#cw: cptsd

[tsaomengde]

CW: discussion of the concept of trauma

On a whim I started to rewatch DS9. I just finished the first two-parter, "Emissary."

Preface - I am not any kind of psychiatric professional. I've read a book on CPTSD, I have loved ones (including two adopted kids) with it, I've done a lot of therapy about my own trauma. I consider myself well-informed, but far from an Authority on this subject.

This episode was very interesting to me because the last time I watched it was before I had kids, before I was even married I think (though I did watch the show with my wife, I just think we weren't officially married yet). Examining the events of this episode through the lens of trauma analysis reveals a shockingly erudite examination of trauma as concept, particularly for something written in the nineties.

I wonder how much Michael Piller and Rick Berman understood trauma when they wrote this. Okay, being real, Rick Berman is a homophobic and misogynistic trash pile, so probably this was more Piller, but hell, Orson Scott Card wrote Ender's Game, sometimes terrible people write good shit. I digress.

Our main character is Benjamin Sisko. We see him on his starship in a battle where the ship is all but destroyed. While evacuating he goes to his quarters to find his wife and son. His son is unconscious but alive. His wife is dead. His fellow officer has to physically drag him out of there as the ship comes apart around them to keep him from staying and dying with her.

Three years later he's considering leaving Starfleet. He's given a dead-end assignment on a shit-ass space station in a system with a provisional government that's probably about to collapse into civil war. He loves his son but you can tell he's hurting.

During the course of the episode, he and his friend Jadzia travel through a wormhole (a kind of tunnel through space). This wormhole is the home for the Prophets, an alien species that exists outside of linear time. They take Sisko out of his spaceship and spend days of our subjective time trying to make sense of him, though for him it's implied it doesn't actually take all that long.

When they talk to him, they assume the forms of people from his life, in settings from his past, because this is the only way they can communicate with him. They ask him to explain linear time to them, how living beings can exist at only one point in time at once and can not only survive with but actively treasure the fact that they don't know what's going to happen next. While they ask him these questions the settings keep changing, and they always come back to his starship. His quarters, the ship burning down around them. His wife lying there dead while an alien being wearing her facsimile asks him to explain death.

Sisko begs the Prophets to stop bringing him back to this particular place, because it's the hardest place to be in for him. They tell him that they aren't doing any of this; it's all him. He chooses to bring them here. When he asks them for the power to take them somewhere else, they tell him they can't give him a power he denies for himself. They tell him they keep coming back here with him because he exists *here.*

He breaks down and admits that it's true. He has never figured out how to move on, how to live without his wife. He says, "it's not linear."

When we are triggered, we are literally taken back in our minds to a previous place of trauma. Even though we are safe now, we are not actually experiencing the trauma that marked us, our brains think we are, and react accordingly, with panic, fear, anger, etc.

Seeing this visually represented by Sisko unconsciously taking himself back to the scene of his greatest trauma over and over, and then seeing him admit his hurt and experience catharsis, was very moving for me. It resonated very strongly with my understanding of trauma. It was shockingly prescient for how we understand trauma and CPTSD today.

Obviously trauma in real life is not treated by having one big "oh I have been hurting and I don't want to be anymore" moment. Magic wormhole aliens are a hell of a drug, I guess. But that's TV for you. And the fact that it affected me so much speaks to its enduring power.

[virgo-dream]

Re: Virgo Rises Once More

just listened to the entirety of Blue Monday by New Order for the first time in my life and man, this is brain chemistry altering shit. I’ve been trying to listen to all the amazing recommendations you guys were so nice to send me. The one overarching feeling of this experience so far is this: wistfulness.

I’ve mentioned it here a few times, but I feel like this is important context to this post. I have C-PTSD, and most of my childhood and teen years are just a void filled with very specific (and hurtful memories). Listening to all this music these past couple of days has made me access the feeling of good memories, if that makes any sense. Like riding the bus back home from school on an late autumn afternoon. I can see the streets my school bus used to go by, and I can remember the look and feel of the books I used to read on my way home. My trusty discman on my lap, no-skip technology not letting me miss a single second of any track on my burned CD.

It also lights up very specific imagery in my brain; of brick walls and graffiti, of a newly renovated sidewalk and concrete bleachers by the semi Olympic swimming pool on an overcast day, where I pretended to forget my swimsuit at home to get out of class. Of wanting to grow up, wanting to be free, wanting to escape a life that was hurtful. Of having hope, despite feeling buried in fear and having panic attacks nearly daily. It makes the memory of the graveyard next to my school less terrifying, even knowing I’ve got a loved one resting there. Makes me feel like I found the missing piece of the puzzle, somehow.

Reminds me that I dyed my hair pink at 16, and that I decided I would give bullies reason to think I was weird if they weren’t going to stop harassing me anyway. Reminds me of watching The Princess Diaries for the first time and happening upon the books in my school’s library. Of taking them home even though I was too young for the themes. Of finding my favourite book in “We Need To Talk About Kevin”. About sleeping in protest to not being able to listen to music on my iPod because I was grounded for my bad grades.

It reminds me I had a childhood after all. That I was defiant, maybe I was a rebel. And that child wanted so many things that I’m so close to achieving now.

It reminded me I’m alive after all.

[honeypiecastiel]

I have been disassociated for the past two days and today I finally am feeling the world around me and like I’m real. It’s wild how you can just be snapped back into your body and feel real world emotions again.

[wanderingibon]

anya deserved so much better

[badaziraphaletakes]

Yes!!! These are such good points!

❤️❤️❤️

Bad Crowley Take for y'all, to mix it up a little bit!

Me when I read this:

Y'all, Crowley did NOT choose to fall. He’s said so many, many, many times. We're getting real tired of explaining this. (EDIT: What I, Mod X, meant to convey here is a. That given that Crowley said he didn’t mean to fall, it feels wrong to doubt his word about his own ab*se, and b. Whatever else Crowley may or may not have chosen, he definitely did not choose being thrown into a pool of boiling sulfur - assuming heaven knew it was there- on himself. No one “chooses” to be tortured that way. Hope this clears some things up. Sorry for the confusion caused by my poor wording.)

And one person’s ab*sive household (company? I don't even know lol) is NOT a "better" or "worse" experience to live through than another. That's just not how it works. We do NOT get to say one ab*se survivor had it “better” than another.

[explodingsaturn]

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

[alpaca-clouds]

BG3 fans, we gotta talk CPTSD

Okay, I have spend about a week considering writing this blog, but I really gotta say, that it is something people really need to understand. See, I mostly see this issue with Astarion and his depiction in fandom. However, I would argue that it is a thing that affects literally all characters that play some sort of bigger in this entire game. Including many NPCs.

But let me start with Astarion. See, I wrote the blog two weeks ago about people being judgy on people, who do not want to have graveyard sex with him. Mostly people will argue how Astarion should be allowed to have his agency in that moment - while I argued that whoever the player is playing should have also agency in that scene. Including the agency to say "no" for whatever reason. I also included that my Tav absolutely denied Astarion, because he was not trusting that Astarion in the scene really was ready for it, for a variety of reasons. Which is very much a valid reason for someone not to want to sleep with someone else. (Literally every reason is a good reason for that, mind you.)

And obviously there came the comment, that went basically: "As someone who was raped I am very appalled by you saying that raped people cannot consent." Which is very much not what I said.

What I said was, that my Tav did not consent. Yes, he did not consent because he thought Astarion was not ready for it - but he is the one not consenting. It does not matter for this whether his assumption about Astarion is true or not. Tav does not feel comfortable in the scene, so Tav does not want sex right there.

However... If you consider the drow orgy scene, Tav is also very much right. If you do that scene after defeating Cazador, Astarion is enthusiastically consenting to that orgy, but he still ends up dissociating during the scene. (And in that scene, even if your character notices it, you cannot go "Stop!" Which I hate.)

Here is the thing. If you are in the BDSM scene, you might actually have encountered a scenario in real life where someone was enthusiastically consenting to something - only to them realize, that they were not into it at all. And people can withdraw their consent IRL at this point. Only that in this game, obviously you can't. So within the game choices I will just start out with "no" for this character.

Still, that is actually not what I mainly wanted to talk about. No.

What I wanted to talk about is the other thing. I absolutely know that for a variety of reasons a lot of SA survivors do identify with Astarion, and I do not want to take that from anyone. I think it is amazing that we got a character with whom we see this issue portrayed seriously. And let's face it. Especially in tumblr fandom circles, we will have a lot of SA survivors, because the userbase of this website is majority afab, and many are queer. And we know from statistics that queer afab people are even more likely than non-queer afab people to experience SA at some point in there life. So, yes, Astarion is going to be embraced by this community makes sense - even without his dashing looks.

But here we get to the actual meat of the issue: Astarion was not just raped. Astarion was abused in a variety of ways - some of them sexual - over the course of 200 years. He went not through a single traumatic event, but an ongoing trauma that, again, lasted for 200 years.

Or to put different: Astarion does not have PTSD. He has C-PTSD. Complex trauma. The kind of trauma that develops when the trauma lasts over a long, long time, without the survivor getting a chance to ever really properly ever relax. Something that was very true for Astarion's time under Cazador. He was under constant threat of rape, torture, and other forms of violence.

While CPTSD is a form of PTSD, it has some differing symptoms - and additional symptoms from plain old PTSD.

I found this graphic on this blog here, and found it fairly good in the depictions. (If you google CPTSD you will find several graphics like this.) It shows very well the additional symptoms, compared to normal trauma.

Generally speaking, CPTSD brings a lot stronger issues with self-worth, interpersonal problems, and emotional regulation. CPTSD folks are often prone to emotional outbursts (this graphic names anger, but technically it can be all other kinds of emotional outbursts - which is why at times CPTSD gets confused with BPD).

And Astarion is written like this. He shows very much all the symptoms of CPTSD. And let's be honest: That is an issue he will have to deal with for a long, long while.

But... As I said, the same is actually true for pretty much all the characters.

If you look at the companions, it is obvious.

Gale spent at least a year in constant fear of blowing up. While Mystra's abusiveness towards him within the relationship prior the orb is more fanon than canon (though the relationship was defnitely not an easy one), the "one year in constant fear of death" is very likely going to instill some form of CPTSD in him.

Karlach was a slave for 10 years, forced to fight in the hells. While she will also probably suffer from certain forms of PTSD more common in soldiers. Additionally I would argue that she also has some CPTSD from tiefling-racism. While she does not bring it up often... She does seem to have a thing there.

With Wyll it is a bit more complicated. Yes, for him I would see the kind of CPTSD I have - parental abuse related. Ulder was not openly abusive, but neither was my mother, and guess what fucked me most up in my childhood, despite experiencing some really bad violence elsewhere.

Shadowheart was abused by Viconia and midwashed and tortured and was forced to kill her fucking pet mouse. Bonus points that a lot of it happened during her childhood. She very much is gonna suffer the consequences.

Lae'zel... Do I really need to say something about her upbringing among the Gith?

Then we have Halsin. We know fairly little about his background, given that he is very coy in talking about it. But his "three years as a drow slave" definitely make it likely that he has developed some form of CPTSD.

And then we have Jaheira and Minsc. For whom just the... Well, look folks, the adventuring lifestyle would logically also leave you with CPTSD of some sort.

Even if you play a Tav who entered the game after having a very untraumatic life... They will spent what has to be at least two months with a tadpole in their head threatening to kill them - while half of Baldur's Gate is trying to do the same. They'll have PTSD after this at the very least, if not CPTSD. (Even though, let's face it, chances are we all gave our Tavs more than enough background trauma to go along with it, right?)

And same goes for so many other characters. The tiefling refugees. Our main villains (especially Gortash and Orin). Cazador. The other vampire spawn (duh). The list goes on.

So, what am I trying to say here?

Well, for once I just want to make sure folks understand that CPTSD is a thing that exists and while being similar to normal PTSD differs in some points. Including the fact that people with CPTSD have a high likelihood to make very rash decisions driven by instable emotional states, that might be harmful to them on the long run.

And mind you. In real life most people with CPTSD have it because either they were bullied for a long time, or were in an abusive relationship of some sort. (Abusive parents, abusive partners, abusive friends/roommates.) But even in those heightened scenarios the game represents for the most part - the issues are gonna be still mainly the same.

[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.

[honeypiecastiel]

You know what the most fun thing about having cptsd is??? Thinking none of your friends actually care about you and that being solidified when they post pictures of them hanging out without you even though one of them is literally coming with you to a tattoo appointment tomorrow so that you're not anxious and alone. But instead of me recognizing that they can hang out without me I just feel like they don't actually like me because I was shown in my childhood that I don't matter.

[69constellationsinatrenchcoat]

If I see another post going on about how we should kill all abusive people, I'm going to lose my shit.

Not all people who make abusive choices intend to abuse others, sometimes they're doing their best with little resources and support.

Haven't we all made bad decisions? Everyone has hurt another person whether or not they realise they have.

Some definitions of "abuse" would have the entire population killed.

Abusers are often victims of abuse themselves. Cycles of abuse perpetuate. It doesn’t justify their behaviour, it explains it. but should we really be resorting to murder if that’s the case?

What about compassion and support?

It’s okay to be angry at what they did to you. It’s okay to be angry on behalf of others. Your anger is there for a reason.

But sometimes we need to step back, breathe and consider it from another perspective.

And fuck, I UNDERSTAND, THAT’S SO HARD, but I know you all have it in you.

People make bad choices if they're mad, or scared or stressed.

[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.

[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. :)

[prose-among-the-trees]

You know what’s really scary?

Being influenced by a community because believing them is safer than understanding the truth.

I was not programmed. The people who experience organized abuse and psychological abuse are real, cult survivors are real. I wanted an explanation for why I was treated the way I was, I wanted to believe that my abuser was intentionally hurting me. That it was her fault in her entirety. I wanted to believe she intentionally created my did so I could be a better kid.

But the thing is, she was just clueless. I have to understand and accept that my abuser just thought she was being a great parent. It’s not fun, knowing that there’s nuance to what you’ve experienced. None of it was my fault, and all of it was hers, of course, but it was an unintentional fault that will affect me for the rest of my life.

I wanted so badly to believe that she was maliciously harming me, training me to be a perfect little solider of a child. I needed to believe there was a concrete cause to my cptsd and did instead of a bunch of little things that ruined my life.

And that? Dealing with the fact that I wasn’t programmed and it really was just mistakes from a mother who shouldn’t have been involved?

That’s fucking terrifying.

[shcultureis3]

Sh + cptsd culture is genuinley feeling happy after a satisfying sesh bc you went deep enough and drew enough blood. Not even knowing why you think this way. But how can this be so bad when it makes you so pretty and happy? I dont think i could ever stop for anyone, sorryy

.

[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.