#or mental health issues. he represses like literally every negative emotion ever

[wereh0gz]

Headcanon that after Surge electrocuted the shit out of him and he clinically died, Sonic occasionally experiences chest pain and heart palpitations and some other complications that may be from that specific fight or may be from other events that he never got checked out because he never goes to the doctor ever

[emsartwork]

this might be kind of a long ask I'm sorry! (I really love your work btw) but you know how you did the personality run down for the winx girls as well as their negative traits, I was wondering if you could do that for the specialists? (I really love your versions of them — their personalities are so nonexistent in canon)

Sure! I love giving the boys more personality lol i kind of ended up talking about their mental state as opposed to their flaws but like. ur flaws are reflective of ur mental state so. idk.

 long post sry

SKY: Sky didn’t have a good sense of how the world works before going to Red Fountain (to be fair he was aware of this which is partly why he wanted to go in the first place). His childhood was strict but coddling, he wasn’t allowed to make his own choices but he had everything he could ever need provided for him. So adjusting to real life that first year in school was ROUGH. He had his ass handed to him several times for being a royal prick and couldn’t even really do anything about it because of the identity swap. Fortunately, this did nip the worst of his ego in the bud. He has a tendency to exert his control over others as a way to sooth his own anxiety/bitterness about being controlled himself. He did this especially with Bloom in the beginning of their relationship, but got a talking to from both Stella and Brandon and knocked that shit off (with the help of therapy) This issue came up again after the season 3 disaster with Diaspro and he spends a lot of secret of the lost kingdom and magical adventure working through that before season 4 puts them on earth.

BRANDON: tbh Brandon is one of the most well adjusted characters here. He has a good relationship with his parents and a strong sense of self. It helped that he had the freedom to pursue his own interests in a safe and stable environment and that his parents feel strongly about mental health issues, having first hand experience dealing with trauma in themselves and others. Brandon is the mom friend and sometimes takes on too much responsibility for his friends’ emotional states and becomes preoccupied with fixing their problems for them. In the process of officially becoming Sky’s guard/companion in his late teens he was forced to learn to set boundaries a little better. Brandon is literally always trying to get the other guys to take advantage of the fact that Red Fountain has an on campus counseling office but they’re like “nooooooo my unheathy coping mechanisms are fine” meanwhile after every winx mission Brandon roller blades into the office with an ice coffee like “what is UP I have new trauma”

TIMMY: so Timmy was raised on an asteroid colony, and had a fairly unstable childhood just because of that environment, his mom loves and provides for him as much as humanly possible so his emotional attachments are pretty secure, but he does have issues with permanence. if something is lasting a long time (whether good or bad) he starts to get antsy and suspicious, and sometimes ends up self sabotaging by poking at the thing when he should just leave it alone. He also has some hoarding tendencies due to his childhood. Timmy also hates feeling like a burden, and doesn’t take advantage of some of the opportunities ( at Red Fountain because he feels like he doesn’t deserve them. 

HELIA: helia baby stop repressing your emotions and desires to fit into other people’s definition of success its not good for u. So Helia is a quiet person by nature, but also struggles with dissociating in order to avoid anything unpleasant or difficult. This is mostly seen by pursuing both magic and warrior training for his dads’ sake, even though all he wants to do is paint shit and write poetry. His dads would ultimately be supportive but Helia is terrified of failure lmao, and lacks the confidence to actually express his needs but also can’t pursue what he really wants because WHAT IF IT DOESN’T WORK OUT. he will also use the silent treatment/cold shoulder as a way to hurt people if he’s mad at them.  

NABU: ok like on the surface Nabu is doing pretty well. He’s got his shit together. He knows exactly what to say and how to say it. But the boy is also a mess. He does repair some of his relationship with his parents after he and Aisha officially get together, but is still super angry at them for treating him like an achievement/trophy and then essentially tossing him away when he became inconvenient. Nabu also has a tendency to be secretive and a little manipulative, secretive because it was a way to get back at his parents as a child and manipulative because he was raised to basically be a politician and doesn’t like conflict so he’ll just mess with situations and people until it’s what he wants. These aren’t big problems while he’s doing his own solo thing but Aisha is not down with this and is basically like “take steps to fix it or leave” and joining as an unofficial member of the specialist’s rescue team forces him to do some self evaluation and improvement. 

NEX: Nex is another one with good parental relationships, his issues primarily stem from his competitiveness and impulsiveness. He also holds grudges pretty badly, Thoren is helping him to work through stuff like that internally instead of taking it out on the target. His impulsiveness has gotten him into A LOT of trouble, he basically has no filter which can be fine but also he needs to shut tf  and read the room sometimes. He really wants to do a good job as a paladin but does worry he’s not gonna succeed (mostly because he’s comparing himself to Thoren which really isn’t fair lol). He and Aisha are both impulsive, and try really hard to keep each other in check(as a mutual thing) but sometimes they just end up bouncing off each other until its complete chaos. (ok my version of Nex is basically just a himbo i honestly don’t know how this happened help)  

RIVEN: yikes, ok riven has issues. At his core, Riven is terrified of abandonment, and deals with this by keeping everyone around him at arms(or farther) length so they CAN’T abandon him. This can include, ignoring, insulting, avoiding, and flat out rejecting any offer of friendship or affection. He’s also fairly defensive, and is constantly trying to “prove himself”, which great, push yourself and improve, but also you have an ideal you can never actually live up to which just leaves you feeling shittier than before so stop that. Riven also has... some ptsd? trauma. And has some trigger phrases based on the spells Darcy used to control him. In season 1 Brandon had almost convinced him to go to therapy just for his attitude and to mesh with the team better, but the whole thing with Darcy happened and he shut himself off to any perceived outside threats until around the beginning of season 3 when he started attending sessions with the Red Fountain counselor.  

[hillnerd]

ptsd/c-ptsd,  therapy & writing

(This is written by someone with CPTSD - I am not a mental health expert, and am just writing from my own experience! )

So a lot of writers want to incorporate PTSD and C-PTSD into their fiction. Sometimes people get it super right- other times I’m left cringing. I wrote this to help writers know more about it, then it also ended up being something I sent to a friend with PTSD as it got into it so she’d know more what the therapy process is like. 

So! What’s it like to have PTSD? PTSD therapy vs regular therapy-How are they different? How are they the same? What does PTSD therapy consist of?

Trigger warning:

I will be describing therapy, talk of other disorders like anxiety and depression, and might use some 'you' talk - example 'once you've gone through this, then you start to feel better.' This will also skim over child abuse, suicidal ideation mentions and trauma in general- Read w/ caution if you are sensitive to this

general overview to PTSD and C-PTSD

I am diagnosed with PTSD, but it's actually C-PTSD*

C-PTSD or Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder differs from PTSD in that it's more for people who have had chronic environments of trauma/abuse for years - and is currently proposed to have a certain symptoms not listed under PTSD symptoms. 

Much of these symptoms have more to do with how one relates to other people, their self perception, and generally their learned behaviors in order to protect themselves long-term. PTSD is more about a specific event, of series of events that occurred in quick succession.

Despite the lack of official diagnosis, therapists treat people for CPTSD all the time- they just use a lot of the same tools they would for PTSD.

Not everyone who experiences trauma or battles develops PTSD, but there are factors that make you more inclined to develop it.

What is PTSD like?

There are many ways that people manifest PTSD/CPTSD symptoms.They are easy enough to google and be familiar with, but what's it ACTUALLY like for me.

a hair-trigger startle instinct I have had a few times where my husband is up at night, and I didn’t realize he was in the room- then I see the outline and start screaming- and can’t stop for like 2 minutes- then the crying settles in for 30 minutes. My traumas had nothing to do with strangers in the night. I just have a super intense startle instinct that sends my whole body into panic mode sometimes.

Hyper-vigilance- trying to control everything around you to keep you safe, and being super on edge keeping an eye out for how things will fall apart. Making sure things are locked, being extra wary of people, wanting to not have your back to people, perking up at every little noise etc.

issues sleeping- insomnia, light sleeping, & nightmares-   Sometimes reliving a memory, or just having intense dreams that leave you exhausted the next day you can barely function. This ties in with hyper-vigilance a lot- so falling asleep and staying asleep can be hard.

Depression and anxiety- pretty self explanatory- but it's common to experience these, and for pills to not necessarily be that helpful without the therapy. Sometimes anxious self destructive thoughts and memories start haunting you and making you freeze up or panic, feel like you’re going to die/be left alone by everyone etc. Sometimes emotional abuse from your past starts coming up and haunting you and you feel all your selfworth leaving your body leaving behind nothing but the want to sleep all day/cut yourself off from people - at times this can turn to suicidal ideation and other really dangerous behaviors and thoughts.

Sudden mood switches/panic responses usually a trigger for these switches is something associated with your trauma- but basically when something associated with our trauma suddenly comes up sometimes it causes us to start having feelings and emotions that feel out of whack for the situation at hand. 

Example: When I was a five I was beaten and locked on a sunny porch of a 2 story building with a sliding door.  Once my husband blocked me on the way to the door so I wouldn’t accidentally walk into some freshly painted furniture on the other side of the sliding door. I immediately panicked and angrily screamed at him to’ let me GO! fuck you!!! when he’s the gentlest man in the world and has never ever been anything but kind and wonderful with me. Then after the rage wore off I was like crying and so sorry.

I’m usually not an ‘angry reaction’ person- I’m usually a freeze/cry type- but yeah.Sometime people get panicked in crowded places, or if they feel someone is mad at them, or if they feel trapped, or if they feel like they’re being abandoned.

Sometimes I’ll get super manic and impatient/snappish if there’s not a plan on what we’re doing at a crowded place (really it’s because I want an escape plan/safe place I know we can always go to- and feel vulnerable when it’s a lot of people standing around without a plan and feel like I’ll get lost/abducted)

intrusive negative thoughts 

It’ll be the darkest weirdest repeating thoughts that you associate with emotional upset.  In ptsd treatment there is a lot of going through the events and rethinking your conclusions you’ve taken away from them. It’s simplified a lot in shows to a simple ‘it’s not your fault’- which, yeah, that’s the crux of it- but the actual work of it is super intense, exhausting, and so much more in depth.  

unhealthy coping mechanisms so a lot of people with ptsd will find ways to cope to help them fill an emotional void, or to cover up feelings etc. There are tons of ways people do this. Some will do extreme things like drugs, risky behaviors, drinking a lot etc Example: They experience a ‘violent retraumatizing’ moment like a pet getting killed in front of them- then later to cope have casual sex and drink too much in order to numb their emotions and not think about them.

A lot of ‘avoidance’ and ‘overdependence’ can be a part of ptsd. Like you might avoid certain things like the plague, or constrastingly might start using people or things or substances or food like an emotional crutch/security blanket instead of coping in a healthier way or learning to be independent.

Self protective steps you take might be super over the top, or self-destructive and borderline suicidal. 

Sometimes trying to repress all your emotions and not express them is something you do to protect yourself. 

This can be all over the map really- there are hundreds of examples!

triggering moments of your ‘Stuck points’

Stuck points are thoughts that keep us from recovering. Stuck points are concise statements that reflect a thought – not a feeling, behavior, or event. 

Example of stuck points:  'If I let other people get close to me, I'll get hurt again', 'I am useless.' 'I'm broken', 'I can't trust anyone in authority', 'People will reject me if they get to know me/see me at my worst’ ‘I’m a monster.’ ‘I’m worthless’ 

These can come up and you won’t even realize it at first. You’ll have something super innocuous happen and all of a sudden you’re on the verge of a breakdown, angry and/or panicking for seemingly no reason. 

These intense emotions will hit you and don’t feel like there’s any thoughts connected to them- there ARE thoughts behind it of course, but it takes a bit of deconstructing to figure it out though and realize ‘ooooh, there’s the thought train that was bubbling under the surface! I didn’t realize because thinking through my emotional processes was something I wasn’t allowed to do during my trauma- so now I don’t know how to instinctively do that even a little.’

Examples in fiction 

Harry Potter in Order of the Phoenix where he is yelling at the drop of a hat when he feels abandoned/rejected by everyone. His reactions are so CLEARLY PTSD related to me.  Actually, I think he has CPTSD and it just got to a tipping point due to the traumas he experienced in the graveyard.

Hunger Games Books  Probably the best portrayal of PTSD, of books I’ve read, is Hunger Games. The movies glazed over it a bit- but the books? Oh man, they nail it so hard.

HP and Hunger Games both have protagonists who are great portrayals of ptsd. The anger, the disassociation, the depression, the nightmares, the inability to identify with humans at times, the self protective steps that are unhealthy, the coping mechanism of avoidance etc.

Disassociating

People describe this in tons of different ways, but personally I think of it like body/brain numbness. All of a sudden it’s like a blankness comes over you, almost like that hazy way of daydreaming, only instead of daydreams it’s nothing but a buzzing blankness with maybe like slight almost invisible undercurrent of panic. It’s like the body is paralyzed, and you can’t act or think or do anything but stare or numbly move a bit- it almost feels like your soul just left your body for a bit and you’ve been consumed by a white room of emptiness. Not a black void- it’s not being lost in darkness- it’s like being lost in the light, if that makes sense? Like think of a blank why void like in The Matrix where the whiteness goes on forever. 

Flashbacks

In tv shows they often show it like it's a hallucination or something. Flashbacks are typically shown as a person basically becoming delirious and having visual and audio hallucinations, then perhaps even becoming violent to those around them because they literally see something different than what is real.

Again, this is my experience- but flashbacks have never worked like that for me. I more disassociate, and then all the emotions of that memory hit me, and in my brain I’m able to see bits and pieces of what happened back then, or even the whole thing- it’s like a SUPER intense memory/daydream/nightmare just settles in there for a bit- and you feel all the full emotions of it for a bit- can suddenly feel the sensations of it too at times-but at NO point am I actively moving about in a real room around people getting them confused with the past and lashing out at the hallucinations.

 I’m just sitting there, or crying there- and if someone in the room with me were to talk to me they might have to get my attention because I'm deep in that daydream/flashback- but I’d hear them and see them once I realize I’m spacing out. The most outburst I’d have would be to not want anyone to touch me- or get super startled from someone touching me then pushing them away from me. That’s very different than the crazy shit they show on TV and movies sometimes.

BAD EXAMPLE: One particular one that still makes me mad is when that had Owen from Grey’s Anatomy sees a fan- then get ‘triggered into a ptsd episode’ where he is unblinkingly choking out Cristina as she begs him to stop for a long time. Like…. It’s one thing for someone to be startled and have their instinct be to strike out- that’s a very different thing from what they portrayed. If they wanted to show him as ptsd dangerous- which is worrisome to me as people with mental health are stigmatized enough- but if they wanted to- it would have made much more sense for her to startle him somehow and for him to just blindly strike out before he realizes it. With combat training, he could very well have instincts that aren’t safe when he’s over sensitized and startled.

What are the main treatments for PTSD?

Cognitive Processing Therapy  (CPT)

CPT is the main treatment for PTSD. It is highly structured, and the majority of it is writing and worksheets. There is a LOT of writing and talking out about your trauma, writing and talking about how you process it, and analyzing it.

Beyond the traumatic memories, there is also noticing the behaviors you have that are related to your trauma and how they come out in every day scenarios. This leads to:

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

This is not about processing past events, but about processing current behaviors/reactions and trying to slowly change those behaviors over time so that they are healthier reactions/coping mechanism in place.

Exposure therapy- Reliving memories

For PTSD some people do a lot of reliving the trauma memories by describing them in detail, every tiny detail they can think of- and basically reliving them, but then trying to reroute the emotional response to them. 

Some people are SO repressed that this is a very difficult thing for them to access- both remembering the memory, but also knowing what their emotions were/are. These memories of trauma aren't always easy to remember/re-feel/access and that can be frustrating.

I personally am REALLY GOOD at reliving memories- in fact I'm so good that we have been avoiding it for a bit because i go straight into flashback mode way too easy (more on flashbacks and how they work later)

There are ways of doing this that are more than just revising the memory through talk therapy, that I haven't done and would require research on your part:

virtual reality to revisit the place

watching videos or listening to recordings of the event and talking it through

exposure therapy that's more about getting used to sounds/smells/words that are triggering

The main point though is to process the emotions tied to that event and not make your brain default to that flight/fight/freeze mode when triggering things happen.

IMPORTANT TOOLS FOR THERAPY

If a person hasn't had much therapy, CPT/CBT has a lot of learning for that person, and a LOT of trying to identify emotions and really feel them, so one can process them.

Grounding techniques/exercises-

techniques used to sooth/calm a person when activated- there are like thousands of these guys out there- I think everyone is a bit familiar with them- like breathing exercises in yoga? Basically it's a way of regrouping and centering yourself- 'grounding' you in reality, instead of letting your brain go off on a tangent/emotional rollercoaster.

It's basically any way you can snap your thinking out of your anxious thoughts and concentrate on something until your re-calibrate and are calmer.

Personally the breathing techniques make me freak out- so I don't use those. :P Ones I find helpful are ones like 'Name every color you can see.' or 'go through the alphabet and letter by letter name an animal that starts with that letter.' and 'hold an ice cube in your hand and concentrate fully on every sensation you're feeling.'example  example

-CBT and CPT WORKSHEETS

god, SO many worksheets.

Here are some helpful links

https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/cbt-cognitive-behavioral-therapy-techniques-worksheets/  --- This page covers cognitive distortions really well, and has some helpful resources and worksheets.

https://trailstowellness.org/resources   This page has a lot of great worksheets for trauma.

https://www.psychologytools.com/professional/problems/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/- unfortunately you cannot access the documents here without paying- BUT you can read what the docs are, and how they will be used in a therapy setting- so can use that as a launch point for what sort of worksheets/phrases to google.

I specifically worked from  Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD: A Comprehensive Manual a lot.

What is the structure of PTSD therapy?

First session

The first thing I had to do was fill out a questionnaire (PTSD test , cptsd questionnaire) to make sure she thought the treatment was appropriate. We talked about this a bit, what symptoms I had, talked over examples of it. I'm comfortable with therapy so this wasn't so bad for me, but I can see this being very difficult for people who aren't as comfortable in this setting and would need to be walked through it more and have more questions as they might not have a lot of self-awareness. We discussed goals, what could be achieved, and generally what it would be like. We went over the first worksheet and I was given homework of figuring out what my stuck points are.

Sessions after that

Each session we begin with typical therapy for a bit 'how was the last week? Were there any events I should know about?' Then we go over the worksheet I filled out, and analyze it, talk about examples, or apply it to trauma memories.

What is trauma therapy LIKE?

I always try to have the next day or so as free as possible after therapy, because afterwards I am wiped out, exhausted, and sometimes super triggered and crying afterwards.

The analogy I like to use is cleaning out a closet you keep hoarding stuff in:

Your house is your life, your brain is a closet, and PTSD/trauma is a messy hoarders type hidden away in the closet. When the door to this closet is closed you can almost pretend there isn't a mess there at all. Y ou close the door by being in denial, not thinking about your trauma, not acknowledging or processing it. You just keep stuffing the trauma into the closet.

But the longer you let the closet stay like that, the worse the situation gets. Soon that closet door keeps busting open and all sorts of crap falls out when you don't want it to. Freakouts, hypervigilance, meltdowns etc. The crap in the closet starts to multiply.

Ever seen Hoarders or Marie Kondo? You know how people are crying over t-shirts and crap and the house looks WORSE for a while? That's trauma therapy.

In therapy you have to open the closet door, take out ALL the crap you've been hoarding in the closet, process it, organize it, and then put things in order again. Every single box of trauma needs to be looked at then put away- The goal is to  throw out the intense intrusive emotions tied to the junk. You have to keep your memories- but you don't have to keep holding on to the behaviors they've formed, the turbulent emotions, and the intensity of it all. During therapy at first it's fine. Kondo is walking you through it and it's all just fine and dandy- then you are faced with this HOARD of CRAP you have to work through- and it's SO overwhelming. My anxiety and depression got way worse for a while. Like, I was on EDGE and having nightmares and it was horrible. But then once you've processed the memories, and start actively applying what you've learned and start using grounding techniques more and more- things do get easier.

I am not fixed. I am not cured. I will have to continue to work through stuff- It's that whole 'healing is a not a straight line' thing. Like, there are times I regress and I hate it. :P But it's gotten a lot better.

IF YOU GUYS HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS I’M HAPPY TO HELP.

I figure this can be an ok resource for people who don’t know much about ptsd except what it says on like webmd (which isn’t that accessible to me) and want to write about it (or want to just know more about it)

( *C-PTSD has not been considered an official different disorder from PTSD for all that long. In fact, one technically can't be medically diagnosed with CPTSD in america yet. PTSD is diagnosable and has been considered an official disorder for decades, but C-PTSD has not been named a disorder of its own yet in the official guidebook of psychological disorders in the US (DSM). I think they might have JUST recognized it in the UK guidebook (ICD). I know it was proposed for the 11th addition.)

[bluesrrgents]

Can you elaborate on Gansey’s MI? I don’t really remember most of what happened in trc

Yeah, of course. I’m not an expert in the field but I’m also not an idiot so this is my perspective on the topic.

 The way I have read the book, it’s become clear to me that Gansey struggles with PTSD most apparently, but also anxiety and depression. A big part of Gansey having mental health issues is that he…. Literally died. He exhibits symptoms of PTSD; flashbacks to when he died, the voice he heard, how much it hurt to be stung, the bees in his ears. Bees are clearly a trigger to him, you can see it when he finds one in Monmouth, when Henry puts one in his hand, when he’s in the cave and goes limp from the sound of hornets and has to cover his ears. He experiences negative alterations to his mood in the form of persistent fear, as seen with his reactions whenever even thinking about bees (and his obsessive drawings of them), his fear of Adam, of Noah, of Cabeswater, no matter how much he loves each of them. And guilt. There are so many times in the books where he makes himself feel guilty, both with reason and without. His guilt gets to the point where he won’t sleep, as shown in the third book when he says he lost hours of sleep “playing and replaying the events… trying to decide if he had been wrong or right or if it even mattered.” This also plays into his insomnia, which is brought up often in the books, and also happens to be comorbid with many mental disorders, including PTSD, anxiety, and depression. He experiences nightmares, Malory states this in the third book blatantly. Malory also states that they would be “toddling through some riding path in Leicestershire and next thing I knew he’d be on the ground clawing his face like a mental patient.“ These aren’t the only flashbacks he has, as he describes in BLLB that he can still feel the hornets crawling into his ears, a fact he describes to Blue about his death in the first book. Another symptom of PTSD is detachment from others, which I’m not sure you see it much in the books, but the way Malory states that when he was younger, he just left Malory without a single word and didn’t contact him until months later clues you into the idea that he may have dealt with detachment prior to the story. Malory also talks about how Gansey would never tell his family where he was or contact them, again another indication of detachment. I also want to point out that Gansey’s time with Malory wasn’t that far away from the beginning of the series, meaning the mask he puts up is more recent and he was dealing with sudden flashbacks and nightmares (if my memory of the timeline is correct) about 2 or 3 years before the books began.

He also doesn’t cope with it very well. When he sees the hornet he doesn’t do anything, in fact he gets closer to it as if putting himself in harm’s way where he knows that he can die instantly, while still having a panic attack about the bee right in front of him. Not only that, but he goes around the forests and empty fields searching for Glendower knowing full well there’s probably tons of bees all around him and he could die any instant. Speaking of Glendower!! Glendower talked to him when he was 9/10. Gansey is 16/17 in the beginning of the books, still completely obsessed with it. And it’s not just a special interest that he has in searching for him, it’s a well and true obsession. Everyone in the books jokes about it, but when it’s his POV and he starts thinking about the idea of not finding Glendower or even of him finding Glendower and what the hell he’s supposed to do after he does, he has panic attacks about it. His anxiety is incredibly apparent when faced with the quest that he’s put himself on. His obsession over Glendower is closely intertwined with his anxiety and trauma due to it stemming from the traumatic event of his death.

I think the fact that he has these “masks”, the different personalities that each character is aware of, indicates some repression towards the parts of him that aren’t as perfect as the Presidential version of himself. How he says to Blue, “Crushed and broken… Just the way women like ‘em.” It’s brushed off as a joke, but he does have issues and he views himself as broken in certain ways. He describes himself as someone “with a lot of stuff and a hole inside him that chewed away more of his heart every year” and Blue states at one point in TRB that reflecting on his death, his eyes were hollow, and later when in the cave his voice goes hollow when he hears hornets. The boy has gone through some serious trauma and he thinks that there’s close to nothing left inside of him. He has horrible self esteem and often degrades and reprimands himself. He thinks that all of his friends hate him and that he’ll continue to love them but they’ll never love him back despite that not being the truth. He hides his sorrow from everyone and doesn’t ever really deal with it himself either. To me, one of the most apparent moments is in TDT when, in addition to panicking over Cabeswater being gone and therefore he thinks Glendower is gone, he “thought about the day he’d been stung to death by hornets and lived anyway. Gansey ran over the memory until he no longer felt the thrill of hearing Glendower’s name whispered in his ear, and then instead gave himself over to feeling sorry for himself, that he should have so many friends and yet feel so very alone. He felt it fell to him to comfort them, but never the other way around.” Before this quote, he says he often sits in his car to think, showing that this isn’t the first time he’s gone over this moment in his head repeatedly and obsessively. In addition, the way he hides his own emotional turmoil and sacrifices his own mental wellbeing for his friends?? He doesn’t get help from anyone, not his friends, not his family, not a professional, not even himself. After this quote he becomes angry with himself, he berates himself, and insults himself to make himself angry and to further reduce his own self image. It’s an incredibly harmful practice for your mental health, and he does it more than once throughout the series.

Much of Gansey’s behavior indicates mental health issues, he’s just good at hiding and repressing this part of him. I think he has learned to keep that part of him in check, rather than it being very apparent, as it was in his days with Malory, but it’s definitely something that is still present during the books. From his perspective, you see him often feeling horrible and caught up in his own thoughts of guilt, anxiety, anger, etc. all mostly directed at himself and his own thoughts or actions. He also has flashbacks, gets triggered, and experiences panic attacks throughout the story. These moments aren’t disguised that much in the books, they just aren’t thoroughly addressed or explicitly stated and the fandom doesn’t talk about it much, so it’s easy to forget. This is probably a longer response than expected but I hope it was at least a little helpful and articulate.