#in which shiro has shitty coping mechanisms & sebastian believes he doesn't have any problems bc reasons

[amorremanet]

takashi shirogane + coping a n d seb + sleep habits

the “character + thing” headcanon meme (aka, “the best of all possible memes, c’mon, you know you wanna”)

Shiro + coping

Shiro voice: “coping? I don’t know her”

Okay, but in all seriousness

It isn’t that Shiro has NO coping skills or coping mechanisms that work for him, and it isn’t that he has no idea how to cope with anything — quite the opposite, really.

But a huge problem for him is that a lot of his coping techniques are, at best, non-ideal and at worst, basically a slow-burn form of self-harm that’s hard to notice because he isn’t obviously crashing and burning, or obviously having some kind of problem, and because he isn’t obviously in trouble, Shiro feels like his techniques must be totally okay

Even if he might acknowledge that they aren’t okay, though? Good luck getting him to actually do anything about that; he’s pretty sure that there are bigger problems

Like, one thing with Shiro is that, for all he values patience and for all he praises forethought, he also gets very easily frustrated if he can’t do something. If that something can’t directly affect whatever the Big Problem of the moment is, then Shiro needs to at least feel like he is Doing Something Productive — which, for him, usually means something like working out.

Maybe it could mean sparring or training with someone, but Shiro is one of those ambiverts who both enjoys being around people and can get destabilized very quickly if he’s left alone for too long, but who also needs a lot of time to himself to just breathe and decompress.

It was like that before he was taken prisoner by the Galra, e.g., a stressful as Hell exam season leading to a big night out and all kinds of hijinks with the other cadets in his class because oh man, everybody needed to just get away from studying, and Shiro would’ve been worried about how his grades would look when they came back so he needed to feel competent and one thing that makes him feel competent is making sure that other people are having a good time — and to a different extent, just being around others while they’re having a good time because who had to learn the hard way about how much his empathy can turn into a Bad Thing for him and how to set boundaries on it? Shiro did

—but then after said night out, he’d retire to his dorm (which probably involved moping, half-asleep, while binge-listening to Fiona Apple, needing to be reminded that it’s generally pretty unhelpful to sleep through lunch and never do anything about it later), and maybe he’d be seen around the gym (with a huge set of headphones on because sure, they’re cumbersome but sometimes, other people don’t always notice earbuds and Shiro wants to please be left alone), and he’d probably only willingly deal with Keith or maybe Matt

Shiro’s time with the Galra has made this tendency worse, but it’s also shoved him into a situation where it’s hard to tell, since he’s the Decisive Head Of Voltron™ now, so he needs all that time alone, but feels like he can’t allow himself to have it or else

(“Or else” what? ……Well, okay, you got him there; Shiro has no idea, “or else what.” But it’d be something Bad, okay, and he is completely certain of this because he just is.)

—but despite the fact that working out can help him clear his head so he can try to deal with things and isn’t inherently bad, Shiro also doesn’t entirely understand this, “moderation” thing you speak of — at least, not when it’s being applied to him.

Sure, he gets it in theory…… but in practice, he has an approach that’s more like, “Okay, it hasn’t cleared my head yet, so clearly, it can’t be that I need to find some other way to deal with whatever is on my mind and troubling me right now; I just have to push harder until it does work.” Sometimes, he makes it work out okay.

Other times, it doesn’t, and Shiro either ends up getting interrupted by something (emergency drill, “a wild Sendak appeared!”, “oh no, the castle is trying to kill everyone!”, Coran begging him to come intervene so Lance and Pidge can’t try to turn something into a screen on which to play their Mercury Gameflux II, literally anything)

……or he ends up with a seriously peeved little brother who is very likely going to yell at him because Keith is worried and he’s scared and unfortunately for everyone, he tends to get angry when he’s scared and then promptly loses control of the volume of his voice (because he’s usually not aware of how loud he’s being until someone points it out)

All of this…… will probably not get any better when Shiro gets back from wherever the Hell he’s hiding. Like, on one hand, it might get so bad that it actually becomes a more visible problem and leads to him getting some kind of help and learning better coping skills (and things like, “Yes, you’re the Decisive Head Of Voltron and all, but you have a right to ask for help with your problems, too”)

……But it could also get a lot worse and Shiro could just get better at repressing everything and acting like everything is fine (relative to the situations they’re in, anyway), and focusing on everybody else’s issues while completely ignoring his own. Only time will tell.

Seb + sleep habits

Seb voice: “sleep habits? Who’s that?”

……yeah, but seriously, though

Let’s not mince words about it: Seb’s sleep habits are unhealthy as shit, and if he maybe talked about them more and/or just took them more seriously (i.e., didn’t brush them off as, like, “I just couldn’t sleep last night, it’s not a big deal, it happens to everybody” [which isn’t untrue, Seb, but the thing is, it doesn’t happen quite so consistently with most people unless there is something Not Good going on for them] or look for tons of excuses about why he couldn’t sleep), then it’s quite possible that he would’ve gotten a depression diagnosis a lot sooner than he actually does in-story

Unfortunately, on one hand, we have one of Seb’s biggest and most common problems in all things ever (namely that he does not think he has any so-called, “real problems,” because that’s silly, why would he have, “real problems”; “real problems” are for literally everyone else in the world because, “they deserve to have ‘real problems’”)

—so, in his mind, of course it’s not a big deal when he can’t sleep but feels useless while he’s lying in bed with his pit-mix Lola, waiting to fall asleep (which makes him feel worse and can all too easily lead him down a self-loathing rabbit hole), so he gives up on that, goes back downstairs, and bakes things while watching whatever’s on TV or in the Blu-Ray/DVD player until he’s finally tired enough to crash on the couch for a couple hours

(which doesn’t really make him feel better and is often an ill-advised waste of his energy reserves, but on the other hand, doing something makes him feel less useless, and lets him temporarily escape the self-loathing rabbit hole — if for no other reason than, “well, he has to focus on his baking, which means he can’t focus on finding reasons to hate himself and/or rehashing old ones” — and he enjoys cooking, especially baking, and especially baking that he knows other people enjoy because he likes making other people happy)

Like, if it were literally anyone else doing anything like that, he’d go, “Oh man, that sounds really bad, are you okay, have you talked to a doctor or someone about it, is something stressing you out, can I help”

or, in an illustration of this double-standard that actually happens in character: the night before the story opens, Seb did exactly what I just said, while Pete intended to go home and get a decent amount of sleep…… but while he was doing a last check on the costumes he’s supervising for the production of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream that he’s involved in at work right now, he found several rips and missing buttons that no one mentioned to him

He figured it wouldn’t take him that long to fix everything, but he estimated very badly, and by the time he’d finished the task and gotten everything cleaned up again, it was late enough that he decided to crash on the couch in his boss’s office (because, considering the travel time, Pete could get more sleep by doing that than by going home), clean up in the bathroom and throw on one of the spare shirts that he keeps in his locker, then run out to grab breakfast, come back, and act like he totally had not slept in Mitch’s office last night

That worked out pretty well…… until Pete decided to take a follow-up nap during a stretch where he officially had a bit of spare time (“officially” meaning, “it wasn’t on any particular schedule, so technically, he was allowed, but lmao there is no such thing as spare time in the theatre, there just isn’t”)…… which got him told to go home and rest because Mitch would rather not do without his self-described, “Swiss Army thespian,” but if it’s a choice between sending Pete home for the afternoon and risking the chance that something’s amiss with Pete’s health and possibly losing him for at least a month while he goes to rehab again? ……Yeah, Mitch would take the former.

Either way, Pete still got more sleep than his Princess, and they swap stories about their respective low-sleep nights when they meet up at the gallery owned and run by their sponsor (Nick), where Stephen works as curatorial assistant

………and Seb is Concerned about Pete for losing track of time and nearly pulling an accidental all-nighter, but he doesn’t? really?? feel like??? there’s any reason???? for Pete????? to be concerned about him, Seb, having such bad insomnia that he wound up watching a marathon of Catching All-Stars reruns (despite how Seb doesn’t like that show and finds it uncomfortably voyeuristic) while baking a bunch of treats that he doesn’t personally enjoy, but he knows that his parents, Margot, Nick, and Nick’s husband Isaac all like them

(Catching All-Stars is sort of like what would happen if you took the a team of superheroes that’s like the unholy, commercialism-driven mashup of JLA, the Avengers, and Lance “Captain Amazing” Hunt from Mystery Men… and gave them a reality show that is so much like Keeping Up With The Kardashians that some people consider them to be rival shows.)

Because Seb totally understands that these kinds of things are, in general, Not Good. But see, if it’s him in any given situation like this, then his understanding of how Not Good things like this are goes right out the window because…… nope, it’s not a “real problem” if it’s happening to him, that makes no sense because of reasons

—and on the other hand, Seb is just…… depressingly ignorant about a lot of the realities of depression and what “depression” even means (in more than a very vague, “it is a mental illness and a ‘real problem,’ one of the worst ‘real problems’ that I can imagine personally, and you wouldn’t wish it on anybody unless you are a complete douchebag” sense)

If any of his friends or loved ones had ever been told that they were dealing with depression, you can bet that he would have read up on it a lot more and true, he still would’ve encountered some issues here (because of how so much information about all mental health issues is unreliable for one reason or another, and conflicting opinions in the sources [some of which are not reliable sources, but others of which are reliable and just have differences of opinion and approach because mental illness is complicated and difficult], and so on) — but at least Seb would not be quite so astoundingly ignorant about the illness that he’s been living with

Like, when Pete came back from rehab (which… well. He wanted to do an outpatient thing for his addictions — alcohol, Adderall, and cocaine — but his Mama disagreed and he needed her help paying for treatment, and Leilani went, “I feel like inpatient rehab would be better for you, and if you agree to go there, then I will make sure that you never need to worry about the cost of anything related to your treatment”)

—as I was saying.

When Pete came back from his trip to rehab, he’d done a lot of work on his problems with substance abuse, but he had also come to realize that he’d been dealing with anorexia nervosa for long enough that it was hard for him to remember when things had ever been different, which he hadn’t noticed for a lot of reasons

(chief among them: the unfortunately widespread belief that men don’t deal with eating disorders ever, especially not anorexia, because they are Lady Disorders For Women and anorexia nervosa is The Single Most Lady Disorder For Women Of Them All;

the fact that Pete’s presentation had never been as glaringly obvious as a stereotype-riddled Lifetime Original movie or Very Special Episode/Arc about EDs [which, unfortunately, does a lot of damage to people who don’t fit those images or don’t feel like they’re truly “sick enough” to have an ED because they’re “not as bad” as some character in some fictional representation of EDs];

and the fact that his disorder had developed so slowly that he — and everyone else in his life — looked at his symptoms and went, “that’s just some quirky Pete thing that he does that totally falls under the heading of average, non-disordered human variation, right?”)

Seb got to be the first person who heard about this, which would’ve happened even if he hadn’t picked Pete up at the airport because he’s the brother who Pete wishes he could have as a legal part of his family because Pete’s relationship with his biological brother is…… A Mess. And more than that, Pete’s Princess is the person with whom he has the easiest time being vulnerable, and doing things like, “being his most honest self, even when he feels like shit, or he feels ashamed of himself, or he wishes that he could be somebody else instead,” and “admitting when he’s terrified and wants to get well and be okay but he doesn’t know if he’s strong enough to do that” and, “just letting himself cry when he needs to”

But the more important thing is that, at the time Pete told him this and needed to cry and get reassurance from his best friend, Seb was similarly very ignorant about eating disorders.

He knew they existed, he knew they were bad, he knew the vague sketchy details about anorexia and bulimia (his biggest tidbit of knowledge was that he knew enough to differentiate between anorexia nervosa, anorexia mirabilis [i.e., “it’s complicated but there’s a whole wealth of mystical and spiritual writing about how some divine being or other told someone, like St. Catherine of Siena for example, not to eat because piety”], and, “anorexia as absence of appetite, which happens as a symptom of something other than anorexia nervosa”), and he kinda vaguely knew that guys could have eating disorders but largely only by virtue of personal experience

—by which I mean that one of his exes (Rémy) was an actor-slash-model and some of his guy friends or guy coworkers had dealt with EDs in some capacity, and, “well, Julian was never officially diagnosed with an eating disorder or anything, and in fairness here, he had a lot of habits that were all over the map and would’ve made diagnosing him properly really hard, but he had some people concerned about whether or not he had an ED at different points, and then he complained about it to Seb because haha that’s so ridiculous isn’t it but also god how could they think that about him, please agree with him now or at least pay attention to him”

—But when Pete got diagnosed with one in rehab, that was all the reason Seb needed to look into all the things, learn everything he could get his hands on, etc.. because his best friend needed him

But as it stands, none of the people he loves have ever gotten a depression diagnosis, so he remains quite ignorant about the illness he’s living with here

—That sorta got way off from the point, but…… really, depression is a big reason why Seb’s sleep habits are such a mess, and a huge part of the reason why he hasn’t treated them seriously or seen them as an “actual problem” (maybe a minor annoyance at best, but not a “real problem,” so much as, “a thing that happens to everyone and that Seb has to just deal with on his own because no one else would let something like this mess them up so badly” — he says, while he legit feels like what he’s saying is totally accurate, despite knowing that it isn’t even remotely true)…… has been the depression that is a major contributing factor to them in the first place

……Yay? (Not really. Not even a little bit.)

Another contributing factor is one of the potential long-term side-effects of kicking alcohol and opiates — like, it may not happen to absolutely everyone in a similar position to Seb, but both alcohol and opiates act as central nervous system depressants, and one of the more common effects of CNS depressants…… is making you sleepy (which is why, for example, I didn’t take most of the opioid painkiller that I got after dislocating my kneecap while doing the Time Warp in college, because I could handle the pain but could not handle sleeping through my classes).

(……that may be one of the most painfully nerdy things that I’ve ever said, but it remains true)

If you get used to having a shit-ton of CNS depressants in your system, then you can very easily end up with trouble sleeping, and unfortunately, it can continue for even years after you get sober (it doesn’t always, but it can). In Seb’s case, no one prepared him for that or told him that it could very well end up lasting even after he’d detoxed, and it was harder to notice when he was actually still in rehab because all of the therapy involved there took a lot out of him and let him sleep easier than he might’ve done otherwise

…and then, out of all his trips off the wagon in his first thirteen months of trying to stay sober, three of them were directly caused by Seb being torn between desperately wanting to stay sober, but also desperately wanting to fucking sleep (and preferably without any of the nightmares that can also be a long-term side-effect of abusing alcohol and/or opiates, and are exacerbated for Seb by the PTSD that he “totally doesn’t have, because people with real problems have PTSD, so stop devaluing their struggles by saying that Seb has it”)

(do you ever think about your own characters and just look at the camera like you’re on The Office? because I do. constantly. often with this particular human disaster right here.)

Um.

I feel like I had somewhere else I was going to go with this, but it’s wandered so far off of any semblance of an outline and I want to have lunch

So…… uh.

Something moderately less depressing to wrap-up with, I guess: bed-sharing with Seb can potentially be awkward for a lot of people because he is so unreasonably freaking tall, but if you ever want to sleep next to someone because it makes things easier for you to sleep, or you need cuddles, or whatever, Sebastian is a good, sweet cuddler and a very respectful bed-sharer who will probably also make you breakfast

You may need to deal with Lola deciding that she totally fits in the bed too, or being kind of huffy at you because excuse you, but no, see, she is supposed to sleep in the bed with her Person, not you (like, she’s only less of a huffy little shit to Margot and Pete about it because she likes them and she can usually manage to fit into the bed with them there)

He also has a somewhat easier time of sleeping if he’s sharing with someone, but it’s not entirely a magical, “press this button to fix insomnia for the entire evening” thing

Also, breakfast

He will make it for you

……I should really go have lunch now, jeez