#just caused more dissociation and self harm. so like... yeah. idk.

[piplupod]

"get out of ur comfort zone!" brother i ain't ever been in my comfort zone :/

[smugblueenby69]

I absolutely would agree with you, but I also think she’d need something to drown out the voices in her head. Like yes she’d listen to church music, but I think a modern AU Harrow would secretly be listening to at least like an instrumental.

Could it possibly be a rock instrumental? Who knows. But it’d be something to drown out the voices. I relate super heavy to Harrow, and I think that her finding rock/goth/and metal music she likes would work really well. Especially given how many Christians/catholics work in those genres.

Also

Coming from both a perspective of depression, and various neurodivergence, but also a perspective of having hallucinations, its easier when you have something to focus on or to dissociate into. And Harrow canonically having a bad brain atmosphere would likely not want to dissociate into her thoughts. She probably USED to dissociate into her thoughts.

She probably spiraled a lot, constantly hating herself and having a terrible relationship with religion and living, but alas, she would have access to music as an outlet that she definitely doesn’t have in canon, and also the mirror to fixing her relationship with Gideon in a modern AU would probably lead to her not wanting to rely on self harm in any form anymore (and yes, allowing yourself to talk bad about yourself on purpose all the time is self harm, and also Harrow canonically self harms throughout the series, just in necromantic ways, I’m not putting any weird head canons onto her, so stop typing)

So yeah, music or noise of any sort would make sense for a teenage, modern AU Harrow to get into, especially on the journey to self recovery. Now, do I know people IRL who genuinely cannot listen to music? Yes. In fact, my therapist for some reason cannot for the life of her listen to ANYTHING at all, which tbh is really interesting ig. Idk what her brain is like that she doesn’t like audio books or anything else.

But also I genuinely don’t think Harrow is like that, people who have a lot of noise in their head tend to want to match it on the outside. And Harrow always has a lot of noise, even minus 201 souls, cause she’d still have hallucinations and stuffs.

Do I think Harrow would like panic and the disco? Absolutely not. But something melodic and haunting that also feels like someone is scratching at your soul? She’d fucking cry her heart out at three am trying to cram the song into her chest cavity via will. Give her something grungy and dark and put it in one of those boombox radios, not so she can play it super loud no, but so she can lay it on her chest while she’s in bed and feel the vibrations and the pressure. Built in sad goth weighted blanket.

Also, its not goth but one day Pal introduces her to Mon Rovîa, Nemahsis, the 2017 Chappell Roan album, and The Happy Fits and she creates a singular tiny playlist with some of her favorites from what Pal showed her (I genuinely think there are some she would enjoy given the chance)

But yeah no, the fact that Harrow doesn’t listen to music in canon isn’t because she hates it, it’s because there really isnt any music for her to listen to other than really guttural Ninth funeral songs that honestly aren’t all that great, and really just about the emperor. This gives her a real outlet!

Music could save her guys

I do think its fair that you believe she’d prefer silence, but I think its way more conditional. If she’s got something else to fully dissociate into then I agree, but I doubt it’d be easy for her to do with hw, especially on subjects she despises. This is still a neurodivergent person we’re talking about

Anyways thats my take. Sorry for any typos, my cat was sleeping on my face during this

I see so many posts on Harrowhark's modern music taste "she'd like this goth band and that goth band".

I'm gonna level with you.

I don't think she likes music.

I think Harrowhark is the kind of person who will go on a 12 hour road trip and demand the trip to be in dead silence. She's not even the one driving, obviously. But she will turn the radio off passive aggressively as soon as it makes a sound. Doesn't matter if it's music, the news, advertisements, she'd just turn it right off.

No music for studying either, or for making soup. It's dead silence all the time.

Maybe in the evening after a long day of research, she'll sit down on the couch, with a nice tall glass of tab water, turn on the radio and listen to CATHOLIC CHURCH MUSIC like the weird over devoted nun she is. She listens to this actively. She leans back, closes her eyes, lets the churchy tunes settle in and sometimes forms the lyrics (which she knows by heart) with her lips (only lip synching though, no singing). After like half an hour of that, she turns the radio off and goes back to silence.

[mothlegs]

yelling abt meeting i had with my psych nurse today, mostly talks about selfharm so be warned

Learns of The Day:

my nurse is stupid

my nurse does not know things

my nurse is not to be trusted (should already know this)

i selfharm more than i thought

my mom was with, beloved mother who is able to speak for me and translate the things i say. my nurse isn't great at english and i'm mildly shit at my native language (thanks dropping out of school to live on the internet) so there are Some language barriers, and i'm generally also just shit as saying what i want to say, especially with people i don't know well

so! my mom did most of the talking and she did great, much progress, thank you mother

i already forgot how the topic came up, but she starts asking about selfharm? and i'm like. genuinely i do not know how often i remember very little about it. and my mom then says it's At Least weekly because she sees on my arms??? and i'm like. wot i had no idea. and then she mentions scratches and bruises and i internally go ohhh right yeah scratches is a near daily thing huh. idk about bruises though, i don't remember that much either. but idk i feel kinda stupid for not realising cause i'm very Self-Harm Is Many Things And Not All Are Physically Visible kinda stuff cause it's important to me non-scarring forms of selfharm arent minimised or looked over. yet i completely looked over when it happens with myself

but then nurse asks about what i use to hurt myself??? and i'm like. =_= why? and she just keeps asking and not really giving an answer, saying something about how it helps her to know how i'm doing which? complete bullshit lol? and eventually i get her to say that yeah maybe they would try to take my tools. so i just like. yeah i'm not telling you lol get fucked

when we get home my mom's talking to my grandma about it and she said she felt like she almost had to defend my self-harm to my nurse and like say it's ok??? genuinely love to my mom i appreciate her so much, and she's self-harmed too when she was younger so she Gets It she actually understands it and what i need. she also mentioned how it would do no good, and how she has done really dangerous things to hurt herself like using things she found on the sidewalk- i wouldn't go that dangerous but i Have done dangerous things that risked getting pieces into wounds so like. yeah. my mom is good ok

ALSO JUST. i luckily have never had my tools taken but i thought they'd taken them once and i had a major breakdown. as in major major breakdown, and the second i found them i was ok. so like. lmfao y'all ain't trying to help me fucking bullshit

so anyways i'm not getting meds but she's gonna ask the doctor (who is stupid and i hate her) about re-evaluating me Again after i'd ALREADY BEEN TOLD I WOULD BE RE-EVALUATED god shit like this keeps happening. one person will tell me i'll get a thing and then i will be patient but eventually ask about it and then a new person will say they have to ask someone if i can have the thing and then that takes literal months. happened with therapy too and i still haven't heard anything about it

oh and my mom told me to write a thing explaining my plurality cause i can't really explain it to my nurse, very complicated and i struggled to explain it in private to my mom too so definitely wouldn't be able to with my nurse. i still don't know how accepting my mom is? but she gets some of it, i think

OH GOD AND MY NURSE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT DISSOCIATION IS. SHE LITERALLY DOESN'T KNOW WHAT DISSOCIATION IS. WHAT i'm going to have to explain dissociation and dpdr and ifs to her jfc she is literally working at a psychiatric facility, there is a psych ward where she works, psychiatric evaluations are made there, AND SHE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT DISSOCIATION IS ???

so yeah she stupid don't know shit never to be trusted

rest of my day was good though i got a slushie at the mall and we bought makeup?? i dont know how that really happened but i guess i might learn to do eye makeup now. maybe

[buckysfaveplum]

my head is an animal

summary: a dissociative episode leaves you and Bucky reeling, with Bucky questioning the safety of you being with him

pairing: bucky barnes x female reader

word count: 2.8k

warnings: swearing maybe in this one?, dissociation, ANGST ANGST ANGST, mild violence?, talk of self harm, winter soldier!bucky, just sad feels i’m sorry y’all

author’s note: soooo yeah i guess i only write angst?? sorry y’all it just helps me vent idk. OMAM (my favorite band) just released the 10 year anniversary edition of My Head is an Animal so that inspired this. hope you like this!

also yes, everyone is alive in this fic and y’all live in the tower cause i like the tower and i said so and i felt like it

masterlist

To say Bucky was having a rough week would hardly begin to cover it. You thought he was doing better, he seemed to be. He’d told you the nightmares were subsiding.

He was going out with you more. Coffee shops, grocery runs, even taking you to cute diners after dark just to talk. Your relationship was intimate, much to Bucky’s dismay. He’d done everything he could to try to discourage your feelings, even hiding his own. But nothing worked. After the first night you calmed him from his nightmares, you had Tony move you to the vacant room next to his. In the end, you won; though he’d never say it out loud, he was glad.

Things had been strange lately. His recovery seemed to be taking a turn for the worse. You tried to be the most accommodating you could be. Offering to go with him to therapy sessions, staying with him through nightmares and panic attacks, even helping avoid situations that could be triggering. He was grateful, he truly was. But it was killing him deep down. Watching you try to figure him out like an equation. You weren’t the problem, you could never be the problem. It was all him. His girlfriend shouldn’t have to take care of their boyfriend like it was her job. Just another thing for him to add to his list of reasons he hated himself. A list a mile long and one you’d never see. 

He’d been pushing you away, he knew that. Maybe it would help things, he thought. If he could get himself together on his own, he could finally be with you like a normal man. The burden would be lifted from your shoulders. You’d finally be able to breathe.

-

You were tired of his bullshit. Tired of the locked doors, dodged calls, read texts, all of it. You knew what he was doing, you knew that man like the back of your hand. He was shutting down again, shutting you out again. You were having none of it.

He’d promised you he wouldn’t do it again. Not after the last time. A particularly bad nightmare left him shaken up. He’d pushed you away, ignored you all week. Till out on a mission where he nearly died. After watching you break down on your knees, he realized just how much he hurt you. All his attempts to shield you from him being the source of your pain failed. That day, he promised to never shut you out.

Guess that promise meant nothing. You stood outside his door, banging, hoping he’d finally acknowledge you. You knew he was in there, Friday had alerted you to his elevated heart rate. Something was wrong, and you were not gonna let him keep shutting you out. You’d been standing there for 4 minutes, tapping your foot and occasionally knocking, hoping he’d finally crack.

Still nothing.

“Buck, Honey. I know something’s wrong. Can you please let me in?” you were met with nothing but more silence. 

It just wasn’t fair. You knew he had every right to handle his trauma the way he saw fit, but it just wasn’t fair. He couldn’t do this to you. He couldn’t bring you your favorite flowers just because, he couldn’t turn your alarms off in the morning and gently wake you himself, he couldn’t make you fall in love with him then disappear. He couldn’t make himself the most important person in your world, then lock himself in his room alone with his thoughts. You knew what he was thinking in there, and it was nothing good.

Somewhere deep in your spiral, you heard it. A loud bang came from inside Bucky’s room. If you were panicking before, you were feral now. Beating one first against the door and working the knob with the other. 

“Bucky, please! Open the door!” your pleas fell on deaf ears and the rumbling inside the room continued. You were terrified. What if he was hurting himself? Finally, you came to your senses. It’d taken you far too long to remember an AI ran the building.

“Friday!” you shouted.

“Yes Miss Y/L/N?” she responded 

“I need you to let me into Bucky’s room.”

“I don’t know, Miss Y/L/N. Mr. Barnes is very insistent on his privacy.”

“Please, Friday. It’s me. I’m scared he could be hurting himself. Please.”

Friday was silent for a moment. You were afraid she’d just opted to ignore you when you heard the sound of the locks undoing on the door. You silently thanked the AI before slowly entering the room.

You were stunned. The dresser was flipped, photos of you and him smashed on the floor. His bedsheets were torn and the headboard cracked. Not to mention the broken glass of a vase shattered across the floor. You were shaking. What happened?

Slowly, you ventured further into the room. Across the mess stood your love, panting and shaking. His t-shirt was soaked in sweat, small bits of glass lodged inside his flesh arm, and his vibranium one clenched tight at his side. This was wrong, that wasn’t the sight of a normal Bucky meltdown. You’d seen enough to know how he was. Yes, he shouted, he shook, he cried, he slammed doors. But he never broke things, he never smashed things. Something was wrong.

“Buck, are you okay?” you asked, keeping your distance.

Finally noticing your presence, his head shot up. His eyes were different. That wasn’t your Bucky. This was the Winter Soldier, or was it? You’d only encountered him once, back in 2014 in DC. It was brief but enough. You knew your Bucky, and you knew him. This was something in between.

He was dissociating. His therapist had mentioned something like this to you. She said it was common in veterans, walking up at night believing they were still on the battlefield. Anything could set it off, she said; a trigger, a panic attack, a nightmare. You hoped it’d never happen to him, yet here you were.

“Sweetie, you’re okay. You’re at the Tower. It’s me,” you said, extending your hand out in front of you to show you were no threat.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked, his voice cold.

“It’s me, Y/N. I’m your girlfriend. It’s okay, Bucky. You know me.” 

“No I don’t!” he shouted, his fists clenching.

You lowered your hand, trying to better assess the situation. 

“Friday, call Sam and Steve,” you said.

Slowly, he made his way over to you. You stayed calm. You weren’t scared, you never could be. This was your Bucky, he’d never hurt you. You had to stay calm for him. You hoped you could talk him out of the delusion. 

“Okay Hun, breathe. I’m not gonna hurt you. I wanna help,” you said. He now stood before you. His jaw tight, eyes staring you down. You tried to give him a soft smile, maybe you could get to him without words. But of course, that just did the opposite. More confused than ever, his hands grasped your shoulders, slamming you back into the wall. A small wince escaped your lips and his grip just tightened. 

His breathing began to pick up when out of the corner of your eye, you spotted Sam and Steve coming down the hall. They slowed as they entered the room, taking in the situation. You simply turned your head to them, telling them with your eyes not to engage yet. It’d only upset him more. You just wanted him to be okay.

“Buck, Honey, look at me. You’re not there anymore. You’re here with me. You’re okay,” you said, pleading with your eyes. His eyes clamped shut, trying to process his confusion. Before you could get another word in, he slammed you once again back into the wall. You ignored the pain radiating from the back of your head and his too-tight grip on your shoulders. You ignored your friends getting ready to intervene. 

“No, stop...that’s not,” he began to trail off, losing what he was going to say. You could see Bucky coming back in his eyes.

“Buck,” you said, slowly raising your hand to his face, giving him time to reject your gesture. Once he didn’t you knew you could pull him back to reality. “Come back to me, Sweetie.”

His eyes began to clench open and closed, trying to regain focus on his surroundings. His grip slowly loosened on you, his arms pulling back and he stumbled away from you. His breathing slowed as he sank to the floor. He was back.

Sam rushed over to you, checking you over.

“You okay?” he asked, his hand tenderly grazing the back of your head. You’d be fine, you’d had worse and you told him so. 

At the sound of Bucky’s soft sobbing, the men knew it was their time to go. Steve gently took your hand, telling you they’d be right outside the door. You silently thanked him before making your way over to your boyfriend.

Lowering yourself in front of him, he immediately looked up at you, tears welling in his eyes. He was confused and scared. You figured, his therapist had told you he probably wouldn’t remember what would happen when he dissociates. It was up to you to help him.

“Hey Buck, you’re okay,” you said, sitting in front of him, taking his hands from his lap. They shook and you quickly brushed the bits of remaining glass from his arm. 

“What happened, Y/N? What’s going on?” he asked, his voice shaking. God, you hoped he’d never have to deal with this again.

“Hun, you were dissociating. I think… I think you thought you were him,” you said, caressing his arm. “What do you remember?”

“I-I don’t know. I was freaking out about something, I can’t remember. Then it got really hard to breathe. So I tried to do those exercises you taught me, to calm down. But it didn’t work this time. And I just kept getting more scared, and I kept shaking, and I don’t know… I don’t remember the rest.” 

He didn’t look at you, just staring down at your hand, holding his vibranium one. Watching your thumb brush across his palm. He couldn’t feel it but knowing that didn’t stop you caused his heart to swell. 

Gently, you lifted his chin, just giving him a soft smile. Both your hands came to the sides of his face, holding his gaze with yours. You pulled him to you, placing a faint kiss on his lips. A small sob escaped his lips, feeling safe in your presence. Pulling away, you began carding your hand through his hair, trying to bring him some comfort.

“I’m sorry for ignoring you, I just...I. Things have been bad, and I got scared, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay now,” you said. Slowly, you wrapped your arms around him, caging him in your love and warmth. Shielding him from his demons. You just sat there, rocking him gently in your arms. It was okay, it was over now.

“I love you, Doll,” he said, kissing your neck.

“I love you too,” you said.

-

You held him for what felt like hours. It couldn’t have been more than 20 minutes though. You watched from his window as birds flew by, counting the windows in the building adjacent to the Tower. You’d hoped he’d calmed down, ready to talk about everything. You wanted to bathe him, treat his arm, get him water, anything he needed. You just wanted to make sure he was okay. 

His breathing was steady in your arms. His back rising and falling in a consistent pattern, much better than the mess before. You watched him as you processed your thoughts. You thought about everything. How would you explain what happened to him that day? Your heart broke at the thought of telling him how he handled you. It wasn’t him, you knew that. But he needed to know. He’d spent far too much time unaware of his actions. Missing chunks of his memories, unable to piece together a day, his mind at the mercy of men who saw him as nothing more than a weapon at their disposal. You couldn’t be one of them, you won’t be another person to mess with his memory.

Before you could begin to process how the conversation would go, Bucky spoke up.

“What are these?” he asked, pulling himself out of your embrace. His hand gingerly traced along the dark bruises forming over your shoulders. Five small dots on each side with a large patch of purple to match. Your shoulders were a watercolor painting of his pain and anguish. Wearing a tank top that day was your biggest regret.

“Buck..” you started.

“Did I do this to you?” he asked, his eyes locking with yours. You’d never seen fear like that in him before. His pupils were blown wide, his bottom lip shook. He was terrified.

“You didn’t mean it,” you tried to explain, but he wasn’t listening. Quickly, he stumbled up, out of your grasp and as far from you as he could manage. He barely noticed he’d backed himself into a corner till he slammed into it.

“Buck, please listen to me,” you raced over to him, trying to minimize his panic.

“I hurt you,” he wasn’t even processing you in front of him. He was on autopilot, no longer with you.

“It wasn’t you.”

You wrapped your hands around the back of his neck, running a hand through the short hairs at the back of his head. He didn’t react. He just stood there, motionless.

“I hurt you,” he mumbled again, averting your gaze at all costs. A choked sob escaped your throat. You rested your forehead against his own, pleading with him to listen to you. 

You may as well have been mute. He couldn’t listen, he didn’t want to. You shouldn’t have been defending him. He hurt you. He broke you. Turned your soft skin to purple, blue, and green. Marked you with his own hands. He barely registered your arms wrapping around him, pulling him into your embrace. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve to be in your presence. Didn’t deserve to know you. He’d already mucked up his own life, Steve’s, Sam’s, everyone’s he knew. But he could no longer ruin yours. He needed to leave. 

“Sweetie, please. Please hold me,” you said, desperately pleading with the broken man in your arms. His arms were still glued to his sides.

“I can’t” That’s all he said. Tears silently fell from his eyes. You sobbed at his words, tucking your head further into his neck. He just stood there, refusing to hold you, to touch you. For fear, his next touch would paint a different part of your body in bruises.

Before you could say another word, he ripped himself from your arms, pushing himself away from you. You simply stood there, tears streaking across your cheeks. You watched as he stormed towards the door, away from you. Pausing just before the door, he turned to you. His eyes were red and wild, full of disgust and anger. Not at you, never at you, but himself. His gaze flickered from your eyes to your shoulders a few times before he turned on his feet and booked it.

“Bucky, wait!” you tried to chase after him, but he was always far too fast for you. 

You slowed to a stop in the middle of the hallway, watching as Steve chased his best friend out of your view. Defeated, you sank to the floor, letting it all crash over you. Sam’s hands came to wrap around you, tucking you under his arm as you sobbed into his side. You hoped Steve could talk some sense into Bucky. Hoped he could bring him back to you. But things had changed. He’d lashed out at you. And you weren’t sure he’d ever let himself move past that.

---

yes it’s angsty, and yes I gave it a sad ending. let me be in my sad feels🥴🤚🏻

[kazo0-boy]

WARNING: Talk of mental illness, trauma, suicide, PTSD, solitary confinement, torture, generally dark topics, talking about c!dream in a somewhat sympathetic light

honestly idk what this is. it had a point somewhere but it just devolved into my thoughts on c!Dream. i also wrote half of it while dissociating oops

gonna put a disclaimer first: I am in no way trying to excuse any of c!Dream’s actions. he’s done tons or horrible things. this is just an analysis post from the perspective of him being mentally ill and flawed and the effect the prison would have on him, and what i think should have been done instead. Also, this is a fictional character.

This is something i’ve been wanting to put into words for awhile but haven’t really gotten to until now, but honestly as someone who has struggled with mental illness for most of their life and been in toxic mindsets I can’t help but sympathize with c!Dream in that it’s very clear to me that he isn’t just evil for the sake of being evil, but he is also a character that has gone with untreated mental illness and no proper support system that has resulted in him spiraling into the toxic mindset and abusive behaviors that we see him with now.

Nobody just goes into a spiral of cutting everyone and everything important to them off in order for them to have no chance to hurt or be used against him out of nowhere, developing unhealthy obsessions with power and control, attributing having attachments to displaying weakness, ect.. He’d have to have been struggling for a while to get to that point. There’s no way in heck that happened without a lot of internal struggle. Tbh i think what we saw with him snapping at Tommy for using Spirit’s leather against him was only the tip of the iceberg. We didn’t see any of his internal thoughts or descent but we did see the breaking point that led to his downfall. And he just kept getting worse from there. 

do i think his actions are justified? no. he’s done a lot of unforgivable things that cannot be excused with any explanation and that’s not what i’m trying to do. can i see what state of mind would lead him into the place he’s at now? yes. just like every other character on the server, he is someone with complex actions and motivations that go beyond just being evil for the sake of being evil.

do i think he should be in the prison? no. now before you write me off let me explain why. NOBODY should be in the prison because it is inhumane and designed to break the prisoner’s spirit rather than contain and rehabilitate them for the safety of the server. It’s more of a torture chamber than a prison honestly. And being in it is clearly not helping c!Dream at all and traumatizing him more than anything. He’s mentioned that he doesn’t get full meals (during Bad’s visit, he asked if he gets 3 full meals a day and Dream brushes off the question) and what he does get is barely anything. Essentially starvation. The original prison plans were for the prisoner to also be able to leave the cell and go into a courtyard and such for ‘enrichment’ but neither Sam nor Dream has mentioned that. So as far as we know he’s been stuck in his cell the entire time with almost nothing to do. So essentially solitary confinement with a touch of starvation and isolation (people rarely visiting him, visitation being taken away as a punishment, ect) plus more for an extended period of time is a recipe for disaster (this is the only time i’m gonna mention specifics but i can see this resulting in specifically C-PTSD among who knows what else, as unlike simple PTSD it is caused by multiple traumatic events for an extended period of time. things like childhood abuse or being held captive for an extended period of time, and there have been cases where solitary confinement has caused it so he could easily end up suffering from it). I’ve seen people make the point that ‘oh well he was gonna put Tommy in there so he deserves it.’ that’s not the point. the point is that NOBODY should be in the prison. It should have never been built in the first place. any character that would go in would come out with serious trauma therefore it’s inhumane.  Plus, how is Dream going to ever become a better person in that kind of environment? Isn’t that what a prison should be aiming to do? 

Even if he hasn’t entirely broken yet, as he still shows hope of getting out or fighting back it’s inevitable that he is going to. We’re already seeing the beginnings of it in the form of self-destructive behavior like burning his clock and killing himself in lava (basically suicide). As time goes on its only going to get worse and worse. and even in the off-chance that he’s doing those as some kind of attempt at manipulation, the fact that he’s willing to go as far as to do serious harm to himself is seriously seriously concerning

So what do i think should have been done instead? first off, get this man some therapy. get EVERYONE some therapy. he’s no less deserving of getting help than anyone else. Second, put him in an actual prison that isnt a literal torture chamber, that will give him consequences for his actions properly without dehumanizing him and taking away any chance at recovery?

so uh, yeah. theres my 2am dissociative trigger-enduced rant on c!Dream over. i cant believe i wrote an entire essay on a minecraft roleplay

[satanfemme]

(idk how to trigger tag this, i don't want to upset anyone, i remember how i couldn't stand to hear it before and i imagine there are people who still can't, i think maybe, if this is posted, please look away if the word parts in relation to did/osdd bothers you)

i feel like for a lot of people with did/osdd, it's because they don't want to admit their alters are parts, not separate people, because that's literally how did and osdd work, it's saying "no, that's not me/that didn't happen to me", so they say all manner of things to avoid it, and then that gets spread by other people who also want to avoid it, and this ends up causing people to dissociate worse

like i think it's just built into our disorder to deny that we're one person/separate our self from trauma obviously but i think people need to realize that they can't use that as an excuse to blatantly encourage dissociation in other people by saying things like "if you don't let your alters be their own people you're abusing them" or like... telling me i'm in denial because i don't want to be called a system. or telling me they think i actually have osdd because they can't be bothered to read anything about did that's not from tumblr or a website made by people who call everyone with a presentation different from their own fakers, or lashing out at people for using the word parts instead of alters, or lashing out at people for just talking about did and osdd as mental illnesses and not like, a special thing that makes you "multiple people in one body"

like i understand why they do it, i understand they don't want to admit they're one person or that they even have did/osdd because admitting that would mean they were traumatized at all, and i don't have a problem with people who can't stand to hear it, i have been like that, but it infuriates me because they're dragging other people down when they circulate the kind of posts they do, and i don't think they even actually realize it, i think they probably think they're spreading positivity and helping, but that doesn't minimize the harm they do. my pseudo memories wouldn't be so elaborate without tumblr literally encouraging me to make it worse. when i show people screenshots from the haunted self, like that passage about the guy with multiple star trek introjects, they're surprised. i have met so many people who still don't really know anything about their own fucking disorder, because they only ever got their info from tumblr. it's miserable

aaa yeah yeah yeah. imo I think people seeing their alters as completely separate is “valid” (for lack of a better word) depending on the context (ie: as long as it’s not being presented in some kind of educational or factual manner I’m fine with it, the same way I think people have the right to talk about things like delusions), but also I have to admit that me + my alters seeing ourselves as less-separate has helped us personally a lot. we obv blend a lot and come and go and dissociate beyond knowing “who we are” for each individual moment (as is common with DID/OSDD anyway, despite what a lot of people seem to think), and I feel like when you do get so fixated on fighting this kind of blending and defining Who You Are in each instance as these Unique and Easily Defined entities, it can really just become ... v frustrating v quickly. while on the other hand I’ve found it much more enlightening to just Let ourselves be like this. if in one moment we’re one person, that’s great! if we’re another later, that’s good too. but if we’re neither or both or nothing at all? that’s perfectly fine! we can evaluate the best course of action to deal with our trauma symptoms as they come, and just let our identity be a more casual or laid back background noise.

if we feel one way in one moment, and the opposite the next, there��s no requirement to analyze our person-hood wrt that. our identities are fluid and subjective and I think accepting that has made it feel more like an advantage to us than the roadblock it’s felt like before (both pre and post my (self-)diagnosis.)

also, irt ur second paragraph, that’s super understandable. I think, like with all mental health, treatment/coping needs to be individualized. if you not calling yourself a system, or not letting your alters be their own people, is what personally helps you/your recovery, I don’t think it’s really any strangers’ business to make judgements about it. its just ur business + maybe a therapist if u so choose. literally everyone has the ability to understand their own mental health better than anyone else ever could, and everyone has the ability to determine what is or isn’t helping them towards recovery.

and everyone has the right to decide what “recovery” means to them in the first place!

I don’t have much more to say on this, just that I think this is all a reasonable viewpoint to have, and I think the community at large would be a little more well-rounded and grounded if we had more people bringing up perspectives like this one

[copehell96]

VENT so xbox companion logged me out of my dads account and... VENT

idk its not like I can even play it I don’t got the xbox anymore cause of some fuckery of my guardians like god idk it wasn’t that long after he died maybe a year after- its been four years now ig? ...but god did that feel like a fucking punch in the face you know? I have no idea how to log back into it maybe I could ask my half brother but... He couldn’t even fucking tell me my nivada password I asked him 3 times between holidays for a year and finally said fuck it and changed the password myself.

...But it’s just so fucking stupid man...

it was the ONE thing I could access that was Dad’s- everything else they took away or couldn’t figure out how to log in (Fucking hire a hacker then damn cowards) I just...

I miss him and I even miss Mom!? Even if she was still doing drugs and yelling at me I don’t care I’d deal with it- anything deal with anything not to be alone anymore... I have bro but-... honestly idk man... I’m like I need a new consoler but why the FUCK should I trust em after Josh after four years of being there decides “ BYE “ and just leaves after like nearly a whole month or more of silence only to find out second hand he just up and LEFT... and went somewhere else nearby to work??? Leaving the Kelbermen center with ONLY ONE Consoler btw. I think that was just GAH. it was a dick move man...

I just don’t want to trust someone again like that? like whats the fucking point you know?

im so damn tired of having to just trust people with what I have to say, what I think- when all I want is to FUCKING DIE. That or dissociate so hard I don’t have to care anymore- space spacy- daze off, hallucinations and shit. Looking in the mirror and never EVER seeing myself - or if I do I’M UGLY UGLY so ugly I get urges to cut up my face- I hate it hate it- I just...

I’m so tired and I’m 24, I was gonna start some college-ish work training stuff but this stupid virus stuff ofc ruined it, im having trouble calling / texting people again- as bad as when Dad first died trouble. and Bro will drop off and not help unless I make it VERY obvious I need help- he’s doing a lot better NOW but idk how long that last until he drops off for a month again and leaves me to do everything AGAIN. AND AGAIN.

god no wonder mom did fucking drugs. its almost funny.

I cut for the same reasons she’d go out. Loneliness, not feeling like you getting the support you need, working yourself to exhaustion, being trapped in the house all day no way out, no where to go cause you got no car, family that you need around you basically not calling or anything for weeks, threats from family members about this or that cause of whatever dumbshit that's going on, oh and the IMPULSE TO JUST DO IT AGAIN. RELAPSE.

...atleast I can say I understand her better now, tho im not sure if I’ll ever forgive her for the hell she put me and bro through. Unlike Dad she never got better, never was able to provide the same stable house he could. He might of made mistakes when we were little (I have no memory of any of it tho- even if it was the start of my self harming tendencies from what I was told from mom told me) he GOT BETTER. He worked hard to make sure we felt safe, and NEVER yelled and always appreciated when I helped him around the house or hung out with him to watch tv / him play a game... Mom couldn’t even sit to watch one movie with us- NOT EVEN A SCARY ONE LIKE THE GRUDGE LEAVING ME AND BRO TO HUDDLE IN A CORNER SCARED-

I don’t think I could ever fully forgive her.

I miss trying so hard in my dreams to get to heaven to reach Dad- I would try every night wandering a highway- with other people as well as if we were all lost but we all knew we wanted to go up-

until one night I maybe took a wrong turn? I’m not sure.

But my Grandma and Grandpa (dad’s side) picked me up in a car and told me not to come back, that I wasn’t going to someplace I didn’t want to be, nor should I be. (probably was hell lol) God must of been tired of my ass breaking in to see my parents...

my Nana’s like 91 (my mom’s mom) everyday I get scared impulses about her. Like this virus is horrible- and she’s just so... what i’d give to have her hug me- what I’d give to be able to cry into her shoulder- she was more of a mom to me then my mom was- same with Grandma- Grandma always made sure to show up for my school stuff until her... until she wasn’t able too- and then I was left with no one- yet somehow they always found time for Bro’s stuff-

God what I’d of given to have ATLEAST had Dad go to my graduation- BRO DIDN’T EVEN GO FOR ME- I WENT FOR HIS- I’m still angry about that... He acts like he always wanted to go to my stuff but yeah right- if he couldn’t be there for me at my greatest- and scariest moment he sure af ain’t gonna be there for something small!?

[cyanpeacock]

Realtalk(tm): The Continued Brainprocessing of Fucky Shit

it’s a long one boys but they all are atm

like jinkies scoob i have been Avoiding So Much with les drogues. avoiding so much like, wow, shit, I Feel So Empty Around People Who Were In My Life. but yes, very necessary to dissociate from this shit for a period while i adjusted to the possibility of, oh, wait, this really is My Apartment? this... i can Live Here without being Disturbed or Attacked? still adjusting. but without les drogues this time.

im continually coming to terms with like... ok, so, i have been and sometimes still like... engage in emotionally and physically abusive behaviour towards my own body, and to other bodies around me? 

and also, i am coming to terms with, this does not strictly mean i am An Abuser Forever full stop (i.e. Bad Person, Irredeemable, Disgusting, Abhorrent, Should Be Euthanised, etc).

this is reflective of, emotional and physical abuse has been so normalised to me as a young individual, that i have been repeating patterns of behaviour i saw routinely growing up, not even understanding why that kind of behaviour is hurtful or how i could do stuff differently. and that kind of makes me go, oh shit. dude, what the hell? that’s... that’s actually, yeah, that’s one fucked up upbringing. it really Was that bad. 

even regarding like The Voices In My Head(tm), my reaction historically was just like, scream at them? yell at them? injure the body somehow until they shut up or it passes out? 

which, uh, oh. that’s totally what my mother did when i was displaying “unreasonable” or “irrational” emotions as a small thing. rejecting then snapping then shouting then smacking until i either ran away to cry alone and injure myself more (emotional abandonment; reenacting and normalizing physical punishment) or went very numb and quiet and compliant like a Good Child (dissociative reaction/freezing; fawning). 

now like i am aware of these structures and this history Right Now. but still frequently i do get into the old frame of mind where it’s like, “you’re being stupid. you’re overreacting. you’re being melodramatic. Other People Have It Worse. Just Don’t Think About It” which, yeah, that’s introjected from a number of adult figures in my life. very very unhelpful, but when you’re a kid, you’re looking to adults for structures to implement to help you navigate your own life. when those adults are emotionally unhealthy... Yeah. this happens.

and right now, i’m like, uh, what the hell? it’s not a dick measuring contest, you’re telling a kid in pain that they’re not allowed to express their pain?

like i’ve talked abt this before probably but it’s an incident that reminds me how fucked up the whole situation was and is. when my school found out i was self harming in like y7 (so like, 11-12yo), because i’d cut so far down my PE shorts didn’t cover the marks, my PE teacher legally had to get the school to call home. and like, i fucking Begged her, please don’t, a call home is gonna make things SO much worse for me. but ofc the law is the law especially when it comes to teaching, and the call home got made. and later that evening my mother bust into my room with NO warning and fucking screamed at me, “You Selfish Little Cow.” 

like i went numb as hell. i don’t really remember clearly what she said after that but it was a whole tirade. stuff about how i was a brat and going to get her in trouble with social services and how i was ruining the family (implicitly, her life) and causing trouble, and how i ought to Think About What I’d Done. i was thinking/feeling, oh my god, she’s beating me again. i’ve ruined everything for everyone again. this is all my fault. i’m responsible, i’m the one to blame, i should have hidden it better. i’m not allowed to talk. i’m not allowed to feel. i’m supposed to be Quiet and Good and Do School and Not Annoy Anyone and Behave. i’ve failed. i am a failure. I Am A Selfish Little Cow. 

i think i tried to commit after she left? but like, in that way where you’re so numb and out of it you can’t actually physically pull together the methods, despite the mind wanting No More. 

and like i’ve been going to visit the woman that DID THAT TO ME. smiling and telling her about my life while Really Fucking Avoiding Telling Her Any Details About My Life. hesitating in pain and then adding “xx” to the end of the text messages i felt like i was obliged to send her. trying to convince myself “she’s my mum, i’m not gonna get another one, i should call her, it’s not so bad, we can talk about... uh, talk about politics, or religion, or, uh, her dog, or my siblings...” COMPLETELY fucking avoiding the fact that, like. this is the Same Person who caused me all that pain, and i don’t feel safe or secure talking to her about important details of my life, or my emotions, or, well, me. i hide and go Nothing Is Wrong! :) I’m Doing Fine! :) 

and! it really does seem like she’s not, you know, as cruel as she was with me, with her other children, at least since after i ran away. but no amount of that can actually change MY memories of growing up with her? my more-or-less programmed Make Her Happy reaction to her physical body? i can’t just, you know, conveniently forget those Things that Hurt Me to engage with her for her happiness. because, well, Her Happiness is not My Happiness, although i was lead to believe that was so. and, when i’m Conveniently Forgetting those things (i.e. my emotions at the hands of an abusive relative), i’m not behaving with the proper regard for myself as a person, and by extension i’m missing pieces of how to properly engage with other people. 

i don’t wanna like, mask the in between spaces of utter dread and anxiety and total blankness with Everything Is Totally Fine. I Am Functioning. Yes I Did Well In School This Year. That’s All That Matters. What Have I Been Doing? Oh You Know. The Usual. (without ever saying what The Usual is, because, yeah, when i’m in that Mode, i don’t fucking know what i do at home! idk how i spend my time! My Function Is To Avoid Conflict). 

because, uh, yeah, academically, sure! i am functioning, sort of! bodily? uh, well, i’m SLOWLY learning how to properly feed myself, and sleep without chemicals, and stay clean, stuff like that. socially? Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. okay, fuck. that’s the one i can’t... figure out, like, at all, on my own. how do i... where the fuck do I even start? i’m not even okay enough with Myself to navigate the social world without passing inappropriate judgement on potential peers. i see people who might, Might, be friends, and my brain goes POTENTIAL THREAT REGISTERED. SELF: SIGHTED. ACTION: HIDE. DO NOT APPROACH. FLEE IF CONTACT INITIATED. 

SO LIKE. my issue now is, i totally know that like... these patterns of behaviour are not My Fault, don’t make me Useless, Bad, Bratty etc, if i sit down and write about it, frowning on-and-off for hours. but, i can’t actually implement these regulatory thought processes in realtime quickly enough to... meet new people and enjoy it? on like, a social level? even on a professional level i have to wait for a good day, and switch off like, chunks of me to get the Task Completed. and uh, talking to friends isn’t a Task process, it’s supposed to be a Leisure process?

i’m quite capable of filling my time and navigating the world quietly, alone! there is a surprising amount i can find to do. but hypothetically i’d really like to, like, meet people, and not talk about “haha dude I’m so sick right now. let’s smoke another blunt,” because while it was... uh, reassuring? and i suppose fun? for a while? to meet other people dealing with life pain like that, that sort of thing gets really mutually toxic.

like, i’m in the process of quitting drugs altogether, and drugs tend to go hand in hand with that social space. daily use, even second-hand smoke, is not something i can be around any more. weed was great for ages, but now like, the drug basically told me “nah g i’m not for u any more”? - as in, it was not helping me any further, i could feel this, and i just... smashed the pipe i’d smoked out of since living in the YMCA, deleted my dealers’ numbers, and withdrew. goodbye ganja! I Keap The   B o m g   In My Mind Now

i was offered like, support from a local drug addiction charity? people fucking pushing me and pushing me to go there, actually. but like... i step outside the place and the ground is carpeted in fag ends. there are cheap booze shops like 5 minutes walk away. it felt like the kind of place where something heavy would come up in group, and i’d be with the people who peel away afterwards to chainsmoke, get a couple litres of cheap voddy, then somebody pulls out their second phone to get a baggie of the good shit once the booze hits? like it could easily just drag me back down. this is a thing i gotta discuss later, and more privately. that kind of group Not For Me.

i’d also like... started Really noticing the whole undercurrent of like, anger and judgement and denial and impermanence in the we’re-all-mentally-ill-here social spaces i used to hang out in? and i’m aware that i was participating in that too, and that while it was good to begin with and for a long time, it really isn’t good for me any more. actually tbh i go Completely Wack upon returning to those people and places now. which, fuck, like, if the person in question happens to be reading this, i’m very sorry. and yeah, sorry doesn’t cut it, because that must have been Fucking Alarming from your perspective, and i wouldn’t have done it if i’d been in my right mind, and i wasn’t in my right mind, and currently can’t be around so many triggers, and yeah your lifestyle being triggering to me is NOT your fault at all, which is why all i can really do is a disappearing act. cuz there’s no conversation that can even make a goodbye feel right, fucker that this situation is. rip. 

so yeah uh. my issue now, is Establishing Trust and Healthy Social Connections. that is, trust that someone is gonna like me for, the collection of things i like and do and say and am? uh, or even several people? 

this... is one i can’t figure out Alone, because, well, it concerns social relations. and i have very little confidence in social relations, because, well, they’ve either been painful, or centered around painful experiences. and i’ve been told that when i’m really truly enthusiastic and happy about something, i’m overwhelming and annoying to others? so i put the brakes on like crazy if i start feeling “too” happy and end up going Appeasement Mode to get out of the social situation as quickly and smoothly as possible.

and uh, what, i don’t even know the collection of things i like and do and say and am. i don’t... Know all of those things at any one time. how, uh, what? what am I. you know. the usual ??????????? flippy haze. 

i mean! i’m getting better at talking Within myself. i REALLY try to talk slowly with kindness and understanding of context to myself and the voices in my head now, and figure out solutions to pain and problems that don’t involve different kinds of pain or avoidance? but i still lapse into like, you know, Augh Jesus Christ I’ve Heard This One Before Why Do I Need To Have This Discussion Again, and frequently i can’t find a viable alternative for avoidance, because i get overwhelmed easily and that makes EVERYTHING worse. and i haven’t figured out how to take my foot off the brake pedal, either, even though i’m not always pressing it. I Need It There For Now Or Else The Car Might Crash u kno. 

so, like, what? i guess i just keep, talking kindly to the voices, and also to myself? practice until it becomes the default state of being when a trigger pops in? this requires patience, and also booting away people who refuse to have patience with me. unfortunate, necessary.

the thing about IRL conversations, is they happen so QUICKLY, and like, i don’t have enough time to calm the brain down from every trigger that pops up! because like, it can be a facial expression, a movement, a word or phrase, a tone, something in the periphery, something behind me, an internal sensation. it’s SO much information my brain is scanning urgently for threats, and my brain scans harder the more a person knows me, because a person who knows you can deal WAY more damage than a stranger. 

so... yes. this is the part i require assistance with. Hrrrrrrmmnhghdfgjnh.

I SUPPOSE. perhaps now the university have stepped in to arrange a case review with the NHS, they can really push for the kind of support i need. which, yeah, it’s long-term one-on-one trauma-focused counselling or therapy, and also some help with social interaction???? not repeated crisis team referrals, not some 12-week DBT course, i’ve literally been off finding DBT skills and employing them on my own because the waiting lists are so fucking long, and not a 12-week psychodynamic course, because i’ve been seeing a psychodynamic counsellor on and off for four years privately, and the work is nowhere near a conclusion. shit, i’d be satisfied if they could just somehow secure funding for me to keep seeing that guy specifically? he’s REALLY helpful to me, literally like my fucking role model for non-toxic masculinity. and i’m not ready for like, group social skills work, Yet. but soon, you know? only when i’m like “okay, yeah, i really do think I can handle this without my health going backwards again” - which, i need more within-myself security for that. 

also better mood monitoring would be nice, i.e. seeing the same damn person, who actually knows my case, instead of a different person every time saying “I’ve just quickly had a look at your case notes”. because if i go low again this winter, then my “depressive disorder NOS” is bipolar, and i’ve been mismedicated from the beginning. and yeah honestly like? as soon as it starts getting dark and cold, I get inexplicably sad, even with plenty of indoor light and warm clothes and whatnot. but yeah we’ll see about that.

anyway This Shit Wack. Im Done.

[light-of-being]

05.02.19 (treading tentatively forward)

Today was good. Long, exhausting, but good.

Last year was really hard for me and I spent pretty much all of it in survival mode, which is kind of just a sad way to live and was bad for my academics, leadership roles, etc, although I accept that there was no other way at the time. I can confidently say that I’m probably a lot better at coping now than I was before. But I wanted to take a more proactive approach this year -- to live more...intentionally, so to speak. To kinda build a life beyond just survival.

My main concerns were around energy and being able to do this without just collapsing entirely. I find it hard to imagine successfully sustaining studies, health and household tasks simultaneously. But perhaps I’m just being excessively miserly with my energy and I should just allow myself to be tired, to do things beyond the point of exhaustion, and then rest. I’ve been afraid that the rest wouldn’t help, that the exhaustion would become paralysing, as it often has. But the truth is, I haven’t allowed myself to reach that point in a long time because I’ve been afraid, so I don’t actually know whether that still holds at all. I might just be able to be achy and tired, get a really good sleep, and then get up and live another full day. I’m going to experiment with that, let’s see how that goes.

I got books from the library last week, but I didn’t get very far with reading them (probably coz they were slightly dense and not-so-slightly boring and depressing). So I returned those today, and got new ones that I’m actually excited about, intend to, and actually expect to read. I made deliberate efforts to pick out those that are accessible and/or noncommittal, such as a collection of short pieces that I can approach and abandon easily while still having appreciable gains.

I spoke to a therapist while on campus about problems in the general direction of this post. It was actually quite fruitful. I expressed a lot of concern about disintegration/falling apart/losing control that comes with the swamp of uncertainty surrounding my dissociation and my history of experiencing such. The sense of stumbling in the dark. I won’t pretend that I feel any more confident in being able to hold it together, but I do feel more willing to have faith. I’m slowly becoming more comfortable with the idea that I’ve rarely actually put shit behind me, but rather fled from them, that I still carry the corpses of all of myself that I’ve killed. She said we need to explore that and the past more the next time. I agree, I think. I’m still not sure what that’s meant to achieve, but I’m slightly less sure it’d be a waste of time. She says I need to put down the corpses to make space for those I’ll collect in the future, if I think that’s going to happen. Which seems fair, although I’m not certain speaking about them will put them down any better.

I took some time out yesterday to exercise (active) self-compassion. Most of my recollections and thoughts of the past had been so tainted by the visceralness, terror of recurrence and uncanny sense of similar-but-other, that I’d never bothered to look back at those stranger selves as people of their own right. I mean, if they were actually strangers, I would probably have responded to them with empathy and support, but all I was doing to myself was recoiling. So I extended to them an olive branch of sorts. Forgave them for not making it through, appreciated them for doing their best nevertheless. Promised kindness and greater support henceforth. Which was, in turn, inductively comforting to me.

But I was also angry. Very angry. At my parents, my bullies, everything that had put me in these positions. People whom I’d thought I’d long forgiven, although I’d never even properly given myself a chance to be angry at them. I’d jumped to “they did their best and didn’t know any better” type of thinking and knew I couldn’t reeeally blame them for it if I was applying my own approaches consistently. Never mind that I’d only just grokked after yeeears that this hadn’t been my fault, that it wasn’t due to anything being fundamentally wrong and horrible about me, that they were just...fucked up, and were in fact doing this to everyone. That this was wrong.

I felt, last night, the same kind of mental shift I did long ago when I moved from “slavery was 30 years ago we need to move on coz it doesn’t matter anymore” to “wow no this is still affecting every part of people’s lives and will continue to, we can’t just ignore it”. The same kind of bitterness I see when people talk about how a lot of  white people in this country never apologised, still look back to apartheid nostalgically, don’t begin to accept any responsibility or even understanding of the harm they caused...and yet we’ve “forgiven” them and “reconciled”.

Idk. I’ma write out a lengthy exposition of exactly what they did and how it affected me at some stage. I wanted to send it to my mother, or even my father, but sensibly, I probably won’t. It won’t have any productive benefit: while I’d really like them to understand and accept responsibility, I’ll almost certainly get only invalidation and hostility. Soo I’ll probably just write it for my own sanity and hopefully at some point (actually) let go.

So yeah. I’m working on things. This morning I also joined tai chi again, conditional upon being able to opt out of physical contact and social chit-chat things. I bought pretty candles that I look forward to using for meditation things and general niceness. I finally got around to buying a lace curtain so I can open the dark ones without rendering my entire room exposed to the fkin street, and I swear, the outside light transforms the ambience. It’s the best thing. I like light, a lot. I’ve set up my journal for this month, and it’s very pretty and welcoming. My bursars emailed today confirming that they’ll fund me again for this year, which although was expected from the T&Cs, brought a huge sense of relief for my financial state.

Classes start on Monday. I’m very slightly anxious about the workload and the fact that it’s final year and everything counts A Great Deal, but the content seems really cool. I dropped my maths course last year because I was overwhelmed by my own head, and I think that contributed to reduced stability and grounding. I’ma be doing it this year, which is nice. Algebra was pretty cool while I was doing it before I dropped, and Discrete Maths has always been exciting.

Applied cognitive psychology seems overall like a very exciting course. It covers stuff including neural networks, decision making, memory in forensics, clinical cognition and evolutionary cognitive psychology. There’s also an Actual Research Project done in groups: complete with research proposal and poster, and the power to grant kids course credits for partaking...which is in equal parts extremely fkin cool and absolutely terrifying.

Computer science has been said to be challenging, which is probably nice (and also, again, slightly scary). We’re doing more in-depth and probably more complex things like networks and operating systems, which is cool and superior to the largely superficial programming stuff we’ve spent so long on. I enjoyed last semester (concurrency, computer architecture, etc -- conceptual things) so this should probably be good as well.

I’m looking forward to the structure of lectures and the purposefulness of having assignments etc to do. I’ve also been reminded (again today) how much I like my (very beautiful) campus and how it brings me a sense of peace and belonging (generally when there’s nobody else there, not when scared new first years are anxiously attending everything...but anyway).

Things are, for now...okay. I’ve always liked beginnings. I’m willing to try. I’m holding out a tentative hope.

[anxiisms]

i’m just going to vent and talk about my week under the cut... i haven’t really talked to anyone about it and it’s just weighing heavily on my shoulders and causing a lot of tension in my chest so... idk maybe writing it out will make me feel a little better.

TW for self-harm, emotional abuse, neglect, suicide attempt

it all started on friday night. i‘m putting away some dishes and my mom is talking to me at the same time; basically i dissociated and only hear the last bit of what she says. so when she asks me ‘do you know what i mean?’ i kind of snap out of it and just reply with ‘yeah. yeah.’

she then proceeds to explode; saying things like never mind and i’m the only one that doesn’t get to complain ( because apparently me talking about my mental health and day-to-day events/possible struggles is considered complaining but i’ll get to that later ) she storms off into her room and at this point i’m still so dazed and lost that i just walk away and go back to my room.

my mom has a huge history of being really aggressive when it comes to situations like this. i never know if i’m going to get a loving mother out of her or a beast from hell that won’t hear a word i say and just bash me. so naturally my instinct is to walk away from this because i’m not mentally capable of handling any more of that shit at the moment.

however, over the next TWO days she acts as if i do not exist. she doesn’t talk to me, look at me, nothing. of course, having that kind of response from her when she is the one who over-reacted is really really hard on me because i suffer from some seriously bad self-judgements and stuff like that. at this point all i’m feeling is how worthless, useless, stupid, inadequate, horrible, can’t do anything right child and it starts to fuck with me big time.

during the work day on monday things just get worse. i drive for a living so i’m alone a lot and my thoughts like to wander but i can generally keep them under control unless i’m extremely stressed and anxious like i was because of how the weekend ended up being like. by the end of the day... i was in a really bad place.

i went home, cleaned everything up in the kitchen, grabbed my knife, and left. i drove way up into the mountains, i didn’t even know where i was going, all i wanted to do was get so far away and never have to go back. two hours later i’m up by a canyon and things haven’t gotten any better. i’m starting to think things like ‘i have no regrets’ and feeling relief that this is all finally going to be over.

i cut. i cut so much more aggressively than i have in the past. i wanted to die. i was ready to die. and i tried, i really tried but my knife is dull and i couldn’t do it. i gave up eventually.

i drove back into town and decided after a while to go see if my ex girlfriend was home. thankfully she was and i stayed with her for hours, just talking, catching up. i won’t go into detail about our relationship and the things we talked about but i was thankful to see her. she really helped to calm me down despite how much my arm was stinging and burning; she made it easy to forget what i had just tried to do to myself.

i stayed out really late and came home after my mom was asleep so i wouldn’t have to deal with her. she spoke to me ( finally ) the next morning. seemingly she understood what had happened after i explained but she really likes to make everything about herself so... i really didn’t get to say what i wanted to. that’s pretty typical of our relationship though. not much i can really do at this point now.

since then i’ve been... really drained. work has been tough with the condition my arm is in and i fucked it up again today picking and scratching at the scabs that were starting... i feel stupid. i feel embarrassed. why is this such a hard habit to kick. why do i hate myself so much. why do i feel like i deserve to die. i really don’t know..... i wish i did because it would probably help my healing process a bit without dealing with all these horribly intrusive thoughts but such is the life living with borderline i suppose. in the end - the skills i’ve learned of the past few years did save my life. i guess i’m thankful but i can’t really say that truthful. every day is hard. it’s so hard. but i’m trying my best...

[theguiltyhours]

So from what I’ve heard most peoples triggers tend to push on memories. I don’t have many of those and mine are attached to thoughts so it doesn’t work that way for me. So usually this kinda starts with depression. It’s my go to general problem. Long time, many years, coping skills, yuck thing. Anyway, I have a tendency for ‘bootleg’ self harm. I trigger myself on purpose to beat out that level of depression. 3/10 would not advise I’m about 10 years in and nope. Works for me but well I’m not that well anyway. Point is that the whole triggering thing doesn’t trigger my memories. It triggers my body. I have a conversion disorder. I also have pretty high dissociation levels and things don’t click in a timely basis. Anyway, because of this I will read/watch triggering material until I have some type of conversion response ex. Today I started seizing and I didn’t realize for a while and yeah I hurt but shrug. But after for some reason I’m a little better. A little more free. And the cloud is gone. And no it wasn’t easy starting the whole trigger thing. I always get anxious and have to distract in the beginning because a panic attack is a bit counterproductive in this situation. I guess sometimes I feel a bit weird about it. Maybe cause it’s laced with unhealthy coping mechanisms. Probably because it’s covered in dissociation. Which is not odd for me but idk sometimes dissociation makes me feel idk less normal. Like there are things I can’t process right. Idk. I just had some thoughts, thought I’d write it down. Been baby bothering me for a while.

[chromsai]

Sai, I just went and watched Yugioh Everything's video on Yusaku and Aoi having Autism and Depresson, respectively. While he makes some solids points and I agree with them having mental problems, he basically said Vrains is the first yugioh to talk about 'such dark topics.' If your up to it could you bring up some characters in previous ygo series (Arc-V or all your choice) that implied to have mental problems cause Vrains is not the first by a long shot lmao.

Lmao sorry this answer is kinda late since the past few days have been busy for me and ironically enough you sent this right when I just got back from a grad school info session (regarding psych programs ofc) which made me realize I kinda wanna pursue a career more along research in the field of abnormal psychology which is one of my stronger areas of knowledge in psychology already anyway. I just really like it that much.

So yeah I did see this ask like almost right when you sent it but it was late and I had just gotten home after a nice day and YE’s videos haven’t been making me too happy lately so ofc sorry I kinda avoided watching it that night cuz I didn’t wanna ruin my nice day (just in case). But now that I watched it, well as far as I can remember he didn’t outright say that this is the first time a Yugioh’s dealt with these issues before (but I can see how you got that he perhaps implied it).

That all being said, I still have just a, I’d say, general yet above-average knowledge in these subjects (hey I have a degree in Psych, yes, but that doesn’t make me an expert by any means and I’m not afraid to say that, hell I love learning new things about psych all the time) so please keep that in mind (also please keep in mind too that I cannot professionally diagnose anyone, but for the sake of discussion about the psychology in fiction, I can definitely give my thoughts on what would be the most probably diagnosis for certain characters). Besides that though, if YE does actually believe that this is the first time these kinds of issues have ever been dealt with in Yugioh, well wow idk how much he’s been paying attention before this...

(Long read with further examples + explanations from characters in each series under the cut)

Regarding his statements on the Vrains characters and the disorders he mentioned, I’ll give it to him. In fact, I too am pretty sure by now that all of Yusaku’s “quirks” point to Autism, though, and YE didn’t mention this so idk how knowledgeable he is regarding other personality disorders, he also seems to show symptoms of OCPD (obsessive-compulsive); these include being obsessed or preoccupied with making lists and keeping track of small details, over preoccupation with work or meeting goals to the point of neglecting your social life or forming close relations, unwillingness to see ethics or values in someone else’ light, being stubborn, etc. Wouldn’t surprise me if he has both since there’s a high co-morbidity between ASD and OCPD.

In regards to Aoi, again yes I agree. Girl has depression. It’s very obvious (this I can say with confidence as someone who has suffered previously from it [note: I sought help and let’s just say I’m very glad I did]. The Paranoid Personality Disorder... (I’m gonna be honest.... I didn’t pay enough attention to Aoi’s character enough to determine a firmer answer and I don’t really feel like rewatching the ep). According to him, it’s a possible thing. He did mention that she could just be acting that way because her whole entire life she’s been kinda used so she has a general distrust of people, but that’s just the thing. If in fact he’s correct about her symptoms matching up, it doesn’t necessarily matter if she’s acting this way due to her childhood trauma, in fact, that’s even more reason to validate her suffering from PPD (another area I feel more confident about in psych is child/adolescent development and hey guess what, lots of personality disorder symptoms start showing up during childhood or are even a direct cause of childhood trauma).

Speaking of childhood trauma, you wanted to know characters from other series that have mental illnesses/suffer from personality disorders? Well... (*cough cough* as a psychologist, why do you think I enjoyed Arc V so much?)...Here’s a quick list of just a few select characters I can think of:Arc V:-Yuya (remember, the childhood trauma I mentioned): Oh my poor boy suffers from dysthymia. Again, I’m pretty confident here because I can relate (because I suffer from it too ahaha). While we don’t know exactly for how long, it’s been at least three years with it (ugh) since his father’s disappearance and all the bullying. He shows so many signs of it throughout the show (it would be pointless to get screencaps because the signs are literally everywhere): dysthymia (sometimes called “persistent depressive disorder”) is noted by sadness, anger, irritability, mood swings, loss of appetite, insomnia (did you notice in Synchro when we was feeling depressed in his room he didn’t eat at all and stayed up all night despite being noticeably tired), indecisiveness, low self-esteem, among others. I’m sure people might argue against me, trying to say “oh well he’s energetic for the most part and still smiles a lot” well guess what, there’s lots of entertainers, comedians, performers, and just overall really sociable people who do a terrifyingly good job hiding it.I saw someone once mention that they headcanoned Yuya also has Histrionic Personality Disorder and well... he actually does show signs of it but not so much that he actually meets criteria. Even for being an entertainer tho, he shows this more than the others (either Dennis, Yuzu, or even Yusho), but again, can’t be diagnosed with it.Lastly, and this is more of a post-canon thought regarding the prognosis of his mental health... he’s definitely gonna deal with some dissociative symptoms for the rest of his life (or until somehow, some way they find a way to separate him and the other Yuus, and even then still...). There is just no way in hell you can convince me that he’s not gonna experience dissociation on a regular basis with 3 other people living inside him. Same goes for Yuzu. (Side note: RIP my heart.)

-Shun: He suffers from PTSD. Oh man he’s kind of textbook PTSD: irritableness, mistrust, social issolation, flashbacks, hostility, fear, anxiety, paranoia, agitation, hyper-vigilance, etc. (I’d also say Yuto and Kaito suffer this too).

-Reria: Also suffers from PTSD, but since Reira is much younger, coping with childhood PTSD is a lot harder and leads to more frequent panic attacks, flashbacks, intrusive or unwanted thoughts, nightmares, avoidant behavior, etc.

-Yuri: Conduct Disorder, aka the precursor to Antisocial Personality Disorder. He’s 14 so he can’t really be diagnosed as the second. Anyways, what really tipped me off about him having this is his blatant disregard for any remorse towards harming others. He just doesn’t feel it. On the contrary, he straight up says he enjoys it, says he needs it “just like breathing”, he’s an overall really violent kid and starts fights with literally anyone that gets in his way (like... it’s even his catchphrase “You’re in my way!”), has no knows long term close relationships with anyone (reeaaally wish they had given us more of him and Dennis together tho...), and he’s known to deceive, trick, or lie to others with no guilt at all. (He’s also seen as similar to past villains of Yugioh, outright disproving the implication that Vrains is the first Yugioh to deal with personality or mental disorder issues).

-Zarc: Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Again, another textbook example. And yes, similar to Aoi’s possible Paranoid Personality Disorder, this is canonically induced into his personality as a result of the society he lived in praising his violent duel style and eventual lust for power due in part to the same reason. But just because it was induced due to circumstance doesn’t make it any less valid. It’s another form of trauma, just like Aoi’s whole “being used all her life” led her to develop PDD.

And well there’s more examples in Arc V (you can also argue that Shingo also suffers from NPD to some extent, etc.) but I think those are the biggest ones I can think of right now.

And of course, though I’ve seen them all, I know Arc V the best + it’s just the one that’s in my most recent memory so it’s easier to talk about them, but some other quick examples from the series that I can think of:

DM:-Kaiba: Again, Narcissistic Personality Disorder.-Marik: I think he’s a strong candidate for being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (at least the way his villainous arc portrayed him as).-Bakura: Actually an adult so actual Antisocial Personality Disorder.

GX:-Judai: Depression & Dissociation. Yep.-Ryo Marufuji/Hell Kaiser: Definitely could argue that he displays signs of Sadisitic Personality Disorder, just keep in mind that it is no longer included in the DSM-V so it is not something someone would be typically diagnosed with professionally.-Manjoume: Another Narcissist.

5D’s:-Jack Atlas: Okay so he’s more of an accurate example of Histrionic Personality Disorder, minus the sexual criteria (which, if the Yugioh anime genre/audience allowed, I’m sure would be plausible since he also displays signs of NPD, implying that he might actually want that kind of physical/superficial attention).-Aki: Also like Aoi, displayed symptoms of PPD, though I’d argue she definitely has it and just learns to cope over time after befriending Yusei & co.-Sherry: Shows signs of high functioning ASD (being perfectionist and being obsessed with finding out about her parents murder), but ASD isn’t something I’m too confident talking about yet so maybe don’t quote me on this.-Divine: I’d say you can argue he’s has Antisocial Personality Disorder.

Zexal:-Vector: Another one with.... I mean... he’s not really 13 or 14, he’s actually, what, like 100s of years old? So instead of Conduct Disorder, he actually has Antisocial... technically...-Fuya: OOOOOHHHH You thought I wouldn’t remember a character like him??? (Again, as a psychologist, these are the characters I like the most). He’s memorable to me, despite being a minor character, cuz I’d say he definitely displays signs of having Avoidant Personality Disorder, especially with regards to using his Esper Robin personality to avoid all those intrusive, self-conscious thoughts he doesn’t find pleasant.-Shark/Ryoga/Nasch: Also has PTSD.-IV: He’s borderline Antisocial. Not quite. But almost there.

OOOKAYY Well anyways, those were just a bunch of examples. There’s way more, I’m sure that I missed A TON. But yes it’s as you said, Vrains is definitely NOT the first time in Yugioh history where characters have had to struggle with mental health / personality disorder issues. Far from it.

And wow actually thank you for the ask! This was really fun to think about and I welcome the discussion any time! Anyone, don’t be afraid to let me know if there’s stuff I might have left out or if there’s anything wrong with this or any arguments for or against any of this.

[pinkpeccary]

coping music recs

so i have been having a Sad Time lately and channeled those feelings into making a list of music i use to cope, which i figured i’d share in case anyone else wants it. these are some of my favorite musics, but some of them have potential triggers in them so be careful. (also if you’re concerned about triggers for them you can message me and i can detail more)

(tw: suicide, self harm, eating disorder, i think that covers it but lmk if it doesn’t)

Daughter - good for trauma feels. i like her for strong vibes of “i am hurt, i am damaged, i am broken”. some of my faves are:

Human (underneath this skin there’s a human / buried deep within there’s a human / despite everything i’m still human)

Landfill (and this is dangerous / cause i want you so much / but i hate your guts)

Youth (and if you’re still breathing, you’re the lucky ones / cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs)

Still (two feet standing on a principle / two hands longing for each other’s warmth / cold smoke seeping out of colder throats / darkness falling there’s nowhere to go)

Candles (blow out all the candles, blow out all the candles / you’re too old to be so shy / he said to me, so i stay the night)

Mother Mother - also good for trauma feels and just all around badfeels. wide variety of songs that cover many many aspects of mental illness, from depression to dissociation to eating disorders to dysphoria to suicide to etc etc etc. some faves:

Monkey Tree (i never went to your school / i learned in a monkey tree / so come into the jungle / where the drugs and the drinks are free)

Ghosting (you don’t need tricks and you don’t need treats / you don’t need tricks / you don’t need no Halloween / you don’t need tricks / you don’t need treats / and you don’t need me)

Little Pistol (i found brimstone in my garden / i found roses set on fire / and i found Jesus / what a liar / so i trade licks with the muddy waters)

The Stand (tell me your fears / okay it’s everyone here / you mean just all of the people / yeah and all of their peers)

O My Heart (and i throw my heart into the fi-ire / cause i want to set my heart on fi-ire / and i watch it try befriending embers / but the ice don’t melt in mid-December)

Body (take my hands, they’ll understand / take my heart, pull it apart / and take my brain, or what remains / and throw it all away)

Happy (ask me if i’m happy / what does it mean? / i’ll tell you that i am if you tell me i’m dreaming)

All Gone (i take a hammer and i break my legs / i break them for the better / the two of them were always walking me / into the stormy weather)

Arms Tonite (and hey, you / don’t you think it’s kinda cute / that i, died / right inside your arms tonight?)

I Go Hungry (i got a date on Friday / not gonna eat anything til then / i’m gonna look so skinny / she’ll wanna feel my bones against her skin)

ROAR - only has about 10 songs. hard to find if you don’t know the names of songs bc the generic band name, but good. interesting music bc it doesn’t have much repetition within the song, which is cool. kinda more like poetry. some faves:

Flightless Bird (means that never reach an end / that’s what you get for living in your head / you breathe 3 AM breath / and tell yourself that this is for the best)

The Comfort of a Laugh Track (why is it so hard to speak / to people, i don’t know / is it something that you learn / when constantly alone / when did i become a man / trapped inside a ghost?)

I Can’t Handle Change (nothing i do is ever good / nothing i do is ever good enough)

The Mountain Goats - i have a hard time describing what it is about them that i like so much. i’d guess it has to do with a general vibe of mistrust for the world, but like i’m gonna keep going because fuck you. also cause they’re fun, even when they’re serious. idk. some faves:

This Year (i am gonna make it through this year if it kills me / i am gonna make it through this year if it kills me)

No Children (i am drowning / there is no sign of land / you are coming down with me / hand in unlovable hand / and i hope you die / i hope we both die)

Pink and Blue (and what will i do with you? / pink and blue / true gold / nine days old)

Get Lonely (and i will find a crowd / and blend in for a minute / and i will try to find / a little comfort in it / and i will get lonely / and gasp for air)

The Fall of the Star High School Runningback (but selling acid was a bad idea / and selling it to a cop was a worse one / and new laws said that seventeen-year-olds could do federal time / you were the first one)

The Best Ever Death Metal Band out of Denton (if you punish a person for dreaming his dreams / don’t expect him to thank or forgive you)

Goo Goo Dolls - tbh a lot of this is nostalgia (although i didn’t grow up with them, the music style has that feel to it). i do think they’re good for coping in the sense that they feel protective, like being wrapped in a blanket. some faves:

Acoustic #3 (and you wonder where these dreams go / cause the world got in your way / what’s the point in all this screaming / no one’s listening anyway)

Iris (and you can’t fight the tears that ain’t coming / or the moment of truth in your lies / when everything feels like the movies / yeah, you bleed just to know you’re alive)

Name (scars are souvenirs you never lose / the past is never far / and did you find yourself somewhere out there? / did you get to be a star? / don’t it make you sad to know that life / is more than who we are?)

Sympathy (and stranger than your sympathy / i take these things so i don’t feel / i’m killing myself from the inside out / and now my heads been filled with doubt)

Other Songs - these are all things i’ve found individually, idk about the artists in general but these ones are good

Island of the Misfit Boy - Front Porch Step (i stand in front of the mirror and look at myself / and i don’t make a sound but my eyes scream out help / and i start to struggle to hold myself back / from thrusting my head straight through the fucking glass)

Sarcasm - Get Scared (don’t mind us we’re just spilling our guts / if this is love i don’t wanna be loved / you pollute the room with your filthy tongue / watch me choke it down so i can throw it up)

This is the Best - Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker (i was feeling so inspired / by the state of my own execution / drop me cause i can’t let go)

Fallen Leaves - Billy Talent (in a crooked little town / they were lost and never found / fallen leaves, fallen leaves / fallen leaves on the ground)

Dead Hearts - Stars (i could say it but you won’t believe me / you say you do but you don’t deceive me / dead hearts are everywhere)

Girl With No Name - Jules Larson (i draw the blurriest lines / i never promised to stay / i am the girl with no name)

Into the Ocean - Blue October (let the waves up and take me down / let the hurricane set in motion / let the rain of what i feel right now come down)

Not Your Kind of People - Garbage (we are not your kind of people / speak a different language / we see through your lies)

[owlpajamas-archived-blog]

yuu dies au

basic summary: “i thought kagami treated me horribly but then i met you lot” -- mika

“no one is happy and mika is the least happy”

the agenda: - make everyone sad - make ourselves sad

nory: heyyy remember yuu dies au bee: r u about to angst on us nory nory: welll i was thinking about it some more bany: Oh Boy

created by moi, @distressedphilosopher​, @forblazes​, and @celestialshinoa​

GIANT HUGE CONTENT WARNING for: suicide, self harm, fucked up mental shit, fucked up coping methods, disordered eating (kinda??), pain and suffering

Setting: during the Final Battle, yuu goes seraph and sacrifices himself to cleanse the entire world. kinda like what he did at nagoya but on a larger scale

yuu was secretly planning smth like this ever since they started planning the final battle (in sanguinem?? tokyo again???) and he was dropping hints leading up to it and being super duper affectionate and emotional towards everyone and spent a lot of time reassuring them all that he loves them so much etc etc. and insisted on mika drinking from him one last time the day they leave bc that means so much to both of them. n at the end of the battle yuu goes seraph and does the thing and there's this huge explosion/burst of incredibly bright light and a huge shockwave and it lasts for several minutes and when the dust clears yuu is lying at the epicenter of a huge crater

and mika gets to him first and the others just hear him scream with grief/pain and they Know. mika is completely incoherent and refuses to leave yuu's body and doesn't let anyone else get close for a while........maybe that's the first time mika tries to kill himself...this is getting a lot darker than i first intended

ok so it's after the battle right and yuu's body is at the morgue and the shinoa squad is back at their house recovering physically and emotionally from everything

like it's their first day back from staying at hospital overnight

and it's morning and mika drags himself out of bed and downstairs and he's dissociating like whoah; and he opens the fridge and the first thing he sees is the several bottles of blood. and it's yuu's blood that they made before the Final Battle; and mika just falls to the floor sobbing bc yuu is gone, he's dead, and yet a part of him is still here?? and feeding mika was always something special for the two of them, it was calm and safe and bonding time

and after mika drinks this yuu will be gone for Real

he's just hit w all this existentialism and reality of the situation

shinoa runs into the kitchen and finds him and he's totally inconsolable

the remnants of the JIDA become the new human government and they let the shinoa squad, including mika, retire early to a house in the countryside for their service.

t starts off w the squad in their new home and it's up in the mountains and it's nice and quiet and there are fields for them to grow their own food and they have a goat or chickens or smth idk but it's empty and they're all grieving

no one really knows what to do w themselves bc not only is yuu dead but they're all retired indefinitely now

kimizuki tries to distract himself w cooking

mika sleeps All The Time like for days at a time bc of vamp metabolism is weird af. so if u add in severe depression and grief u get....sleeping for 3 days straight. also in attempt to get mika out of bed kimizuki ropes him into House Chores™. picture mika and kimizuki at the sink. mika is robotically peeling onions mika and kimi become the food prep team

 he likes feeding the chickens. shinoa takes up crochet. shinoa gave the chickens all stupid names

everyone struggles to cope and mika is actively suicidal and the squad tries to bring him out of it

mika loses his appetite from grief/depression and refuses to drink for a week+ at a time and gets really weak and sick. it's ironic bc all this time drinking blood has been the thing he hates most about being a vampire but he kept doing it so that he could save yuu/live with yuu. and now yuu's dead and he doesn't even care about blood at all. like under any other circumstances this would be a GOOD thing to not be thirsty but.

it's a struggle to get him to drink anything bc the old solution of "confront him and cut ur arm or show him blood and then he'll give in and drink" doesn't work anymore bc mika just Doesn't Fucking Care.

someone just ends up jamming their arm into his fangs and he hates it but his instincts are screaming at him to eat, eat, survive even if his mind and heart don't want to

like once he starts drinking his body is like Oh Shit wait this is a really good thing u need this to survive

and then theres panic among the person who jammed their arm into his teeth because oh fuck his jaw locked (as vampires do when feeding sometimes. this was completely on accident on mikas part tho)

at one point yoichi is trying to convince him to drink and is getting really really worried bc mika is in a Bad Place and so he kind of yells at mika “yuu would want you to!!” or smth like that. and mika snaps and starts yelling at him and is Really Angry in a scary vampire way. like he just whirls around and yells at yoichi to shut the fuck up, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, he slams his fist into the wall, he’s baring his fangs and his eyes have this dangerous glint. and yoichi starts crying bc he’s just so scared and worried for mika, and he’s also grieving yuu so much, and he can’t help but be scared when mika acts like that

and then mika feels even worse!! >: D

yoichi is sobbing and mika doesn’t kno what to Do he’s so confused and disoriented and he feels so awful and it’s a Mess. the rest of the squad comes running in and intervenes cuz they heard the yelling

bany: also u know how cats will purr when either happy OR distressed as a self-comfort mechanism?yeah. that happens. its not a happy purr sound. its miserable and throaty and stuttered.

yoichi is crying and saying “i’m sorry i’m sorry” and “i miss him too!!” and kimi and shinoa are trying to comfort him and mika is floundering and sad-purring

bany: mika just. gives up and curls into a ball. just him and the squad and the vibrations in his throat

kimi drags yoichi away, who doesn’t want to leave until mika’s ok, and shinoa and narumi stay and try to talk to mika. he caves and drinks from narumi and then falls asleep for like a day and a half after that. depression symptoms become more exaggerated when ur a vampire bc their metabolism is slower. mika becomes the master of the depression nap.

hey hey what if he and yoichi cuddle after the fight as an apology. mika falls asleep and yoichi starts petting his hair and mika starts purring, then yoichi falls asleep too. yoichi Insists that mika drink from him, or at least drink /something/ bc mika’s had no appetite for weeks and is p much starving himself

bany: he feeds so infrequently and in such small portions the squad starts to notice signs of continual starvation (his cheeks are hollow, his spine should not be that pronounced, holy shit ribs) and say okay this has GOT to STOP

permanent dark circles under his eyes and shaky hands, dizzy spells All the time, his skin was always pale but now it’s paler than normal and all the color is washed out or greyed out

bany: vampires have slow heartbeats right? it should not be as fast as it is

nice thing about living w a group of powerful demon users/human experiments is that they all have a pretty good healing factor so they can lose a lot more blood and be fine than a normal human could

after yuu’s death and things settle down a little and the squad resigns from the JIDA and live in a house together in a small town thats being built again. theres a grave and shrine where yuu is buried, its in the woods a little,  and thats where mika spends most of his time. shinoa helped him plant perenials to plant on the gravesite. mika spends most of his time dissociating and remembering and talking to yuu outloud. about how much mika misses yuu and how desperately he wants to be with him, mika cant bear the thought of existing in a world where yuu no longer exits, and that hes so sorry that he could save yuu and that he wants to join yuu in death but he cant bc its impossible. and hes so lonely and he feels like something has been ripped out of him, bc yuu was mika’s life parter and fp.

he tells yuu about all the stuff that happens everyday too, and he also cries a lot. he tells yuu about how his appetite is gone and how ironic it is that something he wanted so bad to happen (to not want to drink blood) was caused by his worst nightmare (yuu’s death)

Melissa: Mika realizes how much he actually appreciated drinking Yuu's blood n stuff and how much he hates that he has no other options now

The squad keep a little schedule without mika knowing and they go and visit him and let him feed from them (or rather, make him)

He doesn't fight back as much as he used to because he just doesn't care about anything

Nory: he reaches a point where he doesnt cry or anything anymore but the only emotion he has is overwhelming grief and self loathing. he talks about how grateful he was that yuu accepted him so enthusiastically and whole-heartedly and always looked out for him even when mika made it difficult; and how much he misses drinking from yuu and how comforting and safe it was because he loved yuu so much and they had so much trust in each other. the first time he drinks directly from one of the squad members he breaks down and is flooded w memories of yuu

also he gets really really furious at the other squad members bc they arent feeling the grief as powerfully as he does. like they still are absolutely grieving for yuu but they start to recover and move through the stages of grief and mika cant

Melissa: Mika thinks it's because humans are fickle and care less and he gets mad at them for being so "shallow"

he takes his grief and angery out on them and yells at them and gets into fights, yelling how they couldnt posssibly understand what hes feeling right now, how dare you, how dare you start to move on….etc..

During one of his angry spurts he just runs into a forest and starts knocking down trees

Nory: someone tries to comfort him and he curls in on himself and hes termbling and sad-purring. kimi tries to stop hm and mika whirls around and snarls “dont touch me” and he looks really feral and its a little scary.

Melissa: He does the neck grab attack thing on someone then looks down on them as tears fall from his face into theirs then he gets off and turns his back toward them and just says "...I'm sorry" then flies away

Nory: he doesnt come back for a day or 2 and he comes back really exhausted and dissociating and bleeding a lot

Melissa: he stabs himself a lot (cue nory sobbing)

he hasnt had any blood in over a weak and he just makes it to the front porch before he faints, his injuries arent healing bc hes so weak. And everyone is like "how do we feed him if he's unconscious???" he wakes up a little when they get him inside and immediately throws up from internal bleeding. (I LOVE SUFFERING)

And they just like try to stop his bleeding enough to get him to be conscious enough not to choke on it.

he drinks from kimizuki then bc his body is running on autopilot at this point and hes to tired to fight the impulses anymore, and after he gets enough in his system he watches his wounds start to heal and he's like "damn it" and is mad and embarrassed w himself later for causing a scene and being an inconvenience.

he was also so drained and out of it he wasnt even thinking about dying he was just in pain and his instincts took over completely

he was dissociating and he didnt even remember going back to the house or fainting, he just wakes up in his bed not knowing what happened or where he is

after a while mika starts sleeping in yoichis room bc its comforting and it lets him forget about anything and just pretend hes a normal teenager

Sleep deprived angst talks are the best kind

yoichi + mika have late night talk sessions that usually involve at least 1 of the crying

mika comforting yoichi tho?? good shit……..in a very quite, subdued way, lots of hugs involved, purring, crying. they finally fall asleep at like 3 am and dont get up till past noon. mika is clinging to yoichi like an octopus.

Mika: holds yoichi

Yoichi: is held

yoi always wakes up earlier than mika but he stays in bed and falls into a doze and hugs mika instead of getting up

bc its so nice to have companionship and also he knows that mika will get really anxious if he wakes up and yoi isnt there

oooooh maybe the first time they sleep in the same bed yoichi gets up in the morning to have breakfast and mika’s still asleep (he needs his rest). and then mika wakes up and panics bc yoichi is gone, and he immediately thinks someting bad happened

mika rushes downstairs bc Gotta FInd YOichi and sees everyone in the kitchen eating breakfast and everythings fine, but he still hugs yoi and checks him over for injuries and doesnt want to let him go. vampire instincts say Gotta Protect Yoichi

and hes like trembling a little bc what if something had happened to yoichi or any of the others??

scenario: mika spends days at a time at yuu's shrine and it's pouring rain and getting to be nighttime so yoichi goes to look for him and he's bleeding from his wrists and not healing bc he hasn't had blood in a week. and yoichi eventually persuades him to come inside. (bany: this kills the man). and basically half carries mika back to the house, and the other squad members are anxiously waiting in the kitchen, mika is basically incoherent but he's just so. miserable. and everyone hurts. he’s dripping blood and cold water and hes a Mess™

yoichi and shinoa get him upstairs and into the bath and mika doesn't even care bc he's just. done.

(also there's mikayoi going on bc i'm lov that shit)

mika says that his life his worthless if yuu is dead and that he's failed his only purpose - to keep yuu safe. and yoichi and shinoa talk about how they need him too bc he's their family now too. and there are nice tender moments with yoichi washing mika's hair

bany: good because his hair would be Nasty and prob needs a good brush

 afterwards mika drinks from yoichi bc he's too exhausted to even protest and they have another Tender Moment™

anyway imagine mika and yoichi hugging each other quietly remembering yuu 

:" )

the squad ovs ends up sleeping in the same room/mattress pile (comfort among others, ect.) but they have like. babysitting mika shifts. they take turns wedging him into the corner of the pile so 1. he can get some fucking sleep and 2. he won't get up and try anything self destructive at tnight.  lot of times he can't even sleep OR he sleeps for days at a time

thats it for now :3 thank u for reading so far and also im sorry

[littleangelicboy]

For BPD thing: ALL THE ODD NUMBERS

1) Self-dx or Professional dx?-Self-dx!!! -I'm too young they won't professionally dx me-I'm crying 3) Do you have an fp? If so, who are they?-Yes I do and it's literally hell!!! -They didn't do anything wrong -My brain is just constantly screaming -But!!!! They probably already know bc I probably told them and forgot -Or I didn't bc I was worried I'd be too much -But um... -Not surprisingly -It's Hazuki -haha haha haha yay5) What do you do to have a sense of identity?-convince myself I'm the best and no one can top me -and then get pissed when someone tops me-and then I split -and then I cry -that's practically the story of how I almost quit orchestra lol 7) Do you have traits of other personality disorders?-Yes!!! Mostly PPD and DPD -I'm so paranoid it's not okay -at all -especially with food -the real reason why I'm skinny -I don't eat bc I think my beans are actually secretly bad things 9) Are you LGBT+? Has your BPD affected this in any way?-Yes!!!! I am!!! I'm pan??? Maybe??? And asexual??? Maybe??? And a demi-boy??? Maybe???-But it definitely has -Bc I get an fp that's a girl and suddenly I'm like 'God girls are amazing!!!!' -But then I think about actually being in a relationship with a girl and it's like 'ehhhh' -Boys are great tho I fuckin love boys -right now -also it's kinda hard to say I'm ace when I'm hypersexual so it's like!!!!! -what are you doing?!?!?! -also am I a boy??? Probably-But am I a girl bc my fp likes girls??? idk -am I both??? Most likely -anyways yes 11) When did you first start having symptoms?-shit idk...-I was always extreme since I could remember -and would always have a crush I would devote my life too -But like... -Shit what age are you allowed to be like... mentally ill???-Anyways probably a long long while ago -But I really noticed it when I learned about it after I got away from @ ykwya so :/ 13) Do you ever split on yourself?-consistently -one moment I'm the best in the world -and the next I'm nothing and could shrivel up and disappear and no one would notice15) Do you get jealous often? What makes you jealous?-Yes I do!!! -I'm always jealous of SOMETHING-and jeez pretty much everything -I'm not even kidding -someone complimented my fp and I was seething with jealous like what a fuckin child -But I also get sad jealous a lot -I got sad jealous a few days ago and like cried for five minutes -then my fp texted me and it was okay 17) What emotion do you hate the most and why?-Jesus it's a tie between anger and jealousy -Bc on one hand before I even knew my fp was my fp I was jealous all the time -and thought I was abusive for it and God it was the worst -But like...-anger is really bad for me and I'm killing my hands bc of it -whenever I get angry bc of the stuff at home -I end up throwing a BPD Rage Tantrum and beat the shit out of my wall-But honestly it only leaves my hands tingling, my fingers kinda numb, and bruises on my legs so :/ 19) What do you do when a relationship ends?-jeez I don't have much experience with that -the only relationship I've really had that ended was with @ ykwya -and I didn't take it well -and a year or two later I'm still not taking it well -so you can only imagine 21) Are you a quiet borderline?-usually usually -I don't really go out of my way to make life hell for people -I more so internalize that shit until I'm about to burst -and then... uh... do stuff bc I'm bursting!!!!-yeah... I don't harm others per se... if I'm mad I'll hurt myself... -no matter how much I hate someone I just can't hurt them bc of my stupid ass empathy for all 23) Do you have mood swings that aren't caused by anything specific?-hm...-I feel like it's always caused by something -even if it's small -or barely related 25) How often do you dissociate? What are your usual symptoms?-that's a great question I would like to know the answer to too!!! -um mostly memory loss I guess -Or time skips -like I honestly didn't realize it was 10:42 a few hours ago bc I checked five minutes before and it said 9:05 so :/// -But also sometimes I can't remember what happened literally seconds before -Or what I said seconds before -and that's Scary!!!!!!! -like Really Really Scary!!!! -I try to play it off as like 'haha forgetful me' but like... it's scary and my voice gets a little shaky 27) Are you on any medications?-I'm on a bunch of medicine bc I am sick -But for mental illness -NO!!!! -Partly bc I was a bitch and decided not to take them bc I was pissed and split on my doctor -Partly bc my anti-psychotics made me fall asleep in class and I couldn't take it -and Partly bc I moved out of state and can't get them AND I STILL DON'T HAVE A FUCKIN DOCTOR OR THERAPIST DESPITE MY EVERYTHING GETTING WORSE -AND I DON'T EVEN THINK I'M GOING TO A THERAPIST -BC APPARENTLY A THERAPIST WON'T BELIEVE THAT I HAVE REPRESSED MEMORIES -AND I'M PISSED -But um yeah -nothing for mental illness -I have to take meds for my tummy tho-that's the only one I remember -if I don't take it everyday I get sick and it's not fun at all 29) Do you ever have hallucinations? If so, what are they? -Not visual -never visual for some reason -But I always hear someone calling me -like a family member -even if I'm home alone or that member isn't there -9/10 times its my mom and sometimes I hear it even while playing music -and it freaks me out bc my mom always says she didn't call me -and ahhhh it sucks {Thank you so much!!!!! ❤}

[quietborderlineinfo]

Hi I have a question or want your perspective on something please. So I've seen myself in other people's descriptions of bpd for a long time. My t thinks I might have it. If I have it it's the quiet type. But there's just some things that I can't see fitting? Or understand how they would be "quiet"? And some of the criteria I only experience very rarely or with certain people. 1/?

alright hey stargazer!

i can totally appreciate how much thought and detail you’ve put into this - i remember being in that place, and its so confusing and frustrating and frankly exhausting. breathe; from what youve said it sounds like your T is paying close attention and wants the best for you. over time, you’ll figure out what diagnosis & treatment(s) may work for you. until then, just focus on getting better one step at a time.

keep in mind that below i just discuss how the things you said relate to the diagnostic criteria, but no one here can diagnose you. definitely talk to your T (and if theyre not a psychiatrist, try to talk to one of those if you have access to a good one, since theyre more inclined to diagnose, in my experience)

also remember that you only need 5/9 for a diagnosis - so two people w bpd may have only 1 overlapping symptom. (so if you dont see yourself in everything you read, thats normal)

For instance 1 (frantically avoid abandonment) only w/ 2 relationships I’ve ever had, and these are more feelings than actions I take 2 (pattern unstable intense relationships) I’ve only had one significant relationship in my life and it was very intense and unstable, but I have no history of it but I also have no history of what I would call “close” relationships. I’m mostly avoidant of them) 2/?

1 & 2: saaame. i once asked a T if never letting yourself feel close to people was a form of attempting to avoid abandonment, and was told that it can be, if that’s why you do it. it can be hard to figure out why you do something you may have always done though, so it helps to both try to analyze past experiences and definitely to try to look at your feelings and how they’re motivating you as you go forward.

I’m not sure on the whole feelings vs actions thing; ask your T cause i think there can be a lot of grey area. and for #2, i had the same experience too; everyone who treated me seemed to think that the one relationship was enough evidence, i guess considering that avoidant behaviour. 

3 (id disturbance) I’m not sure exactly how this manifests or is separate from depersonalization. Like I don’t feel real when I try to engage in hobbies. I only exist when I’m doing things with others and then I feel fake and two dimensional (but this is getting a lot better and I’m afraid that means the symptom isn’t real) I’m not sure of my own hobbies and I have no internal motivations or knowledge base to make my own decisions. 3/?

. I can hardly tell right from wrong a lot of the time and use clues from others to help me. And I can change depending on the people I’m around. Is that what this means? This isn’t all things but some things 4 I am not in the slightest impulsive except if you count the impulsive texts I would send to that one intense relationship to make sure she didn’t hate me every few weeks 4/?

3. so depersonalization is a type of dissociation, so that’d fall under criterion 9. symptoms can get better and that absolutely doesn’t mean that you are now or have ever been faking; remission of symptoms with time and/or therapy is actually more likely than not. not knowing right from wrong is interesting cause at first i thought that was entirely unrelated, but realized it could come from not having an internalized moral system, which would definitely sound relevant.

what does fit the description is both not being sure of your hobbies (esp since it sounds like means youre not sure of what you enjoy/care about?), and changing depending on the people you’re around (if you feel like its more of an internal change than say, changing from business-appropriate speech patterns to something more casual when around friends vs at work).

the wiki page describes ID disturbance really well i think, but if you still have questions, definitely send them your T’s/our way.

4. neither am i, and i was still diagnosed. some people seem to think that it’s one criterion that has to be met though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it is possible that it manifests only very specifically, like w me I’m only impulsive w self-harm or recklessly crossing the street.

5 (self harm) I’ve cut in the past but I can go years without cutting, but the urge to cut will always surface every few weeks whether I act on it or not 6 (affective instability) not sure I understand this. My emotions are so intense that I have a hard time doing anything but engaging in avoidant behaviors. Focusing on school and work is extremely difficult around my thoughts and feelings, Is that what this means? I can change really quickly too based on one thought or one outside occurrence5/?

Hi stargazer anon again. Sorry I’m all over the place with this I just get confused. So missing might be the part that addressed diagnostic criteria #7. basically yes I experience emptiness. I think The end of message 5 is relating to diagnostic criteria #6 (instability of mood) and message 7 is relating to diagnostic criteria #8 (anger). Sorry it’s a mess. But I don’t think there is anything important in the missing piece. I was just going through each symptom and comparing my experience w/ it

5. that certainly counts! (proud of you for keeping it to a minimum, hope you’re working w your T to eliminate it entirely!)

6. “Patients often describe affective instability as an “emotional roller coaster” that relates to a subjective sense of strong affects and emotions experienced in an uncomfortable, rapid sequence.”

what you described sounds intense, and to clarify the changeability i think it can have a lot to do with reacting really strongly to things in the environment/in relationships. you didnt talk too much about the changes, so id say it sounds like this likely fits, but warrants more discussion just to clarify.

7. aight √

But i don’t get angry at people usually. I used to have this pattern of withdrawing from my relationships because I was convinced they didn’t really like me and I wanted to see if they would come talk to me to sort of “test them” but knowing the whole time that I was a horrible person who didn’t deserve their love anyway and if they didn’t really love me then I didn’t deserve it (though have gotten way better at this with therapy). Is that what is meant by the cold shoulder? 7 I think/?

8. see idk, it’s possible that that’s anger for you, but it sounds like you’ll wanna think more about it. i think cold shoulder is more about refusing to engage someone because you are upset at them. to me, what you described sounds more like fear than anger, but only you can know that. idk about other quiet borderlines but for most of my life I’ve had anger far repressed 🤔

9. (for the sake of completion) depersonalization, which you mentioned in part 2, is a kind of dissociation

Sorry for this essay if not ok just ignore and delete. Sorry I’m just having a hard time cause so much of this feels like me but then so many of the hallmarks don’t at all, or only rarely appear. I think I have aVpd too and it makes it hard to know because some symptoms cloud each other. Thanks can please tag stargazer if you do answer it? 8/8 I think it was?

sorry for taking so long to respond! yeah its useful to have a full discussion with a psychiatrist about this especially when multiple disorders are in question. also remember that as much as we may seek the sense of identity labels can give us, you dont need to fit something specific to have valid pain that deserves to be treated and warrants a break from work.

please let us know if you have any follow-up questions. good luck - it’ll get easier with time & work!