#stayed up on a work night to write about mental illness on tumblr dot com... for fictional character jacob black of twilight

[ownsun]

𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠⠀:⠀CONTROL⠀»⠀⠀

          as you’d expect ,  control is a big aspect of any werewolf’s personality     —     in fact ,  it’s borderline essential to most werewolf characteristics if one wants to interact cohesively with the rest of the world .     however ,  jacob responds to his own sudden ,  unanticipated lycanthropy with far more intensity than most .     overnight ,  jacob’s entire life is turned upon its head without his consent ,   accompanied by the trauma of his first shift  &  what it means to be a werewolf at all ,  the cushion to all of it is a man he’d been so suspicious of ,  pulling friends  &  acquaintances bit by bit away from their previous lives until they’re no longer familiar .     it’s a lot ,  on top of the everyday stresses that come with his life already ,  as well as his more recent investment in helping bella cope with her own demons along the way .     his life is suddenly dangerous  &  unfamiliar in every place he needs it to feel safe  &  secure .     his actions themselves  &  even his own feelings are suddenly so untethered from the person he spent all his life becoming ,  they barely feel like his anymore .

          the responding coping methods quickly devolve .

𝐨𝐛𝐬𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐮𝐥𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫

          there are two main components to most anxiety disorders .  firstly ,  the given  anxiety  itself ;  more specifically ,  the initial process of something causing distressing ,  persistent anxiety     —     &  then often the resulting  dysfunctional behaviors  that reduce the anxiety .  ocd itself usually has noteworthy     ‘  types  ’     :  cleaning  &  contamination ,  symmetry  &  ordering ,  forbidden or harmful thoughts  &  impulses ,  &  hoarding .     because jacob’s symptoms lie mostly in the ordering  &  thoughts / impulses category ,  i will only be going over these two in this headcanon .

          ordering  :  a big part of jacob’s anxiety is over control     (  moreso the lack of it  )     is the feeling that he does not belong to himself .     his thoughts  &  feelings are shared with an entire pack of other people when he’s a wolf .     his future partner is borderline if not entirely guaranteed to be someone he won’t get to choose ,  but instead his brain will choose for him ,  which in of itself isn’t nearly as terrifying as the prospect that he won’t even be able to choose for himself how he will feel about it ,  that even his right to forming his own thoughts will be robbed of him.     shifting into a creature that’s just as powerful as it is deadly is something that can happen to him at the drop of a hat ,  at any moment ,  any time ,  as long as his emotions behave even remotely in their own accord ,  which . . .     is how emotions tend to work .     

          this is one of jacob’s obsessions ,  &  what helps to reduce this is to meticulously keep track of  &  control what he needs to believe is his .     naturally ,  this means most of this meticulousness is reserved for his own things ;  his room ,  his belongings ,  his clothes ,  his hair .     everything has to be a certain way now ,  because in everything he does ,  there is now a desperate need to keep hold of it ,  a compensation to the thought that he's going to lose it all .     everything in his room  &  the garage has it’s place ,  deliberate  &  intentional to the point that if someone touches or grabs at one of his things ,  even if it’s to simply look  &  set back down ,  anxiety spikes  &  he hovers ,  escalatingly irritable until he can personally return it to it’s rightful spot .

          another habit to reduce this feeling is being deliberate  &  habitual with his own body .     routines like morning jogging ,  or the time in which he showers or wakes up ,  are opportunities to own his own physical actions .     if outside any of specific routine of his ,  counting his own steps is an accessible method to achieve the same sense of security within his own actions .     brushing or braiding his hair is also helpful  &  another reason why he doesn’t want it cut ,  as well as the permeating desire to remain as himself as he was before he was a werewolf .

          thoughts  &  impulses  :  this one’s honestly the doozy of the two .     actions are worrisome  &  the impulse part of the two ,  but the idea that his own thoughts aren’t his is foundationally destressing to his sense of autonomous identity .     with being part animal comes the instincts of one     —     the instincts of a predator at that ;  to hunt ,  to prioritize  &  optimize survival ,  to respond to fear with violent self defense or complete concession ,  to obtain power in physical feats .     most of these behaviors are a direct contrast to his personality before his first shift .     the person he thought he was  &  wanted to be was generous ,  thoughtful ,  nurturing ,  someone who cared to indulge in the unnecessary ,  to fix things  &  to thrive ,  to do things just because ,  no personal survival or reward necessary ,  no need to compete in the ongoing power struggle of nature .     that’s not to say wolves don’t participate in any of these qualities     —     in fact ,  jacob knows real wolves’ behaviors aren’t that black  &  white or brutal .     (  funnily enough ,  this fear-fueled black  &  white thinking can be more alike to the animalistic instincts he’s desperately trying to avoid  )     it’s the anxiety of the shift itself being something he doesn’t get a say in ,  that it’s completely at the whim of fickle ,  moment to moment ,  fluid  &  irrational emotions .     that anxiety only ever snowballs any stress he might already feel that could prompt a shift .     anger that would otherwise be fleeting becomes fear that his mind can’t stop obsessing over until he can soothe it somehow ,  assure him that he is in control ,  &  that he won’t hurt anyone unless he himself decides to .

          unfortunately ,  one of the quickest  &  easiest ways to stop a shift is pain .     intense pain interrupts the self defense mechanism of shifting to prioritize the healing process instead .     if ever jacob feels like he’s genuinely on the verge of an unintentional shift ,  the quick snap of an arm over his knee or clamp of the jaws into his hand is usually enough to short-circuit the process ,  moreso if the shift has already come  &  gone before he could stop it .     pain becomes soothing ,  an act he feels the benefit of choosing ,  as well as controlling a shift  &  ensuring that if someone is to suffer for his lack of control ,  it will be him alone ,  &  it will be his decision .

          another far less damaging coping method is to ask someone for help .  this may seem rather simple ,  but it requires far more patience  &  awareness than breaking his own bones ,  as well as admitting out loud to others something he’s deemed a moral failing of his ,  a personal defect .  even just asking someone to remind him who he was is can be grounding ,  which is something he would have learned the moment bella responded to the voicing of his fear of losing himself with reassurance that he just wouldn’t ,  that she’d be there to remind him ,  whenever he needed ,  that she simply wouldn’t let it happen .     that confidence in ones own ability is something he envies as well as hopes to believe in ,  even if it’s childish ,  even if it’s vicariously through whoever gives it     (  if he trusts them enough for it to mean something to him  ) .     group activities that engage his sense of self before monsters existed offer a dual calm ,  one instilled by doing the activity itself ,  another by having someone else to verify  &  confirm his own behavior to him just by being there to respond to the familiar ,  human jacob that always existed before he ever had a reason to question it .

          a tragic irony is that when jacob is a wolf ,  most of these anxieties evaporate immediately  &  get replaced with a simpler experience of reality .     instincts sharpen the world ,  narrow it to focus ,  refine actions  &  reactions to the present moment in which fear is much harder to conceive ,  as fear by nature is based on theoretical what-ifs .     eventually ,  a healthier way to experience his own lycanthropy would be to accept all aspects of himself ,  both human  &  wolf ,  but with the entire invasion of the supernatural into his life so fresh ,  he’s desperate to cling to his own personhood ,  which is very much steeped in the version of him that didn’t even know werewolves existed ,  much less that he was one  &  what it means .

there’s no room to learn what kind of werewolf jacob black wants to be when he doesn’t feel like that’s something he ever got to choose ,  or ever will .     &  so ,  it remains something to fear ,  which means it remains something he cannot control .