#posts that incite violent sensations tw

[guiltyidealist]

[rise-above-the-grave]

Leia’s response to her trauma?

Oh boy, where do I even start with this?

PLEASE NOTE: These are my headcanons, and my take on things. These are only a little bit supported by canon (though they aren’t denied by canon either). Please feel free to ignore my takes on this particular subject!!

tw: suicidal ideation/tendencies, self harm, eating disorder, rape mention, torture mention

Suicidality

Leia is passively suicidal until she’s at least 25. This does not mean she is actively trying to kill herself, with maybe one or two exceptions, but rather that she walks into dangerous (and yes, often deadly) situations with the thought “Maybe I’ll die this time,” rather than the (much healthier) “Hopefully I won’t die this time.” She really just doesn’t care if she dies - in fact, she sort of hopes she does, though she won’t do anything (again, with the exception of one or two times) to incite her own death. She holds too much responsibility on her shoulders, knows that she is too important and too needed, understands that her death would truly cripple the Rebellion, to actually act on her desire to die.

That doesn’t keep her from wanting to die, though.

And yes, there is one (or maybe two) time(s) when she almost actively kills herself. Han stops her once, and Luke stops her the second time (if the second time happens - I haven’t actually decided if that does or not?).

Self harm

Okay, I’ll be honest here: I don’t think Leia does the “typical” forms of physical self-harm, e.g. cutting, burning, etc. Nothing that leaves physical scars on her body, or marks that someone could theoretically see and question. She emotionally self-harms more than anything (e.g. looking at holos of Alderaan, of her parents, looking for people who blame her for Alderaan’s destruction, getting into nasty arguments with people about that, etc.), though she also has the tendency to punish herself physically really harshly on Bad Nights by pushing her body past its edge of endurance. This leads to torn muscles, stress fractures, etc., but they’re all things that are easy enough to dismiss as an “accident” because she “doesn’t know what she’s doing” or whatever. (Those who know her well enough know that she has to purposefully be doing this, because she knows better than to exercise that hard on cold muscles, etc. - but it’s never anything anyone can prove, and she’s usually alone in the gym when she does this, and she never like...does anything to purposefully hurt herself, she’s just negligent and stupid. Regardless of what anyone suspects, though, it’s never anything they can prove.)

Eating disorder

Yeah, so, I’m pretty sure Leia could technically be diagnosed with an ED post-Alderaan. She just straight up doesn’t eat afterwards until she absolutely has to, and when she does, if she eats “too much”, she throws up. She loses a shit ton of weight between ANH and ESB (and it’s not like she had a lot to lose to begin with, because she’s smol and also was already in really good shape), and this does’t start getting better until Hoth, when people start realizing how malnourished she is because she’s constantly shivering. (She’ll drink protein shakes and stuff to keep herself in shape and capable of hard exercise, but like...she’s unhealthily skinny...) She doesn’t necessarily count calories, but she severely restricts, and then her body purges if she eats more than a little bit at a time.

Nightmares

Leia has horrific nightmares. They vary from night to night, though they have consistent themes: Alderaan’s destruction, people she loves dying/disappearing/being taken away from her, watching people she loves be tortured or killed in front of her, being hurt (including both torture and rape, which I believe both happened on the Death Star). Most of her nightmares are abstractions of her trauma, with the exception of Alderaan’s destruction - i.e. she has nightmares about what happened through different scenarios that might mirror what Actually Happened, but aren’t necessarily a 1:1 reproduction.

Dissociation

So I think she dissociates more post-Bespin than post-Death Star, frankly, though she still dissociates post-Death Star. Post-Death Star it manifests more along the lines of “I’m still being tortured by Darth Vader, none of this is real, this is all a hallucination” than anything, with a dash of out of body experiences/seeing herself from third person; post-Bespin we start seeing a strong disconnect from reality at times, disconnection from her body, etc, as well as seeing herself in third person and disbelieving that what’s happening is Real.

“Responsibility”

Leia absolutely throws herself into her work. She uses it as a distraction and as a shield against her pain. She ignores basically everything in lieu of doing her Duty and fulfilling her Responsibilities. She uses this as armor against anyone who tries to challenge her to take care of herself as well (including Luke and Han). This is largely also what leads some people (in the Rebellion especially) to call her Ice Princess after Alderaan, because she just straight up doesn’t show emotion, and instead just focuses on the Rebellion. Which, speaking of...

Emotional regulation

Yeah, so I’m gonna go out there and say that Leia has shit emotional regulation for a while post-Death Star/Alderaan. She feels everything incredibly and intensely, and she just doesn’t know how to handle it. So she shuts down completely, or else overreacts. This is partly why she and Han end up in screaming matches in the base hallways so much, and why, once they actually start working out their feelings for one another (and Leia starts processing emotions healthily again), that stops.

Irritability

Leia is incredibly irritable and angry like. all the time. Constantly. There’s hardly any reprieve from it. Even when she’s happy, something small can set her off. (Again, this is partly what leads to her and Han fighting so much - because Han consistently gave her an outlet for her anger. Probably purposefully. Really the only one Leia rarely got angry with was Luke, and when she did get mad at him, she’d usually apologize for blowing up at him.)

Flashbacks

Yeah, Leia definitely has flashbacks: to Alderaan’s destruction, to Vader’s hand on her shoulder holding her back from Tarkin as Alderaan died, to the needles, to the torture-bot, to the hallucinations Vader gave her as he dug through her brain, to Vader himself, to metal beds and cells, to the smell of bile and antiseptic, to the feel of soft cloth against her skin, to the feel of metal against her skin, to the sensation of grates against her skin. Sometimes those flashbacks are just behind her eyes, like she sees them but knows they’re not real; sometimes she literally cannot tell she is not lying in the cell on the Death Star with Vader towering over her, or watching Alderaan explode.

Triggers

Leia doesn’t like needles. Leia doesn’t like Vader. Leia doesn’t like the smell of medbays. Leia doesn’t like a lot of things. Anyway, Leia deffo has triggers. That doesn’t always mean she has flashbacks (emotional or visual or auditory or psychosomatic), though; sometimes she just gets really, irrationally angry, sometimes she snaps, sometimes she goes nonverbal (I’m pretty sure Leia goes nonverbal sometimes post-Death Star/Alderaan. It’s unfortunate), sometimes she just seems to lose her damn mind. She’ll also sometimes get really manic after being triggered.

Hyper-arousal 

Leia is...so tense. All the time. She is constantly aware of everything going on around her. She’s one of those people who knows every entrance/exit, how many people are in a room, how close the nearest person is to her, etc. She also sometimes jumps at loud noises, reacts violently to people touching her unexpectedly, and to people coming up behind her. She is Not A Fan of that shit.

tl;dr Did I just describe most of the DSM criteria for PTSD? Yes! Yes I did!! Leia has really pretty bad PTSD post-Death Star/Alderaan, including the ugly and horrible bits that most people don’t like to talk about! It really fucked her up! And she’s one of the ones who got angry and bitter and hard instead of soft and scared. And there’s nothing wrong with that!