#cptsd cw

[grislyintentions]

As usual, Shuyi is late!

But she's not fussing over her four bingos. XIao's like a brother, a bird brother(A bird & a cat getting along? Who would have thought?)! But hey, this was fun!

"Do I need to start asking before I hug you? 对不起, 哥哥. I'm just used to you saying yes."

"..." A gloved hand is raised...only to bump the top of Shuyi's head lightly in faux sternness.

"无妨，别在我不知情下忽然搂着我便是。书子上写着的要求只不过是想避免自己无意中害伤心无诡异的人罢了。如你所知，我一直以来都死守着荻花洲。魔兽杀得多，犯人捉个不少：这样维持警觉性的自己不适合任人爱碰就碰.”

[It's fine (no harm done). Just don't surprise me with it. The request writ upon said card is merely included as a warning, to prevent myself from hurting those who meant no harm. As you know, my vigil over Dihua Marsh is a ceaseless one. All the years of dealing in death and capturing of criminals...a reactive person such as I am ill-suited to be touched casually to the whims of others."]

@vixlenxe

[iirvings]

Lloyd, starting shortly after the end of the game, has symptoms of cptsd related to his experiences with every trip to the Tower of Salvation. He knows that something is very wrong with his psyche but he has no real way of verbalizing it to others.

Frequent nightmares involving his friends disappearing, of the people he loves leaving him, of betrayals at every corner, of falling from high towers-- Lloyd has been hurt by the actions he and others took in the game, even if oftentimes there was no other option at the time. But he doesn't have the language to let someone know that he's hurting, that going by where the old Tower of Salvation stood makes him physically ill, he's unable to sleep without counting the breaths of his traveling companion before bed, that flight makes his heart race in ways it never did before the Tower fell.

Lloyd is open with the feelings he felt about having the hero's journey forced on him via Tethe'allan and Sylvaranti propaganda. But at what point is he ever given the chance to stop and process everything he became to his companions and the rest of the population? When was he ever allowed to scream and cry about Colette being kidnapped and almost murdered multiple times, about losing his friends in front of his very eyes one by one, about his loved ones always lying to him, about having to take on the weight of the title Hero?

And so he keeps going and going, and he hasn't said anything about it because no one's ever fucking asked. He gives and he gives for the sake of his companions. He pushes them to be honest with him, to do their best and be their best. But he never gave himself the same treatment.

He never gave himself grace.

And now he lives with the weight of Lloyd the Hero on his back, without the support system he so very needs. He forces himself to relive his memories with every visit to the World Tree, and he talks himself down from paranoia every time he loses sight of his companions. All without saying a word to anyone else.

Because he is Lloyd the Hero.

But he is still Lloyd the Man.

And Lloyd the Hero is heavy burden to bear.

[thisbrilliantsky]

.

[radioactive-worm-on-string]

Oh fuck I think I might have some kind of PTSD

[oflolth]

very unedited and like bear with me i am. processing. ( i had to add this disclaimer because i was like no you should banish this post to your drafts and make it clearer but at present i think it being stream of consciousness is just how things must be skdfhksdf ) but . okay . i think istvan absolutely hates the grove but will still definitely save it tbh just on the basis that in this conflict, the grove ( or specifically the tieflings, anyway ) are not the aggressors but the racism aimed at him within the grove is just. like it affects him deeply in ways he's not even ready to admit at this point in his life and his development. having his people reduced to a monolith, and getting hit with "you're brave to walk around without hiding your heritage" from zevlor while he is quite literally on the run from the society in which he was raised, when he's had to forgo cultural practices that were genuinely dear to him in order to hide. like. it hurts but he doesn't really have the vocabulary or trust built up to share that pain with anyone, and as long as it exists solely within him, he will seek to invalidate it, because for istvan at present, it just is a lot more manageable if he can like. internalize it instead of pushing back. like. hm. he is doing his damn best to "hide [his] heritage" but that, for him, without a literal disguise self moment, is not possible. and part of hiding his heritage is isolating it to something he only deals with in his own head. and part of that as well like... okay so yeah, i started this post off by being like "man hates the grove" but i think he can't even really connect to that hatred without feeling like it is a failing on his part? which. he has a lot of growth to do towards accepting his own vulnerability and accepting that like sometimes people are assholes and he is absolutely allowed to be furious abt that but rn . i think that would just make it hurt a lot more for him.

like. also. he is told by his family that he is not enough of what they are, and that he is lesser for it, and then the message he gets on the surface is that he is too much of what he is, and that he's lesser for it. and it's like. [screams]

[explodingsaturn]

maybe i should just stop talking. i want all of my secrets back.

[badaziraphaletakes]

Making jokes and laughing about a frightening experience does NOT mean someone does not appreciate the gravity of a situation. Quite the contrary, in fact - it is a very, very common way of processing trauma.

In fact, I can't offhand think of any traumatized people I know who haven't make a joke about their traumatic experience/s. It's a deeply normal, human thing to do.

(And please don't try to tell me Aziraphale seeing Crowley be kidnapped and then being hit over the head with a crowbar (?), violently kidnapped himself, and dragged to hell, and then seeing the awful people and place Crowley had been stuck with for the past 100k+ years, witnessing the usher being murdered in cold blood before his eyes, and wondering if the same thing might happen to him, and/or if he hell was going to discover his and Crowley's secret, not to mention seeing for probably the first time what exactly the thermos of holy water would have done to Crowley if he'd used it, wasn't traumatic. First of all, that just is. Second of all, look at his irises. He was probably having a bit of fun - not surprising considering how relieved he was that the holy water didn't work on him and hell appeared not to have caught onto the deception; of course you'd be a bit giddy - but he was also terrified and scarred and angry and disgusted and I don't even know what else.)

There's a reason the rates of depression found among comedians are off-the-charts. And it's not because humor causes depression (we know it actually alleviates it). It's because traumatized people and people with mental illness (I mean, the Venn diagram between those groups is basically a circle, but y'know) gravitate to humor. It is one of the most powerful weapons we have to ward off despair. Humor can save us when nothing else can.

It can also stop you from wanting to punch someone when you're really, really angry. I propose that we can see smoldering contempt and fury and outrage and disgust on Aziraphale's face at the end of the scene, hidden just under that cheeky grin. It's some masterful acting work by Tennant, so many emotions going on at the same time.

Also - may I point out that Crowley loved Aziraphale's jokes about the whole thing. Aziraphale knows how to cheer Crowley up. A big part of the reason he was so sarcastic in hell was for Crowley, to score some points against the people who have been oppressing him for millennia without him ever being able to answer back. (And also he was acting that way because he figured it was how Crowley would act and he had to be convincing. If he'd gone in there and hadn't been 100% confidence and swagger, hell would have noticed something was off. They're paranoid, and Beelzebub, at least, is smart. No flies on that one. Heh, heh. Did Aziraphale overplay it a bit? Maybe. But the deception worked, so clearly his approach was correct overall.)

And finally: Don't tell me Crowley wasn't having a little fun with all this, too. His laugh on the bench was sincere:

He could arguably also be accused of overplaying it a bit with the neck cracking (which I don't blame him for; I would have done the same - but I don't see anyone getting mad at him for having a little fun the way they did with Azi):

And he LOVED getting to breathe fire at Gabriel & Co.

Which is exactly as it should be. :)

[lostmf]

By @desnos

[amuseoffyre]

Hypothesis: Ed actually already knows how to fix and clean stuff around a house (not just a ship), because he used to do that as a child (to save his mum the trouble - if anyone laughed, he could make the excuse that he was saving her time and energy that she could use for doing *paid* housework for posh gits). He might also have learned to cook on a budget from her, but maybe that's speculating too far...

I wouldn't be surprised by that tbh. In poor households, kids were expected to take up labour as soon as they were big enough to hold tool. Whether in the house or being sent out to work, there's plenty of historical aspects that would support Ed being pulled into domestic tasks early on.

That said, Ed and domesticity have a... complicated relationship. Our man desperately wants to be married and in a safe and loving relationship, but his template for what a happy/safe relationship is skewed at best.

I know I've mentioned this before, but it has me in a chokehold: Ed definitely self-soothes using simple domestic tasks in times when he's in situations where his whole world has just turned on a dime, usually as a mechanism to say "look everything's fine. We're all good".

When he's surrendered his identity, his beard has been shaved off, and he's now pretty much a slave to the empire for the next ten years, he's sitting folding laundry. Because it's fine. This is all fine. I'm fine. You're fine. We're fine.

When he's been abandoned by Stede and vaguely shared about it with the crew and decided to turn them on a new path towards a talent show, he goes back to his cabin and starts cleaning. Because it's fine. This is all fine. I'm fine. You're fine. We're fine. WE ARE ALL FINE SHUSH DON'T LOOK TO CLOSE OR SAY ANYTHING.

And, of course, most significantly, when he's shot Izzy and had his breakdown on the front of the ship, but the next morning, he's cleaned all of the cabin and scrubbed it down and freshened himself up. BECAUSE. IT'S. FINE. THIS IS ALL FINE. I'M FINE. YOU'RE FINE. WE'RE FINE.

We are definitely not going to push someone to kill us. We are definitely not going to drive the ship into a storm because no one is taking the fucking hint to do the big job for us.

WE. ARE. FINE.

Even within the context of his own subconscious in the gravy basket there are layers and layers of him folded in there: the most hated parts of himself manifested in the shape of Hornigold but Hornigold is doing all the domestic tasks.

We see him making soup and trying to feed Ed as a parent would try and feed a stubborn child, foraging for ingredients for boil-up and weaving sandals. Also worth mentioning the stuff Hornigold has around him are all Maori elements - the type of woven sandals, the ingredients for the food, the basket. The two parts of Ed's traumatic history incarnate - one of his white abusive father figures carrying out the domestic routines of his Maori mother.

Because it's fine there too. Totally fine. Not at all avoiding anything. STOP LOOKING. NOTHING TO SEE.

And later, much later, he decides to become a fisherman and take on the domestic chores of sorting out the meals for his employer, because... well, you know the drill. He's fine. He's totally fine. He's not at all stuck in a repeating cycle of taking refuge in domesticity and pretending everything is totally fine and normal and not at all anything to do with the memory of the domestic situation in his childhood growling down his neck.

[grislyintentions]

(@icicle-dragon) -for Xiao

Xue gave Xiao a surprise hug! He felt his big brother needed one.

A sharp inhale punctuates the air as the Yaksha reflexively tensed, having not expected to be caught in an embrace. Anticipation towards physical violence gives way to matching hostility and aggression, discomfort seizing a hold of his instincts.

Xiao does not jerk away but the minute flinch in his expression is hard to miss.

"Don't-" Gritted teeth ground out the beginning of his words before the older adeptus is able to suppress the rest of the venom. He takes a shaky breathe. Then another. Allows tension to bleed out of him. There is an imperceptible shake in Xiao's hand when he raises it....to gently set his touch atop Xue's head.

"Don't surprise me like that," Xiao scolds lightly. "I could easily have mistaken you as a hilichurl trying to ambush me."

@icicle-dragon

[gor3sigil]

I have to share a story about why I HATE the term "trauma dumping".

So basically, we were at my at the time partner's house with friends of them and we were talking about mental health.

I don't remember exactly how we came to this but one woman started talking about psychosis and her sister who is schizophrenic.

She had a lot of preconception about this and, while I am not schizophrenic, I dealt with psychosis and hallucinations.

So I started to talk about my experiences with that, stating AGAIN that I wasn't schizophrenic but I thought it was an interesting point of view.

Some other people started asking questions so I answered them, asking here and there if it was okay for me to talk about it, and nobody, INCLUDING the woman who started the conversation in the first place, said anything.

And at one point I saw she was uncomfortable and asked her if she'd rather drop the subject.

And then, she BLEW UP on me saying that I was trauma dumping, that she felt like she was partaking in a conversation she NEVER ASKED to partake in (again, she was the one who brought up the subject), that I was being insensitive and over sharing shit and that she didn't like it.

Like, bitch, I asked a bunch of time if it was okay, you were the one talking about these symptoms without even living it and trying to teach people some crappy over the counter shit, but now that she wasn't the Main Character with the Knowledge it became an issue and I was the problem.

I know that I'm open about my experiences and tend to talk about it but I ALWAYS make sure that people on the other end are okay with me sharing this. This was just utter bullshit.

And online or IRL, I just noticed that the term "trauma dumping" is just the easy way out of a conversation that makes you feel uncomfortable while putting the blame on the person doing it.

You can absolutely put boundaries, but don't you dare guilt someone just to avoid being seen as an asshole and make yourself clean of anything. It's healthy to state that you are uncomfortable talking about things, but you can do so without making up shit about others.

[alpaca-clouds]

Astarion, Trauma, Depression & Healing

I just cannot stop thinking about this topic, so I am going to talk about it. Mind you, technically I could extend this topic to some of the other characters as well - maybe I will - but for now let me talk about our favorite vampire spawn.

The game does make an effort to give every character at least a somewhat happy or at least bittersweet ending. (With the exception of Karlach, really. Yeah, I am still bitter about it.) But of course the general way it goes about the character plotlines is that they basically remove one issue and then end.

And for me there is the question: What would realistically happen after the ending?

So, let me talk a bit about psychology.

This is for the vampire spawn ending.

Spoilers for all acts.

CW: Abuse, trauma, depression

Astarion is traumatized.

"No shit!" I hear you say.

But yes, he is traumatized. To be exact he has CPTSD. Complex trauma. The difference between this and normal trauma is, that it develops over a long time. Specifically when it is not one or even just a few traumatizing experiences, but it is a lasting traumatizing situation. And in the case of our dear vampire spawn it is a traumatizing situation that lasted for almost two centuries!

Being unable to escape a traumatizing situation means that people in those situations build coping mechanisms as a method of survival. And I would argue that Astarion's entire asshole snarky personality mostly is a coping mechanism.

There are a several aspects of the situation with Cazador, that were traumatizing.

Several people have already talked about how basically Cazador has subjected his spawn to basically every single kind of abuse. We know there was physical abuse (for fuck's sake, they were tortured on a regular basis), there was sexual abuse (they were forced into prostitution and there is some dialogue that say that Cazador also raped them), there was emotional and psychological abuse (just look how Cazador talks to Astarion - and how he played the spawn against each other), and there was also a general sense of neglect.

But there is also the fact that Cazador forced them to do bad things. Be it to catch those victims (who the spawn thought would die) and there is also a bit of evidence that he probably forced them to otherwise kill - maybe people who were in the way of his politics. After all he also was quite active within the politics of the city. We also know from some dialogue that Cazador used his absolute control over the spawn at times to force them to torture themselves or each other.

One big aspect of people in abusive relationships (be it romantic relationships - or familiar relationships) is that the abuser will try to take away any possible support. I do assume that him playing the spawn against each other and making them torture each other is partly meant to destroy trust between them.

And of course, they just could not get help from the outside. Partly because of his rules and command. And partly, too, because I assume any attempt to get help would end the potential helper's life.

We also know from Astarion's dialogue, as well as the narrator text in the Astarion origin that Astarion gave in fairly quickly and tried to just do what Cazador wanted him to do. But we also know that it basically made no difference because Cazador would find some faults he could punish Astarion for.

So, all in all Astarion spend about 200 years in constant survival mode.

Here is the thing: For someone who has spend two centuries in those condition he appears surprisingly... functioning. Sure, he is a snarky bastard. And yeah, he also cannot fathom you helping him without him paying you in sex. But he... well, he is not a pile of misery sitting in a corner.

There might well be a reason for this, though: He is still in survival mode (because of the entire tadpole and world ending thing), and he also has a concrete goal (kill Cazador). The big question is how he is gonna relate and work through the trauma after the end of the game, when both the life-or-death situation ended and Cazador is dead.

Because, look. Our boy is going to need to work through all of that trauma. There is no way around it. He needs to work through it and it is gonna be painful.

A lot of people with CPTSD do develop a depression - and I doubt that this precious vampire spawn is going to be any different. Heck, I am going to go so far and say that we do see him being depressed quite a bit even in the game, even as he tries to hide it.

We know from the game he has nightmares of Cazador. Nightmares that kinda mix memories with fears. And those are probably just going to be a fact of his life for a few years. So, sleep is going to be hard at times - and so is going to be other stuff.

There will be stuff that triggers him. In my stuff I write him as easily being triggered by sexual stuff - because there is so much trauma related to it - as well as getting triggered when he is reminded of his scars. But he is also quite good at triggering himself by falling down memory holes.

Given that when you play the Astarion origin we have at least two scenes (probably more, but so far I encountered it two times) where he halucinates Cazador being there and watching him, I would assume that this is also going to stay within his life. Him seeing or hearing Cazador, because it is just so engrained in his memory through trauma.

One big thing I see him struggling with most is, that everything he is right now is what Cazador made him. For better or worse, all his learned behaviors are because of Cazador. And Cazador of course wanted to shape him. If Astarion ends up with Tav (or one of the origin characters), I can also very much see that this is gonna be a big issue for him. Because Astarion needs to change to heal. He cannot let himself be defined by Cazador. But if Tav tries to help this along, Astarion might just think that Tav is just another person who tries to mold him into someone else. (And yes, this is a point of conflict that I bring into Voice of the Voiceless.)

Another issue I could see arise is avoidance behavior. Basically... Here is the thing, trauma will never quite go away - but it can get better, if you work through it. But working through trauma is very, very painful, which is why a lot of traumatized folks instead try to avoid this. Becaue while it leads to betterment on the long run it is more painful for the moment than just trying to forget about it and distract yourself.

And given just the amount of trauma, I can see that easily happening here.

There is another big thing, too, though. Some people have already pointed it out before, but... If romanced it is fairly clear that Astarion is very, very emotionally dependent on Tav. Which absolutely makes a lot of sense, given that from his perspective Tav is (probably) the first ever person in a long, long time, who is actually nice to him and helps him. But you have to see that this, in the end, also is a type of avoidance behavior. Tav is safe, so he just sticks to Tav like a shadow, basically.

It seems to me from the game that Astarion is one of the characters in camp, who very much stick to themselves. Like, you can gleam from dialgoues (even though I still gotta say, I wanted more scenes of the characters doing stuff together at camp) that Wyll and Karlach do hang out at camp. And that Halsin and Gale over time do also kinda take care of everyone. But Astarion mostly tries to stick to himself, not really making connections to anyone.

And I think that also is in a way part of avoidance behavior. Friends means opening himself up, which means having a weakness, which then brings fear of it being exploited. So... yeah, sticking to Tav and Tav alone is so much safer.

But, here, too I think it is something that he, if he wants to heal, needs to learn to overcome. To put it differently: This man needs some friends. He needs people in his life besides Tav. But to get him there might be hard.

I mean, let's be frank. This man needs therapy. He needs therapy so badly. But... I somehow doubt that there are therapists in Faerûn.

So, yeah... He needs to figure it somewhat out on his own, which is only gonna make this harder.

tl;dr

This man is a mess. And even if everything goes well, he is gonna be a mess for at least a few years. Because you just do not get over 200 years of trauma upon trauma, without being a mess somewhere in between.

[baldurs-gate-official]

Thinking about Astarion and trauma again (shocking)

He really is the first character I've seen that depicts PTSD/C-PTSD the way he does. He's angry. He's collecting the pieces of himself he had to chip away over the years and figuring out how to fit them back together again, and it's hard.

I rarely see good PTSD rep in media (and C-PTSD is even less depicted/understood). And when I do, it's always the soft pitiable side of it. The side of it that's more palatable and easy to accept. But the reality is that the trauma that stems from such abuse can be vicious, and messy. It can lash out and push people away. Bring out the worst in you, at times. It can be so, so angry.

I love that we see that in Astarion. Both because it's good representation, and because I'm a survivor too. I'm angry. I'm upset. I want to kick and scream about it, but I can't. I feel like I must always remain in control, or that displaying those feelings will only hurt those around me and push them away. I don't want that. I don't want to hurt others or be alone.

Seeing Astarion do those things, being angry and messy over it all... It makes me so happy. He says things to Cazador I wish I could say to my own abusers, with no regard to how others perceive it. He doesn't hold back. And I get to see a character with a very similar kind of trauma do/say the things I only dream about, and not be abandoned for it. He's given the chance to heal and grow as a person, and feel loved. He gets to have a happy ending.

And he gets to be mad. And that's ok.

[mossy-petrichor]

The deer has a scar along its spine

It's ugly and it makes the deer's body crooked. The deer has a lifelong limp because of it

Sometimes, the scar opens into the wound it once was. It's gruesome and oozes blood, dripping red along the grass wherever the deer goes. Flies lay and bathe in the wound, buzzing constantly near the deer's ears

The deer can't run from the flies. They come with the wound. The wound comes with the scar. The scar comes with the deer

The deer can't run from itself

It's tried to

Everyone runs from the deer. It looks sickly and wrong and the wound in its back smells rotten

The deer can smell it too. But it can't run from itself

It's tried to

[reimeichan]

I've been slowly learning to reclaim things that I love for myself. So many of my hobbies and passions are tainted by history: piano was forced upon me as a child and was a huge source of trauma by itself, dance was fun until my teacher started shit talking me about my weight, even photography sucks because it's something my parents enjoyed and god forbid I turn out anything like them.

But I'm teaching myself to decouple the past from these activities. I acknowledge the trauma associated with piano, and also that I miss playing pieces I enjoy. I allow myself time to hammer around when I can and to take breaks as long as I need to, to make the music making enjoyable in a way it never was for me as a child. I learn new dances from youtube, and giggle when I get the moves right. I still can't record myself, but I'm re-learning that my body shape has nothing to do with my ability. And while I still don't take a lot of pictures, the people around me do and I'm starting to associate picture taking with them instead of my parents. I guess this, too, is a part of healing.

[mizusjawline]

Abusive parents will put you into this world without your consent, even though they are completely unfit to parent, even though the abuse you will suffer at their hands will be so painful that you'll start contemplating suicide by the age of 13

And then behave as if you owe them gratitude for being born