#cw: cptsd

[badaziraphaletakes]

Such good commentary! Thank you so much @turquoisedata for sharing this one with us!

I've seen some people saying that Muriel is annoying, shallow, one-dimensional, etc because of their sunshiney attitude. But those people are missing the point that Muriel isn't happy and sparkly because of a lack of depth as a character - it's actually evidence of how deeply abused and traumatized they are.

Look at the barely concealed sadness on their face when they refer to themself as "no one." Heaven treats them horribly, but they have to just smile and pretend it's fine. Because they're an angel, so what other choice do they have? They've been talked down to and told that they're unimportant for thousands of years. That they're beneath literally all of the other angels, just a 37th order scrivener, a nobody.

And so in order to cope with the horrific way that they're treated, they hide all of their emotions and trauma behind a cheerful mask. But if you look at how they act around the Archangels - how terrified they are to even approach Michael and Uriel, you can see how truly abused they are, and the pain and fear that they're hiding.

The other reason for their over-the-top cheerfulness is that they're so incredibly lonely. They've probably never had a friend - every couple hundred years someone comes and asks them a question, and that's it.

The poor thing has basically been kept in solitary confinement for thousands of years, of course they're going to be thrilled to speak to anyone at all, much less actually get to leave their desk and go to earth. Their sheer delight at everything on earth isn't just them being ditzy - it's the first time they've ever experienced anything other than the cold emptiness of heaven. The first time they've been allowed a tiny break from the horrible way that they're treated by the other angels.

Poor Muriel is so desperate for connection and validation that they're so excited to be needed, even after being called "the dim one" to their face. They hardly even reacted, it definitely wasn't their first time being called something like that.

All in all, Muriel is just like every single one of us who smiles through pain and loneliness and abuse, because we have no other choice. It doesn't mean that they're shallow and airheaded, or that they're any less traumatized than Crowley and Aziraphale. It means that they've learned that smiling is the only way to survive, because they're trapped in a heaven that feels like hell.

[badaziraphaletakes]

"Without knowing or perceiving any danger" except that the Metatrash is a murderous lunatic whose organization has repeatedly put Aziraphale in great danger and who Aziraphale knows collaborates with hell, and therefore could put his husband in great danger as well.

"How would he go about listening in?" First of all, NG literally put in that moment with him hearing Michael from outside the bookshop, to make it so obvious that it's like he's practically hitting us over the head with a 2x4 to make sure we get it. But frankly, I almost wish he hadn't, because the real issue here is that Aziraphale can't afford to assume he's *not* listening in.

(Oh and also he (Metatrash) popped up right after Crowley disclosed the secret of the giant miracle. After 6000 years of forced paranoia, I guarantee Aziraphale picked up on that. You get soooo used to noticing the smallest clues as to what your ab*ser's up to. Hypervigilance, and all. Just because we don't see Aziraphale drink as often as Crowley does, doesn't mean he doesn't have the angelic equivalent of C-PTSD, and probably PTSD too. It's that tired male PTSD stereotype rearing its ugly head again.)

[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.

[wanderingibon]

anya deserved so much better

[kairoswouldnever]

i hate it how hard it is for me to keep myself functioning

i get it self-care is absolutely non-existent with me but when i fail to keep my space clean, it really bugs me. i sometimes wonder just what kind of mental illness mix do i have, and if it's just cPTSD or some form of a high-functioning depression. i am at a loss, but i know things are wrong.

at least i did clean today. and decluttered. and decided to get rid of some things that most definitely bring no joy, only bad memories.

[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.

[lostmf]

By @desnos

[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.

[badaziraphaletakes]

Hello! Was looking for something on my blog and found this post

https://www.tumblr.com/turquoisedata/730723784383987712/i-am-literally-crying-because-shit-thats-me

And I wondered if you'd seen it/posted anything along these lines before? (You might have and I might have just missed it because Tumblr hates me and doesn't show me loads of stuff I want to see 🙃)

(if you have you can just delete this!!!)

Hi!

We've touched briefly on the fact that Muriel is very Autistic-appearing (thank you so much for the reblog pointing that out, @phoen1xr0se ! You're the best!) and how that has made people misjudge them as shallow/childish/naive/etc, but as far as I can recall we've never done a post about their traumatized behaviors. I'm so glad this person has done that here!

Thank you so much for sharing this EXCELLENT meta! It definitely didn't make me tear up... ;)

[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.

[trinketbug]

on healing.

[thestarlightforge]

Your friendly holiday reminder:

It is normal to draw and maintain firm boundaries with (and/or hate) people who have abused you.

You are not being absurd, dramatic, “too emotional,” or a ruiner of anything.

You deserve safety, and to be surrounded by people who know, love and accept you for who you are.

Signed,

Your Fellow in Perseverance

[honeypiecastiel]

My brain conjured up a weird fantasy world where my ex bestfriend (who was horrible to me and I still have lasting damage from) and I met up and I drove them to work??? And now it’s caused a bunch of flashbacks and I’m having a rough morning

[lostmf]