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coalitiongirl · 3 years ago

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Fic Recs (under 300 edition)

So I wanted to get back to reading Swan Queen fic regularly, and I asked people to rec longfic that they'd read (not written) and loved that had fewer than 300 kudos! I haven’t read most of these, but I’ve collected them here so y’all can go through the list and discover some new fics with me! Please try to kudos and review every fic that you read! It means the world to the writers and will keep em writing, and then we all win. 😁

Atonement by SgtMac (M): With Regina's magical heart failing thanks to years of previous evil, Emma and Regina and Henry (and Granny!) set out to save her life by traveling to the Enchanted Forest and requesting help from ancient magical beings known as the Guardians. Given a mission as simple as it is impossible - to achieve atonement by creating peace - the ladies find themselves joining a rebellion and fighting for the very soul of the Enchanted Forest all while trying to help Regina to understand that the self-loathing and guilt which have driven most of her actions don't have to doom her chance for a new beginning or even, a chance to live and love again. A S4(ish) SQ love story set against the turmoil of war and the chaotic savagery of the old world.

Blood and Sand by cheshire6845 (E): A/U The Savior is a slave forced into the role of fighting as a gladiator for the House of Hearts. The odds are against her survival as she will have to win in the arena, navigate Cora's schemes, outlast a general's vengeance, and not be killed out of spite by the current House of Hearts Champion - Regina the Undefeated. This story follows the major plot points of Starz Spartacus with some twists along the way.

But what if there was no time by KizuRai (M): When she wakes up, it's dark. She can't move, she can't see, she can't feel and she can't hear. Where am I? She feels a forceful oppression, pressing her down, draining her of her energy and she's powerless to stop it. How did I get here? The question of here is relative, she's not even sure where here is. What happened? There must be some reason for being stuck here but her memory is fuzzy, like all her thoughts are being sifted through a filter. Who am I? She's not sure if she actually exists or she suddenly became sentient in the darkness.She hears a voice reverberating in the distance, it's distorted and quiet but she hears it all the same. It breaks the monotony of the silence. Someone's coming for her, they will get her out. She's just not sure she wants them to as the price might be too great.

Finding Home by evl_rgl (T): “I wanted to remember you so badly that I pulled back your cursed town just so that the memories would make sense. I needed you so badly that even when I had no memory of you, I still tried to find you.” Regina gave Emma and Henry memories of a happy life together before they fled Pan’s curse, leaving them with no memories of their lives in Storybrooke. However, when the memory spell shows signs of failing, threatening to rip apart the minds of both Emma and Henry, Regina makes a drastic choice to go back and fix it, understanding that it will mean living alone in a world where her son doesn’t know her. Was the spell really faulty, though? (swanqueen)

Five Flames by MariaComet (U): In the past, Emma Nolan disconnected from her peers in high school, preferring to keep to herself. In her sophomore year of high school, she decided to try and join the boy’s wrestling team because she was bored. She didn’t expect herself to become the champion of the most bullied kid in school or the secret best friend of the school queen. She also didn’t expect to join a club that would change her life. In the present, Emma is trying to cope with a humiliating loss in her martial arts career. She claims to be “training” but is stuck in limbo between wanting to retire and try again. She is isolated from her former best friend, Regina Mills, a local celebrity chef and the rest of her old friends. When one of them calls her with an idea to honor their deceased teacher, she is confronted with unresolved feelings and questions about how powerful love truly is.

A Glamour of Truth by PrincessCharming (T): After 2x10, Regina uses magic to show Emma the obvious truth. A tentative trust forms between them amid hilarious bickering. With Emma's help, Regina struggles to regain a place in her son's life... until Cora arrives, wanting her daughter back. Pieces of Regina's past emerge showing that the board was set long before the game started. The final battle begins soon.

His Dark Materials 'verse by MoonlitMidnight (M): A modern Alternate Universe in which Dæmons (the external physical manifestation of a person's 'inner self' that takes the form of an animal) are present. In which Emma and Regina have led slightly different lives and they make slightly different choices.

How Many Miles to Avalon? (WIP) by RavenOutlander (E): Regina would do anything to save Emma from the darkness and bring her back home safe and sound. Even put up with the two idiots, Captain Guyliner and a bunch of dwarves she decidedly wanted to drop off at the nearest exit. But in their search for Emma, they find that she might not need that much saving after all. Caught up in a search for the infamous Philosopher Stone, an all out war between DunBroch and Camelot, and ghosts from the past to haunt her every waking moment, Regina finds herself scrambling to keep her and her family's happy endings from falling apart.

The Hyperion by FrankenSpine (M): After wishing upon what she believes is a shooting star, Emma Swan finds herself aboard the Hyperion, the royal starship of an alien Queen from a faraway galaxy. She quickly learns of the tensions between the Queen's people and her own, but the Queen takes an interest in her and agrees to take her away from Earth forever. Adventure awaits. *(Loosely based on Guardians of the Galaxy with just a hint of Farscape)*

If Wishes Came True (It Would've Been You) by Angeii_K (M): After Regina films a guest appearance on her friend Neal’s popular show, he invites her to spend the weekend with him and his girlfriend. What she never expected was to actually like the woman. Sparks fly between the two, which results in them questioning everything and making choices they will later regret. 4 years later, they meet again in the most unexpected of ways. Now co-stars on the same show, they are forced to work through the emotions from their last encounter. What will happen next? Only time will tell.

The King Doesn’t Have To Know (WIP) by highheelsandchocolate (M): The White Knight had never seen anyone like her before: the Queen was nothing short of mesmerizing. Her possessive yet neglectful husband, however, was another thing entirely.

The Lich by Dangereaux (M): Gay disaster Emma, exasperated Regina, and a monster. A Halloween special.

Maybe if We Close Our Eyes we Can Reach the Stars by wellthizizdeprezzing (T): Emma is a lonely astronaut. Regina is an adventuring alien. Their paths cross leading them onto a journey of new discovery. Between galaxies and many miles of cold black space, despite not speaking the same language, they manage to fall for each other. An out of this world love story.

A prisoner long forgotten by sugarsweet_19 (M): ‘I wish I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood and as black as the wood of the window-frame. Soon after she had a little girl, who was as white as snow, with lips as red as blood and with her hair as black as the ebony of the window-frame. She was therefore called Snow-white.” This is how our story starts but how will it end?The evil queen as been locked up in a tower and forgotten that is until princess Emma looks for a place to hid from her parents after they tell her she has to marry Neal the son of the dark one.

Revenge of the Three Little Pigs by mskyo (M): Regina and Emma find themselves alone and looking for the rest of their party. The Evil Queen must face the consequences of her past actions. Will Emma come to her aid, or understand that justice must be served... *Some chapters have fairly graphic sex, and violence*

Things I Almost Remember by cheshire6845 (T): A/U Despite an oncoming war between the Dark and the Light, Emma and Regina are best friends growing up in the Enchanted Forest. When war does come, they find themselves on opposite sides. Regina will have to defy her mother to save Emma. Will Emma be able to save Regina when Cora curses her daughter to live in the Land without Magic?

What We Make (WIP) by DiazTuna (M): “My mother.” He says calmly. He’d known all along, she’s aware. But he’d known that today would be the day that would get this going. She wants to ask what it was like, to have woken up this morning, laced up his boots and walked into hell just knowing. “It’s programmed the cyborg to kill her. Before I have a chance to be born.” -In which the leader of the future sends his best soldier back to the past to save his mother from a killer cyborg. Terminator AU.

The Wrong Way by pcworth (M): Takes place right after Zelena steals Regina's heart. Zelena offers Regina a chance to go back in time with her and change both of their lives for the better. But what will be the price of that decision. Slow-burn to SwanQueen

zombie trash by 13pens (T): Zelena could have her brain and eat it, too. Fic operates on three premises 1. this takes place in any universe where zelena is a reformed asshole 2. zombies are a thing and exist iZombie style 3. i have NO chill

#swan queen #fic rec #ouat

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littleholyterrors · 4 years ago

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seeing your fleabagposting on your main and it’s got me thinking,,, do you think when jessica grows up there might be some parallels with how she navigates love and relationships? NOT FOCUSING ON THE SEX STUFF BECAUSE THATS ALWAYS WEIRD TO DO WITH CHILD CHARACTERS but i mean like the intentional isolation, the false bravado, the self sabotage, the conflicts with religion, the doomed romance of it all, the fear etc etc

A CHANCE TO TALK ABOUT FLEABAG AND OLDER JESSICA IN THE CONTEXT OF ANALYZING PARALLELS BETWEEN THE TWO???? anon you SPOIL ME

so yes. Yes yes yes i 100% agree with all of this

if jessica were to continue down the path she’s on now (while looking at her through a slightly sympathetic but still accountable lens), then i think she’d grow up being a lonely bitter person once she fully grasps the weight of her actions. i don’t think she’d ever experience the depths of the guilt and fear that fleabag does — even when she’s more self-aware, i think she’ll always be concerned about her own wellbeing first and foremost, thinking more about how her actions cost her before thinking about how they cost others. however, years of manipulating people, forging shallow relationships for superficial reasons, and vying for attention that she keeps losing bc she can’t control herself have probably caused her to be unable to trust anyone but still wanting someone. she has daddy issues up the wazoo if you’re to take her interactions with tim at the end of “bart’s girlfriend” and in the tapped out mobile game as genuine. her ego makes her hard to deal with among her peers. and sure, jessica can scoff and roll her eyes and act like she doesn’t need them, but it’s easy for that shit to get under your skin when you’ve grown up with some degree of emotional neglect. it’s like a bad cycle on both ends: she acts out bc her dad doesn’t give her attention, and her dad doesn’t give her attention bc she acts out / her ego is too big for people, so she copes with it by further inflating her ego and acting like she’s better than them anyway. it’s that false bravado and intentional isolation you mentioned at play here!! and if she doesn’t have a good guide to ground her, then she’s gonna keep digging her own social grave

and oh my god the conflict with religion... now you know that i’m very attached to the idea of the lovejoys sending jessica to a christian camp as a last-ditch effort to reform her, and i think it’s a good representation of how i imagine her relationship with religion is in general. i feel like religion is nothing more than theatrics and excuses for jessica, something people do to make themselves look better than they actually are. this is why she’s so good at playing up the “sweet minister’s daughter” role to get out of sticky situations. i’m sure that when she was younger she was devout bc children will believe anything, but as she gets older she sees the hypocrisy of her parents — especially her mother, ever the catty vindictive contradictory woman — and realizes that their christianity is only skin-deep but their ways of reasoning still skew heavily theistic bc it’s what they’re so used to. maybe there was a sense of disillusionment that came with that realization. her parents knowingly engage in sinful behavior without so much as batting an eye so long as they don’t get caught. religion is a “get out of jail” card for them, their answer to problems that they don’t have the energy to solve themselves. half-hearted reasonings of “god’ll take care of it eventually”, “the bible will get through to you at some point”, “just pray and it’ll be fine”, etc. this is the blueprint on which jessica was raised. very clearly, religion did nothing but probably exacerbate her need to break rules bc if there’s one thing christianity loves, it’s telling you what to do. she knows how to talk the talk of the bible-thumpers and ned flanders of the world, but she doesn’t buy it any more than she buys into her own performative personality. i think the most she feels is a nagging sense of annoyance or the feeling of christian resentment (not trauma but definitely a dislike of going to sunday school and being in the church unironically).

now finally, let’s talk about the self sabotage and the doomed romance of it all..... the self-sabotage is evident in the aforementioned tapped out interactions where jessica promises tim she’ll be good so he’ll pay attention to her (her honesty is always up for debate but i’ll buy into this for narrative’s sake), but then turns around and causes more trouble. you can also see it in her relationship with bart, who she genuinely liked bc he was a troublemaker like her. i could see that she really did want to stay with him, but she couldn’t resist the temptation of stealing even though it ended up being a dealbreaker in the end. her own impulsive whims end up winning over any sort of meaningful relationship she tries to keep, and it’s an interesting facet of her behavior to explore and extrapolate... how much does she resent her wicked ways and how much does she blame others (parents, school, boys, etc) for how she is? how much does she blame herself? is there anything TO blame if she never becomes self-aware and just assumes that it’s the world that has a problem, not her? or will her underlying need for attention and affection embitter her to a point that she can’t get satisfaction from trouble alone anymore, and tentatively tries to genuinely reach out to find someone who can keep up with her in any capacity? either way, she’s probably convinced she’ll never change or be enough of a good girl for others once they get to know her, so she embraces being cruel and that includes embracing the temporary nature of the company that comes her way.

#asks #also ofc i want bart to be the one she reaches out to bc he’s the only one we see who still likes her and actually adjusts to her level #BUT YA KNO #anyway i think i have more thoughts and i didn’t draw many points back to fleabag BUT #if u know fleabag then u get where the connections are #if u don’t then watch fleabag #but either way this is the most coherent i can get #i hope u like it!!!!

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everyothermouse · 4 years ago

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Made some designs for my old superhero au for funsies, enjoy

I am going to take this as an excuse to talk abt this au, some backstories and design details under the cut :)

Tw: suicide attempt (peters backstory) and abuse (hash’s backstory)

Also, i gotta warn you that the backstory descriptions get longer as we go on, as the longer i write for, the worse i get at being concise. My apologies!

Peter

Power(s): control over the shadow realm

Power triggers: fear, depression, sadness, anger, focus

Relationships: hash (daughter/apprentice), genny (ally), ms. Garner (friend/ex nemesis), gabby (ally), prince (assistant/nemesis) princess (nemesis?)

Backstory: Tried to die in a vat of Poisonous Liquidtm but due to the nature of the experiments Done by damian at Unnamed Lab Owned By Damiantm, instead of dying his misery manifested through shadow powers. He was a shadow for a bit before he was able to start being a person again, and he was so upset about being alive that he decided he needed to consume the entire city in shadow so everyone else would have to be miserable like he was. He would be repeatedly thwarted by a superhero in the city named flower girl, who would eventually (over the course of like 3 years) forcibly found family him. He now has a job and uses his powers for good, and has recently taken up a superhero apprentice :)

Design notes: the heart clasps on peters cape and arms were originally by Ms. Garner before she retired as a superhero. They are tools used to help focus magic, making it easier to stay centered and to direct magical forces. The heart in the middle changes color based on the magic surrounding it/running through it, for peter it is black, but for Ms. Garner it was red/pink. Peters crown is made of the same material, but is not quite as strong. Peter mainly focuses his magic outwards using his palms and the soles of his feet, thus why they are uncovered. Villain peter looks a lot less alive than current peter partially because of being magically exhausted, but mostly just because he is in very bad physical health, having dipped himself in a vat of poison and proceeding to get 0 medical help, and then also not eating or bathing and living on shadow magic and depression. The boots previously used for villain-ing are now his work boots :)

Genny

Power(s): super strength

Power triggers: N/A

Relationships: nut (son), mellisa (friend), gabby (ally), Ms. Garner (friend?), hash (ally), peter (ally), damian (enemy)

Backstory: genny was a single mother and teacher living a normal life when she was caught in a catastrophic event as the city’s super villain the week was wreaking havoc in the middle of town. When a car came flying at her child, she had no choice but to rush forward and try to get him out of the way. Usually this would have ended in disaster, but thanks to a mix mothers hysterical strength and the strong magic energy radiating out of one of the destroyed buildings (it was U.L.O.B.D., because its always fucking damian isnt it) she was suddenly imbued with the strength to block the car and escape. Soon she would realize that this effect wouldn’t go away, and thus she decided to try and use this ability to help protect the city from all the dangers which threaten its safety.

Design notes: the knife on her leg is attached with a very strong magnet, it is difficult for others to remove but easy for her to thanks to her strength. Her body armor is all much stronger than the other three’s, as having armour that is lightweight isn’t a priority for her in the same way it is for the others, due to her strength. Genny doesnt actually have that much more muscle mass than a normal reasonably fit person, as her super strength is not connected to this. She wears contact lenses in her daily life, but after the event in which she got her super powers her eyes are entirely white (nut’s eyes are also lightened, but not to the same extent as genny’s, you can actually see them from more than 2 inches away.)

Hash

Power(s): control over earth/rocks

Power triggers: fear, excitement, focus

Relationships: Peter (parent/mentor), genny (ally), gabby (friend), prince (annoyance),

Backstory: Hash has had the ability to move the earth since she was born, but her parents always shunned her for it, saying it was destructive and evil, and so was she. She was forced to repress her powers and was often neglected (and occasionally hurt) by her parents, as well as frequently being forced to socially isolate herself from peers and teachers due to her being “too dangerous.” She tried to run away from home, feeling as though she was a danger to her parents, but when she was caught she freaked and accidentally used her powers towards her parents out of fear. Her parents called the police, making her more afraid and causing her to become more destructive. After a couple days of chaos and no one being able to defeat her, she would eventually be talked down by [whatever tf peters superhero name is], a superhero in the city who had previously been a villain but was changed through kindness and love and what not. It took a while after that to convince her that she wasn’t some horrible monster, and to get her a way from her previous household for good, but now shes a lot happier and has moved in with peter. She’s also started practicing using her powers, although its pretty hard for her given she spent all the time that her powers were developing not using them, and thus doesn’t know how to control them at their new level. She likes to tag along and try to help out on superhero missions, but honestly her main focus right now is trying to make friends and become accustomed to normal daily living, which is difficult when you’re constantly afraid of everything and have no idea how to talk to people.

Design notes: her small cape/cloak is an old one of peter’s. She hand painted on the rock pattern and the green inside, and its not perfect but she likes it. Just like normal hash, she cut the sleeves off of all her shirts, even the ones that weren’t damaged, back when she was at her old household. After moving in with peter though, shes started wearing more long sleeved shirts :) . Hash may lift rocks from the ground and stick them to her body as impromptu armour when shes distressed, although she usually doesn’t purposefully do this as its not actually very good armour, its just annoying.

Gabby

Power(s): fire manipulation, lizard stuff

Power triggers: lizard: N/A Fire: focus, anger

Relationships: peter (ally), hash (friend/ex-rival), Dario (nemesis/enemy/rival), Akira (friend/ex-rival), genny (ally), Ms. Garner (mom/mentor), Mrs. Harvey (ally/girlscout troup leader), the other Mrs. Harvey (Girl Scout troup leader/ally)

Backstory: ever since she could walk gabby was convinced she had the ability to control fire, But none of the other kids at her orphanage ever believed her, and neither did anyone at her school. One day though these powers were put to the test, when the orphanage took fire and she rushed in to help the local super hero evacuate the other kids while the fire fighters were still on their way. It was at that moment she decided that she could be a superhero too, and that the poor superhero present at the time, flower girl, would be her mentor. She followed her everywhere being the annoying curious child she was, but all flower girl wanted was her to stay out of danger and go home to her parents (which she would eventually realize gabby didn’t have.) But when gabby proved her worth and saved flower girls life, flower girl finally caved and decided to start training her, as long as she promised to try to be more cautious, and to stop skipping school to follow on dangerous missions. From then on they were an amazing super duo! Together they fought villains and used the power of kindness and pretty flowers to brighten peoples day :) and after a while ms. Garner would even end up adopting gabby, yay!

Eventually gabby’s lizard features started growing in, which was pretty scary. But her mom showed her that they weren’t all that bad, and gabby realized she could use them to help out on super hero missions! Peter, who was flower girls nemesis, would move in with her and her momma temporarily while he was getting better, as he was very sick while he was a super villain. She decided to adopt him as her new second parent, which he never agreed to, but I mean hes never denied it so its basically true. Several villains and other hero’s have also been added (and removed) from gabby’s growing list of parents. After her mom got hurt really badly in the hash incident, she decided to retire from being a superhero, deciding that she needed to put more focus on her safety so she could take care of gabby. Gabby has continued fighting crime, now taking up a more independent role as a superhero because she’s a preteen and thinks shes mature, but she usually works alongside other superhero’s in teams or as partners, as her mom requires she have adequate supervision (bcus shes LAME.) She still gets somewhat serious treatment from other superhero’s given that she technically does have more years of experience in the field than like half the cities heroes and she has had a major role in taking down multiple big villains, but she’s still a child and is generally not to be trusted on her own, as she is minority stupid and majorly reckless.

I’m sorry that was so long,,,,,, it could’ve easily been 1 paragraph but i have failed 😔

Design notes: gabby isnt wearing shoes under the legwarmers in hercivilian design, she likes the good grip her feet give her. Sidekick gabby’s stick can make fire just like her current one can, but it does not have the other functionalities. Her stick is not just for magic stuff, she also wacks people with it, and knocks them off their feet and stuff, its quite sturdy. The thick line on her face is just face paint for funsies and to make her a little bit less recognizable (only barely tho.)

#artinevee #oc #digital art #hunters bullshit #Monsters superhero au #digital Doodles #This one was one of the first au’s i know because i made it when i actually thought about labs #labs peaked week 3 of the monsters universe #it is now bullying labs hours #sorry the read more stopped working! idk when that happened but i removed it and readded it so i think it should be back now ^-^

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emkini · 1 year ago

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@rainyaheysoe OKAY SO. LET’S TALK ABOUT ENGLISH.

I’m going to talk about two models of education here– the progressive model and the classical model.

Progressive education is a movement that formed in the late 19th century as a reaction to the perceived narrowness and elitism of the more traditional education model. You’ve probably heard of Bloom’s Taxonomy– that pyramid with the word knowledge or remember at the very bottom and the word creation or evaluation at the very top. Progressive education’s core idea was to focus on higher order education (the top half of Bloom’s Taxonomy) and use it to form ‘the whole child’ in accordance with the then-novel study of child psychology.¹

Now all this, on paper, sounds great! But we’re talking about English and composition, and you’ve probably this heard before– progressive education, as a practice, focuses on career-oriented and practical writing skills.² The progressive model wants to teach you how to be a good worker and maybe a good activist, but not necessarily a good reader or a good thinker (and we’re not even getting into how insanely dangerous it is to have poor thinkers as activists). Progressive education tries to shear off the entire bottom half of Bloom’s Taxonomy to focus only on the top half, and the results are that “human experience tends to be [....] broken down into isolated, unconnected units; students ignorant of what questions to ask are presented with uninvited and consequently meaningless information.”³

The consequences of doing away with the knowledge or remember parts of Bloom’s Taxonomy in English is that fundamental reading, writing, and thinking skills are so thoroughly neglected that in my high-achieving college with a 2% admissions rate I have un-ironically read the sentence “living in San Diego is the best place in the world” in a peer review. Even more important, I would argue, is the abomination against nature which is the English textbook. The English textbook breaks writing down into checkboxes: what is a good hook? What is a good thesis? What is the name of X literary device? What is the worst sentence you can feasibly write while still being grammatically correct?

The progressive education model butchers English. It becomes a study not of great writing but of good writing; not of beautiful grammar but of correct grammar. The artistry of language is mashed into a formula which can be spat out effectively with only a bare minimum of active thought on the part of the author. The modern English textbook is perhaps one of the only books which can be morally burned (I knew a girl once who shot hers through with a rifle and am inspired by her daily).

Now, I mentioned the classical education model at the beginning of this trainwreck of a tumblr essay. Classical education carries a stigma on its back–– the words themselves reek of elitism and dogma, and the stereotype is not entirely wrong. The classical model has, since its foundation in the early years of recorded human history, been reserved for those who could afford to study it. My own parents paid several thousand dollars a year for my high school; I do not pretend the system is flawless. When it comes to English, however, I would argue that the classical model is the only model; it is a terrible shame that in the 21st century it has not only remained inaccessible, but become even more so.

Classical education is centered around two main tenets. The first is the study of books which have stood the test of time and, most importantly, are beautifully written–– from Plato’s Republic to One Thousand and One Nights to Franny & Zoey and Cannery Row. In a typical year at my high school I would read several hundred pages and nearly a dozen books, and not once did I open an English textbook.

The second tenet is what is called the trivium, or the three stages of education: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The grammar stage is about laying down the foundations for further learning, and the logic stage is where a student begins to learn to fit facts and ideas together themself. It is the rhetoric stage which is completely omitted from the progressive education model as a natural consequence of trying to skip over foundational learning–– the stage at which students begin using their knowledge to specialize. They are encouraged toward the books and topics which inspire them, and are taught how to write and speak on those topics with clarity and elegance. Towards the end of the rhetoric stage students are given a great deal of freedom in what they write and research just so long as they do in fact write and research, and do so with intent and finesse (The longest essay I have seen a classmate turn in was over 20 pages on the St. Augustine’s Confessions. She was 16 at the time).

Plutarch’s much-quoted and mis-quoted line, “the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled” is completely lost on the vast majority of the education world today–– like most words in the progressive model they are revered without thought and without follow-through. The classical model, in contrast, “diminishes perhaps the attractions of business, but [....] increases the attractions of nature.”⁴ It is far from perfect and as of now far from accessible, but if we want our humanities programs to thrive it must become more mainstream. Business, I’m sure many of us humanities-major gremlins on this website can agree, should not be the ultimate purpose of education and certainly should not be the ultimate purpose of English. The fact that the progressive education model has treated it as such is a crime against humanity, and against the very children it claims to be built for.

References:

1. Britannica. “Progressive Education.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 2019, www.britannica.com/topic/progressive-education.‌

2. Tomcsik, Rachel E. “History: Classical vs. Modern Education.” English.rutgers.edu, english.rutgers.edu/index.php option=com_content&view=article&id=66:history-classical&Itemid=102.

3. Hicks, David V. Norms & Nobility. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1991.

4. “CLASSICAL EDUCATION.” The Maine Journal of Education, vol. 5, no. 9, 1871, pp. 353–54. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44859942.

Currently writing a research paper for English about how modern composition and progressive ‘English’ classes are complete bullshit, because saying ‘fuck you and your class’ may be a bad idea but also this is the first non-classical English class I have ever had and I am fucking Appalled

#this is a MESS #but on god I have opinions.#re: classical education knowledge my main source is 'trust me bro'#but also just like. google #it's there #you can use it #education #english #nevermind em #I do need to say that composition and grammar IS important #but not. at the college level. holy shit

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aswegrow · 3 years ago

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Why am I not okay

If someone asked me, I could not give you a definite answer.

There’s nothing wrong with my life - I have my own room, in a house owned by my parents, I’m engaged to the most wonderful man I’ve met, I go to a good university, studying a course that I chose, I have food on the table and shelter and running water and electricity. I have trustworthy friends and a family that loves me. What more could I possibly ask for?

So why am I so sad?

My room is messy, I’ve got a headache, I feel cold, my nose is runny and my brain feels foggy.

Every time I talk, I feel like I have to repeat myself multiple times to be heard.

If my words are not coated in sugar and if it does not sound like there is honey dripping from my lips, everyone instantly asks what’s wrong with me.

When I am tired, I can not summon the energy to smile, and now I am a bitch that has ruined everyone else’s mood.

It has been nearly a year since I have seen my friends, because of the pandemic. Only one of them contact me regularly. I constantly worry that I am a burden on the rest of them. The three friends I plan to live with next year organised two parties this month. One I could not attend because I was in my last day of quarantine, the other they told me about in passing, but they did not really invite me. I said that I could make it for that one, because I thought that if they are telling me about a party, it must be because they want me to be there, right? But what if they don’t?

The girl I was closest to last year, Maria, sends short, concise replies to anything I ask her. Does she not like me anymore?

I miss going to university and mixing with different people. I miss feeling valued and heard. I miss having the space to be myself without being questioned and scrutinised.

Yesterday, I was making my special diet lunch in the kitchen. Half way through my mum told me to move because apparently she needed to use the exact same spot that I was using to cut vegetables, and apparently she needed to use the exact same burner on the stove that I was using to cook. I calmly reminded her that she could easily use the countertop on the other side of the stove to cut her own vegetables and still be next to the stove, instead of moving me and disrupting my workflow for her own perceived convenience.

I instantly watched her expression turn sour, and felt her silently fume for the next 20 minutes.

“Ah,” I realised, “my words were not sweet enough. I should have joked and playfully whined instead of talking to her like an equal. Because we are not equals and whenever I act like we are, she gets angry. Because I am her daughter and she is my mother and I must always respect her and never dare assume that I may treat her like a peer.”

I hate eating alone when I am in a house full of people. For me, being surrounded by loved ones and not breaking bread and sharing happiness with them is an isolating feeling.

This morning, my parents were hungry for lunch two hours earlier than they usually are. As they started setting the table, they called me down. I was a little upset at the realisation that I would probably have to eat my lunch alone today, as I have not started making my food yet, but they were almost done with theirs. I asked my mum, in future, to let me know when she starts cooking so that I can start cooking too, so that I can eat with my family. She berated me saying that I should be looking at the time and that I should know to start making food at that time myself. Apparently my reply, “But we don’t normally have lunch for another two hours, I normally wouldn’t have to think about making my lunch for another hour,” was rude and unwarranted.

I feel neglected, like I am an afterthought. I feel that I must behave perfectly, like the sweet, playful, doting daughter that I usually am if I am not to annoy everyone.

But I know this is not the case, I am valued, and all of these examples are small lapses in my family and friends’ actions. I know that I am reading too much into small situations, and these are everyday issues, not even memorable for most people.

I know that I am loved, I know that my parents are proud of me, I know that I am cared for.

So why am I not okay?

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marysfoxmask · 4 years ago

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“the secret garden” (2020) review

(warning: spoilers!)

just watched the latest adaptation again! i wanted to see it a second time to really get my thoughts and feelings together. and, while i think it was a good effort, ultimately i was disappointed. my instincts when i first saw the trailer were more or less correct—really vibrant, flashy visuals ultimately subtract from the low-key nature of the book. when adapting a story about realizing the magic in mundanity, realizing the magic inherent to the turning of the seasons and the growing of plants that we usually take for granted, it’s monumentally better to prioritize realism over fantasy.

mary’s character was served the best by the new film, though sadly that isn’t saying too much. while i understood that this mary would be different from her book counterpart, i definitely felt the original’s absence more than i would have liked. the mary of this film is just too well-adjusted, to the point where her arc is less about a spiritually stunted, completely neglected child becoming healthy and whole through the power of nature and socialization (as it is in the novel) and more about a vaguely troubled child apologizing to the specter of her late mother for feeling badly about being neglected, which is essentially the opposite of what burnett was getting at.

was anyone pining for a mrs. lennox redemption story? the same woman who, as per the book, never wanted a child and only cared about going to parties? i’ll forever be baffled by people being more invested in the adults and their ponderous backstories rather than the emotional development of the child protagonists; this film seems a lot more interested in the impact of the deaths of mary and colin’s mothers, to a bizarre degree. “grace” craven (really? was “lilias” not good enough?) and her sister (this and the 1993 film both depart from the book, where mary’s father is related to lilias, in favor of making mrs. lennox and mrs. craven twins—a decision i’m confused by in terms of thematic relevance on both accounts) are never characterized more than being essentially the angels of misselthwaite. they float by, laughing gaily, dressed in white, at points during the film. they are bittersweet representations of the idealized past and, at one point, guardians of their loved ones left behind.

i’ve never enjoyed the romanticization of lilias craven in any adaptation. mary calls the fairytale trope of beautiful princesses falling asleep in a garden for a hundred years stupid in the novel; and what is lilias but a princess eternally sleeping in her beloved garden? she’s beautiful and innocent and good and thoroughly uninteresting. she’s the angel of the house, embarrassingly dated compared to her imperfect, misfit niece, who is coming awake and growing healthy while lilias is frozen in amber, a beautiful idealized figure even in death. the interest in her in this film, the broadway musical—and even the 1993 movie, to an extent—seems to completely contradict the point of the novel, fetishizing the past and resisting lending enough focus to the events of the present. mary is a spunky, interesting, flawed heroine who doesn’t need to share the spotlight with any angels of the manor; the story of the secret garden is one about healing from trauma, not wallowing in it.

that isn’t even touching on the decision to have mrs. lennox be an apparently good person brought low by depression following her beloved twin’s death. i find this adaptive choice to be positively loathsome. mrs. lennox, as a character, is a bad mother and a silly, foolish person, point blank, period. she hands baby mary off to an ayah the moment she’s born, keeps her isolated and locked up, and insists that the ayah keep mary quiet lest “the mem sahib” become angry. when given the chance of evacuating due to the cholera epidemic raging, she instead stays in order to go to a party. she’s a frivolous character whose superficial prioritization of amusement leads directly to her death. she doesn’t need a sympathetic reason to be neglectful to mary; she doesn’t need to be sympathetic at all. the decision to make that a priority in this latest adaptation hurts mary’s character. when she tells her uncle that it was too hot to play in india (a sentiment taken directly from the novel), it doesn’t ring true—in the multiple flashbacks to india, mary plays a lot with her loving father (her ayah, while mentioned, is rarely seen; what we see of india is populated entirely by privileged whites), and is shown to enjoy herself tremendously until she glimpses her mother wilting sadly on a cushion or something. it undermines what little development mary has in the film.

the prioritization of mary and colin's mothers in general make the film feel weirdly overstuffed while giving little weight/emphasis to the events present in the source material. how many lines did major secondary characters like dickon or martha have, for example, compared to all the waffling mary and colin do about whether or not their mothers loved them and whether mary really killed her mother or not they, at the end of the day, really knew their parents, et cetera, et cetera? it’s a frustratingly shallow addition to the original story, devoid of thematic relevance.

speaking of shallow additions…

hector, a stray dog, assumes the role of the book’s robin (bizarre, considering the robin is also present), being the friendly animal character that leads mary to the secret garden. i’m not sure why the decision to add hector was made; he’s also the catalyst for mary leading dickon to the garden, while she needed no such thing in the book. did marc munden feel kids wouldn’t sympathize so readily with mary befriending a bird, despite the success of all the other adaptations saying otherwise? hector gets a lot of attention in the film, which is frustrating, because so much of the movie is filled with strange original additions that say little.

despite the clear talent of the actors and the vividness of the visuals, the changes to the story are devoid of purpose. the time period, for instance—why 1947? why have mary’s orphaning take place during the partition of india when her parents die of cholera anyway? why make martha and dickon black when the script pussyfoots around it, refusing to interact with that aspect of their characters in the same way burnett directly (if somewhat tactlessly) interacts with their poverty? save for vague, implicatory dialogue, like the threat of having poor dickon whipped if he’s sighted in misselthwaite by mrs. medlock, the racism of the time period isn’t featured at all. martha is stripped of any characterization at all, her cheerfulness diluted to the point of being nonexistent once mary gets a bit snappy. perhaps the decision to mute martha’s characterization was made out of fear of the implications of a black maid being cheerfully nurturing to a white girl despite her cruelty (invoking the mammy stereotype)—but if so, why make the decision to change martha’s race at all?

the structure of the film is odd, too. mary meets colin early on (in the book, mary explicitly states that she’d hate the imperious and bratty colin if she hadn’t met kindly martha or dickon first) and doesn’t meet dickon until halfway through. why? it directly contradicts the novel for no particular reason; it doesn’t help that dickon is so underused that he’s virtually a non-entity, his three whole canonical character traits (poor! happy! in tune with nature!) watered down to nothing. In this film, dickon isn’t particularly happy (he’s just as solemn and damaged as the other two kids, though in a more subdued way, as his father has died in the war—it’s frustrating that his rich white peers get to air their mommy issues at length while poor dickon’s grief is only glanced at) and his skill with animals is only vaguely alluded to. his skill with plants, negated by the apparent flourishing of the secret garden even when no one’s looking after it, is only brought up when, in one scene taking place in the garden, colin asks dickon what certain plants are.

it’s also frustrating that dickon, the only poor and nonwhite character in the trio, is the only one doing only actual gardening work while his friends sit around and talk about their trauma. the whole time, i wanted to urge mary to stop indulging in her overactive imagination for once and pull some weeds or something. putting in the work to make her secret garden flourish is an important part of her growth in the book, but that’s entirely absent here in favor of the occasional frolic. dickon even eventually whittles colin a cane he uses to eventually stumble into his father’s arms. this gesture should be touching and evident of the strength of the boys’ (offscreen) bond but instead is only another example of dickon selflessly and thoughtlessly serving his betters, making the classist implications of burnett’s original story more obviously troubling by adding race into the mix. it’s also bizarre that mary can cartwheel but dickon can’t, given how physically adept he was in the book. poor dickon is sapped of all his accomplishments, it seems. his character is completely glossed over, though i do like his feistiness in his meeting with mary, with him coming out of the mist and sharply remarking that martha loves him much more than she likes her. even more sadly, unlike his ‘93 counterpart, he doesn’t even get to eat a worm.

mrs. medlock is one-notedly antagonistic, being hard-nosed and strict and disapproving of mary’s wild ways—which is also disappointing. she’s not outright villainous, but she’s denied the shades of sympathy allowed her by the original novel, where she was a straightforward, unsentimental woman working a thankless job trying to satisfy and care for a tyrannical little hypochondriac. she’s also probably the closest thing we have in the movie to a xenophobe/racist, frequently making coded comments about the primitive and savage nature of the english colonies in india where mary grew up, but that’s only ever hinted at without being called out by mary or anyone else. there’s also an odd moment at the beginning of the film where mrs. medlock states the book-accurate sentiment that nothing lives on the moor but wild ponies and sheep, yet mary sees in the mist multiple shadowy figures with what i think are wheelbarrows and gardening tools (it’s a bit hard to tell with all the mist). this probably is meant to clue mary in to medlock’s classism, foreshadowing that mary will be given insight to the outdoors and different people in a way medlock could never be, changing her views of the class hierarchy she’s been inundated by—i’m not sure what else can be gleaned by the contradiction of medlock’s words and what mary sees but that—but nothing is done with it. we never see anyone on the moor but dickon throughout the rest of the movie. it’s another missed opportunity. maybe it’s meant to set up that there are poachers on the moor who set traps, like the one hector is hurt by? after seeing the movie twice, i’m still not sure what the purpose of that imagery was.

there are parts of the film i enjoyed! all the children do wonderfully in their roles (amir wilson does well with what frustratingly little he has), and i enjoyed this film’s characterization of colin as somewhat stiff, with a practiced, affected way of speaking that subtly indicates that he’s spent more time with books than with people. it makes a nice contrast to mary’s plainspokenness as a (relatively classless) orphan and dickon’s “rough” (lower-class) yorkshire accent, showing off his education and status as an upper-class boy.

the scene just before mary shows colin the tree his mother died beneath, when colin asks dickon about the names of flowers, is very sweet and book-accurate; i especially appreciate the nod to the kids’ book mastery of yorkshire, with colin mimicking dickon’s speech and noting that the names of the flowers sound better in his accent.

i also loved him calling dickon handsome. it is socially awkward? yes. does it make sense for colin to be socially awkward? also yes. and it’s adorable and book-accurate, in my opinion; if dickon weren’t so homely in the book, i imagine colin would call him handsome there, too. and mary proudly stating that dickon can whistle, as well, is lovely.

similarly, mary and dickon teaching colin to swim is very sweet—while i found most of the garden’s cgi magic wholly dispensable, i did enjoy the plants shivering along with colin. that sort of playfulness felt very attuned to the innocence of the book.

edan hayhurst does a wonderful job playing colin haughty and upset and an equally lovely job playing colin giddy and happy—if only he’d been allowed to really show off his screaming in a proper adaptation of his hysterics, instead of the pale imitation we got in the film!

it’s funny to note how much these kids get enjoyment out of pretending to be dogs. mary barks at hector when she first makes friends with him, pretends to be a yorkshire terrier with dickon when hector gets well in the garden, all the kids start barking when playing together, mary recites in a letter that colin pretended to be a dog all day...these kids sure love to bark. it’s not a bad thing, necessarily, just funny. why the dog obsession, marc munden? though i like the idea of them pretending to be animals (the masks they wear at one point are lovely), dogs feel a very typical choice. still, i can’t help but get enjoyment out of the kids playing together, though these moments are sadly brief.

i also really enjoyed all of mary’s outfits. they were adorable. if only we could have gotten more interactions between the children! part of the beauty of the second half of the novel is just watching the kids be kids in the garden; we rarely get that in all of the adaptations, of course, but in this one i was particularly sorrowful, given all the new directions the story went and how none of them directly impacted the children’s friendship with each other. there wasn’t even the mild jealousy colin has over mary spending more time with dickon than she is with him, which is present in most of the films. it’s a real shame; colin doesn’t even know dickon exists until he meets him, in a hurried scene that doesn’t remotely convey the sweetness of their meeting in the novel. the movie flits over all the book’s little idyllic joys in favor of its own original drama (which is not nearly as compelling as the movie thinks it is).

i did also enjoy the ending scene, with the kids swimming together, and mary attempting to tell a story with colin and dickon interrupting. it’s nice to see an ending to this story that doesn’t follow the book, which forgets mary and dickon in favor of colin. i think ending with the kids playing happy and whole in the garden is much more representative of the book’s charms. and the scene where mary and dickon first enter misselthwaite and are giving all-clear signs to one another as they go is fun, too.

i also enjoyed the set design, including all the green present in misselthwaite’s decor. i loved the high ceilings and the bareness of mary’s bedroom. poor colin still didn’t have any proper pajamas, reduced to wearing a white tank top for some reason, though i liked his goofy little hat that he wears when going outdoors. i wish we got to spend more time in colin’s room, and i wish the color saturation had been toned down a little just so we could get a better look at everything. all the insistent gloomy blues felt a bit overbearing.

i love the opening credits, though, and “the secret garden” slowly appearing in the title screen. the music and the soft green of the trees against the words really conjure up the novel’s near-pagan melancholy and mystery.

the less said about the third act climax of misselthwaite burning down, the better. it’s unneeded and resolves a film-only subplot about mary’s mother that didn’t need to be there in the first place. i think it also unfairly paints misselthwaite as a cursed, doomed place that can only benefit its inhabitants by being destroyed, which is unfortunate. misselthwaite wasn’t the problem, its people was, and they only thought misselthwaite was gloomy because they’d made it so. if they’d followed the teachings of burnett’s book, the one they were adapting, and thought a little more positively about it, then maybe they’d find it wasn’t such a terrible place to be. but, then, i guess we wouldn’t have the third act climax to artificially ramp up the stakes. how sad.

i could say more, but i’ll stop for now. i appreciate the effort, like i said, but i can’t help but feel this missed the mark.

#the secret garden #the secret garden 2020 #frances hodgson burnett #movie review #children's classics #classic literature

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a-woman-apart · 4 years ago

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Watch "I'M BACK! WHY I LEFT YOUTUBE FOR TWO YEARS!" on YouTube

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This scared me so badly, because this is EXACTLY what happened in my life, except it was all in The Reverse.

I graduated with an Associate Degree in Music Performance in 2018, but instead of running TOWARDS my dream/calling I ran hardcore AWAY from it. My pride in graduating only lasted a month before I declared myself Utterly Unmarketable and sought to go after a "real degree" and get a Big Girl career.

Between 2018 and 2020 I had major life changes.

My dad died of stomach cancer

I broke up with my neglectful boyfriend

I turned down a Full Ride to a major college

I hospitalized myself for Suicidal Ideation (Sept 2019)

I quit my job of 5 years

I started working for my best friend and became her Office Manager

I started dating the Love of my Life

I lost my friend group and peer support

I lost my mind and left college due to COVID-19 (but not before making one of my best decisions in taking a Screenwriting class because I WANTED not NEEDED it)

Started distancing myself from the toxic women in my life and definining Womanhood/Adulthood for myself

Visited my brother's grave after over a decade of waiting and got closure

Fully acknowledged my childhood trauma/abuse

Rediscovered my sexuality

Was disowned by who I erroneously thought was a close friend of 17 years over my political views

Joined and exited Unity2020

Turned in my car for repossession

Spent a week in the hospital after having a severe, paranoid psychotic break, but came out completely free of the vice of self-consciousness I was living under

You know what is nuts? I feel in many ways, I have completely reverted to who I was in the summer of 2011. I was off my meds, and it WAS mania, but personality-wise, the tempestuous, gum-chewing, cigarette-puffing, flirtatious, humorous, free-spirited ball of fire that drove all the way to Colorado on a whim wasn't rebellious, SHE WAS ME.

I just wasn't Me around the right people, and it wasn't the Right Time.

My inner Sagittarius moon would remain in a dormant state for almost a full decade. I would spend the next 9 years heavily sedated, sleepwalking through life, only alive at The Sound of Music.

It was Torture to feel so much but be afraid to express myself. I had to Hide while doing a major that demanded that I Command Attention. I am by nature "dramatic", "theatrical", "emotional", "expressive" but that part of me was so suppresed that I was frequently told I sang with excellence but without emotion.

Aside: During my 2011 manic episode, I spoke a lot about Doppelgangers. Without going into excessive detail, this is a German word that means "Double" and it is considered bad luck to encounter yours.

In the past 2 weeks, I have encountered people that look/sound like me (Josephine is Nigerian-Canadian and I am Nigerian-American and I kept thinking about her work even though I initially disagreed with her lot) and a woman with my name (different spelling) who was NOTHING like me and I also think might've had malice in mind for me.

I was DEFINITELY an agnostic atheist when I started this year, but as a result of undergoing so much weird shit I almost certainly believe in God, and yes, "God is a Woman." (More on that later)

Also, I realized that I really DID, as many teenage girls, "lose interest in math and science" but that was because of the terrible, unfactual way it was presented in my homeschool curriculum and by my mom, who was a Math major but whose disinterested detachment made every algebra lesson an excercise in torture.

I have always loved biolology and anatomy and I remember so much more chemistry than I thought. Geology class in community college was amazing and also helped me understand-- even more than the Theory of Evolution-- why young earth creationism was completely impossible.

As for math, I spent 15 years thinking it was my greatest weakness when I have had to use arithmetic in cashiering, my managerial work, and my monthly budget for the last 7 years. Also, as annoying as it was to hear constantly, my mom parroting "What you have to do to one side, you have to do to the other" (but in reverse) gave me the ability to do Algebra quickly and (mostly) effortlessly. I could never get A's, but I got a B in Quantitative Mathematics with no real help aside from occasional teacher input and the "Help me solve this" function of MyMathLab.

Here is where it Gets Weird. I am a Creative. I have been writing stories since I was 6 years old. I have loved Story all my life. My parents were in math and science fields and they completely lacked any creativity. COMPLETELY. It was part of why they were so religiously rigid, authoritarian, and draconian. There was no room for spontaneity or childish imaginativeness.

Looking back, I had major sensory and processing issues. I was likely speech delayed, I learned to read late, and I recently confirmed that when I am stressed my dyscalculia kicks in bad (it IS real). Numbers and symbols get really interchangeable (like an 8 and infinity symbol become kinda the same) which is why I had to recite phone numbers out loud to remember them or write them on colorful backgrounds so I can see them in my head as an image. Also explains my aversion to math but my ease with fractions (1/2 is half a sandwich, etc).

My spatial awareness is also shit when stressed. Before I turned in our car, I had earned the nickname "U-turn" from my boyfriend because on that Floating Death Machine left and right got completely crossed, frequently.

By the way, I struggled with right and left until I WAS EIGHT YEARS OLD. I literally didn't understand the concept of a mirror and 3D space, meaning that the basic understanding that my right is someone else's left didn't come into play until I had an argument with my [now-deceased] brother about it.

What is so weird, is that because of years of correcting for these issues, my sense of direction, ON FOOT is good, if not better than most people. Also, once I realized that, given the opportunity, I very much do whatever I can with my left-hand, and that my hearing is MUCH better than I even thought, I am far less clumsy. Depth perception is still crap, but that is probably also because I was forced to spend years without the glasses I needed (and got earlier this year after living with chronic eye strain)

When I talk about these "issues" it is in line with female autism, but you know what? If really do have adult autism, then I am a Complete Boss because I have pwned that ho.

After being rehospitalized, a kind nurse suggested I may have PTSD and suggested medicine for insomnia and nightmares. It was extremely helpful. I had been looking into C-PTSD for a while, because I didn't think I had "suffered enough" to have "real" PTSD. But that isn't how diagnoses work.

Btw, I still have Bipolar I, Psychotic Features. Another kind nurse told me I don't need anti-psychotics, and no, I don't. I was given Zyprexa by a bitch nurse and it was like getting drunk. I stumbled the halls, almost fell over (possibly did) and woke up with a neon "Fall Risk" bracelet. Anti-psychotics also fucked up my menstrual cycle for years and I have had lingering hormonal isssues. Haha no thanks.

Anyway, I digress. Of course I am fucked up. I lived under family members who questioned my reality, attempted to crush my dreams, threatened me with physical punishment any time I behaved in non-neurotypical ways, violated my rights and interfered with my treatment even though I was a full legal adult, undermined my relationships, tortured and socially isolated me, etc., all under the guise "of knowing best."

In minority cultures, our darkness hides in plain sight, and ESPECIALLY in the Bible Belt, with its supeestition and idolization of familial hierarchy/patriarchy, victims of financial, spiritual, emotional, and physical abuse have no where safe to turn. The Long Arm of the Law is often Short when it comes to "breaking up the family", and women and children are victimized openly with little to no intervention.

On top of doing my Creative Work, I plan to create legislation to make sure that what happened to me and my siblings isn't allowed to go unpunished. We lost my older brother, and I almost died, too, but Enough is Enough.

The Time is Now.

P.S. If Josephine is an Air Nomad I identify as a Water Bender. I basically have no water in my astrological chart, but water signs bring me great comfort in times of need (and make bad romantic partners for me obviously)

Also, this is one Bad Biyatch.

I also found out I am an ISFJ, not INFJ. Yep. Gonna be a Playwright and Director. I want to be a part of the action, not just writing about it.

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charlotine · 4 years ago

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Have You Ever Heard of ADHD?

The first time I heard the word ADHD, I was in secondary school. I had to see the teachers, my classmate would tell me. I just got diagnosed ADHD. She’d never focus in lesson, always scraped average grades and everyone would gossip about her. What’s ADHD? I’d ask my friends. It’s what all the delinquents and stupid people have, they’d joke with a giggle.

As a child, I was always described as smart. I asked questions about how the world worked and persisted until I’d reached a full understanding of the topic. On top of that, I was the firstborn, a girl in an Asian household, so I grew up very traditionally. My parents worked a lot to provide for me in this foreign country we’d moved to, so I was often left alone. My parents would know to leave the PC or TV on because otherwise, I had a bad habit of wandering. Sometimes it’d just be to the landlord’s apartment, sometimes it’d be to other people’s houses (obviously quite bad seeing as I was 4-8).

In primary school, I was the weird Asian kid. In fact, the only Asian kid. Per year group there was at least one or two Asians and one black person in my school. But I was weird, I struggled to fit in with my peers because nothing they did made sense to me.

My behaviour and how different I was proved to be enough ammunition to bully me. I’d watch TV sometimes, to try and figure out how to interact with people my age. Adults always seemed easier, because I was cute and smart. I remembered watching how a boy had pulled down his friend’s trousers on TV and they’d laughed, so I did the same to a girl in my class with the blue dress, and she screamed. I didn’t know, I’d wail to the teacher, I didn’t know it was wrong, please don’t tell my parents.

Eventually, I reminded myself I was different from other kids. How? I didn’t know, but I just did. So I taught self to be quiet and recluse, no matter how bad my mind would shout, because I wanted to be liked. Needed. I was so quiet some people would forget that we’d been to school together all our lives. I learnt to be quiet, because the few instances where I did have friends, I didn’t know how to control my exuberance. It was either hot or cold for me, and I was already worried enough about being ostracised, so I taught myself to be quiet.

I began to hyper-fixate on books and reading from age 8-11, because I had no friends. Or because I hyper-fixated, I had no friends, but growing up, I bitterly assumed the former. I’d read during break and lunch hours, and during lessons if I could; I could roughly get through two 500 paged books a day. I finished the Harry Potter series in 4 days. Every time I would stop, I would feel like my chest was crashing in, and I’d feel that all-consuming isolation and darkness in my heart again. My reading age was on par to a high schoolers by the time I was 9, partly because my dad began handing me adult crime novels.

The teachers would all describe me as smart, but lacking in effort. I’d astound them during class hours, but they’d have to put me in a lower set because once I’d leave the classroom, I wouldn’t exert energy into the subject. I rarely handed in homework, and I’d attend my detentions and read a book because I didn’t know how to explain that I’d forgotten. Everyone would lie and say the same, and I knew they wouldn’t believe me anyway.

By the time I started secondary school at 11, my issues all but seemingly disappeared. I always held the best grades in English, Science, German, amongst others. I’ve never given this high a grade to a 12 year old, my English teacher would say with teary eyes. I called all my friends to read your work to them, and I wanted to ask permission to photocopy your work because I want to keep this with me. It’s a truly beautiful piece.

It’s because she’s Asian, my classmates would say dismissively. They couldn’t compete against an Asian, being smart was expected of me. Things like schoolwork were easier for me, somehow.

I’d always turn up to class with innovative and original projects, shocking all the teachers pleasantly because no one had ever in their entire time of being a teacher. When everyone would turn up with paper drawings of a hastily drawn house labelling the French verbs, I’d turn up with a large painted box with 3D figurines. Miss, she’s Asian, my classmates would say. We can’t compete with her when it’s in her blood.

After a teacher would issue a project, my mind would be hyper-fixated. Make a project, she’d say. I don’t care what medium you use, but it has to relate to the verbs we learnt in lesson today. I’ll see you after half term break. As soon as I’d get home, I’d need to start the project otherwise my heart might just give up. I‘d neglect tidying my room, my social life, my personal hygiene, my sleep, my other projects and eating because I need to do this project mum, you don’t understand. My mind was in hyperdrive, I couldn’t rest because this project was my world, my reason for air. 4 days later, and I’d have a few days left of half term and I’d only eaten maybe 2 small meals the past few days.

(Why can’t you be normal? My mum would plead.

Eyes downcast, I’d whisper, but mum. This is my normal.)

We’re concerned about her, my mum would say to Jenny the therapist. She can be the loveliest person one minute, and the next she can be a whole different person. And she’s not eating again, I think she thinks she’s fat.

She isn’t eating? Jenny would frown. The rest is just hormones, but I think I need to explain to your daughter the negative side effects of anorexia again.

I did think I was fat. I’d look in the mirror and wish to be somebody else, just not me, but I didn’t starve myself. Not intentionally, anyway. But, I’d frown, how do I explain to everyone that sometimes I just forget how to take care of myself? How, sometimes, some things were more important than taking care of myself?

Your daughter is very, very smart, my teacher would say with a smile. She reminds me just exactly why I’d decided to be a teacher — she excels in French, German, Psychology, all my subjects! You should be very proud.

Ah, my mum would look at me with watery eyes, thank you, thank you.

The lesser pieces of homework, I’d forget about until last minute, but no one would ever believe me. How did you explain that if it didn’t send your mind into hyperdrive, that it’d disappear? I’d go through the week care free, and then my friend would message me at 9PM at night and then I’d remember. During those times, I’d skive off school the next day to get out of it because I didn’t know how to explain that I’d simply forgotten to a teacher when everyone would lie and say the same.

Your daughter hasn’t turned up to lesson this week, my teacher would say with a frown. We’re very worried about her, she said she’s going through a hard time, and even in lesson she never seems to focus.

Really? My mum would look at me with watery eyes, I didn’t know. She, ah, told us she went to the school this week.

First Jenny said anxiety, then depression. Anak, my mum would say. Tell us what’s wrong so we can help you. You’re so smart, but you’re wasting it away. You know me and dad want you to make something of yourself, so you’re not suffering like us. But I’d taught myself how to be quiet, and I didn’t know how to explain. What was I meant to say?

(Mum, I can’t focus on things and it goes right out of my ears and I don’t know why, no matter how hard I try to listen. Mum, I couldn’t sleep last night, because I really needed to finish researching the Cold War and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I couldn’t stop, and that’s why I didn’t get up for school in the morning. Mum, I can’t go to school today because even though I’ve known about our speaking test for 2 weeks and it’s all I can think about, I couldn’t revise. Mum, I can’t focus on this thing right now, because all my mind can focus on is Henry VIII even though we haven’t done him in history for 6 years. Mum, I know you gave me all of this month to clean my room, but then I’d have to pick everything up, put it into order, change my bedsheets, hoover the floor, and the thought of all that was too overwhelming for me that I just couldn’t start, but I’m not lazy, I swear.)

Instead I’d say, mum, I think I’m just sad. I fell out with my friends last week, I’d say hollowly, and I just feel sad.

With hardened eyes, she’d tell me to prioritise yourself, anak, friends come and go, and the only person you can depend on is yourself.

My mum never remembered my friends names. I loved all my friends and every single person meant the world to me, but I’d cycle through them in the span of 6 months. I’d go through friends and friendship groups, and my mum would smile at all of them and say, what happened to Natalie? What happened to Lily? in our native tongue.

I hate them, mum, I’d say bitterly. They were using me, too.

With disbelieving eyes, she’d laugh. Everyone is always using you. Why can’t you just be happy? Why can’t you just read a book and be happy?

(Mum, I can’t stop counting the lines, I have to make sure that they follow the pretty pattern in my head that make it look inexplicably real to me, otherwise I can’t, and then I realise I haven’t been paying attention to the words at all.)

Instead, I’d shrug. Books are boring now, mum.

My relationships were intense with everyone. No matter the longevity, I’d feel heartbroken for every single person. I’d be inconsolable for days. If you want to die so bad, my sobbing mum would say with my lined wrist in her grasp, just tell me and I’ll do it for you.

Have you heard of hyper-mania? Sarah, the first, would inquire with a tilt of her head.

No, I’d shake my head.

Rivotril, aripiprazole, lithium, and alprazolam for anxiety attacks, Sarah would write. We think it’s bipolar disorder and anxiety disorder. They often have comorbidity.

I feel sorry for you, my aunt would say. You’re only 15 and you have to take so much.

Setraline, alprazolam and lithium, David would write. Due to the last two suicide attempts, we think it’s borderline personality disorder and anxiety disorder. Her mood swings are too frequent.

She’s only 16, my dad would say gruffly. Why does she hate being alive so much? It’s the meds, they’re ruining her.

I made friends with a girl with ADD in college. She was a daydreamer and had to sit extra classes. Oh, I’d laugh. It makes sense, you’re always losing track of conversation. Then I dated a boy with ADHD; that’s why I struggle so badly in school, he’d explain to me. Oh, I’d reply. School has always been easy for me. I can help you go through your notes.

In college, they’d tell me I shouldn’t have been a year behind. Not to show any blatant favouritism, my teacher would say with a conspiratorial smile. But unlike some of your other classmates, you’re one of the few who don’t really need to be here in remedial GCSEs.

I’d take the compliment and thank him with a nod. But why can I not focus? My mind would plead. Why is it that I can never sit still, why is it that I need to be talking or using my phone to function during lectures? Why is it that I can’t learn the same way everyone else does?

But I’d learnt to be quiet, after a while. My parents had told me I was attention seeking and that there wasn’t anything wrong with me. How could there be? I was pretty, I could make friends easily if I so wanted, and I was smart. In the homeland, anak, my mum would tell me with a scathing look. The mentally disabled people are in wheelchairs, you don’t have any mental illness. You just want there to be, and it’s all in your head.

(I wish I hadn’t lived, I’d whisper to my brother in the hospital. This would be the third time, and not the last.

Huh? What did you say? My brother would ask.

I said, I screamed, I wish I hadn’t lived.)

Why did you do it? The third, Jamie, would ask, after the fourth, the fifth. Did you plan it?

Everything was spinning out of control, I’d reply. And I needed to escape. I wanted to disappear. I didn’t plan it, but it made sense at the time.

So you didn’t want to die?

Contemplatively, I’d tell him I don’t know, but maybe.

Hmm, would be all he’d say for a moment. How do you feel?

I feel empty a lot. Like I need something to fulfil me so I won’t feel like dying today. Even when I try to sleep at night, I can’t, because there’s so many things that I need to do. Like go for a long jog, bake a cake or write as long a story as I can write. I used to have a drinking problem, I’d tell him shakily. Back when I was 14. It was the only way I could get to sleep at night. Everything that I do to myself needs to be intense, so it can break through the monotony. I struggle in school, I do, I’d plead with him. Everyone looks at my grades and they don’t see it, but it’s hard going in and doing work, when I can’t sit still and be focused.

Hmm, he’d say.

I have sex a lot, I’d tell him. I don’t like forming attachments to people because they always leave, so it’s always different people. Sometimes... I’d hesitate. It’s not safe.

What do you mean?

They’re strangers I meet on the internet, I’d whisper. I can’t do it at my home because of my parents, they’re catholic and believe in chastity, so we go to their house. Or their cars.

Hmm, he’d say. Why?

Why what?

Why do you do this to yourself? You’ve mentioned before that you dissociate during sex and find no pleasure in doing so, so why?

I... I’d say truthfully. I don’t know.

Jamie would ask about my sex life. My parents would say I’d indiscriminately have sex with men and women too often, and they were scared for me. He’d ask about drugs, and my parents would say they didn’t know, but that I was easily influenced. He’d ask about school and friends; my parents would say I was very smart, but lazy. They’d inform him that I argued and fell out with my friends often, and had a penchant for the short term. He’d ask how I was like at home; my parents would share a look, and tell him how I could be two different people sometimes. Lovely, my mum would say, and other times horrible and a stranger to us, my dad would finish. She can be sweet often, my mum would tell him, and other times she’ll be so angry she trashes her room, my dad would finish.

(What’s it like, I’d ask my boyfriend. Having ADHD?

It’s like being a magpie. You have one thought, but the other is too shiny, and the next is always shinier. Your thoughts are always racing, conversation topics are always changing, you can’t stop talking, and people say you’re annoying. Sometimes, I’ll have that nyan-cat song stuck in my head on repeat. It’s like needing subtitles when you watch a movie and the Wikipedia page up, too, because you can’t focus. It’s like the way I can never find the right tab, because there’s always more than 50 open on my phone. It’s like having a long list of things you really need to do, but no matter how much you know this, you can’t do any of it. It’s like, when I was 5, I’d say swear words in school all the time. It’s like always being late to everything, no matter how hard you try. It’s why I get angry at you a lot, he’d tell me. And why I can never remember what you last said to me. It’s like being a normal person and drinking 10 energy drinks, but you don’t need the energy drinks.

Oh, I’d frown. I understand what you mean. And I did. I really did.)

Finally, my third psychiatrist would say to us, have you ever heard of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder?

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thatwritingho · 5 years ago

Text

Sasori Head Canons

Lately, I've been putting a lot of thought into the deeper reasons Sasori would be willing to go so far as to completely remove his consciousness from his body, and I think I've boiled it down to a few main head canons: gender dysphoria, heavy trauma, and mental illness, which I will address in that order

Gender:

Agender

When he was younger, he leaned more towards androgyny, and despised the prudeness of his village in relation to his gender, hating that he was being shoehorned into a mold because of his genitalia, and this served to deepen the wedge between he and his grandmother as she absolutely did not respect this

He felt disgusted with himself, like a stranger in his own body, and no matter what he wore or did, no matter the label he tried out, nothing helped or made him comfortable in his own skin

And no one cared

Just another part of him that no one else understood or even attempted to understand

So when presented with the opportunity to make an idealized version of himself, his puppet form, his masterpiece, he was just like "who needs gender?"

He is above such silly human concepts, afterall

And let's not mince words here; Sasori is vain af. He thinks he's hot shit. He has more respect for himself than everyone else in the world combined

He knows he's beautiful, and had always appreciated how gender neutral his facial features and body type presented, the only problem was his - yeah

So, unfortunately for my thirsty ass, this means there's nothing between the legs

Just full ken doll mode

Doesn't really give a shit about the pronouns others use for him (or rather, he has convinced himself he doesn't) as he's accustomed to the masculine ones and neither wants or feels the need to put the effort in to explain himself-he doesn't like talking to people as is, let alone about something that brings up so many bad memories for him

"Are you a boy or a girl?" "I'm a puppet."

Deidara has figured it out though(I head canon him as nonbinary as well, so he recognizes the signs) and makes sure to only use they/them or gender neutral pronouns when speaking about his danna. Despite this, no other members have put two and two together yet (Sasori never addresses this, but a very small, deep down part of him respects Deidara just a teeny tiny little bit for it)

Trauma:

Maybe I'm projecting(I'm probably projecting) but I get big childhood sexual assault vibes from our puppeteer

But the signs are all there: severe switch in personality in childhood(this is ascribed to his parents death, but I feel like there's more to it than that), extreme trust issues(especially in regard to his caregiver), fixation on control, escapism through puppetry as a coping mechanism, depression, self isolation/fear of intimacy, social withdrawl/inability to relate to his peers, disconnect from his body, disconnection from reality(viewing puppets as people), etc.

And while yes, all of these can be attributed to other mental illness, the shock of his parents death, or Chiyo's neglect, this is just the conclusion I'm drawn to. Mental illness, childhood sexual trauma, and neglect are all very closely entwined and complicated, and many signs and symptoms can bleed into each other.

And it breaks my heart to think about.

Maybe sweet little Sasori was being abused by a babysitter his grandmother left him with while she performed council duties when his parents were away.

And maybe Sasori didn't know how to tell her. Maybe she was too busy to notice the signs. Or maybe Chiyo just wouldn't listen at all.

And maybe part of his eagerness for the return of his parents was so that he would no longer have to be around his abuser, and that just made the news of their deaths hit him that much harder

No one was going to save him. No one was going to help him. No one was even going to listen.

So why the fuck should he trust anyone

Mental Illness:

Whether genetic or as a result of abuse and neglect, we know Sasori has some issues

@evartandadam has done some fantastic character analysis(and amazing art!) here here here and here that you should check out if you haven't already

But when I think about what it would take for a person to say "fuck my physical form," the Big Three are what come to mind; Anxiety Disorder, OCD, and PTSD

Again, this could stem from any number of places

Sasori is a brilliant mind, and it would absolutely infuriate him to be able to see and recognize that his anxiety had no roots in logic, but still be able to do nothing to combat it

Random panic attacks would plague him, (which is extremely dangerous as a ninja, so he would have to repress repress repress), along with anxiety attacks from triggers to his past trauma and triggers to his OCD(which I'll get to)

This feeling of having no control over himself would cause him extreme distress, and would contribute heavily to him wanting to escape his own body

Along with his anxiety disorder is OCD, mainly in the forms of Rumination/Intrusive Thoughts:

Ruminations on death and art and the value of human life and his own mortality, during which he becomes incredibly withdrawn into himself and detached, always ending up frustrated when his thoughts ultimately lead to no satisfactory conclusions

I feel the intrusive thoughts would also manifest in hyper awareness of his body, such as fixating on his breathing and salivation, which he deeply hoped to escape with his transformation, and only added to his feeling of disgust with his body

These obsessive tendencies allowed for his fixation on solving his problems through puppetry to blossom

And, of course, all ninjas have PTSD, at least mildly, and with Sasori having been such a sweet, sensitive boy, the Sand's harsh methods would have utterly fucked his mind, especially coupled with his other disorders and trauma

All in all, Sasori is a minefield of issues, all of which contributed to a severe disgust with people/society and extreme self reliance, leading him to the drastic decision to remove himself as far as possible from his humanity

#am i projecting?#probably #but i dont care #akasuna no sasori #can i even tag this as character analysis?#idk #but im gonna #character analysis #tw #tw csa #tw anxeity #tw ocd #tw ptsd #head canon #naruto #naruto shippuden #akastuki #sasori #sasori head canons

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ice-cream-nekogirl · 5 years ago

Photo

The Zombie Trio~!

A trio of misfit teenagers and best friends who are tired of all the bullshit in their lives and taking a stand for themselves together. They’re fierce, sassy and powerful, but also silly and love to have a good time, especially with one another and the rest of their classmates in the Hero Course.

(From Left to Right): Ashlen Kyanse (OC), Amy Martinez (OC) and Hitoshi Shinsou (Canon)

Note: This is all fiction and part of a fanfiction that my girl @ashleigh-luvs-14cats and I collab on~! And I felt like making TV Tropes for our group that we made in the fanfics with Shinsou~! :3

Adorkable: The three of them are pretty quirky and dorky in ways that make them quite endearing, especially when they start singing and dancing together or taking goofy pictures and playing games with each other.

Affectionate Nickname: They give each other a LOT of cutesy nicknames.

Amy has ‘Ames’ (by both Shinsou and Ashlen), Witchy (by Ashlen) and Dummy (by Shinsou)

Ashlen has ‘Ash’ (by both Amy and Shinsou), Love (by Shinsou) and Honey (by Amy)

Shinsou has ‘Toshi’ (by both Amy and Ashlen), Tosh (by Amy) and My Heart (by Ashlen)

All of The Other Reindeer: All three of them have experienced rejection and bullying from their peers simply for being different from other people.

Amy was mocked for supposedly being ‘quirkless’ and then later when she discovers that she’s a witch, the pro-heroes felt too intimidated to care for her so they abandoned her and left her in the care of other witches. But even in America after the coven was outed to the world she was bullied by other witches for her quirky personality.

Ashlen had no friends in her school upon being moved to America and taken in by a rich family, because her peers thought she was snobby or dangerous to be around once some of her peers pretended to be her friend and discovered her second quirk.

Shinsou’s only real friend was Amy while other kids picked on him or made him a scapegoat because they called his quirk ‘villainous’ and he was ignored by his peers, who also called him a ‘future villain’ and as a result he had no other friends except for Amy.

Ambiguous Disorder: All three of them have some variety of undiagnosed mental health issues that shows up from time to time but it’s never confirmed.

Iida believes that Amy has some sort of Bipolar Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder due to her mood swings, lashing out, risky behaviors, unstable relationships and extreme fear of abandonment. However, Amy’s inability to control her emotions and relationship difficulties and triggers that come from either certain events or certain people also highly resemble Complex Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Although Amy also shows many signs of Depression as well since she’s had moments of self-loathing, suicidal thoughts and detaches herself from loved ones when her intrusive thoughts haunt her.

Ashlen, similarly, has several moments of anxiety, self-loathing, depression, panic attacks and overwhelming emotional reactions especially when she is triggered by her painful memories to the point where she needs her dog The Colonel for emotional support and takes medication to regulate her troubled emotions. Implying that she may have some sort of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or Depression, as she, like Amy, suffers from self-hatred and also has a poor self-image that adds to her own intrusive thoughts.

Likewise, Shinsou is prone to panic attacks, night terrors and anxiety when he’s overwhelmed, has poor sleeping patterns (that may indicate some form of insomnia), poor coping mechanisms (eating and over-indulgence) and moments of self-loathing, intrusive and troubling thoughts, and anxiety imply that like Amy and Ashlen, he may have some type of Depression.

Anti-Hero Team: All three of them count, while Amy and Shinsou are straight examples of anti-heroes by being selfish and/or rude troublemakers who look out mainly for themselves but still have the goal of being heroes and do occasionally do the right thing. Ashlen is more of a Classical Anti-Hero as her insecurities are the only thing holding her back rather than a compromised morality.

Badass Crew: They’re all capable of fighting villains on their own, but together they’re quite a force to be reckoned with as their classmates each dread the idea of taking on all three of them together as a crew due to Amy’s magic, Ashlen cancel quirk and Shinsou’s brainwashing.

Beauty, Brains and Brawn: Sweet and bright Ashlen is the Beauty, sarcastic and gloomy Shinsou is the Brains while impulsive and magical Amy is the Brawn.

Beware The Silly Ones: They love to joke around with others, especially people they think are stupid, but are NOT to be underestimated.

Amy embodies this trope, as she certainly looks like a harmless and ditsy girl but she’s an extremely powerful witch who can hex, jinx and curse people, and is very easily provoked.

Shinsou doesn’t look like a silly guy, but he’s pretty deadpan, witty and can easily join in Amy’s wackiness from time to time (esp. when Panic! At The Disco is involved), but he’s still a proficient fighter and knows how to brainwash people just like that especially when angry.

Ashlen is the least silly of the three as well as the nicest, but she does have a sense of humor and can joke around just as much as Amy and Shinsou, however angering her is a very, very bad idea since she’s very good with swords and WILL paralyze your ass if you piss her off.

Birds of A Feather/Not So Different: Two introverts and an introverted extrovert, while they seem pretty opposite at first glance, the three of them actually have a LOT in common with each other.

Amy and Shinsou relate to feeling discriminated and hated by others for having ‘villainous’ powers, and they’re both equally witty and mischievous and have been friends since childhood because of this. And Amy and Ashlen are probably more different than her and Shinsou, but Ashlen has a similar sense of humor and tastes in movies, cartoons and music, as well as feelings of loneliness and isolation that enables the girls to bond. And then Ashlen and Shinsou can bond over having very practical quirks, while she’s a nicer person than he is, he gets along with her great because they’re both introverts, insecure by nature and then they also discover that they’re both pretty smart-alecky and learn to appreciate each other to the point where they start dating.

The Caretaker: They each can act as this towards one another. Ashlen is the prime example as she often plays mother hen to both Amy and Shinsou by making sure they’re both healthy and feeling secure. Shinsou also acted as one to Amy before Ashlen by making sure the witch was feeling okay and recovering from an incident. But he can also easily take care of Ashlen, especially when she is suffering from a panic attack or is in need of comfort. And while Amy is usually being cared for by either Shinsou or Ashlen, she can still play the role just as well by checking up on either one, whether it’s consoling Shinsou when he’s upset, or spending time with Ashlen and comforting her when she’s sad or overwhelmed.

Color-Coded Characters: They each have their own different colors schemes, Amy (Pink), Ashlen (Blue) and Shinsou (Purple).

Comic Trio: Downplayed due to Shinsou and Ashlen being far more level-headed than Amy.

Amy is usually the schemer who comes up with the crazy ideas, Shinsou isn’t a Fool by any means but nonetheless tends to follow Amy’s lead because he thinks it’ll be hilarious, while Ashlen plays the Only Sane Man and attempts (but usually fails) at reigning the two of them in.

Dance Battler: They’re all quite proficient in dancing.

Amy is the only one who hasn’t had any professional training in dancing, but she learns how to be quite good at it by watching videos and is good at physical comedy and making funny faces to make her dancing very entertaining and impossible to not watch. Although she does later get lessons so she can dance with Bakugo.

Ashlen is the only one of three to be considered a dancer as she has had professional training and is highly skilled in ballet, waltzing, salsa and other forms of dance, is very flexible and can also perform some very impressive flips, pirouettes and spins that make her a marvel to watch and she also can utilize some dance moves in combat.

Shinsou had to take dance lessons for a school play during the second Culture Festival, as he had no real training in dancing and merely danced along with Amy but also learned watching some videos, especially ones with Yanis Marshall and gradually became a skilled dancer.

Dark and Troubled Past: They all carry some emotional baggage from their pasts, which actually enables them to bond because they all agree that they’re each ‘pretty fucked up’.

Amy was discriminated against because she was believed to be quirkless as her powers didn’t start manifesting until she was 9 years old. When she found out her witch heritage, hunters emerged from the shadows and killed her parents by burning her mother and lynching her father, while the pro-heroes saved her from getting killed they gave her away to Fiona to live at the coven in New Orleans, which forced Amy to leave Shinsou. The coven was small but very dysfunctional under Fiona’s neglectful care and undermining Cordelia as Amy tried and failed to have her sisters get along. And then Amy witnessed several murders, bloodshed and betrayal that traumatized her into the hardened but unstable girl she is today and she still has anger and abandonment issues.

Ashlen had a normal and happy life complete with an ordinary but useful quirk, but All For One arrived one fateful night and murdered her parents right before her eyes and then implanted her second quirk in her which was extremely painful and nearly killed her. Although the Sennen family adopted her, she was ostracized by her peers at school who either thought she was a monster due to her second quirk or believed her to be snobby and entitled due to her family namesake. Then what friends she did made turned out to be fake who only used her in an attempt to make themselves look better. As a result, Ashlen grew up reserved, distrusting of others and fearful of herself due to her unstable powers and still suffers from self-esteem issues and a guilt complex.

Shinsou came from a normal family, but because of his brainwashing quirk he also faced some discrimination as his peers and even some teachers deemed it a ‘villainous quirk’ which diminished his self-esteem especially when students either bullied him or when his classmates deliberately ignored him and pretended he didn’t exist. While he had Amy to make it better, her leaving made him feel more alone than before. Without his only friend, he became much colder and more distant, which made him an easier target. In middle school, he acted out times by brainwashing two bullies into beating each other up, while he mellowed out in the 9th grade, he became much more cynical and aloof, having no desire to make friends until Amy returned in his life.

Dysfunction Junction: Despite getting along really well, they’re not immune to bickering, especially Amy and Shinsou, with Ashlen having to play the peacekeeper and break them up. And then Shinsou often acts as Amy’s enabler and lets her do anything she wants (much to Ashlen’s disapproval), particularly when the witch is in a bad mood with Ashlen uncertain of how to approach her and vice-versa, Amy can easily enable Shinsou when he’s in a bad mood. At times the three end up walking on eggshells around each other when things get tense. Which is ultimately why Amy says they’re more like family than a mere friendship because they actually deal with important things beyond school.

Exhausted Eyebags: All three of them sport them from time to time. Shinsou’s are almost always prominent, but Amy and Ashlen’s eyebags show when they’re overwhelmed or anxious. Although Amy’s are also more prominent when she’s angry or in a foul mood. In fact, this trait is also partially why they called themselves ‘The Zombie Trio’.

Fighter, Mage, Thief: Ashlen is the (Fighter) due to her swordsmanship, expert combat skills and speed she utilizes for her Cancel quirk and she’s the one who’s mostly on the straight and narrow. Amy is the (Mage) as she’s a witch with several powers and can use 6 of the 7 wonders that she uses any chance needed. And Shinsou is the (Thief), having to rely on being manipulative and sneaky for his Brainwashing quirk to work and allow him to trick and deceive opponents.

Fruedian Trio:

Amy is the emotional, reckless and borderline psychotic Id

Ashlen is the calm, collected and grounded Ego

Shinsou is the logical, deadpan and pragmatic Superego

Gasshole: They sometimes casually engage in burping contests between each other, especially Amy and Shinsou, joined by Kaminari and Kirishima, with Amy and Shinsou being quite proficient in the ‘art of burping’. But to their surprise, Ashlen herself can belt out some fairly impressive, unladylike belches when she loosens up and plays around with them.

Amy: YAY! Ash! You’re as nasty as we are!

Good Is Not Soft: Amy and Shinsou are trouble-makers but also training to be heroes and Ashlen is the nicest of the three, but neither three of them are pushovers and have no issue roughing up villains or playing dirty if needed.

Good Parents: They each have some pretty decent and upright parental figures in their lives.

While Amy had an Abusive Parent in Fiona, Cordelia is Amy’s godmother who loves her unconditionally although she is prone to spoiling her too. But she never stops looking out for her and is very supportive of her. Amy’s biological mother and father were very loving towards her and comforted her in their final moments.

Shinsou’s mother and father support and love him and always express pride in their son for getting himself in the Hero Course. They’re also Good Parents to Amy, despite her not being their biological child.

Ashlen’s biological mother and father were great parents who adored their daughter, and Ashlen’s parental figures that include her sisters and adoptive father also love her dearly and look out for her.

Heartbreak and Ice Cream: Their go-to whenever one of them is extremely depressed and upset, as Amy shamelessly drinks soda and binge-eats cookies, chocolate, candy and ice cream when she’s sad, and then she has no issue sharing her sweets with Ashlen and Shinsou. Ashlen, a sweet tooth herself sometimes may have a soda and some sweets when she’s sad, and even Shinsou has no shame in eating cookies and ice cream when he’s upset or heartbroken.

In-Series Nickname: Bakugo has nicknames for each of them, calling Amy ‘Witch Bitch’, Shinsou ‘Eyebags’ and Ashlen ‘Princess’.

Likewise, Madison tends to call Amy ‘Hermione’, Shinsou ‘Purplehead’ and Ashlen ‘Ellen Ripley’.

Interclass Friendship: A variation as each of them come from a unique background that doesn’t at all affect their friendship.

Amy, while she used to come from a normal upper middle-class family with a mother who was both a witch and a hero, she later had to move with the coven, an independent group of socialites and politically active witches who descended from Salem. Whom are also warriors who act as allies for hero society and Amy being something of an upper-class socialite and witch warrior.

Ashlen also came from a pretty normal upper-middle class family, but she was taken in by the Sennen family. A royal family that dates back to the ancient times of the pharaohs and is connected with Magic and spirit energy lead by two powerful women and Ashlen’s adoptive sisters and royal-like figures. Making Ashlen a princess of sorts, but she’s still a fighter from a high class family.

Shinsou is the only one who comes from a relatively normal family with his parents having modest occupations and his father being a doctor rather than a hero, so his family makes good enough money for Shinsou to be considered upper middle class but unlike Amy and Ashlen, his family has no connections.

Kiddie Kid: In a way, all three of them oscillate between endearing acting-their-age childishness and adult-like maturity. Although it’s Played Straight with Amy, Downplayed with Shinsou and Ashlen.

Amy’s pretty impulsive and immature, even enjoying things that would probably be more suited for pre-teens (toys, cute things, etc.) and still likes playing childish games like Hide and Seek and Tag You’re It.

Shinsou, despite being more mature than Amy, laughs at some of her childish jokes, isn’t above playing along with her games (especially Tag) and can sometimes be just as immature (if not more so) as Amy.

Ashlen is actually the most mature of the three, but she can also loosen up enough to play around and fun with Amy and she enjoys the same cute things and toys that Amy likes.

Lame Comeback: Amy, Ashlen and Shinsou are usually pretty witty but when they’re too angry they usually make some lame remarks when they’re too upset to think of anything good.

Like An Old Married Couple: At times the three resemble a family, with Ashlen being ‘The Mommy’ of the group, Shinsou being ‘The Daddy’ and Amy being ‘the Child’. Shinsou often enables Amy’s antics, but knows how to dish out Toguh Love when needed, and Ashlen, although nurturing and loving, encourages Shinsou to not be so lenient on Amy, their hyperactive, mischievous best friend. It’s even more prominent when Shinsou and Ashlen are discussing and/or arguing about Amy’s behavior as if they were parents talking about their child and even dote on her at times. Likewise, Amy at times can cling to either Ashlen or Shinsou if they were a mom and dad, and also going to Shinsou when she wants something from him, and Ashlen when in need for emotional support.

Like Brother and Sister: Amy and Shinsou are very much like brother and sister, and Amy considers Ashlen like a sister to her and all three of them function together like a family.

Living Emotional Crutch: All three of them function as this to each other in some way.

Amy says that Shinsou’s the only reason she came back to Japan and doesn’t know what she’d do without him as she suffers an emotional breakdown at the thought of not having him in her life because he was her first ally from the very beginning and best friend from the start. However, because she cares about him so much she nearly cuts off ties with him again just to protect him from her. And as she befriends Ashlen, she admits to feeling closer to her than anyone she’s ever met, feels comfortable around her but also greatly fears her leaving her the most which is why she had another mental breakdown at the thought and went back to her mansion for a time, and then she confesses that she probably would have gone on another homicidal rage if not for Ashlen’s influence.

Shinsou feels closest to Amy overall since she was his very first friend the best friend he’s ever had, and when she left to New Orleans, he took it badly and broke down hard, becoming more distant from others. And he nearly breaks down when Amy lied by saying she didn’t want to be his friend anymore after she went on a rampage at UA. He also at times clings to Amy because he knows that no matter what, she’ll always support him. Also, as Ashlen enters the picture, because she’s the first person to ever show him any true, intimate love he feels especially close to her, adores her and takes any argument they have hard and admits that while she’s his first and only girlfriend, that he couldn’t love another woman the way he loves her, because she’s the only one who can make him feel loved and secure.

Upon meeting Amy, Ashlen loves her very much and sees her as her very best friend and a true friend, even nurtures her because she grew to love her so much. Even as Amy starts to show her true colors and deeper psychological issues, Ashlen’s love doesn’t fade, but she does fear the thought of losing Amy more than anything, and at one point pleaded with her not to leave her alone without a best friend. Finally, when she finds love in Shinsou, she feels safe, warm and loved by him, and not unlike him, takes their arguments extremely hard, even taking all the blame because she fears losing him just as much due to her unconditional love for him.

Nice, Mean and In-between: Ashlen (Nice), Shinsou(Mean) and Amy (In-between). However Shinsou and Amy can switch the roles where Amy is acting as the crueler one and Shinsou can be more laid-back and decent, but Ashlen is almost always the Nice on.

Odd Friendship: These three make up a pretty odd but nonetheless very close friendship.

First you have Amy and Shinsou, a chaotic girl with energy for days and a low-key, apathetic guy who doesn’t care about much things, but they’re best friends and have been since childhood.

Then Amy meets Ashlen, a sweet but shy girl who became very close and best friends with the much more outgoing and obnoxious Amy.

Then there’s Ashlen and Shinsou, she’s much more of a sunshiny optimist while Shinsou’s more of a cynical pessimist.

Positive Friend Influence: When they’re not being bad influences or doing mischievous pranks, each make each other happier and better people overall.

For Amy, Shinsou reminds her of her humanity and all other better memories before the coven. Shinsou also can at times be able to reign her in when she’s upset, and enables her to think before she acts. And then Ashlen’s influence is what allows Amy to be much more reasonable and gentler, as her friendship helps Amy learn more lessons in being kinder to people and to forgive the people she felt hurt by.

For Ashlen, having an outgoing and supportive friend like Amy made her much more confident in herself, allowing her to be more assertive, proud of who she is, and she also learns to see her own beauty and even gains a newfound wild side. Likewise, Shinsou encourages her to loosen up a little bit and his endless attraction and devotion to her also adds to her confidence and boosts her self-image.

For Shinsou, Amy’s fun-loving and cheerful personality makes him laugh and allows him to have fun and get a little bit goofy as he humors her and can join in on her antics without letting life overwhelm him. And then having Ashlen as his friend and girlfriend makes him want to be more compassionate and he also learns to be less envious of others, more secure in himself and she also helps him boost his own self-image as well.

Power Trio: Together they’re a ridiculously powerful group of fighters who are even stronger together.

Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: They’re a group of friends made up of a witch, a trained fighter and a world-weary cynic trying to become heroes. Together the trio consists of.

A loud-mouthed, hyperactive Cute Witch who grew up in an infamous coven of powerful witches. Who happens to have a wide array of powers and is a little bit unstable to boot.

A skilled but troubled Warrior Princess with two quirks, one being highly unstable and dangerous. But she still has a strong sense of justice even if people haven’t been kind to her.

A curt and surly Deadpan Snarker with the power of Mind Manipulation and a less than approachable demeanor. However, he still wants to do the right thing, even if he is a bit of a Troll too.

Red Baron:

Amy: “The Coven Heroine: Tricky Witch”

Ashlen: “The Neutralizer”

Shinsou: “Mindjack”

Red Oni Blue Oni: Amy is the Red Oni to both Ashlen and Shinsou’s Blue Oni, although Ashlen can also be the Red Oni to Shinsou’s Blue Oni.

Serious Business: Four Words: Panic! At The Disco. Amy and Shinsou take Brendon Urie very seriously and take any ill remark against him as blasphemy and they manage to get Ashlen on the bandwagon.

Socially Awkward Hero: They’re all pretty socially awkward in their own ways.

Amy is overwhelmingly cheerful and over-the-top for most people, vulgar in speech, has no sense of personal space (as she constantly touches and hugs other people randomly) and usually unintentionally makes people uncomfortable by talking about inappropriate things that really shouldn’t be discussed in public, but she is generally friendly and does mean well.

Ashlen has the best social skills out of the three, but is still pretty shy, awkward by nature, prone to social anxiety, and gets nervous around people she doesn’t know, and is also easily flustered around boys she likes.

Shinsou is aloof, rude and snarky, and doesn’t go out of his way to befriend anyone except Amy, but is also pretty awkward when someone is being genuinely nice to him, and then he gets extremely nervous and flustered around Ashlen, to the point where he resembles Midoriya when he speaks to her.

Superpowered Evil Side: All three of them have superpowered sides or experienced power highs that enabled them to go berserk, lose control of their powers and even made them turn homicidal, even towards allies.

Amy’s Sentio Compassios can turn into Sentio Furia when greatly provoked. Already legitimately insane, she easily gets drunk on her magic and loves toying with her opponents, and when she’s that angry she freely lets go of all control during a rampage to unleash her power and destroy almost everything and anybody in her path, friend or foe.

Ashlen’s second quirk Dark Manifest is what makes her go berserk, even though she’s level-headed by nature. she has issues controlling her second quirk as when she’s pushed to the brink, it causes Dark Manifest to overwhelm her right mind and turns her into a bloodthirsty murderer and makes her lose her morality and kill whoever provoked her and anyone else who she feels like purely for fun.

Shinsou developed an alter-ego that Amy calls ‘Control Freak’. He wanted to get stronger and took up a training session with Amy’s friend Nan, and she and Madison give him a potion to amplify his brainwashing to make it more like Concilium. However, as his quirk’s power was amplified, the potion cost him his sanity and he lost himself momentarily and attacked even his friends and forced them to fight each other because the power high gave him an overwhelming sense of control over everyone regardless of who got seriously hurt..

Sweet Tooth: Amy is the most obvious one with a sweet tooth, but Ashlen also very much enjoys sweets and while Shinsou says he doesn’t love sweets, he’ll still eat them, especially when upset.

Token Trio: Amy (witch), Ashlen (two quirks) and Shinsou (single quirk)

Toxic Friend Influence: Downplayed, at least with Ashlen. Amy and Shinsou are toxic friend influences to each other to begin with and bring out each other’s bitchy side, but they can also sometimes be able to encourage Ashlen to indulge in wild and crazy antics such as drinking Amy’s infamous Magic Juice at a party or pulling hilarious pranks on other classmates.

!Tres Amigos!: Duh.

True Companions: They all came together recently, with Amy and Shinsou being Childhood Friends and later meeting Ashlen, but the three of them are very close, tight-knit, love each other’s company, comfort each other when upset and always support each other and have each other’s back no matter what.

Two Girls And A Guy: Amy and Ashlen are both girls with Shinsou as the sole guy of the trio.

Underestimating Badassery: Since Amy and Shinsou often bicker or make crude jokes with Ashlen having to look after them like a babysitter, people often take them at face value... until all three of them start beating the living hell out of villains and showing just how powerful they are.

Weirdness Magnet: They’ve all been exposed and/or attracted to some of the craziest supernatural things that are weird even by hero society standards.

Amy, being a witch, gets exposed to all types of weird and magical happenings with witches, vampires, demons, ghosts, a minotaur, voodoo queens and the Anti-Christ so she claims ‘nothing shocks her’.

Ashlen’s family actually overlooks several different supernatural things that include ghosts and demons, and so Ashlen is no stranger to the supernatural and is unsurprised by stranger things.

And because Shinsou’s close to Amy and Madison, he knows many things about witches and has become less and less fazed when something strange happens.

With a Friend and a Stranger: The whole set-up of the dynamic with Amy and Shinsou being childhood friends and Ashlen being Amy’s new friend who instantly gets along with Shinsou, and later, becomes his girlfriend. Unlike many examples though, these three are NOT a love-triangle, but DO involve one or two different love triangles OUTSIDE of the the trio.

You Wouldn’t Like Me When I’m Angry: Angering either three of them equals big trouble.

Amy is very easy to provoke and she’s The Dreaded in her class for a reason as she will start screaming, destroying things and fly into a rage if angered. And should you push a major button, it was nice knowing you.

Ashlen is actually quite slow to anger, but when she’s angry she gives a fierce glare and ALWAYS delivers righteous punishment to the one who angers her. And this is scary even when her second quirk isn’t awoken yet...

Shinsou is usually pretty levelheaded but when he gets upset, he gets upset, becoming both irrational and aggressive as he will attack the person who pissed him off, and play dirty as well just to let them feel pain.

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comeondowntosouthparkrpg-blog · 6 years ago

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Allison Mertz

Is she still wearing glitter all over her face?

Allison has been accepted! Send in your blog ASAP.

out of character info

Name/Alias: sam(ael) Pronouns: she/ he / they / them Age: 20 Join Our Discord: hella ( exhausted n queer#8766 ) Timezone: est Activity: 5 bc work n stuff Triggers: n / a Password: jimmy can fast pass my ass Character that you’re applying for: “Kinder Vamp” Allison Mertz Favourite ships for your character: Allison / chemistry

in character info

Full name: Allison Verona Mertz Birthday: December 19th Sexuality, gender, pronouns: Heterosexual – questioning, cis female, she / her Age and grade: 15, freshman Faceclaim: Meghann Preddy / @sugoimeg on instagram

Appearance:

Head / face: Allison’s face just exudes innocence. She has big, honey colored – often concealed by colored contacts – doe eyes framed with thick black lashes and sharp eyebrows above. Her features are delicate and feminine – she has a button nose, full lips, rosy cheeks, and a heart shaped face. Her pale skin has few imperfections, she doesn’t have much acne, but she does have moles and freckles scattered about – however, they’re pretty light, making them barely noticeable if you’re not standing close to her. When she smiles, she has soft dimples and pearly teeth with caps over her canines to make them look like they’re longer and sharper. Her hair is naturally black – however, over the years, her purple highlights have started to cover more of her thick locks. The purple fades often – sometimes looking pink-ish, but she tries her best to keep up on dying her hair. She has a deviated septum – this makes it so she can hardly ever smell and breathing through her nose is a struggle.

Body: Allison didn’t grow much since her younger years, topping off at only five feet tall. She’s stayed relatively thin over the years, and if you look at her torso, you can faintly see her bones. She is actually very anemic – she gets dizzy a lot ( sometimes she even faints ) and craves medium rare steak. Her porcelain skin gets cuts and bruises quite easily, so it’s not unusual for you to see a few cuts or bruises on her at any given time. She has a pear-shaped figure, meaning that her hips are wider than her waist and shoulders.She has a lot of moles and freckles on her body, most of them are pretty light, but there are still a few dark ones. On her ankle, she has a dark birthmark that looks like a big bite mark.

Style: Allison is very into dark and muted colors, so it’s safe to say that her wardrobe isn’t that bright or colorful. On a normal day, you can see her in a pair of dark jeans, combat boots, a simple dark shirt, and a cardigan or jacket / hoodie of some sort. She doesn’t like wearing skirts or dresses much, because she strongly dislikes showing off her legs, as she often gets random bruises from going about, and isn’t comfortable showing them off. In the warmer months, showing off her midriff isn’t an issue for her. She has prescription glasses, but hardly ever wears them in public. In style terms, she can be described as edgy, in a classic way, but still comfortable, and more than willing to accessorize. Allison is the type of person to hang chains from her belt loops, and decorate her book bag with pins.

Personality:

Allison is generally a sweet and bubbly girl – but, that’s not to say she can’t be a bitch at times, particularly when provoked. She’s very opinionated, so sometimes her words don’t always come out the way she wants them to. What I mean is that she’s kind of a passive aggressive brat – unless she likes you, then of course she’ll tell you exactly what she thinks, in a assertive, rather than undertone based way. When it comes to emotions, she doesn’t really know what to do about them. She tends to isolates herself until they go away – or if she’s around people she trusts, she’ll try and distract herself with them or ask them for advice. Most of the time, she tries her best to conceal her feelings and show everyone her best self.

She’s a very intelligent kid – it’s more book smarts than street smarts – and she earns mostly a’s and b’s. Despite that, she isn’t the fastest learner, her best work takes the practice from revision. Taking the extra time to study so she can keep up with other students, she has an intense phobia of failure. Even though the young girl knows she’s pretty smart, she’s very insecure about her knowledge. She will often beat herself up over getting things wrong as she hates messing up. Her smarts are more rooted in her hardworking and studious habits, something she tries her best to work towards, and gets upset when she fails at.

Like most girls her age, Allison strives to be liked and validated by her peers and even of her elders ( aka the older kids ). She does her best to be nice to mostly everyone – offering her friendship to those who she feels are worthy, or who she thinks is just plain interesting. For instance, she still doesn’t smoke cigarettes, but due to seeking validation and sequentially falling into the trap of peer pressure, she started smoking weed. Flora was the root provider, and instigator of this. Which in turn, helps with her chronic migraines.

History:

One freezing December night, young Olive Mertz went into labor, her husband Xavier by her side at all times. The birth didn’t go as planned, halfway through, the baby girl got stuck. The doctors had no choice other than to transition into an emergency caesarean section ( c-section ). Thankfully, there weren’t any other complications, and the birth went well. Olive and Xavier decided to name their new baby girl Allison Verona Mertz.

Allison was a pretty abnormal baby. She was quiet most of the time – hardly ever waking her parents up out of their sleep – and was very calm. She never got along well with most other children, so Olive didn’t take her out much, trying her best not to upset her little angel. Since she was an only child, she got almost all of her mother and father’s attention – and they were guilty of spoiling her with gifts and almost anything she wanted. When she hit the age of four, her parent’s marriage started to fall apart bit by bit.

Of course, Allison was young and didn’t really understand what was happening between her parents – but she knew that it wasn’t good. Olive and Xavier got into arguments almost daily. The quarrels were rarely about anything in particular that would cause problems – such as neglect or affairs – no, it was mostly little things that the two found annoying about each other. Maybe one day, Olive would hear the smack of Xavier’s lips as he ate, and she’d put up with it for mere seconds before bursting out in anger. Allison would often go to her room and occupy herself with drawing or writing – trying her best to not pay attention to the screaming adults downstairs.

Around a year after the arguments started, she started school. Allison felt out of place in Kindergarten, but quickly found a group of people that were willing to take her in; The South Park Vampire Society. The group comforted her during hard times and made her feel at home. They were like her second family. She loved them with every fiber of her being. She dealt with the disgusting taste of clamato juice just to feel like she was a part of something. The vampires were her happy place – they felt like home.

Five years of the constant arguments had passed before the two got divorced. Once Allison understood what they were going through, she was actually happy that they’d gotten away from each other. Not long after the split, Olive and Xavier had started a custody battle over Allison. She bounced between her parents houses, which exhausted her mentally. In order to ease her mind from all of this, she began taking piano lessons and writing poetry.

Two years after the custody battle started, it had ended. Olive and Xavier settled for joint custody – meaning that Allison would be spending the weekdays with Olive and she’d spend the weekends with Xavier. When Allison’s twelfth birthday came along, Olive decided to get her a pet – at first, Allison requested getting a bat, but her mother wasn’t too keen on that – instead she got a Brewer’s Blackbird.

Now, she’s fifteen and much happier than she used to be, from utilizing healthy coping mechanisms, and healthier habits, her stress levels have lowered and she’s pleased with her living situation. She’s kind of a ( not-so-secret ) weeb, from using anime as an escape from her problems, like when she’s too drained to play piano or write poetry.

Sample paragraph:

It was the end of the day and many students were rushing the leave the school, but Allison stayed behind. Today, she was going to try something new – something that scared her out of her wits. She was going to share her poetry. She’d contacted the leader of the poetry club earlier in the week, she was told to come by to check out the club before she officially decided to join – and she was doing just that.

Allison took a seat beside the one person she was familiar with there – Bloodrayne, or rather, Katie Gelson. The club leader stood before the rest of the members and began to speak. “Today, instead of working on something new, we’ll share something we’ve already written. Each member will stand where I am, and read their poetry. I’ll go first.” They said with a gentle smile. One by one, each member read a piece of their poetry, and then it was Allison’s turn.

“Allison, come on up.” The leader spoke. She obeyed and went before the rest of the members with a piece of paper in her shaky hands. She examined the faces of the members who were waiting for her to read the words on the paper. Her eyes landed on Katie, who just gave a nod and a barely noticeable smile. She nodded to herself and began,

“Somewhere, tucked away in the vastness of it all, hidden between the horizon and the sea, there exists a world where you are loving ‘the one who got away’, where the words you never allowed yourself to say flow freely between your teeth. There exists a realm where everything you’ve done, you’ve done differently. It’s where you chose happiness. Maybe you’re much more joyful there – but that’s not the point. Maybe, just maybe, despite the regret, despite everything, you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. Right here, right now.”

The members shared a quiet applause. Allison felt like she was going to burst out in tears, but she didn’t. She just smiled sweetly and went back to her seat, taking deep breaths to calm her nerves.

Maybe this is where she was supposed to be.

Headcanons:

♡ She still doesn’t drink coffee; she usually goes for tea or hot cocoa.

♡ She loves the vampires dearly – and still goes to meetings and stays active in the vampire society.

♡ She has a lisp, even without her fangs in. She actually considered getting her teeth permanently sharpened to look like a vampires, but she decided against it because it was way too expensive.

♡ She also still writes poetry and plays piano at school. In fact, she really likes classic literature and poetry, she’s in the photography club and the poetry club.

♡ She has a pet Brewer’s Blackbird named Echo. Originally, she wanted a bat, but her mother is was very against it ( as mentioned in history ) – so she got a blackbird. Echo is now three years old. She’s also very protective of Echo, and doesn’t usually resort to violence, but if you hurt her birdie, she’ll probably try to stab you.

♡ She loves cop dramas and true crime shows, she really enjoys the mystery behind them, and the suspense leading up to the grand reveal.

♡ Her dream job is to own a funeral home and be the head mortician.

♡ She used to have one of the biggest crushes on Dougie O’Connell – the feelings have mostly dissolved.

♡ Her aforementioned chronic headaches have lead to having to take time off of school, and will often impair her vision.

Anything else: i hope i meet the requirements this time!! thank you for the second chance and putting up with my shit!! ♡♡

#accepted #submission #allison mertz

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mooneec · 6 years ago

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The Parentified Child: How It Contributes to a Depressed, Angry, and Resentful Adult

Were You a Parentified Child?

When you were a child, did your mom or dad turn to you for comfort and advice when they were struggling with problems at work, in their marriage, or with finances?

Did you share a special bond with that parent because you were their confidant and caretaker?

Did you forgo hanging out with friends, joining teams and clubs, and just being a kid because you were busy attending to your parent?

Do you now feel resentful because you missed out on a happy, carefree childhood?

If responding “yes” to these questions, you were a parentified child. As a result, you may be struggling in adulthood with sadness, anger, and depression. Don't give up hope, though, because recognizing the root of your problem gives you an opportunity to heal. You can find ways to make up for the joy you missed as a kid.

What Does It Mean to Be Parentified Child?

Parentification happens when a child switches roles with her mom, dad, or both, becoming the caretaker in the relationship. She may become this in an emotional way—listening to the parent's problems, giving them comfort, and offering advice. She may also do it in a physical way—cleaning the house, taking care of siblings, making meals, and even paying bills. Youngsters often become parentified when mom or dad is an alcoholic, a drug user, disabled, divorced, or mentally ill.

How I Became a Parentified Child at the Age of 12

My parents' marriage started to fall apart when I was 12. My mother suspected my father was having an affair with a woman at work. She and I would take hour-long walks every afternoon when she'd confide in me her worries, criticize my father, and even talk divorce. I'd listen intently, flattered she was trusting me with these grownup matters and offering what advice I could. Even though I was just a kid with little experience in relationships, she'd compliment my wisdom, saying I would make an excellent psychologist some day. Listening to her problems and giving counsel was how I got her attention and validation.

As a kid, I didn't think too much about this dynamic between my mother and me that lasted until I went off to college. I was just happy to spend time with her and be her confidant. It wasn't until I became a mother myself that I realized how horribly wrong it was to burden me with these adult issues, turning me against my father and making me cynical about marriage. I began to understand how she used me and robbed me of my childhood. I also learned that what she did wasn't that uncommon and actually has a name: parentification.

Parentification Can Cause Long-Term Problems Including Depression, Isolation, and Anger

Dads and moms who parentify a child often don't realize they're doing something incredibly harmful. My mother was going through a midlife crisis at the time she turned to me for comfort and support. She was unhappy in her job and feeling lonely because my dad was working long hours and traveling for business. When people at my dad's office began gossiping about an affair between him and a much younger subordinate, she was understandably embarrassed and upset. It tapped into her deepest insecurities as a woman and wife and caused her to think and act irrationally at times.

Instead of seeing a therapist or talking to a friend, she turned to me in her time of need. This proved to be a critical mistake, forever damaging the relationship between my father and me and leading to severe problems later in my life. After focusing on my mother's inner world for so many years, I felt unworthy of any attention being directed at me. I didn't know how to advocate for my own needs and desires. The consequences of being a parentified child finally caught up with me as an adult when I struggled with depression, isolation, and anger.

Bethany Webster deals specifically with mother-daughter relationships in "When Shame Feels Mothering: the Tragedy of Parentified Daughters." She writes, "A daughter is being exploited when her mother gives her adult roles, such as surrogate spouse, best friend or therapist...When a daughter is asked to be an emotional prop for her mother, she is unable to rely on her mother enough to get her own developmental needs met." As a result, the daughter can grow up to be an emotionally stunted adult with little self-confidence.

Depression

It's not unusual for a parentified child to become a depressed grownup. I struggled with extreme sadness most of my adult life, taking anti-depressants to numb the pain and going to therapy to get at the root of my heartache. My life transformed when an astute doctor gave me an aha moment, explaining that I had been parentified as a youngster and was suffering because of it. Until that moment, I had never heard of parentification. Having a name for what I experienced as a kid made me feel much better.

During the six years I acted as my mother's emotional caretaker, a tremendous burden was put on my shoulders even though I didn't realize it at the time. I dealt with adult issues that I didn't understand—marital infidelity, a midlife crisis, jealousy, insecurity, and rage. I worried my parents would divorce. I worried we'd have to sell our home and move away from the neighborhood I loved. I worried about our financial outlook and how we'd cope without our dad. I worried how my younger siblings would be affected. I worried about my mother's emotional stability and how I could make her feel better.

My decades-long battle with depression finally ended when I mourned the loss of the happy, carefree childhood I never knew. Kati Morton, a licensed marriage and family therapist, says the grieving process is key to healing. She says it includes acknowledging that what happened to us was not okay coupled with the motivation to move forward.

I started to nurture the little girl inside of me who didn't get the love and attention she craved. I began to enjoy some of the fun and frivolous activities I wanted to do as a kid but was never given the chance: going to a circus, roller-skating in the park, visiting Disneyland, and even having a sleepover with some of my friends.

Isolation

A parentified child can also grow up to be a lonely and isolated adult. During my teen years, I desperately needed a parent to give me advice and listen to my concerns about friends, dating, school, teachers, homework, my hair, and my makeup. My mother, though, couldn't see beyond her own problems to help me. My father, knowing that I was now my mother's confidant, largely avoided me even though we lived under the same roof. I spent too many hours alone in my room, feeling sad and scared. Instead of having the normal adventures of a teen—going to football games, hanging out with friends, and joining clubs and teams—I stayed close at home, feeling responsible for my mother's well-being.

Some therapists even consider parentification a form of child neglect. Because the youngster misses out on basic childhood experiences, her development is seriously impeded. This was certainly true in my case. I didn't get to enjoy the fun and frivolous activities that shape a teen's life. My role as my mother's confidant and emotional caretaker set me apart from my peers. Because we didn't have shared experiences in common, we didn't have much to say to one another. I had few friends and no social life.

Anger

According to Maggie Olivares, a social worker who's dealt with many parentified kids, anger is another byproduct that comes from missing out on a carefree childhood. When they become adults, they look back on all those years when they had too much responsibility and not enough fun and are resentful and bitter. They struggle to maintain a relationship with the mom or dad who parentified them and may even choose to end it.

To this day, I have tremendous anger toward my mother for using me that way. It turned out that my father was never having an affair and it was all in my mom's head, triggered by her deep insecurity. When my dad and her grew closer again after years of being distant, she unceremoniously dumped me. I was no longer needed as her confidant and ally. My relationship with my dad had been annihilated years before that, and I was left with nothing.

Fortunately, I've forgiven my mother and moved on with my life, but I still find it difficult to trust people. In the back of my mind, I'm worried about being used again. I often see friendships as depleting rather than energizing. While my mother has apologized for talking badly to me about my dad, she certainly hasn't owned up to how she turned me into a parentified child and caused disastrous effects in my life.

Final Thoughts

If you were parentified like I was, missing out on a carefree childhood, it's easy to spend your adult life feeling sad and resentful. In Bad Childhood, Good Life, the author encourages us to understand how our past affects our present but discourages us from making it our identity. Just because we were parentified as kids doesn't mean we have to wear the badge of perpetual victim. We can put our early years in perspective and move forward, knowing we're now in charge of our destinies. We can feel empowered and hopeful, building a happy and meaningful adult life even though we missed out on a lot during childhood. We deserve it.

#McKenna Meyers #parentified #parentified child #depression #anger #isolation #resentment

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sketchynebula · 7 years ago

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Scribbles, Chapter 3

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, You are here,

Scribble tag list: @mikado413 @pleasebringmerlinback @thecrimsoncodex @too-precious-to-process @skadinavien @lexi-love99 @lovisoverrated @kickthecel @rayndropsonrosez @lamp-calm-sanders@iaminmultiplefandoms @ffsas-side-account @tree4life25 @thats-so-crash @sugarblob0 @pattongirl @fandoms-n-ship @izzynuggets @pasteliosis @thisrandomperson102 @memepool1 @hayleycreagine @artistgracie @its-me-madzy @bunniicc

Content Warnings: Self-hate, parental death, short moment of slight dissociation, suicide, flashback of suicide, rejection, fainting, abandonment, emotional break down, descriptions of anxiety and breathing, verbal and physical bullying, neglectful adults

Pairing: LAMP

Word count: 4,725

Genre: Hurt/comfort, Angst

AU/trope: Soul-Mate AU where whatever you write on your skin, it appears on your soulmate’s.

Summary: His mind worked over-time considering whether or not running to the other end of the building would be worth it, but as the fatigue from his sleepless night pressed into him, he decided it wasn’t. Today wasn’t going to be the day he decided to be punctual.Virgil’s English class was all the way across the school from his math class, so it was a long walk. Oh, and he also had it after math and that didn’t help his mood either.

There was a moment where he was sure that he would be late. His eyes peering into an empty classroom and checking the time, only to find that he technically only had three minutes to get there. His mind worked over-time considering whether or not running to the other end of the building would be worth it, but as the fatigue from his sleepless night pressed into him, he decided it wasn’t. Today wasn’t going to be the day he decided to be punctual.

By the time he had walked through the door to the classroom it had been a few minutes after the late bell. The class was all there, all 30 of them visibly acting every bit of ‘straight out of elementary school’ as one would suspect. Fortunately for Virgil’s attendance record, the teacher wasn’t there.

Unfortunately for Virgil’s eardrums, the teacher wasn’t there.

The teacher's desk was vacant, but clean with not a page of paper on it. That was probably just as well, since anything left unattended was almost certain to be looked through.

Virgil’s head was aching again. The windows poured bright light into the room and his head throbbed in pain with each noise that echoed in the class.

He moved to sit in the back, an area that was a little farther away from the windows and a little more closed off from the rest of the students. He sat, before laying his post-concussion head down. His arms wrapping around his head in order to try to muffle some of the sensory information.

He ignored all the kids around him, and they thankfully did the same, but somehow the mess of kids, middle school boys running around and girls talking loudly, made him feel even more closed off.

More isolated from everyone around him.

These kids ran around, laughing, with the privilege of being able to care about nothing more than homework and friendships. They weren’t nursing bruises and hiding concussions. They weren’t carrying drunk parents to their rooms at night and crying when new messages were written on their wrists.

He sniffed, the emotions swirling in him were too complex for his tired mind and he pulled his head off the desk before he could fall asleep. As he lifted it up, a piece of paper came with it, stuck to the side of his cheek.

As the paper floated back to the desk he looked around, seeing that a piece of lined paper was lying on the surface of each desk. A single word was written on the board, ‘Scribbles’, and just as a dawning sense of comprehension and dread filled him the teacher decided to make an appearance.

The teacher quickly bustled in the room, a familiar face that made Virgil stare unabashedly, eyes locking with the last person he wanted to see.

“Everyone sit down! I am sorry I’m late, it’s a long walk here from anywhere else in the school. That, however, does not mean you are allowed to descend to chaos in my absence.” She leveled the class with a glare. “I’m Mrs. Higgs, and I’m your English teacher.” Virgil felt his face flush, sinking into his desk. Of course she was. In his life there was no way that he wouldn’t have to see her everyday for a year.

“Today, we’re going to be working on a free-writing prompt, some children are better at creative writing while others are better at essays.” She turned moving to grab a few papers from her desk and having everybody pass one back, “It’s in my opinion that both aspects of writing and literature are important even if the curriculum only favours one, so I like to give the creative writers in the class space to like language arts and use it as a supplement to improve their writing. Everyday when you come in, there will be a writing prompt on the board, you will write for the first fifteen minutes of class and turn it in after for a daily grade, if you are absent you won’t have to make it up and it won't negatively affect you. this isn’t supposed to be a stressful activity it’s just to expand your mind and get credit for doing it. I am handing out the syllabi and then we are to get started on our prompt,”

As the papers moved from hand to hand, Virgil’s eyes helplessly looked at the prompt. Of all the things he hated the most the list topper had to be sharing his writing. He wasn’t any good, and there was never any reason that anybody in his life had to know anything about the personal inner workings of his mind.

“We’re going to start the fifteen minutes now, try your best to stay writing the entire time- go.”

Virgil’s hand shook as he glanced from the board back to his paper. Idea’s bouncing around his head, none of them he felt comfortable with a teacher reading.

Especially a teacher that hated him.

He gripped the pencil hard before he settled for a compromise. His hand was hesitant as he wrote the first words, mind halting every few letters before his brain started to flow into the mindset. His hand movements slowly evening out, moving to weave emotions in fictional scenes.

He pulled real events out of context and projected them on a fictional world. A world that Virgil wouldn’t have to be responsible for later. Taking what he itched to write for the prompt, what he itched to tell the world, to scream at every teacher that looked at him like he was a criminal, and pressing it against a safe grey area. Somewhere in the middle a place where Virgil can adamantly deny being related to any of the words that graced the page.

Virgil wasn’t done writing by the time the teacher asked them to pass their papers forward, but he almost threw his sheet at the person in front of him. Just wanting this to be over.

The rest of the class was uneventful. The only other notable event being when Mrs. Higgs’s raised an eyebrow at him during roll-call. Virgil would have nodded off after that, but he was tense. His eyes staring forward the entire class.

That didn’t mean he was paying attention at all though. He felt far away from the situation, away from the room and the light and the pain. All until he found himself jumping at the sound of the bell. His body temporarily going rigid before he moved to reach down under his desk. His body buzzed with nerves, antsy to get out of here, to spare himself the embarrassment of having to be around Mrs. Higgs for any longer.

He slung his backpack over his shoulder, students brushing his side as they moved pass him to get to the door, but just as he reached it himself Mrs. Higgs called him back. One of her hands clutching his free-writing assignment in her grip and beckoning him over.

“Don’t worry, You’re not in trouble.” She asserted to him as he glanced at her warily. His cheeks burning.

She motioned him to take a seat in a desk in front of her, “This will only take a moment, however I will write you a pass to get to your next class.” Her lips scrunched, brows furrowing in a stern way.

Virgil fidgeted as the flash of that memory passed through his brain. His mind was flooded with all the other things it brought with it. Saturday was fast approaching, only two days away as the week quickly ends. Everything that that meant was fresh in his mind. He swallowed hard and gripped his hands together in his lap.

“Virgil, you’re writing is- far beyond your grade level.” She said, eyes running over the page again before carefully placing the writing down on the desk and pushing it toward him. “Have you ever thought of taking up writing as a future career choice?”

Virgil can’t say he’d ever really thought about his future, he always assumed he wouldn’t have one to begin with.

He pulled the paper back towards him a full 10/10 points graced the corner of the page in red ink and he shrugged. The thought never crossed his mind.

“There's a writers competition, an annual event that i think i want you to participate in,” she cleared her throat, “though i must admit i have never chosen a participant this early in the year-” Pulling a few papers out of one of the locked drawer of her desk, she circled around to him handing him the papers, a list of careers and different applications of writing was there, along with a ‘Young-Authors Competition’ registration form, the top page of the stack had a bolded title of ‘what you can do with writing’.

Mrs. Higgs nodded to the pages, “I recommend doing some research on some possible careers in the meantime, only if you’re interested of course. perhaps a journalist, or even maybe an author?”

Virgil's face was awestruck, hesitantly he shrugged. His brain backtracking turning the words over in his head. Trying to find any alternative meaning in them than the one he was being presented with. Anything that would make more sense.

His writing wasn’t good by any stretch of the word. It was jumbled and unthought out, each word was meaningless, a product of his mind spewing out emotions that he trapped inside himself over the years. His pulse increased at the very idea of a competition.

A writing competition with people who spent their lives learning how to be good writers. Students who wanted to write since they were young and not someone like him. Him who only wrote because he never seemed to be able to speak.

His shaking was visible now and Mrs. Higgs reached out, hand resting over top his clenched fists, trying to get them to still. The warmth and weight of it made him look up at her concerned expression.

“The competition isn’t until December, you have time to think about it dear.” She said softly, “I, of course, won’t and can’t force you to submit something against your will, and I for one think you are all a little young to be able to fully decide what you want to be in life.” She said gesturing to the pages she had given him, “but it’s better to be well informed and say no than be poorly informed and say yes.”

She patted his hands, before pulling away and moving around the desk, hunching over it to quickly scrawl out the information on a hall pass, ripping it out in one fast motion and handing it to Virgil.

“However, i would at least think about it.” She finished eyes imploring as she turned away from him.

Virgil swallowed hard, standing slowly before his body went into overdrive. He pulled his backpack off the floor, collecting his items and almost running out of the room. The concerned eyes of Mrs. Higgs following him as he went.

Virgil moved out of the way of oncoming hallway goers, ducking through the hall as he made his way to flow onto the correct side.

His fingers nervously tear the edges of the hall pass he was given. He was at lunch, but he appreciate the sentiment more than anything else. Most teachers didn’t care enough to write him one anymore.

Which Virgil wasn’t blaming them for. When someone is as consistently late as he is there came a time where there wasn’t a point.

Virgil’s hand pressed into his pocket, shoving the pass deep inside with it, and he held the small stack of papers in his left hand, eyes glancing over the words and dates.

The bodies moving in the hallway brushed up against him in an uncomfortable ‘sardine can’ way. Shoulders hitting against his until one particularly hard shove had his side slamming into the row of lockers beside him. The disorientation was instant, and the snickering that followed confirmed Virgil’s immediate hunch. He angled his head to see Ricky and Fred’s backs as they passed down the hallway. Laughing to themselves.

Virgil’s hands balled themselves into fists, crumpling the papers, as he kept walking. Hunching into his frustration, and the brand new ache in his shoulder, he walked until he was able to carefully and discreetly duck into the school library. A small area that attempted to tightly fit book shelves and open desks together.

Virgil spared a glance at the librarian at the front desk, he managed to give them a small smile despite his mood, you always wanted to be on a librarians good side. His hands pressed the papers to his chest so nobody else in the room would catch a glimpse of their content, before he moved to round behind a row of bookshelves that were further back.

He hadn’t eaten in the cafeteria since his first week of first grade, the memory of having chocolate milk poured down his back was humiliating enough that he was willing to take steps to not have it repeated.

Virgil pressed his back into the bookshelf there, the knobs of his spine aching uncomfortably. He slid to sit down, hidden in the small nook that he had found. He dragged his backpack into his lap, his legs stretching out in front of him.

Unzipping the top of his pack with one swift motion, he pulled out his sad, sad, sack lunch. A bag that he’s pretty sure he just threw some bread and an apple in that morning.

Virgil frowned at the memory of that morning. His mother having sat silently in the kitchen, nursing a hangover, probably not even knowing that she shared a memory with him from the night before. A memory that his brain couldn’t help echoing back at him when things were quiet. The words ‘I’m glad you don’t have a soulmate’ making him feel guilty and paranoid all at once.

He hunched into his corner, not bothering to touch the bread as he bit into the apple. His unoccupied hand pushed the papers roughly into the backpack before zipping it back up and tossing the pack to the wayside.

“Hey, Verg?” James’s voice whispered out, starling Virgil, who inhaled a bit of apple as James rounded around a shelf. “Guess what!”

Virgil panicked for a moment, coughing before shrugging, his mouth full. James laughed, nodding his head “i feel that! anyway- you know how Mrs. Kace used to be the AP French teacher at the High-school?” Virgil paused, startled at the sudden topic of conversation. He slowly managed a shrug.

He typically didn’t make a habit of talking to teachers, at least not as a pastime, and especially those he didn’t have to directly deal with.

“Well, okay - i guess long story short- I have a chance to win a Trip to France under an exchange student program!”

Virgil’s chest was suddenly tight, his eyes wide in shock before he swallowed hard and tried his best to smile. His face split into more of a grimace.

“Yeah! I might get to be with Sarah!” James gripped his hands together, eyes dancing over the written exchanges they shared on his arms all in french.

Virgil, felt the bit of apple be was able to swallow sour in his stomach, he nodded jerkily to James.

“That’s cool.” He said, his voice weaker than normal.

“Right! Sarah says her parents are more than willing to house both of us and my mom says that if we present out soulmate status they will most likely give me citizenship,” James’s voice was hard pressed to continue to be a whisper, his voice slowly rising in volume as he continued his small, hopeful rant. “-I mean it’s France they’re like the epicenter for soulmate finding resources, you know, as long as i can prove i can speak French well and yadda yadda whatever, I’ll be able to meet her! Isn’t it great!”

It was. He was happy. It was so good for James. He had worked his entire life for something like this. Deciding to be a French translator in second grade when they had first started to write to one another and found out about the language barrier they had to overcome.

He was going to be with his soulmate. In a school that wouldn’t immediately mentally connect him with the outcast and ostracized him in turn. A school where Virgil wasn’t ruining his only chances at being a normal kid.

Why can’t Virgil just be happy for him, why can’t he just be supportive.

Why can’t he just let his soulmates be happy without him.

“That’s amazing, I’m so glad you two- I’m glad you guys get to see each other and stuff.” Virgil said, eyes void, stony and guarded and James’s smile slowly faded, eyes filling with recognition,

“Oh i am such a dick.” He said, a grimace pulling at the sides of his mouth, “dude, i’m sorry, i totally forgot, here i am telling you all about Sarah when everyone knows-,” He paused voice lowering, even quieter than a normal whisper now, and leaning in, as if what he was saying wasn’t common knowledge to every kid in this school district “- everyone knows you don’t have a soulmate” James tried to look Virgil in the eye but Virgil just shook his head.

“No, it’s fine.” Virgil shrugged and James just shook his head back,

“No it’s not, I just- i can’t even imagine-...” Virgil looked at James eyes imploring him to change the subject.

“Anyway?” Virgil said, voice more neutral than his previous tone.

James hesitated before he continued “Anyway… I- I’m just saying that if my french essay gets chosen for this thing in November i’ll be gone by next semester so…”

Virgil nodded his head. That was it. He suddenly felt like he didn’t have anything left to lose anymore.

Scribbles

Virgil's fingers raked through his hair, grimacing. It seemed to be greasy no matter how often he washed it.

He met the mirror with a blank stare. His eyes had started to form light bags under them from inconsistent and sometimes nonexistent sleep. His reflection looked as tired and pale as he remembered it.

The surge of fear that he felt while his shaky hands pushed his hoodie back over the mirror was enough to make him question why he was here. Standing around and holding up the only bathroom in a comic shop near the Cedar cafe.

Who was he kidding?‘Strip’s Spot’ was a geek safe haven that was literally right across the street from the hipster paradise that was the Cedar Cafe. It’s large glass doors and windows making the comic shop a safe viewing spot.

It was stalking, basically. Virgil recognized this to the point that it was almost tormenting him. He was stalking them now.

Or maybe he was always stalking them. His arms and hands containing personal information about them that they wouldn’t normally have shared with anyone they didn’t trust. The question ‘would they trust him’ bouncing around his head was promptly answered by every dark part of his mind, the resounding ‘of course not’ breaking him down a little more.

“But we’re soulmates” he whispered to himself eyes settling over the fabric of his hoodie. “We’re- we are, soulmates.” He stated to himself shakily.

They have to love him.

Their soulmates.

“emphasis on the ‘have to’ part” he mumbled to himself, echoing his thoughts out loud. His mind wavering. He pulled his hoodie away from its place precariously balancing on the mirror, pulling it around his shoulders. He thumbed the sleeves, eyes catching another unwanted glimpse of himself from the mirror before he turned to unlock the bathroom door.

As his hand wrapped around the metal and he spared a moment to try and pull on an at least semi-good neutral face. The kind of face one wore for a public area.

His eyes blinked from being in the darkly lit bathroom to suddenly being in a well lit shop. He took in the dark patterned carpet and the vivid posters once more. His eyes nervously glancing around at the few shop goers as he moved to stand near one of the windows. He pulled one of the comics off the shelf, hands thumbing through it as he pretended to brows, eyes glancing up at the people around him. He was trying so hard to be casual, though that could wrap around and make him seem weird, ‘too casual’ is a thing that exists.

Was he being too casual?!

His pulled himself away from panically staring at a random page of a comic book only to have his eyes connect with the window.

He felt paralyzed.

He didn’t know how he knew it, though it was probably because they were the only party there that was larger than two, but when his eyes landed on the three of them he knew.

It felt like he had known them forever.

They were all standing in the outside seating area just outside of the cafe, hugging, all three of them so elated.

A redshirted boy that Virgil can only assume was Roman was almost jumping up and down. The boy who was obviously Patton, wearing a rather warm looking puppy and kitten themed sweater, was attempting to hug each of them together. The last of them had to be Logan who was smiling a warm smile, and hugging back when it suited him. They all seemed happy and Virgil felt a sting of envy again. Their warm arms and faces were exchanging looks and touches.

Virgil was standing in a Comic shop.

They fit so well together, their arms and hands wrapping around one another like it was the most natural thing in the world.

They fit.

They just- they fit together effortlessly.

His entire life Virgil had never fit anywhere, Virgil had been time and time again shown that he didn’t belong with anyone.

Apparently not even his soulmates.

He watched their hands curl into one another and their faces breaking out in bright smiles. He watched them confirm every fear he ever had, knowing that he could never do any of those things. He could never jeopardize them that way. His hands were cold, and his very presence brought gloom.

He had no place with the three of them. Their colour and their light was gift he was supposed to admire not contribute to.

Not that he had anything to contribute to it anyway.

Virgil tried to shake a barrage of thoughts from his head, eyes watering. The loud sound of a honking car horn startled him, blurry eyes raising to barely make out the faces of just as elated adults waving to the group from a car. Virgil’s cheeks flushed, hands almost dropping the comic book he was now tightly clutching, another car stayed down a ways, the parents smiling.

Normal families.

Normal happy families that Virgil can contact and ruin, ruin the same way he ruined his.

A flash of his fathers cold hanging body made his brain silence, his chest suddenly tighten, his mind tilting until there was nothing.

He woke up all at once, and the moment he was standing to the moment he was waking up on the floor felt like a mere instant appart. A concerned store manager hovering over him, a hand at the back of his head checking for an injury.

He pulled away from the strangers hands, the man's voice was muffled, sounding too far away from the still reeling Virgil.

“-Would you like me to call your parents” The words came into focus like a lense, slowly and with a gradient in time between indecipherable and clear. Virgil shook his head.

Who was there to call?

As Virgil sat up on the floor, he tilted back a little to peer out the glass doors, seeing both the cars and his soulmates gone.

‘Probably soul-bonding’ he thought to himself. Swallowing hard. An aching feeling filling his chest made him turn his head, and stare at the carpet there, mind dully wondering if there was ever going to be a time when things started to hurt less.

Scribbles

The night was all consuming and the edge of the table pressed into him. The blankness of his arms made the sorrow crop up inside of him again. His hoodie discarded to the floor.

It didn’t feel like there was a need for it anymore.

“You don’t normally take the hoodie off.”

Virgil’s head snapped to the side, looking into the eyes of his mother, who he hadn’t talked too since three days ago. He swallowed hard at the tired disheveled look she had. Her eyes bruised with circles and hair tousled.

“Yeah.” He said, turning his eyes back to the wood of the table as he waited for her to go for the liquor cabinet.

His mother took a seat.

She put her purse on the kitchen table, heaving out a sigh as she pulled her name tag off and ran a hand through her hair. “I- I know I’m.. I’m a- failure of a parent.” She stated and Virgil’s heart ached.

“No. You’re not. You do everything you can-,” Virgil began but his mother spoke over him

“I don’t- I don’t do enough.” She said, turning the name tag over in her hand as she spoke.

There was silence then. All consuming silence as they both sat in their own turmoils.

Emotional grievance pulling them both into the darkest places of their minds.

“How did you-” Virgil started suddenly, his voice cracking. “How did you deal with dad- with you know…”

His mother looked away from him. Her eyes vacant again, her expression mirroring the look she gave him in the bathroom that night. Virgil’s heart braced itself. The wounds so fresh that he didn’t think he could take another disappointment.

“I didn’t.”

She stood, tears running down her face. Giving Virgil the most apologetic look he’d ever seen on another human beings face. She pulled herself away from the kitchen table, the apartment echoing around them both as she pulled open the liquor cabinet.

Virgil stood, eyes spilling and a hand covering his mouth. He stepped over the hoodie. Leaving it there.

He burst through the door to his room with the edges of hysteria gripping at him. His hands going to clutch at his hair, yanking until it hurt. The pain making his eyes water.

He thought about his mother, about the years of isolation and pain. He thought about his dad leaving the both of them for his mental illness, and he thought about inevitability.

The pressing feelings that he would end up just like the both of them. His mother who would never see her soulmate again, and drank to forget that. His mind working against his own happiness no matter how every talks about soulmates being the ‘cure for all ills’.

He would be just as broken up, just as lost and desperate. Another ghosting figure in a world that doesn’t care about anyone with anything other than a happy ending. He was a damned soul.

A soulless.

He was truly a soulless now.

His breath came out in harsh puffs and he collapsed, sitting on his bed, keeling over and folding in on himself until his chest rested on his knees.

His eyes rose for just a second, just long enough for the time it took for his eyes to connect with the haphazard pile of the pages on his desk. The writing information Mrs. Higgs had given him. All of them collected in a single spot, discarded and crumpled.

There was stillness. The tears running down his face continued and he stood. His body slowly moving. He gripped the first page, moving it aside to pick up the Young-Authors Competition Rules. His hand shakily gripped a pen. His knuckles turning white with the force, and he pulled a loose leaf sheet onto the surface.

Then. He wrote.

Chapter 4

#Scribbles #my fic #sanders sides #sanders sides fic #soulmate au #polyamsanders #polyamory #hurt/comfort #angst

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fyp-psychology · 7 years ago

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The Unmistakable Link Between Unhealed Trauma & Illness

Most of us experience trauma at some level, not just war veterans who witness and experience horrific terror, but simply by growing up as vulnerable children in a world where many parents are themselves traumatized and can’t always hold that vulnerability safe for a child.

You might mistakenly think that you must experience incest, child abuse, parental abandonment, or living in a war zone in order to be traumatized, but trauma can be much more subtle. Psychologist Dawson Church, PhD defines a traumatizing event as something that is:

Perceived as a threat to the person’s physical survival

Overwhelms their coping capacity, producing a sense of powerlessness

Produces a feeling of isolation and aloneness

Violates their expectations

In his book Psychological Trauma, Dawson gives the example of Martie’s traumatizing event, which could have lasting consequences but might be easily overlooked if you were not attuned to the kinds of events that can traumatize a child.

When I was growing up, I idolized my older brother Gary. But he was pretty rough with me. He was six years older than I was. One day when I was three and he was nine, he wanted to have a “wrestling match.” He “won” by lying on top of me. I couldn’t breathe and I began to panic. Gary just laughed when he saw me struggling. I almost passed out. When he rolled off me, I began to cry uncontrollably. My mother came in, and I tried to explain what happened. He told her it was nothing. I was just being a crybaby. Mom told me, “Big girls don’t cry.”

While it might be easily dismissed as just children tussling, this example meets all four criteria for a traumatizing event. Martie thought she was going to die when Gary lay on top of her, so she perceived a threat to her survival. She tried to cope by pushing him off, but he was too big so her coping attempt failed and she felt powerless. Being smothered by her brother violated her expectation that her family would keep her safe. When her mother failed to support and comfort her by dismissing her emotions with “Big girls don’t cry,” she was left feeling isolated and alone.

By this definition of trauma, almost all of us have experienced multiple traumatizing events in our lifetimes. In my case, I had a fairly benevolent childhood, but 12 years of medical training caused me to experience multiple events that meet this criteria for trauma. I also was held up at gunpoint by two masked gunmen in my twenties and had full on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder afterward. Most recently, I was attacked by a pit bull and started having PTSD-like flashbacks right afterward. Knowing what I know about the link between unresolved trauma and physical illness, I wanted to be proactive about healing the trauma right away. I am lucky to have at my fingertips a variety of gifted and ethical healers who treat trauma. I reached out right away and asked for help. The flashbacks stopped and haven’t come back.

Unhealed Trauma Predisposes to Disease

As I wrote about in Mind Over Medicine, there is a substantial amount of data linking mental health issues with physical disease. This is not to suggest “it’s all in your head.” It’s absolutely in your body! It’s simply that the physiological changes that occur in the body as the result of unhealed trauma and its associated stress, anxiety, and depression translates into conditions in the body that make you susceptible to physical ailments. In a landmark 1990 study of 17,421 patients, Kaiser Permanente and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) collaborated on the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, which has resulted in over 50 peer-reviewed scientific articles. Patients were interviewed to determine whether they had experienced any of ten traumatizing events in childhood:

Physical abuse

Sexual abuse

Emotional abuse

Physical neglect

Emotional neglect

Mother treated violently

Household substance abuse

Household mental illness

Parental separation or divorce

Incarcerated household member

The study revealed that traumatizing childhood events are commonplace. Two-thirds of individuals reported at least one traumatizing childhood event. 40% of the patients reported two or more traumatizing childhood events, and 12.5% reported four or more. These results were then correlated with the physical health of the interviewed patients, and researchers discovered a dose-response. Traumatizing events in childhood were linked to adult disease in all categories—cancer, heart disease, chronic pain, autoimmune diseases, bone fractures, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, depression, smoking, and suicide. The average age of patients in this study was 57 years old, which means that childhood trauma can have a delayed effect on the body, making it entirely possible that something that happened 50 years ago may be predisposing someone to illness in the here and now. The more Adverse Childhood Events an individual reported, the sicker and more resistant to treatment they were.

The Good News: Trauma Can Be Healed

If you’re someone who checks “yes” to these and many other traumatizing events, you might be feeling anxious right about now. Does this mean that if you’ve experienced trauma in your life, you’re now a ticking time bomb just waiting to get sick? Does it mean that you won’t be healed from your chronic illness? Does it mean the damage is done and it’s too late to undo it?

No no no. That’s not what I’m suggesting at all. The good news is that we now understand that unresolved trauma, whether from childhood or adulthood, can be treated and cured. Such treatment may also have direct effects on physical health.

Psychologists didn’t always know this. They used to believe that children who experienced severe trauma were sort of damaged goods, at risk for many other challenges in adulthood—such as physical and mental illness, addiction, criminal behavior, domestic violence, obesity, and suicide. Such trauma was believed to be largely untreatable. Now, thanks to evolving methodologies for treating trauma successfully, such as Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR), Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Advanced Integrative Therapy (AIT).

Somatic Experiencing, and Psych-K, we know better. Trauma can be treated, and if you’ve experienced trauma, treatment can be not only preventive medicine but also treatment of disease.

These cutting edge treatments for trauma recognize that talk therapy is inadequate to treat trauma. In fact, it can actually be harmful and retraumatizing, not to mention ineffective. When traumatized people are asked to replay the trauma through talk therapy, they often dissociate from their bodies, escaping into a safe witness consciousness, where they discuss the trauma from this disembodied, numbed out witness position, since that’s what they had to do to cope during the initial trauma. The newer trauma treatments make use of the understanding that trauma can only be truly healed when you stay in your body while addressing the often overwhelming emotions that accompany trauma, titrating your exposure to the trauma in small doses so as not to disembody and dissociate. Newer techniques for treating trauma often require very little talking, are careful to avoid retraumatizing, and can be very effective, quick, and permanent—with surprising and exciting effects not just on mental health, but on physical health, especially for those recalcitrant conditions that fail to respond to even the best Western or alternative medical treatment.

To Treat Disease, We Must Normalize and Treat Trauma

We know from copious data studying war veterans with PTSD in VA hospitals that, without any doubt, trauma and illness are linked. Yet in spite of all the solid scientific data linking trauma and disease, conventional Western medicine still tends to turn a blind eye to this strong correlation, and many patients are also resistant to considering treatment of trauma as part of a prescription for a healthy body. When was the last time your doctor told you to get treatment for your trauma as part of your cancer therapy, autoimmune disease, or heart disease? If you were asked to get trauma treatment as part of comprehensive, integrative medical therapy, how would you react? In my experience, even very progressive integrative medicine doctors rarely bring this up. Instead of focusing on drugs or surgery, they point you to a healthier diet, an herbal supplement, or a whole bunch of expensive functional medicine laboratory tests that aren’t usually covered by insurance.

But what if no drug, surgery, diet, supplement, or fancy lab test can cover up the ongoing, toxic effects of unhealed trauma on the body?

What if everything else is merely a Band-Aid, perhaps providing temporary relief but never fully healing the root cause that makes you vulnerable to illness over and over?

What if trauma is at the root of many illnesses in many patients, and until we treat it, even the most cutting edge medical technologies may fail to fully work?

Perhaps the block around treating trauma as part of a comprehensive medical treatment plan lies in the stigma many attach to trauma, as if it’s some sort of weakness to have survived a traumatizing event. I suspect that much of the resistance stems from shame about the traumatizing events, which is why the work sociologist Brené Brown, PhD is doing around shame and vulnerability is so important. If shame causes us to bury our trauma in a trauma capsule that we never touch, that trauma can turn into cancer. But if we cultivate shame resilience and we’re brave enough to be vulnerable and get help entering the trauma capsule, miraculous effects are possible. After all, there is absolutely no rational reason to be ashamed if you were sexually abused or abandoned or beaten or neglected. There need not be any shame around getting attacked or bullied or shamed or surrounded by war. Yet shame spirals are common, especially among children who are traumatized. Young psyches somehow translate the trauma into a story that we’re not good enough, or we are weak or unlovable.

Yet children are innocent, as are most adults who are traumatized. At the most basic level, it is our innocence that suffers the brunt of the wound, which means that our innocence needs our compassion and our nurturing, not our inner bullying, shaming, or self-violation. Human life is hard. We have to feel our pain and own up to it in order to heal it and alchemize it into soul growth. But even the most awakened people cannot typically bear to enter into the trauma capsule without loving, supportive, masterful help.

What If Science Can’t Keep up with the Cutting Edge of Sacred Medicine

When I keynoted at the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP) conference last month, I met a handful of cutting edge Energy Psychology practitioners, and after a series of synchronicities made it clear we were supposed to get to know each other better, I spent eight hours talking to one of these Energy Psychology practitioners in depth as part of my research for Sacred Medicine. Like many of the individuals I’ve interviewed for my upcoming Sacred Medicine book, Asha Clinton, PhD is a Jungian psychologist, mystic healer, and longtime spiritual practitioner of first Buddhism and then the Sufi tradition. Asha created Advanced Integrative Therapy (AIT) and has trained over 2000 practitioners in this Energy Psychology technique. What drew me to Asha and AIT was not only the vastness of her presence, but the fact that she is using AIT to treat cancer. Although the methodologies used in AIT appear to be quite cognitive, left brain, and rational, it was clear to me right away that something mystical was underlying this treatment. While most of the other Energy Psychology techniques are being used to treat trauma as it applies to mental health conditions, Asha created protocols that she and other health practitioners are using as part of the prescription for people with cancer—and the great news is that, for those who are ready for this kind of deep psycho-spiritual work, results are promising.

Part of what drew me to Asha was that she wasn’t trying to sell me with pseudo-science or earn my validation with muddy data. Although many people at this conference used a lot of scientific language to try to explain what happens when patients are treated with energy healing and energy psychology techniques, I often start to glaze over when people talk about quantum physics and use language that sounds like “pseudo-science” to try to gain acceptance in the world of science. Frankly, I am concluding that science is simply not advanced enough to keep up with the cutting edge of medicine, and no amount of trying to fit spiritual healing into a science box is going to satisfy the scientist in me. Perhaps science will catch up, and it’s important that we continue to try to study that which can be studied in order to protect us from the charlatans of the world. But to dismiss a particular phenomenology something simply because science can’t fully explain it seems irresponsibly ignorant. Holding this paradox of my desire for scientific proof and my openness to that which cannot yet be proven is a challenging edge for me, but one I am holding with greater fluidity as I continue this Sacred Medicine journey. From what I can garner, there is not yet scientific verification that AIT works to treat cancer, but there are a number of very compelling anecdotes, enough to hopefully attract the attention of scientists who might be able to track outcomes, much as Dawson Church and his colleagues are doing to validate the more mainstream Energy Psychology technique EFT.

The Healing Comes from the Divine

Part of my resistance around “energy healers” who try to use the language of energy to explain how their treatments work is that it feels almost disrespectful to that which is doing the healing. Is it really just yet another rational, scientific treatment? Or is it God? (Not that science-based, technologic treatments aren’t also God, but that’s a whole other blog post.) The reason I’m calling my book Sacred Medicine is because I don’t think it’s possible to separate energy healing modalities or traditional healing practices like shamanism from spirituality. I would even go so far as to say that Love Itself lies at the root of the healing.

Asha’s work felt like a good fit for this book because right from the get-go, Asha was blatant about saying that AIT is Divine work, that the protocols she has been mystically given in order to create AIT are a gift from God. She is fittingly humble in the way she gives credit where credit is due. The technique she has midwived into the world strikes me as very similar to the way some of the mystical healers who I’ve interviewed operate, but what attracts me to AIT is that Asha has learned how to teach this.

One of the challenges I’ve faced in researching my Sacred Medicine book is that many of these Sacred Medicine practitioners cultivate dependency. They don’t teach the patient how to heal themselves. Instead, they often leave the patient feeling like they need yet another hands on healing or yet another trip to John of God or yet another boost of Divine love as it flows through the healer. And often, the effects of the healing treatment don’t seem to last. What interests me is whether we can learn something from these healers that we can practice on ourselves when we are sick, such as the techniques I described here and used on myself when I was bitten by the pit bull.

After all, if the message is always, “You need to find something outside of yourself in order to heal,” I have to pause and wonder. Other than having fewer side effects, how is dependency on a mystical healer any different than depending on drugs and surgeries, or supplements and magic potions? I am more interested in learning from the healers who have reverse engineered what they do enough to teach others how to reproduce their results and ideally even teach the patient how to employ these methods at home. Is this possible? I don’t know. So far, I think it’s a paradox. The body is physiologically equipped to heal itself, but perhaps it can’t do it alone. Maybe this deep inner work is just too scary and painful to navigate alone. Maybe we are dependent, at least for a short while, on the loving presence of someone who can channel Divine Love, while facilitating and holding space so that the body can heal itself.What is Advanced Integrative Therapy?You can read the details about AIT here, but to summarize in my understanding, the technique Asha developed uses the scientifically controversial “muscle testing” (kinesiology) to run through very detailed protocols that help the practitioner assess which damaging beliefs and unhealed traumas the client has experienced, and which beliefs and traumas need to be treated in which order in order to optimize outcomes. The technique screens not only for Adverse Childhood Events or traumatizing events in adulthood, but also for generational trauma, such as the trauma descendants of Nazi Germans or Holocaust Jews might experience, which can alter DNA in offspring. Based on the premise that all upsetting events are types of trauma, and that if left untreated, they become stored within the body, mind and spirit/soul, the intention of AIT is to quickly remove the after effects of such traumatic events and clear the residue of the trauma, as it shows up as disturbing emotions, limiting beliefs, self-sabotaging behaviors, compulsions, obsessions, dissociation, spiritual blockage, and yes . . . (She had me at hello) . . . physical illnesses like cancer.

To make the claim that a psychological and spiritual treatment could be used to treat cancer treads on dangerous legal territory, and Asha is careful with her words when she talks about it. The governing medical boards are very fussy about protecting patient safety—and their turf—by going after anyone they might deem to be “practicing medicine without a license.” If a nutritionist claims that her green juice cleanse can help treat cancer, or if a psychologist or spiritual healer claims that his can, they’re at risk of getting shut down by the Powers That Be. While I’m grateful we have governing boards to protect patient safety and to hold medical practitioners to high levels of ethics, integrity, and mastery of skills, I also find it shocking that we’ve forgotten what healers have known for millennia—that psycho-spiritual healing is probably the most effective, lasting, and restorative treatment of the majority of physical diseases. To suggest that a trained and licensed psychotherapist might be practicing medicine without a license if they suggest that psycho-spiritual treatment might help treat disease seems like blasphemy to me! After all, the CDC estimates that 75% of all doctor’s visits are induced by emotional stress, and Occupational Health and Safety bumps that number up to 90%. Sure, there are some illnesses that need highly effective physical treatments, such as antibiotics or surgery. But it is often psychological issues that weaken the immune system and predispose to infection or surgical issues in the first place! (Read Mind Over Medicine if you want to nerd out on the science behind all this.)

The Link Between Psycho-Spiritual Wounds & Physical Illness

As part of my research for Sacred Medicine, I’m traveling the globe to work with shamans in Peru, Qigong masters from China, Hawaiian kahunas, Yogi Swamis, and other kinds of traditional healers, and they all know that psycho-spiritual trauma rides shotgun with physical illness. It’s only Westerners, in our Cartesian arrogance, who have split body, mind, and spirit/soul. Yet we are waking up again and remembering what traditional healers have known all along, that body, mind, and spirit/soul cannot be separated. If we treat the body without also treating the root cause of what predisposed the body to illness, the patient will likely get another illness, or the cancer will recur, or the disease will fail to respond to even the most aggressive treatment.

If You’ve Experienced Trauma, What Can You Do to Heal It?

If you’re looking to optimize your physical health by getting help for any unresolved traumas, there are a number of ways to get help. Start by checking in with yourself. What modality resonates with your intuition? Is it AIT? EFT? EMDR? Somatic Experiencing? Shamanic healing? Faith healing? A Native American Medicine Man?

I recommend doing your homework and tuning into your intuition before you choose a practitioner. If your practitioner is a licensed health care provider, like a medical doctor or psychotherapist, they are beholden to their respective medical board with regard to ethics, education, mastery, and continuing medical education. But the minute you go outside the system into the realm of traditional healers and energy medicine practitioners who don’t also have licensed degrees, you open yourself to two kinds of risks. Some practitioners have mastery but no ethic, while others have ethic but no mastery. In other words, you may bump into some highly gifted healers, but they may not follow even the most basic medical ethics, such as confidentiality, informed consent, and restraint from having sexual relations with clients. Even more common are the people who are kind, well-intentioned people trying to be of service, people who are basically ethical and mean well, but they’re simply not good at what they do and cannot reproduce trustworthy results. In my research into Sacred Medicine, I have concluded that just because someone has spiritual power doesn’t mean they have spiritual ethic. And just because someone has spiritual ethic doesn’t mean they have spiritual power. (I talked about this for 3 ½ hours in The Shadow Of Spirituality Uncensored class I taught. You can listen to the class here to dive deeper into the topic of spiritual discernment).

I don’t say this to scare you or cause you to hesitate to get help if you’ve been traumatized. I’m just advising that you activate your discernment, ask for referrals, and be ready to sniff out those who are trying to hook you with big claims they can’t follow through on or those who might be full on black magicians dressed up in white angel robes.

If you feel drawn to modalities like AIT, EFT, EMDR, or Somatic Experiencing, there are resources online to guide you to psychotherapists who have been trained to practice these techniques.

Imagine If Doctors Were Trained to Treat Trauma Alongside Disease

Doctors and other health care providers have been exploring exactly these kinds of issues in the Whole Health Medicine Institute that I founded. Those who have been certified to facilitate the 6 Steps to Healing Yourselfas outlined in Mind Over Medicine have gone through the 6 Steps themselves and have been trained to help facilitate patients who are exploring these kind of psycho-spiritual root causes of illness. (You can find a list of graduates here). But we’ve never overtly included into the training how to treat trauma directly. Asha and I are putting our noodles together to feel into whether there’s a potential for collaboration so that the doctors in my network might be trained to not only have awareness of these new treatments for trauma so that they can refer out to licensed practitioners. Perhaps they might also get certified to treat trauma directly. This bypasses the issue of “practicing medicine without a license” and opens up the potential for a whole new approach to disease treatment and prevention within our medical systems. Of course, there are other obstacles to this potential merging of worlds, including how little time doctors have to spend with patients. But as Tosha Silver would say, “It’s impossible that doctors could be trained to help treat unhealed trauma in sick people . . . without God.”

If You’ve Been Traumatized, Please Get Help

Let me just close by saying that if you’ve experienced trauma in your life and you sense that it might be predisposing you to illness or interfering with medical treatment, please know that you are not alone and that there is no shame in having experienced trauma. Most of us have trauma in our bodies, minds, and spirit/souls. We are not alone in our traumas, and we need not hide our pain or resist treating it. Trauma can be cured, and you can have your radiant, vital life back, if only you have the courage to enter the trauma capsule—with expert guidance—and begin to let the trauma dissolve its grip on your life and your body.

Everyone is entitled to their own journey, so it’s also OK if you’re not ready yet. As my mentor Rachel Naomi Remen, MD says, “You can’t force a rosebud to blossom by beating it with a hammer.” Maybe all you can handle today is admitting, “I have trauma.” That is enough for now. Be kind to yourself. As Karen Drucker sings in her song”Gentle With Myself,” “I will only go as fast as the slowest part of me is free to go.” But perhaps by gently loving the slowest part, some day you will be ready to heal. Maybe that day begins right now.

With love and wishes for your optimal health,

Lissa Rankin, MD, New York Times bestselling author of Mind Over Medicine, The Fear Cure, andThe Anatomy of a Calling is a physician, speaker, founder of the Whole Health Medicine Institute, and mystic. Passionate about what makes people optimally healthy and what predisposes them to illness, she is on a mission to merge science and spirituality in a way that not only facilitates the health of the individual, but also uplifts the health of the collective. Bridging between seemingly disparate worlds, Lissa is a connector, collaborator, curator, and amplifier, broadcasting not only her unique visionary ideas, but also those of cutting edge visionaries she discerns and trusts, especially in the field of her latest research into “Sacred Medicine.” Lissa has starred in two National Public Television specials and also leads workshops, both online and at retreat centers like Esalen and Kripalu. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her daughter. She blogs at LissaRankin.comand posts regularly on Facebook.

Source – LissaRankin.com

[THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN BY THE MINDSJOURNAL]

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