#symptom of academic trauma

[ambyandony]

every time I draw pannacotta fugo in sketches he’s always just holdin papers n shit 😭

[lightblueminecraftorchid]

it’s not fair that so much of my memory and cognitive function is tied up in something I cannot control or reasonably prevent

[spookytimecollective]

so tired of the noise in my head. getting randomly triggered for the most random of memories, positive or not.

[kaurwreck]

People tend to homogenize social and mental conditions, both in fiction and in reality. It's so frustrating when even other mentally ill people have struggled to believe I have bipolar disorder and social phobia because they don't think I perform unwellness enough or how they think someone with my diagnoses should.

Similarly, I constantly see headcanons around childhood food insecurity for characters as if it must have granted them a lifelong inability to waste food. But, no, growing up with food insecurity didn't actually make me any less neurodivergent about food.

People respond to and express things differently. And you can learn aaaaall sorts of tricks to mask some of the more publicly unpalatable symptoms.

I see people constantly saying Dazai probably stinks or doesn't have good hygiene, as if it isn't stated that he values comfort above all else.

Bandages need constant changing to remain comfortable, and for a man that takes river jumping as a hobby, they get soiled. I don't think he'd want to stay lingering in them for too long when they're disgustingly soggy. He wouldn't like that.

People also forget he's a ladies man apparently? No women would want him around if he were to smell like a dog and most importantly, he goes to work with Kunikida of all people. Kunikida would not want him around the workplace when he smells like shit.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

how to write characters with muteness/mutism? (i hope i'm using the right words)

Both words may be used :) Mutism seems to be the more frequently used term in research and clinical settings.

Character Development: Mutism

Mutism - an inability or unwillingness to speak, resulting in an absence or marked paucity of verbal output

It is a common clinical symptom seen in psychiatric as well as neurology outpatient department

It rarely presents as an isolated disability and often occurs in association with other disturbances in behavior, thought processes, affect, or level of consciousness

The condition may also be voluntary, as in monastic vows of silence or the decision to speak only to selected individuals

Mutism occurs in a number of conditions, both functional and organic, and a proper diagnosis is important for the management

To write your character with mutism, you may want to begin with their backstory. Below are some types of mutism you could consider.

Types of Mutism

Selective mutism - having the ability to speak but feeling unable to, often because of social anxiety and debilitating shyness

Organic mutism - caused by brain injury, such as with drug use or after a stroke

Cerebellar mutism - caused by the removal of a brain tumor from a part of the skull surrounding the cerebellum, which controls coordination and balance

Aphasia - occurs when people find it difficult to speak because of stroke, brain tumor, or head injury

Additional definition: Selective mutism is characterized by a consistent failure to speak in social situations in which there is an expectation to speak (e.g., school) even though the individual speaks in other situations. The failure to speak has significant consequences on achievement in academic or occupational settings or otherwise interferes with normal social communication.

After determining the possible type/s and/or causes of your character's mutism, below are some characteristics and behaviours. Choose which ones are appropriate for your character. Also determine the frequency and the degree in which these occur.

Some Characteristics of People with Mutism

Social anxiety or shyness outside of the home

Silence that interferes with work or school

Mutism that can't be explained by trouble with language skills

Having experienced trauma

Suddenly becoming silent after speaking regularly

For organic or cerebellar mutism, not being able to speak despite wanting to

For aphasia, mutism can come with difficulty reading, telling time, understanding numbers, and writing

Being silent in social situations outside of the home

Paralyzing anxiety

Using nonverbal communication when spoken to

Asking others to speak for them

Interruptions in daily well-being because of mutism

Is caused by intense anxiety or social phobia

The symptoms interfere with school or work

Difficulty connecting

For Selective Mutism:

Ability to speak at home with family or people they are comfortable with

Fear or anxiety around people they do not know well

Inability to speak in certain social situations

Shyness

This pattern must be seen for at least 1 month to be called selective mutism. (The first month of school does not count, because shyness is common during this period.)

Note: In selective mutism, the child can understand and speak, but is unable to speak in certain settings or environments. Children with mutism never speak. Selective mutism falls under the "Anxiety Disorders" category.

Sample Case Report from this article

A 35-year-old married male was brought by police personnel with chief complaints of not speaking for the last 3 months. The patient had been under trial for the last 6 months for the alleged charge of setting fire in a cowshed. He would not interact with any of the jail inmates. He would however ask for food by non-verbal communication/gestures and would perform all his daily chores normally as reported. He was asked to follow up with family members. History reviewed from wife and elder brother reveled history of 18 years history characterized by violent abusive behavior, wandering behavior, irritability, decreased sleep, restlessness, muttering to self, and at times reporting that other would harm him, associated with withdrawn behavior and socio-occupational dysfunction. On one occasion, he became mute also and did not talk for a period of around 4 months associated with sadness of mood and decreased interest in surroundings. 6 months back, he had symptoms of muttering to self, would often roam about naked and get irritable on minor issues. No other significant history was obtained. MSE revealed decreased PMA, rapport not established, eye to eye contact could not be maintained, he was mute and would communicate nonverbally appropriately. His affect was blank with no facial expressions. All his routine investigations were within normal limits. A diagnosis of schizophrenia was entertained, and he was started on risperidone 6 mg per day and lorazepam 4 mg per day. Gradually the patient started showing improvement in symptoms.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 ⚜ Writing Notes & References

If this inspires your writing in any way, do tag me, or send me a link. I would love to read your work!

[sysmedsaresexist]

Something about that last post just really fucking irked me.

Normalize asking questions about your experiences and things you're not clear on

Yesterday, I had to ask some friends a question.

Any uterus having people that have had the electro therapy on their back-- very specific but Google isn't helping

Can the electricity on the lower back cause a period???

Wow, fucking cringe, what a faker, doesn't even know how her own uterus works, how do you make it this far in life and not know this stuff, FAKE UTERUS

I was so embarrassed to ask. I was scared, too.

And yet, I got an answer that I hadn't been able to find on my own.

Yes, it can happen.

Nice!

Well, first off, A, thank God I'm not hurt or dying, that's a relief. B, no one laughed. C, this shit isn't common knowledge.

Even if you think it's obvious, it's not.

Things can be related in the weirdest ways, and sound totally strange at first, and they turn out to be totally normal experiences.

What is dissociation?

Doctors say it's super complicated to understand, don't worry, you're not alone.

What's the difference between normal and pathological dissociation?

Oh, boy, let's sit down for this one.

What's the difference between trauma and abuse?

Fantastic question, first, are you doing okay? Second, it's complicated.

Could these two symptoms be related?

FUCKING PROBABLY, let's talk about it.

All these overgeneralized, sweeping statements, made under the guise of "correcting misinformation," and really only trying to prove people wrong instead of educate, hurt other people with that thing.

"Your doctor is ALWAYS right," fuck you, no they're not. "They know you better than you know yourself." Ohhh, fuck no, that's dangerous. "You MUST fit the criteria 😤."

The criteria:

WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE TRYING TO HELP?

Because you're failing spectacularly at doing any kind of good for the community you want to "help".

You lost the point so hard that your posts are now actively dangerous to people with CDDs that don't think clinically enough for you. You lost the point when you use papers that directly contradict each other over basic facts, and don't even realize it in your rush to be "right".

"Trust your doctor 100%," about any other disorder, would get you instantly canceled. Are you overweight? A POC? A woman? Trans? A combination? Well, you're fucked.

You, yourself, have probably never thought that.

So why did you say it?

Who cares what they're calling themselves, who cares whether the term is clinical, are they getting the help and support they need? Can we help clarify anything for them?

Using a people focused approach in therapy is totally fine, THIS HAS NEVER BEEN AN ISSUE. It may be a doctor-focused issue, but it's not a treatment issue. In other words, for every doctor that prefers a parts focused approach, there's one that'll use a people focused approach just fine, if that's what you want to do. Good job getting into therapy, congrats! That's what's important.

"Fictives," are so well documented that complaining about them is laughable.

Alters can take years to come forward after events, and may latch onto a character years after their actual formation. Who cares if the person can pinpoint the cause, or if they don't even care enough to try, are they getting the help and support they need???

Instead of saying, "that's impossible," let's start asking, "how can I help?"

Instead of saying, "your opinion is wrong," let's address actual misinformation. Talk to pro/endos about the trauma basis of DID. That matters a fuck ton more than whatever you're arguing about.

Instead of laughing at people who don't know things, learn to socialize and present corrections in a pleasant conversation. God forbid you're seen "being nice," to the other side.

As a very good friend said, better than I ever could, this whole "prioritizing research always over listening to others' lived experiences" is just the plural version of "academic theory on queer experiences is most important." You need both.

Many things can be true, all at the same time. Opinions are onions, they all make me cry or whatever the saying is. Single research papers should never be used generally. If you put all the papers together, anything is possible. This paper doesn't specifically talk about that thing so it's not possible.

Another paper, just a click away:

Are people happy, healthy, and feeling supported in their life?

Fantastic, that's what matters.

This blog is open to basic questions that people are scared to ask. I would also highly recommend sending @cdd-safe-haven those kinds of questions. It's completely unrelated to syscourse, hopefully the information will help more people.

[bolshefem]

if you think people are more empathetic to women than men you are straight up fucking delusional. men have proved themself almost INCAPABLE of empathy for women, and this is statistically and empirically supported. they are incapable of understanding that women have an internal life, do not see us as humans with emotions who exist external to them. look at the comments on a post of a man talking about self harm vs a woman. "men's mental health matters too🥺" "I'm proud of you" vs "attention whore" "sideways for attention downwards for results" "ugly bitch trying to get sympathy"

this is what happens for ANYTHING regarding sexual assault, mental health, suffering, trauma.

or an overweight man vs woman "keep your head up king👑" "you got this bro, I believe in you" "these women don't deserve you." (like totally unprompted not discussing relationships) Or often no comments on his weight at all if he's not talking about it. For a woman, no matter WHAT she is posting about "landwhale" "starve yourself" "put down the burger" "kys fat b*tch" and the most vile and insanely cruel comments The amount of threads and forums dedicated to eviscerating degrading and insulting overweight women on places like lolcow and kiwi farms and just social media in general and I genuinely have never seen one for a man. Same thing with things like facial deformities, the comments are unbelievably cruel to these women.

the level of vitriol is not even remotely comparable, and I don't even think it's mostly a double standard. I think they just lack the capacity to feel empathy towards women and perceive them as human and capable of feeling pain. Things are solely perceived in how they relate to them and thought to be performances for men. Women exist to serve them and if they don't give them a boner they don't deserve to be alive. If something, no matter how innocuous, pisses them off in the slightest they don't have a single qualm because they just don't view them as real people and full human beings with internal lives. women having emotions is inherently manipulative, anything they say or do is a performance for men. And like look at things such as the gender credibility gap https://www.tedxmilehigh.com/gender-credibility-gap/ Women are systematically less believed as witnesses in a courtroom, reporters, academic authorities, in claims of sexual assault, discrimination, or harassment.*

Women's reports of pain symptoms are less likely to be believed by doctors, and they are staggering more likely to not receive proper medication, go undiagnosed and untreated. Women are 32% more likely to die post-op if their surgeon is a man. "Womens' pain not taken as seriously as mens' pain. Researchers found that when male and female patients expressed the same amount of pain, observers viewed female patients' pain as less intense "(sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210406164124.htm) "Nearly three-quarters of cases where a disease primarily affects one gender, the so-called “men's diseases” are overfunded, while the “women's diseases” are dramatically underfunded."

https://www.concernusa.org/story/gender-bias-in-healthcare/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/interactive/2022/women-pain-gender-bias-doctors/ https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/gender-bias-in-medical-diagnosis#how-does-it-affect-diagnosis https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/women-and-pain-disparities-in-experience-and-treatment-2017100912562 I could literally go on on this topic forever. The gender empathy gap is a form of epistemic violence against women.

* "Suicidal behaviour and self-harm in women can be viewed by family, health professionals and the community as attention-seeking, manipulative and non-serious, which can negatively influence how young women are treated." (Curtis, 2016) *Men with overweight tend to be perceived as wise or experienced, while women's credibility tends to decrease with excess weight... women seem to experience higher levels of weight stigmatization than men, even at lower levels of excess weight (Flint et al., 2016)

*Women are at greater risk for weight/height discrimination than men (Puhl et al, 2008)

*so many papers on this but "Across the board, women are perceived to be less credible than men. Especially women’s testimonies of rape and sexual harassment are widely trivialized and disregarded, even though reports of sexual abuse are not more likely to be false than reports of other crimes" (Schreurs, 2020) more like Mack, 1993

[woodlaflababab]

Aang, Psychology, and the Concept of “Running Away” (A Breakdown Of Aang's Trauma Responses)

So, one thing that always kind of threw me off about atla was Aang's ignoration and dismissiveness of the things that have happened to him and continue to happen to him. He never seemed to have any kind of trauma response (besides nightmares).

Recently I've realized that the ignoration is Aang's trauma response, and it runs pretty fucking deep. Aang shows a lot of trauma responses but they are not as noticeable because Aang is also ridiculously good at emotional regulation, to a toxic point imo, and probably due to his upbringing by monks.

Aang, as is pretty well covered by the show, has a problem with trying to 'run away’ from his problems. This steadily stops happening as much throughout Book 2 (though he is learning in Book 1), but what's interesting is, while his tendency to physically run away from problems ends, his tendency to emotionally run away increases.

We go from Book 1 in which Aang confides in Katara about the separation from the monks, to Book 2 in which Aang literally actively rejects attempts at comfort in favor of an emotional shut down, to Book 3 where, after the failed invasion, Aang immediately tries just about anything he can to avoid talking about it.

He's not necessarily 'running away’. He still owns up to his duty and is right on the ball when Zuko shows up to teach firebending. It is not the work he shies from, it is specifically talking about the failure. This is Aang's main trauma response. Before I delve deeper into that though, I want to talk about Aang's other trauma responses that get bypassed thanks to his ability to ignore them.

Quoting ‘What is Child Traumatic Stress’, “Traumatic reactions can include a variety of responses, including intense and ongoing emotional upset, depressive symptoms, anxiety, behavioral changes, difficulties with attention, academic difficulties, nightmares, physical symptoms such as difficulty sleeping and eating, and aches and pains, among others.”

Aang shows almost all of these at one point or another, and typically they show themselves when he finds himself incapable of mentally 'running away.’

Intense and Ongoing Emotional Upset: 

I'm mostly eyeing the avatar state episodes. His immediate reaction to traumatic events he is helpless to is explosive anger, but it fails to be ongoing because it is immediately followed by a shut down. 

- Aang on Zuko's boat. In this episode, while fighting with Zuko, Aang shows some pretty intense fear and his first (technically second) experience with the Avatar state is for survival and driven by fear (also, notably, a repeat experience of the same thing that caused the actual first experience). Yet, as soon as Aang is off of Zuko's boat, he's melancholy for a hot second and then turns on a dime and starts talking about the adventures they can go on. Avatar State -> Shut Down/dismissing or ignoring the problem.

- Aang at the Southern Air Temple. He starts off in deep obvious denial, like this kid is so obviously blocking. Then he sees Gyatso's body, goes into a rage and grief induced Avatar state, gets pulled out, can no longer use denial as his mental defense, and so once again turns to shut down. He's expressionless as he comes down, and when he's fully out he's just kind of tired and speaks with a soft almost toneless quality. He's admitting to the trauma and yet there's a numb resignation to it. He's not emotionally connecting with it. We see him after with Momo and Appa smiling and just being like “we gotta stick together :)”. That's not the appropriate response to admitting there's only three survivors of your home. Avatar State -> Shut down/dismissal

- Aang and General Fong. Aang experiences an extremely distressing and helpless situation while he watches Katara, one of two whole people in his life, be buried. He goes into a rage induced Avatar state, again, and then literally 'nope's out of the situation with help from Roku. And when he comes back, he shuts down. He doesn't react emotionally, he once again speaks in that soft, even, almost dead tone, apologizes, and dismisses the event. I mean, the way he addresses General Fong, the person who just caused this whole thing, is extremely chill, almost uncharacteristic. Just a simple, “you're out of your mind” with a tone that could make you think he was having a casual conversation with someone who just suggested eating cereal out of a cup. And then he's good! Momo comes back and he smiles and everything is all good again. Avatar State -> Shut down/dismissal.

- Then we have the desert, one of the few times Aang does not shut down immediately, but then it culminates in the Avatar State and he stays like that for a bit but once he comes down, his faces changes again, to what is almost resignation, like he's given up on being mad, which really, he has as we see later. And then the next episode and he's playing in some water, but as soon as Sokka brings up Appa, we see the face and tone that's now kind of familiar: soft, dead, dismissive. He's once again refusing to emotionally connect and is downplaying it. Avatar State -> shut down/dismissal.

Depressive Symptoms/Anxiety:

He shows fits of both, though these aren't as evident because, again, most of the time he's in an emotional block and ignoring the problems. But when he cannot ignore the absence of his lifelong companion, he has a long period of anger followed by a numb depressive state, he literally talks about giving up hope. He is entirely hopeless at this point.

And then when he cannot ignore the Day of Black Sun coming in a few days, his anxiety goes through the fucking roof. 

However, these don't last long and that'll connect to me talking about emotional regulation later.

Behavioral Changes:

Aang changes A Lot over the course of the series. Book 1 Aang is very distinct from Book 3 Aang (though we still see the core traits of him throughout). He becomes more hyper focused on doing his duty, tends to fall to the background when he can, generally takes on a much more somber demeanor.

Difficulties With Attention:

This one's not really huge. He has about the same amount of attention focus in Book 3 as he does Book 1, if not improvement.

Nightmares:

I don't think I have to explain this. Aang goes through multiple fits of nightmares.

Difficulties Sleeping or Eating:

Once again, I look to Nightmares and Daydreams, one of the few times Aang is unable to shut down or block. He cannot sleep for the life of him. I have plans to go back and pay attention to eating habits in Book 3 in order to potentially add onto this joke meta, but I would not be surprised if there were signs of a lowered appetite, even if the writers did not intend it.

Aches and Pains:

He doesn't ever complain about this but also like, would he? Even if he was experiencing them? Kid tried to fight people and fly through a storm while newly recovering from a lightning injury. Aang gives no shits.

Then the article also covers childhood PTSD diagnoses which I'd also like to go over real quick. “the child continues to re-experience the event through nightmares, flashbacks, or other symptoms for more than a month after the original experience; the child has what we call avoidance or numbing symptoms—he or she won’t think about the event, has memory lapses, or maybe feels numb in connection with the events—and the child has feelings of arousal, such as increased irritability, difficulty sleeping, or others.”

Most of these I just covered, but I think it's notable that numbness is also mentioned here, the exact symptoms I've been talking about. Avoidant, won't think about it, numb in connection.

And just to be sure that everyone is on board let me go through some other examples of Aang shutting down:

Katara brings up the 100 years and Aang immediately blocks that shit. It's literally too big for him to conceptualize, so he dismisses it as okay because he has a new friend now and moves on and doesn't think about it.

The Northern Air Temple. I think most people agree that the lesson in that episode was wrong. Aang had every right to be angry. There's nothing okay about taking over and destroying 100 year old artifacts of a nearly extinct culture. We see Aang react to this with a numbness. There's even a moment where he's just frozen and uncomprehending. “This place is unbelievable.” “Yeah. It's great isn't it?” “No, just unbelievable.” He reacts with anger later (notably when he feels like he can do something instead of being helpless), and then when he can no longer do anything, he once again just rejects any negative emotional turmoil in favor of that “it's fine” attitude and accepts what the people have done.

Then the desert, one of the few places we don't see him shut down immediately. Except, literally the next episode is all about Aang's hardest shut down yet.

There are other examples but I think you get the point. He does this A Lot.

Okay cool, so we've covered the denial and trauma responses part, but how does emotional regulation play into this?

I'm glad you asked.

So, when I was first considering Aang and this whole thing, I thought Aang exhibited emotional dysregulation, especially in regards to the Avatar State, but then I actually did some learning on emotional dysregulation and realized, actually, no, he doesn't. Emotional dysregulation is mostly characterized by emotional responses being out of proportion with the event, but I think we can all agree, pm every time he goes into the Avatar State, that emotional response is uh, rather warranted. Now, Aang does, in these moments, show the lack of control that can come with emotional dysregulation, but also like, who wouldn't.

Considering Aang's behavior outside of the Avatar State Outbursts, he's actually very good at emotional regulation. Scary good, in fact. Number One in the reasons I say this is everything I said above. The ability to shut down is often an active choice. Aang does not like who he is when he is upset and, outside the initial outburst, has a pretty firm grip on his emotions. He shows anger at times, but they are in appropriate places with more or less appropriate responses. 

The Desert stands out so much because Aang loses the control he normally has. This is where we see him lose his grip on himself and he spirals.

He rarely shows grief. During his lessons with the Guru he passes all the chakras with amazing ease because he legitimately is that good at controlling and managing emotions which, like I said at the very beginning, I attribute a lot of that to him being raised by monks. I mean, he's a 12 yr old who is skilled in meditation. I don't think it's a stretch to think the monks taught him other such things.

He doesn't react to small things that would normally piss people off. Examples include The Headband when he gives absolutely zero shits about the bully, and The Southern Raiders where he accepts Katara trying to steal Appa and doesn't react to Zuko mocking him and his culture. 

Aang also, paradoxically, can be pretty good at expressing emotions when he needs to. He's typically very emotionally intelligent, with the exception being pretty much any trauma. He will react to basic things in the moment and is unafraid to show frustration or anger or uncertainty, as long as it's Not connected to a thing he is distinctly Not thinking about.

And one of the most damning examples of his emotional regulation skill, that is actually the scene that started me thinking about all of this, is the scene with Koh the Face Stealer. 

That scene threw me off so much because I felt like it was incredibly out of character for Aang, this incredibly expressive kid, to be able to show no emotional reaction. It didn't make sense and for a long time I dismissed it as just, the writers thought it'd be cool so he did it. But of course, I can't let things lay, so I never really stopped thinking about it until I realized, in context of everything I've talked about before, it actually makes perfect sense.

Aang is emotionally expressive by choice. He has the ability to control his emotions and responses to a ridiculous degree. He knows how to be emotionally intelligent with basic things, where to express emotion and how to do it. 

(Of course, he's not perfect. There are plenty of times he acts out, the Bato episode being the first thing to come to mind, but even there, after just a few hours, he has wrestled with his jealousy and responds appropriately to guilt, he owns up to it. He does try to explain himself but when Sokka makes it clear he's not going to listen, Aang does not continue to press the point. He accepts Sokka's decision, does not lash out, and for once doesn't shut down or exhibit happiness soon after. He is sad and expresses it without shoving his emotions onto others. For a 12 yr old, this is fucking impressive.)

Aang was taught well by the monks, but the one thing they couldn't teach him was response to trauma, and that's where he falters, but that emotional regulation means he's not going to respond in a typical way. Instead, he turns to denial as his coping mechanism of choice and uses those skills he learned to achieve a workable state of being but through unhealthy use.

Where am I going with this? Idk. Nowhere really, I just wanted to talk about Aang and psychology tbqh.

Anyway, I will finish this up by a fun delve into Things He's Probably Going To End Up Suffering From:

Denial can lead to memory blocking, where it's more than just not thinking about it, the brain actively suppresses and alters memory to cope. Adult Aang's recollection of the Ozai year is probably not going to be super accurate. Would not be surprised if someone was like “hey remember that time you were almost executed by a town for your past live’s mistakes?” and Aang just went “No???” and legit has no recollection of any such thing.

Selective numbing will eventually turn into collective numbing. You can selectively numb for a temporary period of time (which is how people fall into the trap) but eventually your brain will start to numb everything, not just the bad things. At the very least teenage Aang absolutely goes through a period of dissociative complete numbness.

Speaking of dissociation, if you're not going to react to trauma the normal way, dissociation happens. It starts as a coping mechanism but like with numbing, it cannot remain controlled and will develop into something. Aang will have a dissociative disorder, I'm telling you. Which one? Idk, but I assure you, it'll be there. I'm leaning toward some basic depersonalization/derealization and/or OSDD type four where trauma and meditation accidentally mix for the worse.

So yeah, there you go, a breakdown of Aang, his trauma responses, his emotional intelligence, and the consequences of those two things put together.

I'm gonna be a nerd here and add shitty citations but this is mostly in case you're also a psych geek and want to read things.

“What Are the Dissociative Disorders”. International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation.

“Developmental trauma: Conceptual framework, associated risks and comorbidities, and evaluation and treatment”. National Library of Medicine.

“What is Child Traumatic Stress”. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network.

[st4rb0xd-sysh3lp]

Headmate Role & Type Master-list (as re-posted by us to be more thorough and all system inclusive)

Below the cut is a masterlist of common headmate roles and types. We will do our best to keep this updated if we think anything else should be on here. Please let us know if there's anything you think we should add or any info we should update to be more accurate!!

Roles

Boosters

A type of headmate designed to hold or boost a certain emotion or feeling in the system, usually when fronting or co-con.

→ Confidence Booster: a headmate that boosts the confidence of the system or specific headmate(s) in front.

→ Mood Booster: a headmate that boosts the mood of the system, specific headmate(s) in front, or those around the system; emotions affected can range from neutral to overjoyed depending on the booster.

→ Motivator: a headmate that either boosts feelings of motivation in the system or specific headmate(s) in front, or helps motivate the system with encouragement.

Helpers

A type of headmate designed to help the system or individual headmates in a specific way.

→ Caretaker: a headmate who takes care of the system, generally by caring for the body or keeping the living space tidy.

→ Internal Helper: a headmate that helps take care of other headmates in the innerworld; may or may not front.

→ Soother: a headmate that helps soothe the body or other headmates, especially in times of distress or following traumatic events.

→ Supporter: a headmate who was formed to keep other headmates company; often in co-con with other headmates.

Holders

A type of headmate designed to hold certain memories, emotions, symptoms, or otherwise within a system; oftentimes fragments, but not always.

→ Anger Holder: a headmate that holds the system’s anger; might be more likely to lash out than other headmates.

→ Pain Holder: a headmate that helps deal with physical ailments in the body, such as pain or sickness; likely has an easier time handling said ailments than other headmates.

→ Symptom Holder: a headmate that holds or more strongly exhibits symptoms of mental illness or neurodivergent behaviors; may exhibit symptoms of disorders not apparent in the system as a whole.

→ Trauma Holder: a headmate that holds significant trauma; may have more vivid memory of the event(s) or memories not recalled by other headmates; often more affected by said trauma.

Protectors

A type of headmate that helps protect against various types of harm to the system.

→ Aggressor/ Aggressive Protector: a protector that’s more likely to be steadfast and have more aggressive mannerisms or methods than other protectors, but not to such a harmful degree as persecutors.

→ Emotional Protector: a headmate that protects against emotional harm and/or abuse.

→ Mental Protector: a headmate that helps protect against mental harm/abuse.

→ Persecutor: a misguided protector that tends to act harmfully towards others in the system, the body, or those around the system, whether in an outwardly aggressive or self-destructive manner.

→ Physical Protector: a headmate that helps protect against physical harm/abuse.

→ Sexual Protector: a headmate that helps protect against sexual harm/abuse.

Situational

A type of headmate that tends to front and/or is especially good at handling specific situations.

→ Academic Headmate: a headmate that is more inclined to help with academic affairs, such as homework, attending classes, studying, etc.

→ Sexual Headmate: a headmate that is highly sexual in nature; may or may not have formed to cope with sexual trauma; not considered a protector.

→ Social Headmate: a headmate that is more inclined to help with social affairs; may be more social or extroverted than other headmates.

Specialized

Headmate roles that do not fit into the above categories.

→ Host: the headmate that fronts the most and handles most day-to-day situations; may be responsible for many or most decisions.

→ Gatekeeper: a headmate that has a greater degree of control over the front than other headmates; may guard the fronting room and/or have more knowledge of the system as a whole than other headmates.

→ Manager: a headmate that has an easier time making decisions for the system; often more logic-driven than other headmates.

Types

Ages

→ Little: a child headmate aged 10 or under.

→ Middle: a tween/teen headmate aged 11-17.

-> Young Adult: an adult headmate aged 18-25.

-> Adult: an adult headmate aged 26+

-> Centenarian: an adult headmate aged 100 years or older

-> Ageless: a headmate who's age is indeterminate for any reason, including but not limited to being too old to be worth counting, in source time shenanigans, having an age that shifts frequently or varies heavily enough to not have a "true age", or being otherwise literally ageless.

Source Status

→ Introject: a headmate who formed with traits, background, or full identity of an outside source; may be a real-life source such as a person or childhood toy, or a fictional source, such as a character.

→ Sourceless: a headmate who seems to be introjected but does not have a definitive outside source or does not connect to their source at all.

-> Brainmade: a headmate that is not introjected and is instead entirely original to the brain

Types of Introjects

→ Factive: an introject who takes on traits or identity from a real person.

→ Fictive: an introject who takes on traits or identity from a fictional source, often characters in media.

-> Fictish/Factish: a headmate who is partially introjected and does not feel wholly attached to their source, and doesn't feel like just "brainmade" "sourceless" or "introject" describes the entirety of their identity or their relationship with their source.

→ Songtive: an introject who takes on traits or identity based on a song.

→ Playtive: an introject who takes on traits or identity based on a toy, usually one from childhood.

Sentience

→ Headmate: a fully sentient and independent headmate who is able to function on their own.

→ Companion: a complex established NPC, often animals, that are tied to specific headmates and often accompany them; generally can only be understood by their associated headmates.

→ Fragment: a headmate who is at least partially sentient, but not generally independent and able to function on their own; often hold specific feelings, symptoms, or memories.

→ NPC: a being in the innerworld who is not sentient or considered a headmate; named after the term “non-player character.”

Species

→ Human: a headmate who presents as a human.

→ Nonhuman: a headmate who presents as any other species than human; often as an animal, supernatural creature, or humanoid with animalistic features.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

Against my better judgement, a not-very-original contribution to rattumb feminism discourse

Theres a common retort to complaints about feminism from rat-adjs, which when phrased politely reads like "You have the excuse of yr main exposure to feminism being 2010s era jezebel bullshit" and when phrased impolitely reads like "yr main exposure to feminism being 2010s era jezebel bullshit is not an excuse", which takes it for granted that the dumb shit that occupied seemingly 90% of the internets collective attention in 2011-2015 was some inane culture war drivel significant basically only insofar as it sucked up ppls attention or contributed nebulously to the "wider conversation" with distant and vaguely delineated consequences in the objective world

This is kinda funny, bc what i remember from the feminist resurgence of that time period was the massive, largely successful campaign perversely combining a bold expansion of the boundaries of "rape" and an intensified brand of punitive vitriol for alleged rapists. Criminal and quasicriminal consequences for rapists were ramped up, concerns about "due process" were dismissed (with institutional effect!) as antiquated patriarchal relics, judges bemoaning the eighth amendment were touted as heroes, protesters with ak 47s showed up outside the houses of convicts they thought got off too easy. Ppl would extol distant bands of vigilantes in public, and domestic lone assassins in private. Ppl lost their freedom. Ppl lost their lives. And all of this nancy grace nonsense in the most pristine of bleeding heart blue enclaves, under banners of deepest pink!

I could provide citations, but i wont, partly bc i am tired, partly bc all of these are things ive given concrete evidence about on this blog previously, partly bc we all know this to be true anyway

And what grates on me about that patronising reply to those of with the gall to carry trauma from this orgy of bloodlust is that these noose-tying fanatics and the avant garde against the gamergator menace were the same fucking ppl. Saying it all for the same fucking reasons. Again, no citations bc ive said this all before, but search yr feelings. Im not complaining about some more serious problem that gets mixed up with the way the internet collectively decided zoe quinn deserved to be pre-canonised by the magisterium of public opinion as a martyr for the true faith, im complaining about the same problem, of which the lynching enthusiasm was the worst expression. In the annals of the horrors of war, small losses in public life are placed alongside the lists of honoured dead, bc they are alike symptoms of the same overarching social disease

And if you hear more about the milder instances of this mass insanity of last decade, consider this might be bc famous "cancelled" performers and academics have access to more bandwidth than randos stuck rotting inside state prisons

[hiiragi7]

hi there!! i've been reading some of the discussions you've had & many of them are super informative and some comforting to read from the perspective of someone who's questioning if they might be plural/have a CDD. i really appreciate ur blog & the views and experiences u share on it, it feels like a warm hug amidst The Horrors of Syscourse.

i've had something on my mind though. this is probably a silly question, but it's possible to have a CDD without (C)PTSD, right? admittedly i'm kind of just asking this for reassurance while i'm on my own discovery journey. like. i have experienced traumatic events and some of it is ongoing & i'm still living with the people responsible, but i don't think i fit the PTSD criteria due to not experiencing flashbacks or strong emotions related to the events—i usually just feel totally empty & detached from it. i still believe i've been negatively affected by the events hence considering them traumatic, but that doesn't include any kind of flashbacks.

i've been trying to look into it & find answers but i've seen a lot of conflating of having experienced trauma with having PTSD, so most of what i find is "can you be plural/have a CDD without trauma" discourse.

i think it'd be neat to see more conversations about this but free to ignore this ask if u don't want to answer it/if u don't feel equipped to! wishing u the best. have a great day!!

This is actually a very interesting question.

I've read a lot of medical literature on trauma, and each author in the field seems to define what qualifies as PTSD or PTSD symptoms differently, which also lines up with my own experiences with medical professionals in practice. In general, me simply being traumatized was enough for me to be given an automatic PTSD diagnosis, regardless of which therapist or psychiatrist I saw. Some professionals I saw were very specific with what they called what, others were a lot more loose with it.

I've seen a lot of differing definitions and academic debate over what qualifies as a flashback, dissociation, a posttraumatic symptom, and so on. That is to say, it can all be very vague.

For example, there are other forms of flashbacks that exist outside of the well-known ones; some people only relive traumatic events emotionally, or through repeated thought processes, or somatic pain. A lot aren't even aware these are flashbacks, because it's experienced as 'random' emotions or pain or spirals or some other response, and a lot have trouble figuring out what even triggers these responses.

Would these experiences fall under what we call flashbacks in PTSD? Well, it probably depends on who you ask. And, in practice, whether someone with these experiences gets diagnosed with PTSD or a mood disorder or a personality disorder or somatic pain syndrome depends on the medical professional evaluating them.

To further complicate it, a lot of people don't experience overt c/PTSD symptoms until they are no longer living in the traumatic situation, which, for people who develop cPTSD, means they may not show obvious symptoms until a very, very long time after the trauma started. I didn't start getting "classic" PTSD flashbacks and "waking up in a panic attack in the middle of the night" type nightmares about the trauma until I wasn't around the people who did it anymore. However, I have experienced many other trauma-related symptoms and heavy dissociation ever since I was very very little. Before I was diagnosed with PTSD in highschool, I was diagnosed with a lot of other things first.

There's also just the fact that, for whatever reason, people don't all develop the same symptoms in response to trauma. Some people with very complex trauma never experience classic PTSD symptoms. Some people are very dissociative and numb, or develop mood disorders, or obsessive-compulsive symptoms, or somatic symptoms, or eating disorders, or some combination of things. Some people never externally harm themselves or cope using substances while others develop addictions to these things.

In addition, some people's experiences with trauma don't fall under the PTSD criteria's definition of trauma, so even if other symptoms are present they don't "technically" fit criteria. And sometimes medical professionals use their own judgement and diagnose these people with PTSD anyway, and sometimes they don't.

Plenty of people diagnosed with other childhood trauma-based disorders besides CDDs also don't fit c/PTSD criteria or show many c/PTSD symptoms or receive a comorbid c/PTSD diagnosis for whatever reason. It's complicated and messy.

This is all to say, I've encountered medical professionals who treat PTSD as synonymous with "traumatized" and are very loose with what they call PTSD and I've also encountered medical professionals who are very strict about the criteria and are very insistent on only diagnosing people who fit that, and I've met a lot of professionals somewhere in the middle as well. I've also encountered plenty who would much rather focus on helping the symptoms than on what the diagnosis is or isn't, and who don't really like the way mental health diagnosis is structured in the first place.

So, to come back to your question... I don't think there really is an objective answer to it, though personally I'd just say "sure it's possible, and I wouldn't really worry about it much."

In the end, what I've found is that it doesn't actually really matter that much? Regardless of whether there is comorbid PTSD or whether there isn't (or whether it's delayed onset or etc), in the end what you're dealing with if you have a CDD is still trauma, and the treatment for that is more or less the same, regardless of what you call it. There might be differences in, say, approaches to medication specifically, or specific symptoms, but even that is often just throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. Honestly, in my experience, treatment mostly looks different based on symptoms and individual needs rather than diagnoses, really.

In general, I find that a lot of people dealing with trauma and mental illness tend to over-focus on diagnosis and getting it right and trying to figure out whether they "really" have something or whether they're mistaken or somehow faking or so on. I think that's an unhelpful approach to it; there's no objective way to confirm that sort of thing, and either way you still need ways to cope with your symptoms, and coping skills are useful regardless of diagnosis. Learning how to ground yourself is useful regardless of whether you "really" dissociate that bad, learning emotional regulation skills is useful regardless of whether you "really" have severe mood swings, learning calming techniques and self-care and how to be gentle with yourself are good things for everyone to learn, coping skills are not just for people with certain diagnoses. In fact, you don't even need a diagnosis of anything to do these things.

And with trauma, like... it's all just trauma processing in the end, really.

I'll even go as far to say that even if you don't have PTSD, books and resources for PTSD might still be useful to you if you have a CDD or another trauma-related disorder, since a lot of symptoms overlap with other disorders and especially with trauma the recommendations for what to do about it tend to be applicable to a lot of different situations outside of strictly PTSD.

I realize I rambled a long time just to say "well, it's complicated and depends on what we mean by PTSD, but also it's all trauma anyway" but I hope this was helpful still?

I'm also glad to hear what you said about my blog, it was very nice to read.

[gabrielora]

South Park disorder Headcannon:

EPISODE 1: ERIC CARTMAN.

I belive that Cartman has HPD (Histrionic personality disorder), BED (binge eating disorder,) early childhood schizophrenia, and Autism. (Check @rottrottencorpse headcanon post about it he words it better then i ever could.)

(Also disclaimer I am a 14 year old who has never talked a psychology or neurology class and I’m just autistic and like to study the DSM and South Park for fun)

Cartman

1. childhood schizophrenia:

Cartman is shown to have difficulty with daily functioning, such as brushing his teeth and doing basic chores. Although this could be a result of him being spoiled by his mother.

he has a large lack of impulse control, his impulses are often caused by delusion and his inability to control his emotions. He has very extreme emotions that do not fit the situations he is in.

Cartman is shown to have speech delays and is exhibits behaviors of echolalia (in “Cat Orgy” he repeats “they mostly come at night, mostly” over and over again. He does the same thing with “beefcake!”) Cartman (especially in early seasons) tends to have very disorganized speech patterns. He is unable to pronounce certain words and sounds even into adulthood (Post Covid.)

He is shown to have difficulty paying attention and has an extremely low performance in school despite having high academic intelligence when he believes the situation calls for it.

Cartman is often shown to have delusions, an example is in “the China problem.” He will go through extreme measures to validate his delusions. (Such as committing terrorism or even genocide.)

Cartman is shown to have hallucinations; specifically Cupid me. In Cupid Ye, Cupid me begins to show behaviors that are extremely antisemetic and cruel to the point even Cartman becomes concerned. He fully believes Cupid me is real. He calms “Cupid me” down by forcing him to take his meds. Which may imply Cartman is taking medication.

2. HPD,

Cartman is shown to be extremely insecure about himself (seen in “insecurity” and “Cartmans mom is a dirty slut.” Along with ” the end of obesity” and “fish sticks.”) and he gets his sense of self worth from others. He craves constant validation, often attempting to make himself seem grandiose to make others amazed.

He acts very dramatically for the attention of others. He doesn’t understand that his behavior is inappropriate. He becomes upset when he is not the center of attention.

He puts on an extremely charming performance (often when having a delusion) to make himself look great. He is extremely dramatic, to the point he is theatrical. When he wants to draw attention he sometimes will wear outfits that bring attention to him. In fact, he has the most outfits out of any character in the series. He has over 100 as of 2016.

He speaks very dramatically and rarely has reasoning or evidence for his thoughts despite the fact he is capable of researching them. Cartmans emotions tend to be exaggerated, quick and shallow, as shown in people with HPD.

He can be extremely gullible. Especially in early seasons. This can be attributed to the fact he is a child though and cannot be concluded as a specific symptom.

He often believes he is closer with people than he actually is (specifically Jimmy Valmer as shown in Tsst.) and he has a very hard time maintaining relationships with people who aren’t his closest friends.

He has a constant need for instant gratification. This can make him extremely efficient in his plans, but due to his poor impulse control can cause disastrous situations. Cartman becomes bored very easily, and he again, is constantly looking for the approval of others.

Some risk factors for HPD include:

1. Genetics, (other symptoms which Cartman did not yet have is sexually promiscuous behavior.) his mom exhibits many of these symptoms. Especially attention seeking behavior via sexuality, and believing she is closer to people than she actually is (as shown in Tsst with ceaser Milan)

2. Childhood trauma, Cartman is shown to have suffered childhood sexual assault throughout the series. In fact, it has happened or has been referenced to around 21 times throughout the series. It is stated in an episode that Liane made him wear a costume and dance for her while she was intoxicated and having sex with an unknown man. She also drugs him with codeine when he’s paranoid or anxious (as shown in let go let gov.)

3. Parenting styles such as ones that lack boundaries or are overindulgent. Parents who display extreme erratic sexual characteristics and other inappropriate behaviors put their children at risk for developing HPD. (That’s literally just Liane)

3. C-ptsd,

I have less reasons to belive this and it is more of a loose headcanon.

Cartman has experienced long-term/repeated sexual abuse.

He is hyper vigilant about sexual abuse as shown in The Coon, when he sees a man kissing a woman and immediately assumes she is being assaulted. He has negative correlations to anything sex related. He views sex as in inherent act of violence and humiliation (as shown in the fractured but whole when he tells the new kid their dad fucked their mom.)

He reacts excessively and becomes very defensive when any negative feedback is pointed towards him.

It is shown in early seasons that Cartman was bullied by his peers. In the episode Damien, pip says “I think they made fun of the fat boy a lot too, but now i think they like him because he picks on me!” Which shows that a lot of his antagonistic behavior was brought up because he would be ostracized otherwise. Stan, Kyle, and Kenny were the bullies first. Cartman was mirroring their behavior.

The boiling point for this was in Scott Tenorman must die, when Scott humiliated him and he snapped.

He was not the first kid to snap in South Park, in fact the even headed Wendy Testaburger was.

A lot of his negative behaviors are him covering trauma or trying to adapt to his surroundings. (I am referring to morally incorrect or extremely self destructive behavior not just odd behavior when i say negative behaviors.)

4. Autism spectrum disorder

I belive that Cartman shows signs of autism, although many of these symptoms can be attributed to Schizophrenia.

He is very sensitive to small changes, in let them eat goo he got so caught up about the slight changes in the food he had to be hospitalized. (By the way a lot of this evidence was from a post by rotten corpse!!! I am not trying to take credit for the autism!!)

He has hyperactive and inattentive behavior (which can be symptoms of schizophrenia but i think should be listed anyway.)

he is shown to have Alexithymia. He has a hard time expressing his love for people (he tells his friends he hates them when this is not true.) He cannot recognize when he is feeling empathy (which he does feel empathy, he can feel empathy towards inanimate objects and cats and people he is not close to which is why i do not believe he has ASPD.) With the theory he has alexithymia, you could also come up with the idea that he is unable to recognize his strong emotions and therefore unable to think about them logically.

He obsesses over his goals frequently, the largest one being wanting to make a million dollars. Some of his behavior relating to this though can be attributed to his delusions and grandiose. He seems to be very talented at photography and has a large interest in it.

He is shown to not understand personal space a lot, specifically in tegridy farms where he repeatedly holds Kyle’s hand despite his protests. he also seems to become aggravated anytime someone else is in his space.

He tends to butt into and dominate conversations, this can be related back to HPD but this is prominent even when he is not trying to get attention.

He, again, has echolalia which is an autism symptom but also a symptom of schizophrenia.

He mirrors other people’s behaviors. In Damien it’s stated that he mirrored Stan Kyle and Kenny’s behavior so he wouldn’t be bullied by them. He also has developed some of Butters behaviors throughout their friendship. This is also a symptom of HSD (being highly influenced by others.)

Cartman has a hard time understanding social cues. This is more prominent in early seasons compared to later seasons. He is shown to not fully understand when someone is being sarcastic towards him, and often takes things literally. (Such as the Sea Men.)

He HATES unexpected change (he tries to murder Heidi over making him late to the pumkin patch he is not normal)

this is a large maybe as many of these symptoms can be related to his other disorders. I still love this headcannon though because i think it makes it much more interesting analyzing his trauma with that in mind.

5. BED (Binge Eating disorder.)

Im pretty sure this is canon so I may not explain as much as the others.

Cartman compulsively eats very large amounts of food in short periods of time, even eating when he’s not full anymore or not hungry.

He has a hard time identifying when he is full which can be linked back to autism and not being able to process your senses.

He hides in his bathroom to binge as seen in the end of obesity, and he is shown to feel a lot of shame towards binging. (His desperation to get ozempic.)

A good thing to take note of is that Cartmans mom doesn’t just over feed him. She uses food to bribe Cartman into being friends with her. Almost all the “love” she shows towards Cartman is bribery done to alleviate her crippling loneliness. In episode one he tells her he doesn’t want to eat too much because he’s being bullied for being fat. She tells him he’s not fat he’s big boned. He still doesn’t want to eat so she kept bribing him with food until he caved in. In Tsst she bribes him with KFC to skip an project to see a show with her, neglecting his academic needs. He likely sees food as a form of validation. This boosts his BED even further, and the need for validation is boosted by his HPD.

I think his HPD and schizophrenic symptoms make many people assume Cartman has ASPD. I do not belive he has ASPD as he can feel empathy to a very broad spectrum of things (inanimate objects, animals, and people he is not close to.) Conduct disorder may apply but it’s shown he can grow out of it when taken away from his environment or his environment is changed meaning he was not born with ASPD. He does have a lot of symptoms of ASPD but on the dsm they state “The occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the course of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.” Which in my analysis Cartman has untreated schizophrenia which would mean outside of the age requirement, he would not fit the ASPD criteria.

ANYWAY thats all folks!!

[soon-palestine]

In numbers… The government media office documents important facts about the reality of Gaza’s children under the aggression:

🔻 15,694 children killed by the occupation.

🔻 About 34,000 children were injured.

🔻 3,600 children are missing under the rubble.

🔻 About 1,500 children lost limbs or eyes or were permanently disabled due to injury.

🔻 At least 200 children were kidnapped by the occupation.

🔻 17,000 children became orphans, 3% of whom lost both parents.

🔻 More than 700,000 children were forcibly displaced from their places of residence.

🔻 About 650,000 children lost their homes after they were destroyed by the occupation.

🔻 625,000 children were forced by the aggression to drop out of school and lose the academic year.

🔻 98% of Gaza’s children do not find safe drinking water, and depend on less than 3 liters of water per day.

🔻 3,500 children with chronic diseases are at risk of death due to malnutrition and lack of necessary medical care.

🔻 60,000 fetuses in their mothers’ wombs, exposed to miscarriage, death, or birth defects due to the effects of bombs and explosives.

🔻 About 40,000 infants did not receive the necessary immunizations and vaccinations on a regular basis.

🔻 82,000 children showed symptoms of malnutrition, 35% of whom suffered severe symptoms.

🔻 33 children lost their lives due to famine and malnutrition.

🔻 450,000 children are at risk of developing chest cancer and respiratory diseases, due to reliance on burning rubble waste to prepare food.

🔻 All children in Gaza are vulnerable to epidemics and infectious diseases, due to the lack of personal hygiene and overcrowding in areas of displacement and shelter.

🔻 All children in Gaza suffer from psychological trauma and behavioral problems such as fear, anxiety, and depression due to the aggression.

Government Media Office Gaza, Palestine June 14, 2024 AD

[acorpsecalledcorva]

I've tried to write about this a couple times now academically, then in a funny jokey way, but the problem is I'm trying to rationalise a personal topic to justify it and make it more general but honestly it keeps ending up being fakeclaimy, perhaps in a way that deflects from me so fuck it, here goes.

My trauma memories are wrong. And that's okay.

With all the talk about the false memory syndrome and the sociocognitive model I find myself in an interesting position where I wholeheartedly disagree with the False Memory Syndrome proponents attempts to discredit DID as a diagnosis whilst having false memories very much be a part of my diagnosis, with sociocognitive elements influencing both my false trauma memories and my presentation of DID (not it's cause, just how it manifested at times).

And the key issue is metacognition and world beliefs, a growing area of research in the trauma and dissociation field. It basically goes that humans are incredibly narrative in nature. Our memories aren't factual, they're stories we tell ourselves filled with meaning and metaphor and allegory. It's why we love stories so much, whether it's fiction or juicy gossip, interacting with others interpretation of events and finding meaning in them helps us to interpret and assign meaning to our own lives and create rich, nuanced world beliefs. When something happens that is incompatible with our world beliefs and we are unable to assign meaning to to integrate it onto our subjective narrative, that's trauma.

Emotional support can help us to develop our metacognitive abilities and integrate traumatic events but things like disorganised attachment environments really fuck up this ability from a very young age and the creation of alters in CDDs can be viewed as attempts by the brain to protect those very early world beliefs (I rely on my caregivers for survival), by creating new characters in the story who can hold simultaneous contradictory world beliefs.

The problem is when traumatic shit happens young enough, memory just doesn't record properly. The emotional feelings of helplessness and threat to life or exposure and violation might be preserved, but the "factual" record can be lost forever. And once you start chronically dissociating it fucks with your regular every day ability to record and store non traumatic memories, even if by this point a traumatic memory can be "factually" and emotionally preserved whilst also being buried.

So when I look back on my childhood, and I have all these emotional flashbacks from very early childhood and these core beliefs that point to a really shitty life as a baby that I don't have actually memory of, and entire oceans of no memory, and also traumas that happened to me later in life that I do remember even if I've only recently admitted to myself are traumatic, AND a brain that likes to make up alternative subjective narratives through alter formation, AND a desperation to make sense of my life during a very confusing period (system discovery), yeah...my brain made up traumas that didn't happen to me.

When I was reading The Body Keeps the Score because I was dealing with a bunch of somatoform symptoms the early chapters talk a LOT about the prevalence of CSA by family members, and it was honestly kinda invalidating, because as far as I was aware that didn't happen to me so why was I so fucked up? It led to me imagining scenarios of trauma that might have happened to me until something latched on to an unprocessed emotional flashback. It became entangled with that flashback and, in a way, integrated itself into my subjective narrative. It gave meaning to my story, a distressing story, but a story that made sense. The only problem with that is, it doesn't actually make sense. It just isn't compatible with the other versions of my narrative that are contained throughout the rest of the system. I haven't processed and integrated the real trauma, I've just attempted to create a narrative that could serve me in that moment, it was reassuring, it provided a security in the meaning it gave me, but it's only a temporary substitute for real integration of the stuff that's still buried or inaccessible to me.

Maybe I was a victim of CSA, it's definitely possible, but that memory I've "had" just.. Isn't it. And despite community sentiments to believe trauma I would be harming myself to cling onto those memories instead of confronting the true traumatic events through therapy when I'm actually ready to face them. I would be deflecting because believing something I know deep down isn't true is safer than acknowledging what really happened, even if the fake memory is worse than what really happened.

I understand why papers on fictitious DID are concerned with patients freely offering up their trauma when previously DID patients would take years to open up enough to share it. When you get those confession stories of people faking DID there are these repeated elements that come up time and time again. They made up trauma that they freely shared to appear more valid, and despite no longer faking they still sometimes hear their alters. And I think what's happening in these cases isn't actually necessarily that they're faking DID, although obviously you can misdiagnose yourself, but quite possibly community exposure is reinforcing a sociocognitive presentation of DID. One where trauma is this thing that you MUST know about, where alters have deep backstories and a rich biography. This outward protection may very well be a reflection of a deeper but hidden inner experience that seeks to deflect the outside world with a decoy narrative.

This sucks, because from a clinician's perspective whether they affirm it or scrutinise it, if the patient refuses to let go of the decoy to reveal what's underneath therapy work is largely fruitless. Sar and Ozturk seem to be the only practitioner's to have correctly highlighted this in Functional Dissociation of the Self. They recognise the uncanny ability of the Dissociative system to deflect and divert therapy work through substitute beliefs and multiple realities and highlight the value of cutting through all that to get to the hidden psychological self that's able to create the cohesive integrated narrative that allows the system to truly recover.

So I have to ask myself, is the "version" of DID I believe I have and present to others an accurate depiction of what's going on? Or is it a convenient substitution of self that I use to deflect from what's really going on? How is the community influencing this presentation and my need to cling onto it to fit in? And is my participation in the online system community harming me in the long run because it helps reinforce my substitute beliefs about myself to fit in with them without putting in the real work to really understand myself?

I'm mostly making this as a self call out post for accountability, because I think I need to step away. If I keep posting them I've failed because honestly I feel kinda lost without it and that's scary. Hopefully, this will be the last y'all hear from me in a while so I wish y'all well. Or I'll see you tomorrow

[queer-ragnelle]

is there any text or tumblr post that dives into the ways in which sir lancelot is insane? like a freak? i’ve read a couple extracts ab him giving the idea that he was effed up a bit and like a whole murderbot with raging feelings of hatred and love? i would like to know more ab the crazy things he does or says that make ppl go “this man is a freakazoid”. also i adore your blog thank you for making sumn this nice!

hi there!

i'm unsure if you mean excerpts from medieval sources in which lancelot is "mad" or academic articles dissecting those instances...but i have both for you lol now a disclaimer: i'm neither a medievalist nor a psychologist, so all i can offer you is the raw material and my opinion. while we shouldn't "diagnose" anyone of the past as we do now, lancelot isn't a real person, so i think that affords us a little more freedom to speculate about him, and more importantly, what it is he represented: a medieval anxiety surrounding trauma and the resulting mental toll. info and sources below a cut. huge content warning for self harm and suicidal ideation.

Academic Sources: Medieval Attitudes Towards Mental Illness by Edith A. Wright, Of Metal and Men by Julie Singer, The Enemy Inside by Brian Burfield

Medieval Sources: The Knight of The Cart by Chréiten de Troyes, The Vulgate Cycle edited by Norris J. Lacy

so for starters, let's establish what it is people are responding to when they discuss lancelot's mental instability. the character first appears in "the knight of the cart" by chrétien de troyes, and right from the getgo, lancelot exhibits a lot of mental distress, up to and including, a suicide attempt.

from his inception, lancelot was unwell. at another point, he appears to disassociate so completely, he forgets his own identity, and loses perception of his body.

now you may have noticed that the text always links lancelot's episodes to his fixation on guinevere. we'd be here forever if we incorporated the way medieval authors offset the blame of their protagonists' deteriorating mental states onto the fault of a woman (see also: yvain/owain's madness when laudine/countess divorced him, tristan's madness out of longing for isolde, etc.) whereas when a woman shows upset, it's never attributed to her lover, but a shortcoming within herself. so for the sake of staying on topic, we'll focus on lancelot's symptoms as they are, rather than trying to unravel the middle ages-sized knot of misogyny that is the fictitious root of these madness episodes. "medieval attitudes towards mental illness" by edith a. wright discusses this trend in depth.

i'm going to be focusing on "the vulgate cycle" as my main source of lancelot's madness as he has multiple distinct episodes in that text written in excruciating detail that we can discuss. generally speaking, lancelot is presented as an extremely anxious individual that's highly susceptible to outside influence (whether that be guinevere's, galehaut's, etc.) but that in and of itself is not necessarily indicative of mental illness so much as a rarely explored introverted quirk of his personality. as discussed in "of metal and men" by julie singer, it seems lancelot's at his most confident when operating as an anonymous knight and therefore not subject to the scrutiny of societal expectation.

this, however, can develop in extreme ways when lancelot is pushed past his limits, and he succumbs to a berserker-like state neither his friends nor family can shake him from. while imprisoned at saxon rock, lancelot has to be segregated from the other prisoners, despite galehaut begging to be housed with him, the jailers refuse as lancelot's psychosis is so intense that he'd kill his fellow hostages and thus neutralize the enemy army's advantage. lancelot's refusal to eat exacerbates his symptoms. [Lancelot Part II, Ch. 71. Lancelot’s Madness and Cure; Defeat of the Saxons and Irish; Lancelot, Galehaut, and Hector Become Companions of the Round Table]

this psychotic episode continues even after lancelot is freed. eventually guinevere is forced to lock him alone in a room to protect the others, as he continues to attack anyone who comes near, including his own younger cousin and squire lionel who had attempted to talk him down and was struck. lancelot only recovers after his adoptive mother, the lady of the lake, arrives and utilizes strikingly modern de-escalation techniques, such as referring to lancelot by his childhood name to ground him, administering some medicine to help him sleep, allowing him uninterrupted rest, and then bathing him. (this is tinged with medieval mysticism, of course, but you get the idea.) the lady of the lake then instructs guinevere on how to care for him thereafter. once lancelot awakens from his magic/healing-induced coma, his sanity is restored.

it feels important to note here that, once lancelot regains his senses, he feels ashamed of his behavior, and worries that his mental instability would cause guinevere to love him less. but she assures him that she loves him and is committed as long as they both live. even in medieval times, people recognized that a strong support system was of utmost importance for the mentally ill to thrive.

lancelot is, for the most part, stable for a time after this, contented to live at sorealis with galehaut (and guinevere for a bit as well). but growing restless, lancelot leaves galehaut's company to go adventuring. through some misunderstanding, galehaut believes lancelot had died, and thus dies of heartbreak himself. on discovery of his beloved's tomb, lancelot grieves so bitterly that he intends to kill himself on the spot. [Lancelot Part IV, Ch. 120. Lancelot Discovers Galehaut’s Casket and Defends It; Lancelot Rescues Meleagant’s Sister]

it's here that a messenger of the lady of the lake arrives. the lady had been informed by her oracle that this would happen, so acting quickly, she sent someone to intervene. the messenger takes the sword from lancelot and immediately gives him a task, one that would exhume galehaut and bring his body to where lancelot would eventually be buried beside him. in the short term, this prevented lancelot from harming himself, and in the long term, guided him toward shifting gears long enough that he eventually overcomes his grief through completion of his lady's instruction.

the next time lancelot is driven mad is after he is beguiled by elaine of corbenic into bed with her at camelot. (this is the second time, galahad had already been conceived). [Lancelot Part VI, Ch. 176 Lancelot and Arthur Go to Gaul; Claudas Abandons Gaunes; King Pelles’s Daughter Deceives Lancelot; Guenevere Expels Lancelot]

at this point, lancelot is beyond the reach of even his mother, the lady of the lake, so this psychotic episode persists for many years. he's declared missing and all of the knights set out in search of him, to no avail, and he is assumed dead. lancelot, meanwhile, survives the winter by attacking people and stealing their resources. [Lancelot Part VI, Ch. 178 Lancelot’s Madness and Subsequent Cure]

eventually, while lancelot is subdued in a deep sleep, a pair of charitable brother knights, recognizing that lancelot is unable to care for himself and a danger to those around him, successfully transport him to their castle. they don't know who he is. they keep him chained for safety but feed and clothe him. during this time, lancelot mutilates himself to be free.

eventually, lancelot is calm enough to be freed from his bindings, and lives with the brothers in this way for two years. he eats little and completely loses touch with his identity and the reality of the world around him.

but one day, lancelot looks out his tower window and sees a passing boar. he's compelled to follow it and departs the castle of the brothers without a word. he ends up in a battle with the boar which he barely survives. a holy man happens upon him and tries to administer healing, but lancelot attacks him.

after this the holy man flees and enlists the help of some men-at-arms, who assist in capturing lancelot and forcibly strapping him to a litter to be drawn away. ultimately, despite the best intentions, lancelot's condition only worsens.

i'm going to make a brief aside here as this reminds me of an article i read detailing a similar situation which occurred in real life. in "the enemy inside" by brian burfield, john of ancaster suffered mental distress as a result of the war in france, subsequently inflicting harm on himself and others. in this case, it was his father that restrained him into a horse-drawn cart, and brought him to a place of healing which was revolutionary of the time period, as friar bartholomeus recognized the connection between trauma and mental distress without attributing it to demonic possession, thus attracting many people in need of help to his monastery for treatment. so there is, at least in part, historical precedence of similar occurrences.

anyway, back to lancelot. he eventually flees from his intended caretakers yet again and wanders to the town of corbenic. there the children recognize his madness and begin to harass him, throwing stones and sticks, until he's incited to retaliate and wounds anyone who crosses him. eventually he wanders into the castle itself. the courtlings recognize he's mad, and feed him scraps. satiated, he literally curls up and sleeps on the floor like a dog. it's this, at last, that allows him to begin the slow recovery to wellness.

finally, after all these years, someone recognizes lancelot for who he is. none other than elaine of corbenic.

she tells her father pelles and he concocts a plan to capture and cure lancelot using the power of the holy grail. so as the times before, they wait until lancelot falls asleep, and bind him up. then at long last, his senses are restored.

when lancelot awakens from his stupor, he knows not how he got there, but begins walking upright and talking coherently again. he implores pelles to explain how he came there. once up to speed. lancelot is grateful no one but pelles and elaine recognized him. now let it be made clear that while lancelot's psychotic episode had finally concluded, he's not otherwise alleviated of mental anguish. he's still depressed about his banishment from logres and camelot, and deeply ashamed of his many years spent mad. thus he requests of pelles to live somewhere far away, where no one but pelles and elaine will ever recognize him.

so an island with a castle is located on which lancelot can live and he, together with elaine and a small court, go there to stay. lancelot loses his knightly abilities and instead takes up the daily ritual of subjecting himself to painful memories of logres, which then in turn bring him "relief" and "comfort". an apt description of rumination and self harm.

eventually, lancelot sends a secret message back to the land of logres intended to entice people to the island to fight him so he can relive the glory days.

in the end, it's lancelot's own half brother hector along with young and newly knighted perceval who find lancelot on the isle of joy. hector tells lancelot that the queen summons him, and lancelot immediately prepares to leave. on hearing this, galahad tells his grandfather he'll go and lodge in the abbey run by his great aunt, so that he might be nearer to his father. [Lancelot Part VI, Ch. 179 Hector and Perceval Find Lancelot, and They All Return to Camelot; Galahad’s Arrival Is Announced]

and with that, lancelot reenters society with his brother and son, which kicks off the grail quest in the subsequent book. that's a lot of info and reading, but all this to say that yeah, lancelot is known for his mental instability, to say the least. thanks for the ask!

[scrimblobimblowhump]

what a niche whump thing you enjoy?

hi, hello, sorry for replying to this so late but thank you so much for the ask!

here’s some niche tropes i love (some are more hyperspecific than specifically niche but you get the spirit)

oxygen masks! everything about them!! the way the fog up and obscure whumpee's face, making their status as Sick Person faster noticed than their individual personhood; the way they muffle whumpee's voice when talking, especially if they're very weak; as a matter of fact, i'm also feral about them being gently instructed not to talk while on oxygen; all these are even better when you make whumpee all sleepy and delirious on top of everything

warm compresses! we all know and love cool cloths for fevers and whatnot, but i see little appreciation for the toasty ones which is a shame because warmth is something so comforting and kind; speaking of compresses, i also have an oddly hyperspecific liking for when they're put not only over the forehead but also the eyes; also when the cloth catches some of the bang hairs underneath it>>; also consider all that but with whumpee being bathed and caretaker gently putting a warm water-soaked washcloth over their eyes MMM YEAH.

whumper being gentle and kind. and I don't even mean necessarily in a "creepy comfort" kind of way(though that smacks too) - more like, despite being a whumper, they're kind, patient and empathetic towards whumpee's struggle (even if a lot of it was inflicted by whumper themselves). what perfectly evokes that vibe i'm thinking of is that post.

whumpee falling asleep in a warm bath post-rescue. what else can i say

man, something about *professors* in whump. creepy genius lecturer who does unethical experiments or is a serial killer, maybe their whumpee is a helpless student... on the flipside, consider professor whumpee - something about someone smart, fortified in their ivory tower, perhaps emotionally detached, getting their absolute shit rocked; also consider a hurt/comfort scenario where they get cared for by another academic fellow or even a student (live laugh love role reversal). what about caretaker professors - imagine them being very gentle and protective over their students, perhaps caring for them like their own children when sick or otherwise Woed in some way.

doctors, anatomy lecturers, surgeons and such as serial killers!! or maybe torturing someone!! they're skilled with the knife, know all the ins and outs of the human body and use the knowledge they were given for the sake of good to be evil instead.

as mentioned above - role reversals!!! one of my favourites is doctor-turned-patient: they can understand exactly what's happening to them and how they'd treat it but now they're forced to put their life in the hands of others just like countless people put theirs in their hands (even better if their medical team is made up of colleagues - consider the possibility of them being cared for by friends or workplace rivals<33)

grief as emotional whump!!whumpee struggling to get out of bed and take care of themselves,the sheer trauma of it all, being constantly panicked, angry and depressed, the possibility of developing complex grief/PTSD(with all the tasty symptoms)

kind resraints <33 having to tie up a traumatised, overwhelmed whumpee after rescue because in their blind panic they keep on trying to elope or hurt themselves and others, maybe even gagging them so that they can't bite; reassuring them that it's for their own good and because caretaker(s) loves them; caretaker ensuring to restrain them as loosely and gently as possible, using the softest of cloth; also caretaker being absolutely heartbroken seeing them like that and feeling unbearably guilty that they have to do it

blanket burritos!! plz i need more content of whumpees being swaddled and cuddled till all their anxiety or chills or pain or anything leaves them as they drop into deep sleep

as a matter of fact,in hurt/comfort we also need a loooot more non-sexual direct skin contact. not just as means of emergency rewarming in case of hypothermia but generally for the sake of comfort and closeness

something about passive voice..."they were"+choked", "tied up", "dragged", "sedated", "held", "cleaned up", "warmed", "cuddled"...

this is extremely obscure but you know how sometimes in movies ,when captive whumpee is gagged with a cloth or something, by the pattern of the fabric you can tell that it was something random like a kitchen towel grabbed on the go? yeah...(esp in a domestic whump scenario); also when said cloth (or maybe also even the ones used for the ropes) is torn from whumpee's own clothes? good shit (something like that happens in the green knight, this movie is peak whump, h/c and angst material, begging y'all to watch it)

SCHOOL/CAMP BULLIES!!!!! love the trope of some poor nerd being used for some abusive prank. even better if a teacher is caretaker afterwards

in film: that dim, orange-ish lighting when we get a shot of restlessly asleep feverish whumpee in bed

ive made a post about this already but: whumpee with long, luscious hair getting it agressively chopped off(with a knife, even??) by their enemies when they're captured to humiliate them

caretaker calling whumpee “buddy”

whumpee's parent being caretaker!! imagine them gently caring for a delirious whumpee who clings to them, weakly calling out "mom/dad?". even better if whumpee is a grown adult now; just as good - whumpee's parent being their whumper! (maybe even the actual archenemy/villain of whumpee if they're a hero). imagine them torturing them and whumpee crying out "mom/dad, you're hurting me!" again, even better if whumpee is all grown up.

lmao this turned out RIDICULOUSLY long, im sorry if its incoherent, its 3am here and i power through by the force of a chocolate bar and the will of god. anyways, i hope you enjoyed, if anyone writes something inspired by these tropes plz plz share with me, id eat that shit up.

(everyone plz keep on sending me asks, answering them is so fun<33)