#it really isn't hard to earn their trust when... you prove you're trustworthy

[uncanny-tranny]

I'm going to be real, I've been on testosterone for multiple years and my levels have been very consistently high and whatnot, and yet I haven't gotten to the point where my testosterone "makes" me act in possessive, creepy ways toward women. Not even the women who are drop-dead gorgeous to me!

And that's because it's not about testosterone. It's about the way you choose to interact with women. When you devalue them already, no amount of testosterone is going to influence you further.

[chekhovs-tantrum]

OH! So this is tickling my lil nerdy brain!

There are some really interesting theories that I picked up at an EMDR training that talk about how Erikson's developmental stages dovetail with the "core negative beliefs" about ourselves that happen.

If you haven't taken Psych 101, Erikson's theory (which is a fairly standard psych teaching) is that each "stage" you're tasked with learning something about the world. So like, birth to 18 months, we're in the "trust vs mistrust" stage - aka "can the people around me be trusted to take care of me, not hurt me? Is the world ok or is it completely unsafe?" Contrast that with the major developmental task of 9-11-year olds, which is "industry vs inferiority" aka "how can I be good, how can I be competent?" (important to note that there's been research suggesting that the stages aren't perfectly linear, and that they don't always line up exactly with chronological age, and that sometimes development is two steps forward and one step back).

Different schools of psychotherapy have different takes on what happens if you don't "work through" each stage. EMDR comes in (and I want to emphasize this is one guy's conjecture and not like, an accepted Thing across therapeutic disciplines, or even widespread among EMDR practitioners) because their idea that maybe, the "stage" in which a trauma hits might correlate with (not necessarily cause) the kind of core negative belief you have.

We see this SO much with folks with infant abuse and neglect; they can't articulate why, but often there is this deep belief that people will let you down or hurt you eventually, that everyone will leave and abandon you, an anxiety about getting close to people. For a lot of folks, it doesn't mean they don't trust anyone - it might mean they're vulnerable to lovebombing (Cytherea's "let's see those muscles, what pretty eyes you have") because they feel like shit. Or they pull away from relationships when someone gets "too close" bc they're convinced they're going to get abandoned anyways (Harrow says "I must not be a stranger to you," and Gideon literally starts sweating and making anxious jokes). Everyone abandons Gideon suddenly when she's about 3 to 8 months old (if Harrow is born when she's around a year old), and her whole thing is: "I need you to be trustworthy."

Contrast this with Harrow, who yes, has had insanely high expectations and helicopter parents for absolute decades and that's its own kind of trauma, but frankly she's been Golden Child her whole life. Her major trauma kinda doesn't happen til 9, when her parents hang themselves smack in the middle of her working through "how can I be good, how can I be competent?" And what do we see from Harrow? The gnawing terror that she's not good enough to beat Palamedes. Staying up late and not eating and passing out because she's trying so hard to prove to herself she can save her House. Horrifying guilt that deep down she is Bad for having broken into the tomb, trying to earn her way out of that guilt by overcompensating in her studies and her work.

So again - this isn't a perfect correlation, and I don't want anyone feeling invalidated or unseen because the theory and the linked chart doesn't quite line up with your lived experience! Everybody's shit shows up differently. But I think it's another fun lens that applies to the TLT stuff.

can we just talk about Gideon's childhood real quick (or long, sorry) bc it's breaking my heart

We know that everyone in the Ninth treats her like garbage, but what about that first year? before the massacre?

Think of all the people of the Ninth, caring for their children. think of how much they needed this last-gasp generation and how an additional baby (A free baby! God has sent us a miracle!) might have been celebrated. it's a little weird, sure, but what are you gonna do? throw out a perfectly good baby?

So for one glorious formative year, little Gideon is treated like everyone else, mostly. they give her knucklebones to teeth on and leek gruel and gentle touches. she's such a happy baby, so healthy and strong, and isn't it nice to see her playing with all the black-eyed weedy Ninth youngsters? doesn't she make you laugh?

And then, suddenly: all your children are dead. all the Ninth children, that is. your reverend mother and father look like they've seen a ghost - or a few hundred ghosts - and they never recover, even with the single blessing of a heir. The house mourns, forever. the lost promise. all those empty beds.

...except for one.

The miracle baby - the happy sunshine baby - the chubby laughing baby - sits alone, unharmed, in a poisoned room of choked corpses and reaches out to be touched... and everyone flinches away.

Did this cuckoo bring an end to our house? Thinks the congregation. Why are the reverend mother and father horrified at her presence? why isn't she a miracle? if she's not a miracle, is she...a curse?

Better not to love her, then. you can take a hint.

But from Gideon's perspective - she's only a baby, wanting love and touch and attention. and in a single night, it all goes away. she's filthy, dangerous, a wolf in sheep's clothing. a curse and an omen.

The creature, the omen, the cuckoo and the curse grows up knowing she's hated, but never able to recall what was lost in a single night: a gentle touch, a kiss goodnight. a kind word for a job well done. it slipped away in the dark like 200 souls.

So for the rest of her life, all she wants is to get that back. just a crumb, even. desperate for love. stupefied by kindness. made dumb by the knowledge that she doesn't even know what to do when it's offered. the fact that someone would extend their hand to (willingly!!) touch hers is so mind-boggling she can't even reciprocate. garbage from neck to navel. you know: a turd that has sprouted legs.

I guess I just think about this sometimes.