside the TikTok trend).

The show itself is amazing - not just because it's popular - but the storyline, characters and overall aesthetic are quite endearing. I loved how characters worked together and how sometimes they didn't:

Wednesday is not perfect nor horrible. She has many traits that fit the autism spectrum : obsessions, blank tone and facial expression, unique perception of the world - no she is not depressed, she isn't numb to reality nor sad, she simply enjoys what most people are scared of -, and her perception and understanding of social and emotional conventions are, well, unconventional. These traits make her uniquely enjoyable, but it also gives place for improvement and development in this new social environment that is Nevermore, and which we witness throughout although mostly at the end of the show.

Xavier is not a classic manipulative white boy. He is clueless and emotionally constipated (which I believe has something to do with his dad), and that can be annoying, especially when you know he could have been a lot more helpful with Wednesday's investigation as his dreams/visions seemed to complete hers. A certain tweet has made people agree that he is manipulative and annoying, which I don't really get. He is supposed to have flaws so that there's place for character development, just like Wednesday. But he always had good intentions. He did not manipulate Wednesday into asking him to the ball : considering his serious crush on her, I think he truly hoped she had changed her mind - one can hope lol - and teased her as a friendly joke. That's why he got so mad when he found out about her ulterior motives: he realized she never planned on being his friend. He was not being obsessive either. I mean, when you're in love with someone who's been the target of an attempted murder, I guess you try to go out of your way to protect them - and eventually forget them. That's what the painting was for (as he clearly explained it), don't act like you've never been in love or had a hard time getting over it. The one thing I do agree with is that he and Wednesday have no romantic chemistry, and I hope they are not going to try and force this relationship. If they do, I hope they'll make it right with a better atmosphere, context, chemistry, etc... and let's be honest, it would take a lot of changes and efforts. What would really work (with the atmosphere and context of the first season), would be a strong friendship, not only because they made up at the end, but also because they have many similarities and their powers could be very useful when put together. They would be amazing investigators.

When it comes to Tyler, I am surprised people didn't catch on his uniqueness. There were very little to no clue about his true nature, but he was definitely odd: the only normie kid rejected by his normie friends but without any outcast friend either. Troubled teenager who lost his mom, has a bad relationship with his father and a history of bullying (with Xavier), and the creepy scene in the Gates' mansion where his face suddenly appears in the light. After watching the end, you can also catch on the change in sound/music at the ball when Thornill smiles at him, like there's a form of dissociation from the rest of the crowd. Overall, I think the twist was rather unexpected. What I am really eager to see is what they are going to do with him: he was manipulated and experimented on to turn into his outcast form, but from there he also willingly killed people while enjoying it and manipulated Wednesday in the creepiest way (planning a date and their potential first kiss in the very crypt he knew they'd kill her, seriously...). I wonder if they are going to try and save him or push the monster hunting to the edge. After all, his mom apparently didn't kill anyone - I believe they would have mentioned similar deaths from 30 years ago (although that might be information kept for season 2 and it might have something to do with the normie death from 30 years ago that forced the Nightshades to disband). And I can't imagine his dad's state after all the revelations: the guilt he must feel for not talking to his son about his mom and not seeing he was being manipulated.

If there is a second season, I can't wait to see more revelations about Bianca and her mom, Xavier's dad, and just more of Ajax, Enid, Yoko, Eugene and maybe even Kent. And I'm not even mentioning the stalker, as well as the new possible mayor, principal of Nevermore and Thornill's replacement.

What I really liked about this show, beside characters, were costumes: the Addams' gothic style, perfectly modernized while still being close to the original comic/movie. And I loved Enid's colorful clothes (especially her amazing pink shoes in the last episode).

I do have a few complaints about the show:

Although dialogues are perfectly intelligible, everyone being at the same volume, I could barely hear any background music. I only realized it were here in certain scenes thanks to the subtitles, and it sort of loses the whole impact its supposed to have on the scene. So, if you have a hard time hearing (I am aware I don't have the best hearing), I would advise you to use headphones to really get the whole experience.

I'm also slightly disappointed by the style of the series. With Tim Burton as a director, I guess we expected a darker, more "crooked" style (with character designs or even sceneries), which we mostly only got from Tyler's Hyde form and Thing. I am aware Tim Burton doesn't have full freedom and, contrary to animation movies, has to deal with the material and physical limits of the real world (human face shapes, expensive makeup and CGI).

I think my last complaint would be about the length of the season: it was slightly fast-paced and therefore quite short in the end. So many things happened in only 8 episodes. I know productions now have to deal with many constraints, deadlines and even budgets, but I hope the success of the first season will give more time and money for the producers to have fun and add as much as they want to the final product.

Finally, I think it's just fair to write about Jenna Ortega's acting, which is absolutely amazing. Beside the no-blinking thing (which is really hard, not only because of the length of the scenes but also because of reflexes - try not blinking while moving your head around, or try doing it while keeping your movement natural), her posture is so straight yet remains natural. I'm also quite impressed by her capacity to control her full body - try staying as straight as her while falling, like in her vision scene after the kiss.

I also think it's important to note Gwendoline Christie's performance (principal Weems). Her facial expressions are to die for, with the slight eye movements whenever Wednesday or Morticia piss her off !

Emma Myers (Enid) also has some good facial expressions (at the ball, or with the homeless man who steals the camera) and her whimpers are so fun !

The expressiveness in this show is quite phenomenal and really participate in the story - big fake smiles (like Noble and Weems), odd expressions (like the woman who drives the hiker in the woods in the first episode, or Tyler's weird scene in the mansion), and the ambivalent, twisted meaning of Thornhill's actions and reactions that are great to rewatch after the twist revelation.

I have a few more thoughts about the choice to involve Pilgrims in the story (which is unique, hilarious and meaningful), but they're not fully developed.

I don't mistake my opinions for truths and I'd love to see more approaches to the series.

Also please note I'm French and English is not my first language. If you see any mistake or weird syntax/grammar, please inform me 😊

[radicalposture]

Hi! That post u reblogged about writers having a tiny dissociated piece of themself analyzing their emotions and the things they're feeling you tagged as also a symptom of autism, can you elaborate a little? It's very interesting to me

yeah no problem! (twas this post, for reference)

so in my experience and from what i see of others experiences when you're ND and especially if you're late diagnosed there can be this phenomenon where you overcompensate for your 'natural deficiencies', as it were, by developing an extreme competence in a skill that's not exactly the same but runs kind of parallel and does the same job, if that makes sense?

for example, my adhd makes me extremely forgetful, so to counteract i've become an incredibly organised person (colour coded schedule, reminder apps, to do lists, etc.) and people say wow you're always on top of things! but its an 'artificial' skill. its something i learned and not something i naturally am. being a good organiser and having a good memory are not the same thing. i have a terrible memory, but the learned skill of being a good organiser does the same job and achieves the same result. similarly, because i'm autistic i am terrible at reading people and all that general social interaction stuff. but to compensate for that i've become very good at understanding psychology. so while i literally cannot tell when my boss is joking with me or how to respond to a normal question from her, i could tell you exactly how her brain works, why she acts the way she does on certain days, what went wrong in her marriage, how to word a request so i always get her to agree with me... its not the same skill, but it does a similar job and most of the time covers up the fact that i have this glaring hole where my social skills are supposed to be.

so to get back to the writer question. some autistic people really struggle to name and describe their own feelings (sometimes called alexithymia). i especially struggle with this. the best i can describe it is i feel like theres a missing link somewhere? like for normal people i guess it goes like

an event happens to them > it creates a feeling > the feeling has effects

so like idk. they have a fight with their friend (event). they feel sad/frustrated/embarassed (feeling). there are side effects, like maybe theyre irritable or they cant sleep or lose their appetite (effects).

but for me its more like

an event happens > ????????? > ahhh i can feel the effects.....

so because theres this void where the 'appropriate' feeling should be im missing the vital signpost thats supposed to indicate to me how good or bad the event was, or the sequence of events that led to a behaviour, or how im supposed to respond or whatever. for example last week i was in dublin and i was really excited to go to the gallery but after lunch i'd suddenly lost all interest in going and i was like huh? what happened there? so after talking it out with my sister i figured out like ohhhh it was really crowded when we got lunch and i got really overwhelmed because we looked up the menu in advance and decided what we'd get but THEN when we went in they had a COMPLETLEY DIFFERENT menu and i was too shy to ask what was up with that so i didnt really enjoy the food we got and they had a weird self serve system and i got really self conscious and and and. and now im exhausted and thats why im suddenly not interested in going to the gallery anymore. BUT. and heres the crucial thing. at no point did i FEEL exhausted or overwhelmed or sensory overloaded. i had to INFER how i was feeling from context clues without ever actually feeling the actual feelings myself. what makes it doubly annoying is that i do know what feelings are 'supposed' to feel like because sometimes it'll be like oh no! a sad thing happened! i feel sad! and then i cry. but thats only like 5% of the time and the other 95% im like crying and i have no idea why, time to go on a detective quest to understand what the hell it is this time. which is exhausting.

so to get back to the topic at hand!!! sorry for the long and maybe irrelevant sidebar!!! but here's why i think the post is relevant to autism (broken down into points bc i think theres a few reasons and they maybe overlap)

because we often struggle so much with understanding and identifying our own emotions we often develop a hypervigilance around them. we end up with this constant monitoring and checking and analysing to see if we're doing it 'right'. NTs (apparently) just feel their feelings. they feel happy. they feel sad. they feel angry. and they just feel them and act on them and don't think that much about it. but because i so often feel the 'wrong' thing or more likely nothing at all it becomes this constant stream of 'ok I'm feeling kind of angry but like. is that appropriate in this situation? am i too angry? am i not angry enough? am i expressing it right? do other people understand what i mean?'

the performance aspect is so interesting to me bc literally everything feels like a performance to me... when i was getting diagnosed i said to my psychologist 'when im around other people i always feel like ive suddenly been pulled up on stage and told the plays about to start and im like WHAT PLAY and the curtains suddenly gone up and everyone's looking at me but i didn't get a script and they all know their lines but i didn't even know there WAS a play much less that i was supposed to act in it and also I'm really bad at ad libbing so i cant even fake it i just stand there getting more and more panicked' and she was like 'that's autism babe <3'

in addition i often feel like i HAVE to act or exaggeratedly perform to get my point across. especially when i was younger but even now, like for example when im sick ill be 'ok family today i feel really sick im going to call in sick to work and stay in bed. goodbye.' and then i get the hmm you dont LOOK sick and its like? i told you i was sick what more do you want. so sometimes i feel this pressure to like put on an act like i have to do all the croaky voice COUGH COUGH ooogh im sick bleggh etc etc and then people go wow you look sick! you should stay in bed! like i TOLD you that was that not enough. and the line then becomes really blurred like am i performing these actions because that's what's natural in this situation or am i pretending to go through the motions in order to perform the socially acceptable signals to communicate my intentions because that's what people expect but left to myself i never would... you have to not only deal with your own feelings but also read your audiences mind to figure out how they would best receive your message and then translate from your native tongue to theirs because you know they can't speak your language and won't even try so you have to be fluent in their language or you get ignored..... exhausting!

tangential but this post on r/aspergirls yesterday struck a chord: "I’m tired of having to be sugary sweet, bubbly, and happy in order for people to not feel threatened by me. I feel like because I present feminine as well, people need me to coddle them like little babies in order for their egos not to be bruised."

on the other hand because i am so divorced from my emotions its so much easier to be a kind of objective outside observer exactly as the post described. because my actions so often feel/are fake or performed i can consciously analyse them BECAUSE theyre conscious choices im making and not spontaneous unconscious actions. and even when they're real i can also be very detached from them. past experiences in particular i can analyse them very objectively and not feel the feeling over again. i feel like my past emotions are in little glass cases and i take them down and examine them and then put them back.

but going back to the original post, people might say 'but thats just a writer/artist/actor thing' ya and why do you think people are drawn to those careers... people are drawn to career paths or interests because of the kind of people they are, they are usually not made into a certain kind of person by a career or interest. once i said something like 'ha ha sorry im being really detailed about this i guess my classics degree turned me into a bit of a pedant ha ha', to which my sister responded 'has it never occurred to you that you did a classics degree because you were already an insufferable pedant' which shut me up pretty fast lol. what i mean is people are drawn to these things because of the kind of brain they have and the particular bent their minds take. im not saying all autistic people are like this or that or that NTs cant be writers or actors or whatever. but so many ND people are drawn to these kinds of things and we're often so so good at it too.

ND people are often drawn to fiction because it just makes our brains tick a certain way. my brain in particular loves sequences and putting things in order and im also really good at taking huge amounts of seemingly disparate information and compiling it into a coherent whole. we can also be amazing at finding or making connections between things that seem to have no connection at all. and aren't these things the very basis of all fiction? isn't that what a story is? one event and then another one after it, and seeing things that are different but that can be grouped together to be put in the same narrative? isn't that what a metaphor is? you take two things that are not the same but you find out how they could be the same and you hold these two entirely different things next to each other and say see? here's the ways they're similar. here's how you can sort them into the same category. here's the lines you can draw between them. and as ursula k leguin said a story is just one big metaphor. the novelist must express in words what cannot be expressed in words.

ND people are also often drawn to fiction because its a condensed or simplified or hyperreal version of real life. you can read a novel or watch a film or tv show and watch how the characters behave and talk. they describe how they're feeling inside. you can see how one event or action leads to another. its a way to learn how the world works so you can copy it. it teaches you how other people think and it teaches you how they feel and how to feel yourself as well. which is kind of the entire point of fiction anyway but autistic people seem to have a special affinity for it. also we are always right.

EDIT: autistic people especially learn by copying or mirroring. often we learn a skill especially a social skill by copying someone else. when i go into an unfamiliar shop or social event i take time to watch what everyone else is doing first so i can copy how you’re ‘supposed’ to behave. fiction is so useful for this because you can do it in the comfort of your own home and you can pause or rewind or repeat as many times as you need. and so often it’s unconscious as well! it’s not like i said to myself ‘i have no idea how relationships work so i’m going to read pride and prejudice to find out’ but i did learn from these books first and not like. my ‘intuition’ from the world around me. we naturally seek to learn what we don’t know even unconsciously

‘classic’ literature (which most people use to mean victorian novels) seems to have a particular draw for some autistic people as well and it definitely did for me. i think it’s because the preoccupation of the novel in the nineteenth century was with human behaviour, relationships, psychology, social questions etc. especially the ‘novel of manners’ or the ‘social problem novel’ types, austen and dickens etc. there’s less focus on melodrama, unreality, it’s very much a genre that deals with real people in real situations. i soaked it up like a sponge lol. i think this is where the weirdo austen obsession comes from also. you know the kind of people who r like ‘ooh i love jane austen everyone had such good manners in ye old days’ girl you are just searching for a world with discrete social rules that make sense. ALSO i’m convinced this is where weeb/koreaboo/anglophile/any other fetishisation of another culture comes from. obviously an interest in another culture is nothing bad in itself but can so easily tip into creepy fetishisation. if you take japanese culture for example there’s very strict ‘rules’ that seem to apply to that culture that an autistic person might latch onto as easy to follow eg. honorifics & associated dynamics, bowing, etc etc. obviously japanese culture is just as varied and complex as our own but from the limited/xenophobic perspective of the western weeb it becomes kind of like a game. there’s such a temptation with autistic people where you kind of go ‘well i don’t fit into my culture but if i went to this other culture which has very clear rules that i could follow i would be happy’. which is obviously a temptation which must be resisted because it’s a) untrue and b) usually racist

also why autistic people are especially drawn to fandoms! every fandom has its own rules and lingo and once you learn them you’re good to go! and because a fandom is a very small and closed system focused on one thing it’s like a little mini world with very few rules that is easy to navigate. and the people in the fandom have the same interest as you so they’re not going to reject you and you always have talking points

CONVINCED this is why kpop has such a grip on people here lol. compared to western artists the kpop system is so structured like there’s a limited number of companies, there’s a very specific pipeline the band goes through, there’s very specific roles within the band they’re supposed to adhere to, success is measured by specific awards or streaming goals. it’s kind of gamified and you KNOW how gamification is euphoric to the ND brain. also autistic people love numbers and stats so i can see why some people on twitter are obsessed with that kind of thing. have more to say on this subject but that would expose me as Knowing Things About Kpop 💀

wow that was long and a lot of its not really relevant but ig these are just some thoughts it inspired. again not all of it applies to all ND people and it might apply to some NT people, but this is how my brain in particular works and i've seen enough that it seems to be the case for a fairly big proportion of other ND people too. thanks!

[traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors]

Tw: dissociation, age regression, detransition

Hello! My name is Frutes, i just found your beautiful blog and wanted to ask something about dissociation/identity/age regression since it seems you’re quite informed.

A bit of context: I’ve been dealing with a lot of identity struggles during the last 5-7 years, regarding gender identity and general identity traits. I transitioned to non-binary 4 years ago and this year I’ve detransitioned and feel fem again but very very differently than the first time. During the last year or so I’ve been having dissociative episodes, some of them lasting weeks. My depression got better but my anxiety skyrocketed. Since I started to detransition I’ve been feeling better and more confident, but sometimes I still cannot truly recognize myself and have these despersonalisation episodes where I just observe and do not know who I am. I feel very euphoric with all the fem stuff but I still do not believe this is actually happening and I sometimes doubt abot my gender or about who I am as a whole, it can be quite concerning. I’ve noticed that the more anxiety I have, the more I’m lost in my thoughts and identity crisis…

One thing about my new fem gender identity (very different from the fem I used to experience before transitioning to nb) is that I’m adoring kids’ stuff. When I was a kid and teen I was emotionally abused by my mom and didn’t learn social skills, I was a sad kid with no friends, filled with rage. Now since I’ve detransitioned to fem gender I’m experiencing a hype over childish things: I’m buying toys, using hairclips, colorful childish clothes, sweet voice, playful, etc. I’m not in this state 24/7, but I feel specially into this when I’m very happy, as if it was spiritual home or it was what I deserve and need. I just read about age regression as a symptom and I’m curious to know if this is it. I know I’m 23 and not 8, but I enjoy the aesthetics and experience so so much. It’s like this feeling and interests came out from nowhere and fills me with pure joy. My partner and I have been together for 10 years now, he’s been here supporting me during my 2 transitions and all, and he is very respectful and very happy to see me enjoy this and my “new” soft/childish occasional attitude traits. I can though act adult when needed or age-neutral most of the time, but children interests/aesthetics/manners make me feel free.

Are these childish changes something bad I should be adressing? Is this a concerning/dangerous symptom? Is it okay to embrace this as a part of my new gender identity since it makes me experience my feminity more freely and careless? Is it some form of age regression? Is it normal I don’t feel like this all the time?

Thank you :-)

Hey Frutes, first off, your gender transition as a whole is absolutely valid as is, and as it will be. Discovering who we are is a vital part of our self growth, and your gender is included. You stepped out and explored, and then found what you were looking for. I imagine being more fem again feels different because the first time, you were unsure and hadn't done the work to understand it as much. Now you've looked around decided for yourself who you are and what your identity is, so it's easier and freer to stand in the place you used to be with the knowledge that you know yourself better.

Your gender may change and flow overtime into something different, or it may not, but no matter where you land, it's a part of your self exploration and it's important that it happens. Every step you take along the way is valid. In those moments you know who you are, and that doesn't change even if/when you do change.

You are correct when you mention age regression as a possible trauma symptom. This is something that's especially different per person, but falling into something that would have brought you comfort at a time that you needed it makes complete sense. If you never had the opportunity to be a child, now you can make that happen in a safe and responsible way. This includes being able to "shut it off" and be an adult as needed. You are in control of what you do now, so it makes sense that you can control when your child side is out and when it's not.

All in all, your gender movement is normal and valid. Your age regression symptoms are fine and not dangerous. It being a part of your gender experience is also safe and okay. I suggest this a lot, but you may find comfort in finding a therapist to talk about this to. It sounds like this may be trauma related, so talking about it in a safe space may help you figure yourself out even more, and hopefully let you feel better about who you are and how you show it.

I'm also so happy you have a supportive partner in this. Having even one person like that can make a world of difference. You deserve support for this, and I hope you can continue getting it.

Mod Erion

[flamereign]

so i’ve always sorta wanted to make a short (ish) overview of lea’s mental/emotional state during & post kh3,  as the game in all it’s Disney Is For Kids!!! fashion glossed over a lot of the results, repercussions and consequences of going through the kind of trauma axelea went through. of course, this is based on my view of events ( i.e. lea did not relinquish his heart willingly and did not cope well at all to his heartless state as axel which does have repercussions on lea’s state of mind once he got his heart back ) and what i’d imagine that would do to a guy who spent about a decade in a really emotionally toxic environment basically suppressing his emotions / memories and even his past identity.  as i just want to give an overview, i tried keeping it as short and to the point as possible, but it did still get a tad long thanks to my tendency to ramble so sorry in advance ... 

in any case, thanks for reading!  here goes

during and early post kh3 lea gets easily overwhelmed by emotions. as i stated earlier, he did spent about a decade believing he couldn’t feel,  even resulting in him gaslighting himself whenever he did feel something. because he essentially lost his heart around age 15-16 you could say he’s basically still stuck in puberty, only with some added ptsd to the mix: lea literally has to relearn how to process and identify emotions within himself after a decade of suppressing them*. emotions, therefore, tend to hit him hard and fast, can take him utterly by surprise and he has difficult getting them back under control. this can lead to either an overreaction of a certain type of emotion ( for example laughter that turns to unstoppable giggles,  tears that turn to uncontrollable sobbing, mild anxiety that can flip to a panic attack at even the smallest triggers ),  contrary emotional reactions ( crying when happy, wanting to laugh when actually feeling angry or nervous, or even just a lack of emotional response when he's feeling sad ) loss of temper / anger due to embarrassment or even complete dissociation / a feeling of numbness. *see also point 3

this emotional overload leads to hypersensitivity especially if there are added outside stimuli; if it gets really bad even the touch of clothes against his skin feels like too much. in some cases, it can also result in a feeling of extreme depersonalization**, a feeling like he’s not part of his own body anymore,  like his consciousness is torn in every which direction and he’s about to splinter apart. his usual reaction is to isolate himself to a contained space with little to no outside stimuli ( so a dark, quiet and small space ) until he can come back to himself. if for any reason he can’t,  it will result in an anxiety attack or even him flipping to rage form and lashing out. **in this case, it actually helps him a lot of there is a weight placed on top of him to ground him back into the here and now: sometimes this means he’ll go sit in the shower under a really hard stream of water,  or he’ll go huddle into a really tight space or, if there is someone around he trusts, he’ll even calm down if they lay down on top of him as it also reassures him they’re real and they’re there.  anyone else touching him is a big no no in this situation, however. 

lea has a mild case of alexithymia as a result of the decade long suppression of his own emotions and feelings.  though this condition is defined as a personality trait,  in lea’s case it’s more of a result of that very specific trauma ( see also the point 1 ), and will get less impacting as time goes on and lea learns to readjust to life with heart and emotions once more. alexithymia is mainly characterized by: a) difficulty identifying feelings and distinguishing between feelings in the self and in others, b) difficulty describing feelings to others.  point a) also results in point 1 and 2 while point b) results more in point 4 below and actually makes talking about his experiences and his feelings quite taxing for him.

as a result of all of the above, he still shows a lot of avoidance behaviors:  deflecting ( mostly with humour or self depreciation ),  distracting himself w/ something else instead of letting himself process ( like, throwing himself immediately into training to become a keyblade wielder and saving his friends rather than, yanno, give himself some fucking time to breathe ),  becoming defensive or angry when people push ( exceptions here roxas / xion / isa / others, depending on plotted relationship, but even then it’s difficult for him to fully open up ) and he’ll rather avoid talking about the heavy stuff altogether for as long as possible, preferring to act like things are fine even if his body language and facial expressions clearly show things are, in fact, not fine. 

to add to the above:  unlike axel,  who had a kick ass poker face, lea has a really hard time hiding what he feels,  but that still doesn’t make it easier for him to express what he feels.  he may be an open book to others,  but it’s not as obvious to himself. of course contextually or depending on the situation he can infer whether his own state of mind is happy or sad or anxious and he does still have previous experience to draw on,  but if the context or situation can’t help him it could be that he cries but will not be able to say if they’re happy tears or sad tears,  if he feels unsettled he won’t be able to easily discern if it’s anger, if it’s frustration, anxiety or simply because there’s something physical going on ( lack of sleep / eating / oncoming illness etc etc ).  as you can imagine this is very frustrating to him and does not help the bullet points i already expanded on above. 

regardless of the motivations and traumas that guided axel’s behaviors and actions ( which i will make a separate post about ),  getting his heart back has been a quite eye-opening experience to lea to the extent he’s willing to go to survive,  to all of his worst qualities and sides and to the fact that he’s capable of doing the things he’s done:  his past as axel and the things he’s done are causing a tremendous amount of guilt, identity issues*** and even self-loathing culmulating in mild depression.  in short, the confidence he used to have as a kid and as a nobody have taken a big ass dent.  despite the fact that the keyblade has chosen him,  he often doubts and second guesses on whether he’s even worthy of it and had it not been for his determination to save his friends and fix past wrongs,  he might’ve even renounced that power all together thinking he doesn’t truly deserve to be a wielder.  this self-doubt and lack of confidence caused him a lot of issues in his training even getting the keyblade to appear and is, imo, one of the big reasons why he was overpowered so easily by xemnas in that final confrontation.  ***in my opinion, the traits of the nobodies can be seen as that actual person’s worst traits magnified -- in a way, axel can be seen as lea’s inner darkness: the selfishness, the impulsiveness, the temper, that manipulative side, the ruthlessness and the dishonesty are all traits that were already there, but were always balanced out and trumped by his positive traits. lea post kh3 has gotten to know a lot more about himself and essentially does not like the things he found out:  quite understandably he’s having a hard time accepting and reconciling axel with who he is as lea now and as a result he subconsciously tries to suppress the parts that are axel while consciously trying to accept them, which causes him to feel like he’s not sure anymore who he is and who he is supposed to be.  this only adds to the guilt and self-doubts he already experiences.  this is also why i thought that him letting other people use the name axel for him so easily was a really weird decision in the game. 

with his tendency to doubt his own worth also comes paranoia. one big example is the automatic suspicion he feels at nice / friendly gestures, actions or words -- a suspicion mainly borne from the thought that he doesn’t really deserve those,  or that it shouldn’t be as easy. especially during kh3 this will largely center around the other wielders of light or really anyone who’s known him as axel. 

a large part of the paranoia is also linked to his ptsd; he is very hyper-aware:  this can be hyper-awareness in specific situations -- for example he’ll feel uncomfortable in large crowds, or in spaces with low visibility, he’ll flinch at loud & sudden noises, will go from relaxed to ready to attack in the span of a second if someone or something startles him and he will shy away from touch from people he doesn’t know -- or even in a general sense meaning that in any given situation where things seem to be going well or he’s feeling happy he’s always in some part waiting for the other shoe to drop or for the situation to blow up in his face as some kind of karmic retribution. as a result, there’s part of him that has become very sensitive to change as any signs of abrupt and inexplicable change in his life will be interpreted as a sign of impending doom, to put it very dramatically. this in turn can feed into the emotional overload and bodily hypersensitivity i described further above. 

for that latter part, the same can be said about his relationships with other people. i don’t think it’ll come as a surprise to know that with everything he’s gone through and the losses he’s faced as axel, his part of the blame in that aside for a moment, lea has some major abandonment issues.   this also ties in with his low confidence, self-doubt and guilt complex: it’ll take a long time for him to trust that someone will actually want to stick around and part of him is also hypersensitive to signs of behavioral changes in others towards him -- in short, part of him is also always waiting for the people he cares about and who obviously also care about him to wise up about what a failure he is and consequentially leave him. if by any chance this does happen, even if it is through no fault of any party, he’ll always instinctively place the blame on himself, putting it down as something he’s said or done to make that person go.  as a result, if that person returns lea will be both clingy as well a avoidant as he a) wants for them to stick around and b) doesn’t trust them not to leave again, so it’d be better to simply keep his distance. 

the above also results in him not wanting to show his flaws, his doubts and weaknesses: he loathes failure, internalizes and bottles up a lot of his negative emotions towards himself and others and pushes himself beyond his boundaries often just to try and prove that he can ( despite not truly believing that he is ). he’s afraid that if the people he cares for and respect know about his doubts and fears, it’ll increase the risk of them leaving him behind. this is especially apparent in kh3 towards his fellow keyblade wielders: despite having his doubts about being worthy of the keyblade, it’s not something he would’ve ever said or shown, believing that if he showed any signs of not being able to handle the weight of the keyblade, they’d sideline him or boot him out completely. considering a big motivation for him joining the battle in the first place was to atone, to fix past mistakes by helping to save his friends, the idea of having that chance taken away caused a lot of fear and inner stress, resulting in frequent bouts of exhaustion and depression, more self-loathing, defensiveness and even anger if someone tried to critique his actions or question his motives. 

due to the above described symptoms of his ptsd, depression and emotional instability, he has issues with insomnia. whenever he does manage to get sleep, he also frequently experiences very vivid nightmares and night terrors. whereas as axel he’d turn to sleep to pass the time,  as lea he tends to avoid sleep altogether unless absolutely necessary.

obviously i realize that reading all of the above combined makes it sound as if lea’s struggling under huge emotional and mental strain every day ( and technically speaking he sorta is because this is not something that turns off from one day to the next ),  but i also want to add that lea himself doesn’t particularly think of himself as unhappy or depressed 24/7 ( or even at all ) so it’ll not always be super apparent in his attitude or the way i write him in threads. imo, lea’s strength has always come from his empathy, his mental fortitude and his ability to adapt --- and i don’t want to forget that on top of all the negative, he’s finally experiencing all the positive sides of having his heart back as well. this, plus the fact that, unlike axel, he actually has a support system to fall back on, friends that support him and who he can support in return, definitely help him a lot in his day to day activities. 

nevertheless the above are all factors i take into account to determine the way axelea thinks and chooses to react to certain situations and in his interpersonal relationships and are thus important to my portrayal of him. so to anyone who’s read this entire thing:  i love you from the bottom of my heart. 

[shoppingstars]

what is BPD?

 Even though I have a blog about BPD, a lot of people have a lot of doubts about it (about the symptoms, terms, etc). So here is a post about BPD and, please, if you are neurotypical don’t comment “wow I have it” just because you read my post.

Borderline Personality Disorder is diagnosed when there is a persistent pattern of unstable interpersonal relationships, mood and self-image, as well as distinct impulsive behaviour, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts. These difficulties are indicated by five (or more) of the following:

frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.

a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterised by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.

identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.

impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g. spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating). This does not include suicidal or self-harming behaviour.

recurrent suicidal behaviour, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behaviour.

affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood - intense feelings that can last from a few hours to a few days.

chronic feelings of emptiness.

inappropriate intense anger or difficulty controlling anger.

transient, stress-related paranoid ideas or severe dissociative symptoms.

What is FP? 

FP means, for someone who has BPD, favorite person. It is a term that refers to the person you most idealize, usually it is someone you have romantic feelings for, but it can be a friend, fictional character, someone in your family, etc. Not everyone who has BPD has a FP, but it is something common. Having a FP is not something beautiful and shouldn’t be romantized, your mood starts depending on that person, on the way they talk to you, you have a lot of mental breakdowns when they’re gone and it’s something that puts you in risk, because you’re willing to do basically anything for that person.

What is “split”?

Splitting is the action of feeling extremely angry at someone who you usually idealize, for example, your fp (but it doesn’t have to be necessarily your fp). Someone who suffers from BPD usually has black and white thinking or feeling, loving or hating someone, doing something all the time or not at all, basically no harlf term. When someone splits, it means that they were from a extreme to another about their feelings to someone. It can happen for big and important reasons, when someone actually does a serious mistake or it can happen when someone does a “small” mistake and we react extremely, due to BPD hypersensitivity.

What is dissociation?

That’s what Wikipedia says: “In psychology, dissociation is any of a wide array of experiences from mild detachment from immediate surroundings to more severe detachment from physical and emotional experience. The major characteristic of all dissociative phenomena involves a detachment from reality, rather than a loss of reality as in psychosis.”. Dissociation is the match of despersonalization (“Depersonalization can consist of a detachment within the self regarding one's mind or body, or being a detached observer of oneself. Subjects feel they have changed and that the world has become vague, dreamlike, less real, or lacking in significance. It can be a disturbing experience. Chronic depersonalization refers to depersonalization-derealization disorder, which is classified by the DSM-5 as a dissociative disorder.”) and derealization (“Derealization is an alteration in the perception or experience of the external world so that it seems unreal. Other symptoms include feeling as though one's environment is lacking in spontaneity, emotional colouring, and depth. It is a dissociative symptom of many conditions.”). Basically, it is feeling like YOU are not real + the WORLD is not real. Okay, I’m not sure about what I’m going to say now, please someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that there a lot of dissociative disorders, but in BPD people usually suffer just from dissociative symptoms.

Self-Harm?

Self-harm is when you intentionally hurt yourself. Okay, but why? Some people self-harm to relief the pain, a lot of people with BPD also relate they self-harm to feel real during dissociative episodes or to feel something when the emptiness sensations are acting out. For some people, self-harm is when you hurt your body tissue, for example, cutting or scratching yourself, but, personally, in my opinion, thre are different ways or expressing self-harm before it becomes something extreme, for example, starving yourself, triggering yourself, doing something you don’t want to just because you “deserve it”, etc.

“People with BPD are always abusive.”

That’s absolutely not true. A lot of websites make articles about BPD and, because of a lack of information, they mention we are abusive and things like that. The truth is that no one is automatically abusive JUST because their mental illnesses. Abuse is something related to someone’s behavior, regardless if they’re mentally ill or not. “Okay, so why a lot of people say BPD makes someone abusive?” Maybe it’s because PDs are not a very discussed topic and people are always afraid of the unkown, so it’s better if they just judge us. Also, maybe because people with BPD are often seen as “attention seekers”, which is not something bad, in my opinion, because everyone should receive enough attention, since they’re not using bad mechanisms to get it.

About some other symptoms

Mood swings happen when someone goes to an emotion to another. For someone who has BPD, it happens a lot of times during the day. For example, if you got a friend and they have BPD they can talk about suicide and how hopeless they feel and a few hours or minutes later they can talk about future plans and how excited they are about things. It impacts our affective instability too, so sometimes we get lost thinking if we like someone or not. We can easily “get tired” of someone and then becoming totally dependent on them after some time. 

Our instability also impacts our sense of self, sometimes it makes us question even if we are real (going back to the dissociation aspect). That’s why is so hard for us to do things like choosing a career, because today I can feel like becoming an actress and then tomorrow I want to be a doctor. Our decisions and moods are constantly changing.

Our fear of abandonment controls our lives, we can do things that we don’t even want to just to have someone by our sides. Also, some people with BPD can get too clingy or too distant to someone they love, clingy to avoid the abandonment and distant because of a “leave them before they leave me” thought. That’s why our relationships are very unstable.

Compulsion and impulsivity is a form of expressing our confused feelings, like if we need something to rely on. We can drink too much, eat too much, waste too much money, etc. It can happens for a lot of reasons, for example, to fill the feelings of emptiness or to avoid a breakdown, specially when someone leaves.

Quiet and explosive borderlines

Explosive borderline is someone who is the “classical” borderline. They will act out, they may yell at people, they may get involved in fights and etc. Someone who is a quiet borderline will act in, holding their pain agaisnt themselves, for example, with the self-harm. They may not usually yell at people or get involved in fights, but, instead, they will do terrible things with themselves. There is not a “worse or better type of borderline”, they’re just different types. We all suffer a lot.

Sorry if my grammar wasn’t very correct. English is not my native language. I hope it was a helpful post for some help here on tumblr. Stay strong, borderline community!

[laundryandtaxes]

hey julia. i hope this makes sense but its hard to put into words. i’m thinking lately that i might be more into women than i am men. most other women i relate to are gnc. but i dont feel i quite belong in butch spaces either… i think gender is inherently oppressive so, even tho i realize i have no control over how i am legible to *others*, i am very much struggling with where the value lays in *self* identifying with womanhood (or any gender for that matter). help? a lost gnc baby

I don't think there is any massive value in "identifying" as a woman again in and of itself. For most of us, disidentifying came from a place of understanding ourselves as too weird at being women to really be them, from a "not like other girls/women" idea that being feminine was the only way to be a woman, from trying to run from our bodies or hide them or change them or pretend they don't exist or aren't really ours. And for lots of us it stems from the silly idea that gender identity is the primary means of interacting with gender for most people- I don't think most people have or even really understand a gender identity, but that doesn't mean they don't have categorical placements under patriarchy. Not identifying as female didn't make me not categorically a woman just because I wanted it to. I was still getting treated like a woman daily, still categorically marginalized, etc. "If you don't understand gender identity then you don't have a gender," "If you're questioning your gender (in a culture where not being feminine makes people treat you like you're a man) then you're not cis," and "cis means having an uncomplicated and beneficial relationship to gender" are all harmful ideas stemming from popular liberal gender theory right now that push gnc women in the direction of disidentifying. I want to be super clear here and say that's not the politics of "transexualism" or the "trans agenda" or whatever and that popular liberal gender politics in LGBT communities are just one form of many kinds of bad liberal gender theory. The problem there is liberalism and the removal of material context, not trans people just existing. But these politics have real effects on people's lives and push people to ignore the physicality of moving through the world as a woman in favor of identity politics, which doesn't just matter when trying to discuss menstrual stigma as the women's issue that it is but also matters when trying to discuss the prominence of violence against black trans women or the trouble trans people will generally have finding basic employment, etc. Getting away from experiences and moving toward identities has hurt a lot of people, especially a lot of women. So that's your backdrop. I get that it's uncomfortable for a lot of people to hear, but yes, sex is the only connection a whole lot of women really have to womanhood itself when you're talking about womanhood as a socioeconomic category under patriarchy. How my body exists and is read is not separable from my experience of patriarchy, and comprises the majority (though not all) of that relationship. The reason I bring it up is that, for many of us, disidentifying was one way or trying to sort of get out of the box we had been stuck in and primed for since birth. When good womanhood means being heterosexual, not being gnc, being quiet and taking up no physical space, and the people around you make no attempt to problematize those messages, it can really make a lot of gnc women straight up feel like they're going crazy. So the power of reidentification isn't really about identifying at all. Like a number of women I know who've detransitioned are still in this place where they are living /as/ men, being read as male 90% of the time, hell during winter I'm read as male probably more often than not, and a number of women I know are also really only partly reidentified and still consider themselves nonbinary or something rather than "women" per se. But reidentification for us is about not denying what it means to live these kinds of women's lives, not running from our bodies or being dissociated from them, and most importantly not seeing ourselves as fundamentally separate from other women, and seeing ourselves as living the kinds of lives women can live. That can mean different things to different people but the idea is, choosing to understand ourselves as different from other women but not bad at being women or necessarily something else, just one particular kind of woman. That's what it means and has meant to me anyway. I don't have some gender identity in a sense I don't really understand. I have a body and I hsve the way it is parsed in the world and how it moves and I'm not running from that anymore. For me that means I've almost completely stopped binding, I use she/her exclusively again, I call myself a woman, but it can look different for different people. It's a sort of homecoming. It is an experience almost nobody understands who hasn't gone through it or talked to a lot of women who have. Sorry this was so long but I hope it has given you an understanding of what I mean when I talk about reidentifying, and what I mean when I talk about the power and comfort and healing that means to reidentified women like myself. As for your sexuality stuff, I'm not sure what you are asking there- if you're questioning whether you might be gay I think it certainly makes sense to try talking to some butches and being in spaces for butches (and I do consider butch exclusively a lesbian term) but if not you could always try to find some sort of community with other gender nonconforming women broadly. Make a Facebook page. Have group meetings at a local library. Make a Tumblr for gnc or reidentifying women and reach out. But you can definitely build the kind of space you want, it's just hard. Much love your way no matter what, and thanks for reaching out to talk!

[the-organizing-principle]

‘Twin Peaks as Fugue’ Theory, Part 2: What is the Black Lodge?

In the second part of my analysis I explore the concept of the Black Lodge as Dale/Richard’s preconscious zone—a place he retreats to in his mind to reset his ‘reality’ when his delusions become too unstable—and I’ll compare the lodge’s inhabitants to the Id, Ego and Superego. I’ll also offer a potential explanation for the significance of the number “430.″

*If you haven’t seen my previous posts yet, you can find my theory summarized here, and Part 1 (about The Log Lady) here.

Continuing with the theory that all of Twin Peaks takes place in Dale/Richard’s mind after suffering a trauma-induced fugue state, I’d like to explore what the Black Lodge could mean in this context. I think one of the biggest clues to understanding this ‘place’ is found by looking at what happens whenever Dale/Richard enters and leaves it: aside from his dreams, we see him first ‘enter’ the lodge in the second season finale, in an attempt to rescue Annie. At this point in the narrative, ‘Dale’ was losing control to Windom Earle and was struggling to save a woman he loved. Windom lures ‘Dale’ into the lodge, and then we get the distinct sense that something bad is about to happen (cue Jimmy Scott!). I’ll get to what happens inside the lodge in a moment, but first, look at what results: ‘the good Dale’ is left ‘trapped’ inside, while his ‘evil doppelganger’ escapes into the ‘outside’ world.

If the fugue theory is true, then this would mean that Dale/Richard’s identity has fragmented into two versions of himself while he was in the Black Lodge. He now divides his conscious thinking into two separate personas, sometimes wandering the ‘outside world’ getting into all manner of dark shenanigans as his doppelganger, ‘Mr. C’; sometimes wandering the lonely hall(s) of the Black Lodge amongst its strange, semi-backward speaking/moving inhabitants, or ostensibly sitting quietly in an art deco armchair and contemplating his mistakes. Who knows what, exactly, goes on when he is ‘in the lodge,’ but suffice it to say that this is a kind of mental purgatory for him.

In psychoanalysis, the “preconscious” mind exists between the conscious and the unconscious mind; preconscious thoughts are those that have been repressed or that originate in the unconscious, but have become available for recall and can be made conscious. It’s a liminal state of awareness, just as the Black Lodge is a liminal space between the world of Twin Peaks and the ‘spirit world’; the void of non-existence; the ‘real world,’ etc., depending on where we are in the narrative.

Later, when Mr. C is confronted with the prospect of returning to the lodge, he takes great pains to stay ‘out.’ If the lodge represents Dale/Richard’s preconscious awareness, then it would make sense that Mr. C would want to avoid it because this is where integration would take place. Mr. C is a product of Dale/Richard’s unconscious; his ‘shadow self’ made conscious. One must always have a shadow self to occupy the unconscious, though, so if Mr. C is ‘out,’ then who is ‘in’? The ‘good Dale’ is in the lodge, i.e. the preconscious zone, so he has virtually been subducted into the unconscious for the duration of Mr. C’s takeover. But the ‘good Dale’ is not fully unconscious, either; I believe the ‘true’ persona (Richard?) has become the shadow self, now.

When ‘Dale’ gets violently ejected from the lodge by The Arm’s doppelganger (this is a tricky one, but I think “The Arm” / the Man From Another Place might be a kind of personification of aspects of Dale/Richard’s Ego in conjunction with the one-armed man—they are the “moderators”—while the Giant/Fireman is the Superego and BOB is the Id... more later!), he ends up falling through a void before being briefly suspended in Mr. C’s monitoring device, then lands on the patio of a structure on some kind of interdimensional island where some weird stuff happens before he travels back into the ‘real world’ through an electrical socket.

I’m not even going to attempt to unravel all of this, but I will mention that the scene in this strange, interdimensional space seems to be a kind of representation of the innermost workings of the ‘hydraulic mind,’ a concept that Freud adopted which seems to recur throughout several of Lynch’s works (Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, Inland Empire, aka the “blurred identity trilogy”). The hydraulic mind concept views the psychic apparatus in mechanical terms, wherein pressures (from various stressors) build up within the psyche and are subsequently absorbed or discharged. In the interdimensional scene, we see Dale/Richard and Naido reacting to a banging on a door, causing her her climb up onto the top of a TARDIS-like structure and pull a lever, thus seemingly releasing the pressure in a burst of electrical energy that ultimately zaps her into the void. I’ll discuss Naido/Diane in part three, but for now let’s view this scene as a descent into a post-lodge, sub-preconconscious zone, ostensibly taking place in the actual unconscious realm. The ‘sea’ that Dale looks out on from the balcony of the structure is significant, as ocean imagery is commonly associated with the unconscious. 

Recall that this sequence precedes ‘good Dale’s’ transformation into ‘Dougie.’ Something forced ‘good Dale’ out of the preconscious zone / lodge before he was ready: I believe this may have been something occurring in the REAL ‘real world,’ e.g. a new treatment being administered by his doctors, possibly shock treatment given the importance of electricity in this transition. Medication might also produce a ‘shock’ to Dale/Richard’s system, simulating electrical impulses as his brain activity changes. This is pure speculation, but not entirely unsubstantiated.

So now we see ‘Dougie’ inhabiting a new world: ostensibly the same Twin Peaks universe, just 25 years later. This becomes his new ‘reality,’ but it still isn’t real. It’s just a new narrative he’s living out after exiting the lodge. He hasn’t lost touch with the lodge, though: he still experiences visions of the lodge and the one-armed man throughout his ‘Dougie’ arc. This is important, because if he did go through shock treatment or something similar, a moderating aspect of his ego is attempting to break through to him from his preconscious awareness. He needs to “wake up” from the deep dream that is Dougie Jones—from his post-treatment stupor—and recall his ‘good Dale’ persona, who still has unfinished business. Before Dale/Richard can ever become fully conscious, he needs to integrate all of his fractured personas into a single, multidimensional self and this can’t be accomplished until each have been deconstructed.

Without straying too far off topic, let’s briefly consider that the world that Dougie and Mr. C inhabit are meant to be one and the same, but when we follow their specific arcs, we can observe distinct differences in tone between Dougie’s world and that of Mr. C. The former is somewhat kitsch (think: the Lucky 7 Insurance Agency, the Silver Mustang Casino, even the local police station), whereas the latter is much darker (Buella’s house, Yankton prison, The Farm). We can assume that the environment and ‘interpersonal’ interactions that Dougie and Mr. C (as ‘alters’ of Dale/Richard) experience are influenced by and structured around each persona’s unique worldview. When these worlds collide—when Hutch and Chantal arrive on Lancelot Court along with the Mitchum Brothers’ troupe (and don’t forget the FBI stakeout, representing the hovering Dale persona)—chaos ensues.

I can’t claim the ability to diagnose a fictional character or anyone else, but I should note that Dissociative Identity Disorder doesn’t seem to be Dale/Richard’s only problem. He’s probably also suffering from psychotic depression with symptoms of depersonalization and derealization. If this is the case, and if he has been hospitalized as a result of his psychosis, he probably would have spent a lot of time lying in hospital beds while being dosed with all manner of medications; and if this was also true, he would have overheard a lot of medical talk as doctors checked on him and discussed his treatment with family, staff, etc.—whether he was conscious of it, or not—and do you know what medical term he might have heard repeatedly throughout this process? “DRG-430.”

The DRG (diagnoses-related group) is a system hospitals/physicians/insurance companies use to classify a disorder and establish a treatment protocol. DRG-430 is code for a patient suffering from psychoses. If my theory holds up, it would be highly likely that Dale/Richard would be classified under DRG-430. When the Giant/Fireman tells him to remember the number 430, I believe that the Giant/Fireman—as an agent of truth (recall my discussion of “fire” and “truth” in Part 1) and as a personification of the Superego—was trying to remind Dale/Richard of who he really was (Richard, probably) and what he was supposed to do (integrate). More on this later.

A quick note about parallels to other works by Lynch: I mentioned the “blurred identity trilogy” earlier, and should point out that these films all include scenes wherein characters who are experiencing identity crises (e.g. fugue states resulting from the unconscious trauma of unrequited love) encounter mysterious but revealing clues about their true selves after passing through/entering a space involving red curtains. We see these prominently featured in Fred’s home in Lost Highway, and in one scene he’s seen disappearing into a darkened space with a red-curtained background as he goes deeper into the mystery (read: his preconscious mind). We see them again when Betty and Rita enter the red-curtained Club Silencio in Mulholland Drive, and Betty finds a significant clue in the blue box. Then in Inland Empire, we see Sue pass through a red-curtained hallway before she enters into a convoluted, increasingly dreamlike sequence of events before the “valley girls” give her a clue about what will happen in the future, when she wakes from a kind of sleep. All of these scenes can ostensibly be linked to these characters’ preconscious awareness of their true identities. 

Let’s look at the lodge scene in TP:FWWM, now: this is after Leland kills Laura, when we see him standing in the lodge’s “red room” in front of the one-armed man, who is seated beside the Man From Another Place. BOB appears beside Leland after his body moves around strangely, then floats up and remains suspended in the air at an odd angle. The MFAP then places his hand on the O-AM’s shoulder and seems to speak through and with him in unison, saying: “BOB... I want all my garmonbozia (pain and sorrow).” BOB angrily complies, pulling a bloody wound out of an unresponsive Leland’s belly and depositing it in a splatter on the lodge floor, which the MFAP then seems to absorb and covert into creamed corn, which he proceeds to consume.

This exchange seems to support the idea that the MFAP and the O-AM represent aspects of Dale/Richard’s Ego, in that they share a kind of moderating role in the lodge, and have some degree of control over BOB (as Dale/Richard’s Id). Freud has said of these concepts: “The ego is that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world. ...The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions...in its relation to the id it is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse.” Its main concern is with the individual's safety and allows some of the id's desires to be expressed, but only when consequences of these actions are marginal. "Thus the ego, driven by the id, confined by the super-ego, repulsed by reality, struggles...[in] bringing about harmony among the forces and influences working in and upon it," and readily "breaks out in anxiety—realistic anxiety regarding the external world, moral anxiety regarding the super-ego, and neurotic anxiety regarding the strength of the passions in the id.” (x).

I don’t want to go too deep into an examination of how these psychoanalytical roles are mirrored in each of the four characters discussed above; hopefully their relationship to Freud’s concept is not so far-fetched when viewed in this light. We can interpret the lodge scene with Leland as a kind of preconscious integration of this character’s emotional trauma, without speculating on who Leland represents in Dale/Richard’s dreamworld (yet). This process is happening without Dale/Richard’s conscious awareness, but it is preconscious rather than unconscious, because he is present enough for us to hear his voice as the word “Judy” is whispered when the monkey’s face appears onscreen. I discussed the significance of this transition already, but to briefly reiterate: “garmonbozia”/pain and sorrow is synonymous with trauma, and though the garmonbozia seems to be the trauma surrounding Laura’s murder in this scene, Judy’s whispered name in this moment strongly supports the theory that the real, underlying trauma involves something that happened between Judy and Dale/Richard.

Once again, this analytical tangent has already gone on much longer than I intended but I can’t bail out without mentioning the very important Black Lodge scene in the final act:

This time, Dale/Richard enters the lodge without any more fanfare than hearing a backwards rustling/scratching sound, then looking to the side toward a red glow. In the next moment he is seated in the red room again, and the one-armed man is asking him “Is it future... or is it past?” (we can liken this transition to a kind of “waking up” from the nightmare of losing Laura in the woods; Dale/Richard’s mind compensates for the trauma of this nightmare scenario by abruptly returning him to the preconscious zone for a veiled ‘reality check’). Soon he’s meeting the evolution of The Arm again, who asks him “Is it the story of the little girl who lived down the lane? Is it?” We’ve seen this before, just as we’ve seen the following scene where Dale/Richard is seated as Laura Palmer approaches to whisper something in his ear, causing him to gasp. I may be mistaken, but I believe this is the only time we see Dale/Richard moving in semi-reverse motion in the lodge just like the other lodge inhabitants, which would be significant (he moves with rather than counter to them, perhaps suggesting that he is closer to something in that moment than he has been at any other time). Also, if you compare Dale/Richard’s reaction to whatever Laura whispers to him in this scene to it’s nearly identical one in the beginning of the season, you’ll see that in the earlier scene, Dale reacts with a gasp of apparent horror whereas in this finale scene, the gasp has more of a confused/disturbed tone (more like a “huh??”). Whatever she communicated to him seems to have a profound effect, because after she screams and is ripped up and away by some unseen force again, we see a new persona emerge for the first time. For clarity’s sake, I’m going to just call him ‘Richard.’ Now we see the curtain part and a more ashen-faced, serious ‘Richard’ emerges, briefly encountering Leland again who tells him to “Find Laura.” Something has changed; ‘Richard’ even walks differently. With a wave of his hand the lodge’s curtain is manipulated into opening to reveal Glastonbury Grove, where Diane is waiting. She asks “Is it you? Is it really you?” and he confirms that it is, but somehow neither she—nor we—are entirely convinced, especially after what follows.

So what has happened? I think Dale/Richard came too close to the truth this time in the preconscious lodge zone when Laura whispered in his ear, but instead of retreating into another safe, Dougie-like persona, something got through to him and one of the false layers fell away, leaving a persona that was more true to his actual identity than any other we’ve seen before. This ‘Richard’ persona still goes through the motions of trying to fix the broken dream, just like ‘Dale’ would, but he is tiring of the pretense. He is losing control of his own narrative and can’t maintain it for much longer. He leaves the lodge having come close enough to its preconscious information for some of it to leak through to his conscious mind, and the effect of this leak plays out in the rest of the episode as the false ‘reality’ becomes increasingly unstable: ‘Richard’ wakes in a strange motel that is different from the one he arrived at to find Diane/’Linda’ gone and a different car parked in a different place. This happens after he and Diane pass through a point in the road that is apparently 430 miles from somewhere. I think this transition is actually the point at which real world Dale/’Richard’ agrees(?) to undergo some kind of new therapy that his therapist, Diane (Linda?) warns him could have negative side effects. The number 430 marks this point of transition because 430 is the code for the diagnoses-related group (DRG) that Dale/Richard, the patient, has been assigned (psychoses). It is a kind of subliminal clue from his subconscious mind, as well as from the remote Superego (Fireman). I’ll explore what happens next—along with an explanation for why Naido’s face became the Black Lodge for a moment before she transformed into Diane—in Part 3. Stay tuned!

[operagheist-blog]

PHYSIOLOGICAL CATEGORIES HERE. part 2 of the huge meta, i split this up for everyone’s sanity.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CATEGORIES

LEARNING & MEMORY

learning is defined as the process in which changes in behavior arise as a result of experience interacting with the environment. memory is defined as the record of a person’s past experiences gained through learning. this is literally from my class powerpoint, it’s pretty straightforward. 

ERIK’S MANNERISMS IN RELATIVITY TO CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

what is classical conditioning? i’m sure you guys have heard of pavlov’s dog. classical conditioning involves teaching an organism that one stimulus serves as the predictor for a specific upcoming event. as far as i can recall, there was some sort of experiment by clark hull in terms of classical conditioning where he used his students as subjects & conditioned them to expect pain ( i think he slapped them ) if they were presented with the paired stimulus. i’m not sure if that’s a true story, though. something that IS real is the baby albert experiment, where the subject, a baby named albert, was conditioned to fear things that were white & fluffy. he was presented with a white rat & then the experimenters caused a loud noise that scared the shit out of him. honestly, that was a really awful experiment & it screwed albert up for the rest of his life.  ‘ knight, what the fuck does this even have to do with erik ’ ok so let’s look at his initial reaction to physical contact, ignore motn & ponr for a minute ok. if he’s not the one initiating the contact, don’t fucking touch him, because after the whole ‘ devil’s child ’ experience, he’s likely associating touch with pain, where he expects someone to hurt him if they reach out without him first showing that it’s ok ( see. angel of music ). christine did not fucking help this problem after the unmasking part one. erik also reacts by trying to get rid of something he perceives as a predictive stimulus to which he expects pain, see. the swordfight, immobilising raoul in the final lair scene, the torture chamber scene in the 04 movie etc. i’m also certain there are other external stimuli that cause the same reaction & the issue is that they’re fucking hardwired into his brain because he’s been hurt all his life. associations learned through classical conditioning CAN FADE OVER TIME if the stimulus is presented without the expected response. drug abuse can also be linked to classical conditioning, especially in the issue of relapses that can occur post-rehab. 

ERIK’S MANNERISMS IN RELATIVITY TO OPERANT CONDITIONING

what is operant conditioning & how does it differ from classical conditioning? operant conditioning involves an organism learning about the relationship between a stimulus, a response, & an outcome. unlike classical conditioning, the determining factor in whether or not the outcome occurs is based on whether or not the organism makes a response to a stimulus. the whole point of this section is that erik sure as heck learned what responses would lead to certain outcomes; this could explain the reclusiveness from other people ( if they don’t see him, they can’t hurt him ), the distant interactions if he’s interacting with anyone in poto canon that isn’t christine, mme giry, or the daroga ( if they don’t know him, they can’t use anything against him ), & the mask ( if they can’t see the deformities, they can’t shun him... as much as they could otherwise ). the third point is really more of a learned response to lessen the aversive outcomes, although it can’t necessarily prevent them. 

ERIK’S MANNERISMS IN RELATIVITY TO GENERALISATION OR DISCRIMINATION OF SENSORY STIMULI

ok, generalisation is basically the brain grouping similar stimuli together & assuming an equivalent outcome to one stimulus to the other, even if that’s not the case ( allergies are a really good example, i have an aunt who is allergic to walnuts, but not other types of nuts, another example of food generalisation happens in children, a child who doesn’t like broccoli may assume they won’t like cauliflower either, due to its similar appearance. in the olden days, people avoided i think some sort of berries or whatnot that are widely eaten today because they looked like the poisonous belladonna ). discrimination is the ability to perceive differences between stimuli ( a kid who hates broccoli recognises that cauliflower is different & understands that it might not be so bad ). tldr, important things erik generalises: a sudden approach from another person means i’m going to be hurt, because attempts at contact mean i’ll be hurt. people who are highly intelligent & knowledgeable in many subjects are less likely to discriminate against me, because people who understand medicine deal with similar things, people with medical knowledge must also be well educated in other areas. important things that erik can discriminate against: types of music, that’s pretty obvious — give him music by a known composer & he’ll sure as heck be able to identify it from another similar work by someone else. not all leading sopranos go downhill after five seasons, age is a factor, some singers are better than others, but the level of specific skills may not always be better in the singer deemed overall superior to the other ( carlotta can definitely project more than christine, but since erik trained christine, she’s better at carrying a tune, so on so forth ). not all of mme giry’s girls have the proper poise, some aren’t meant for certain steps or lifts, some have better endurance. honestly this discrimination is fine tuned for the arts, be it visual, performance, literature, & also extends to architectural knowledge. 

PERSONALITY PSYCHOPATHOLOGY + ERIK’S BEHAVIOR FT. PLAUSIBLE DIAGNOSES, ALSO OPIOID ABUSE 

here is a link to the DSM V.

 for elaboration, see DIAGNOSTIC NOTES. applicable traits will be followed by ✔︎ O

obsessive-compulsive personality disorder — diagnostic criteria. 

defined as a pervasive pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, & mental & interpersonal control, at the expense of flexibility, openness, & efficiency, beginning by early adulthood & present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by FOUR OR MORE of the following: 1. is preoccupied with details, rules, lists, order, organization, or schedules to the extent that the major point of the activity is lost. 2. shows perfectionism that interferes with task completion ( e.g., is unable to complete a project because his or her own overly strict standards are not met ). 3. is excessively devoted to work & productivity to the exclusion of leisure activities and friendships ( not accounted for by obvious economic necessity ) ✔︎. 4. is overconscientious, scrupulous, & inflexible about matters of morality, ethics, or values ( not accounted for by cultural or religious identification ) ✔︎. 5. is unable to discard worn-out or worthless objects even when they have no sentimental value. 6. is reluctant to delegate tasks or to work with others unless they submit to exactly his or her way of doing things. ✔︎ 7. adopts a miserly spending style toward both self & others; money is viewed as something to be hoarded for future catastrophes. 8. shows rigidity & stubbornness. ✔︎ 

posttraumatic stress disorder — diagnostic criteria. 

posttraumatic stress disorder note: the following criteria apply to adults, adolescents, & children older than 6 years [ for this, i will simply exclude the children under 6 years parts, or other irrelevant to time period notes ].  A. exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence in ONE OR MORE of the following ways: 1. directly experiencing the traumatic event(s).✔︎ 2. witnessing, in person, the event(s) as it occurred to others. 3. learning that the traumatic event(s) occurred to a close family member or close friend. in cases of actual or threatened death of a family member or friend, the event(s) must have been violent or accidental. 4. experiencing repeated or extreme exposure to aversive details of the traumatic event(s). [ ... ] B. presence of ONE OR MORE of the following intrusion symptoms associated with the traumatic event(s), beginning after the traumatic event(s) occurred: 1. recurrent, involuntary, & intrusive distressing memories of the traumatic event(s) ✔︎ 2. recurrent distressing dreams in which the content &/or affect of the dream are related to the traumatic event(s). ✔︎ [ ... ] 3. dissociative reactions ( e.g., flashbacks ) in which the individual feels or acts as if the traumatic event(s) were recurring ( such reactions may occur on a continuum, with the most extreme expression being a complete loss of awareness of present surroundings* ) ✔︎. 4. intense or prolonged psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event(s). 5. marked physiological reactions to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event(s). ✔︎ C. persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the traumatic event(s), beginning after the traumatic event(s) occurred, as evidenced by ONE OR BOTH of the following: 1. avoidance of or efforts to avoid distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic event(s) ✔︎. 2. avoidance of or efforts to avoid external reminders ( people, places, conversations, activities, objects, situations ) that arouse distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic event(s) ✔︎ D. negative alterations in cognitions & mood associated with the traumatic event(s), beginning or worsening after the traumatic event(s) occurred, as evidenced by TWO OR MORE of the following: 1. inability to remember an important aspect of the traumatic event(s) ( typically due to dissociative amnesia & not to other factors such as head injury, alcohol, or drugs ). 2. persistent & exaggerated negative beliefs or expectations about oneself, others, or the world ✔︎. 3. persistent, distorted cognitions about the cause or consequences of the traumatic event(s) that lead the individual to blame himself/herself or others ✔︎. 4. persistent negative emotional state ( e.g., fear, horror, anger, guilt, or shame ) ✔︎ 5. markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities. 6. feelings of detachment or estrangement from others. 7. Persistent inability to experience positive emotions ( e.g., inability to experience happiness, satisfaction, or loving feelings ). E. marked alterations in arousal and reactivity associated with the traumatic event(s), beginning or worsening after the traumatic event(s) occurred, as evidenced by TWO OR MORE of the following: 1. irritable behavior & angry outbursts ( with little or no provocation ) typically expressed as verbal or physical aggression toward people or objects ✔︎. 2. reckless or self-destructive behavior ✔︎. 3. hypervigilance ✔︎. 4. exaggerated startle response. 5. problems with concentration. 6. sleep disturbance ( e.g., difficulty falling or staying asleep or restless sleep ) ✔︎. F. duration of the disturbance ( criteria B, C, D, & E ) is more than 1 month. ✔︎ G. the disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning ✔︎. H. the disturbance is not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance ( e.g., medication, alcohol ) or another medical condition ✔︎.  specify whether: with dissociative symptoms: the individual’s symptoms meet the criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder, & in addition, in response to the stressor, the individual experiences persistent or recurrent symptoms of EITHER of the following: 1. depersonalization: persistent or recurrent experiences of feeling detached from, & as if one were an outside observer of, one’s mental processes or body ( e.g., feeling as though one were in a dream; feeling a sense of unreality of self or body or of time moving slowly ) ✔︎. 2. dereaiization: persistent or recurrent experiences of unreality of surroundings ( e.g., the world around the individual is experienced as unreal, dreamlike, distant, or distorted ). note: to use this subtype, the dissociative symptoms must not be attributable to the physiological effects of a substance ( e.g., blackouts, behavior during alcohol intoxication) or another medical condition ( e.g., complex partial seizures ). specify if: with delayed expression: if the full diagnostic criteria are not met until at least 6 months after the event ( although the onset and expression of some symptoms may be immediate ). 

opioid use disorder — diagnostic criteria 

A. a problematic pattern of opioid use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress, as manifested by AT LEAST TWO of the following, occurring within a 12-month period: 1. opioids are often taken in larger amounts or over a longer period than was intended. ✔︎ 2. there is a persistent desire or unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control opioid use. 3. a great deal of time is spent in activities necessary to obtain the opioid, use the opioid, or recover from its effects ✔︎. 4. craving, or a strong desire or urge to use opioids ✔︎. 5. recurrent opioid use resulting in a failure to fulfill major role obligations at work, school, or home. 6. continued opioid use despite having persistent or recurrent social or interpersonal problems caused or exacerbated by the effects of opioids. 7. important social, occupational, or recreational activities are given up or reduced because of opioid use. 8. recurrent opioid use in situations in which it is physically hazardous ✔︎. 9. continued opioid use despite knowledge of having a persistent or recurrent physical or psychological problem that is likely to have been caused or exacerbated by the substance ✔︎. 10. tolerance, as defined by EITHER of the following: a. a need for markedly increased amounts of opioids to achieve intoxication or desired effect ✔︎. b. a markedly diminished effect with continued use of the same amount of an opioid ✔︎. note: this criterion is not considered to be met for those taking opioids solely under appropriate medical supervision. 11. withdrawal*, as manifested by EITHER of the following: a. the characteristic opioid withdrawal syndrome — [  presence of EITHER of the following; 1. cessation of ( or reduction in ) opioid use that has been heavy & prolonged ( i.e., several weeks or longer ) ✔︎. 2. administration of an opioid antagonist after a period of opioid use. B. THREE OR MORE of the following developing within minutes to several days after criterion a : 1. dysphoric mood ✔︎. 2. nausea ✔︎ or vomiting. 3. muscle aches ✔︎. 4. lacrimation or rhinorrhea. 5. pupillary dilation, piloerection, or sweating. 6. diarrhea. 7. yawning. 8. fever ✔︎. 9. insomnia ✔︎. C. The signs or symptoms in criterion B cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning ✔︎. D. the signs or symptoms are not attributable to another medical condition and are not better explained by another mental disorder, including intoxication or withdrawal from another substance ✔︎ ] b. opioids ( or a closely related substance ) are taken to relieve or avoid withdrawal symptoms ✔︎. note: this criterion is not considered to be met for those individuals taking opioids solely under appropriate medical supervision. 

DIAGNOSTIC NOTES. i could have put more things here, but this is really getting long. with all of that, erik’s a mess ngl. 

crappy college psych major attempt at diagnostic conclusion? OCD, PTSD with dissociative symptoms & a severe case of opioid addiction. 

there were going to be more sections here, but i actually covered everything that i needed to ( as far as i know ). some specifics for the opiate withdrawal; these obviously pertain to when he’s not using opiates, whether it’s because he doesn’t have them, or due to a desire to alleviate concern in others ( especially any loved ones he gains ).  

i am  so so sorry for how long this is. if you got thru this, bravo & i love you for doing so.