#talks about dissociation

[drarrily-we-row-along]

The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known (Part Three)

Draco was itching to see Potter, desperately curious to know what he might learn next about the other man.

And, if he was being honest, a bit desperate to see if Potter would let him touch him again. Nothing untoward, just... it had felt nice to let his fingers tangle in Potter's curls, to know that his hands were helping instead of hurting.

He found himself, for possibly the first time ever, leaving early to arrive at Potter's house for movie night. The normal hum of anxiety, making his skin a hint too tight, seemed to have been reduced to a mere pinprick in the trips of his fingers at the prospect of learning more about Potter.

When he showed up in the living room, Potter was nowhere to be seen. Casually, he greeted everyone who made eye contact on his way through, heading to the kitchen, hoping to find Potter there.

He pushed the door open, and there he was, standing on the other side of the island, working diligently at several different spreads of food. "Gin, can you grab the olives from the-" he said before looking up and seeing Draco standing there. "Draco," he said in surprise and something pleasant flared in his stomach at the sound of his name in Potter's mouth, "err. Malfoy," he corrected, trying to look anywhere but at him. "Sorry. I thought-"

"I can help," he said, moving toward the cupboard and pulling down the can of olives.

"You're a guest," he argued.

Draco shrugged, "I'm woefully single and," he added, lowering his voice and raising an eyebrow, "Ginerva and Pansy seemed rather busy when I walked through a moment ago."

Potter groaned, "not the mental image I needed right now." He shook his head, "Well, if you don't mind would you grab that punch bowl from the counter?"

"Still hung up on Ginerva?" he asked casually as he moved to get the red punch bowl for the other man.

"Pfft," Potter snorted as he set out the juice, ginger ale, and gin on the top of the island. "Don't be ridiculous. We're friends, when I say she's like a sister to me, I genuinely mean it."

He hummed, something easing in his chest at the admission, he wasn't going to look too hard at that.

"What about you and Pansy?" Potter asked, glancing up at him before going back to measuring liquid in the punch bowl.

"What about us?"

Potter lifted a shoulder, "Ever feel like you might want that again?"

"With Pansy?" he asked incredulously. "Disgusting."

Laughing, Potter replied, "you didn't used to seem to think so, all that lounging in her lap and having your hair stroked."

"Potter, I don't know what I have ever done to give you the impression that I am attracted to women. Aside from being a touch and affection starved teenager, apparently."

At that, Potter looked up at him, blinking a few times, "You're gay?"

"Yes?" he replied. "I thought literally everyone knew that." He glanced down where Potter was still pouring gin into the punch, "You're overflowing your bowl," he said.

"Huh?" Potter asked, still staring at him uncomprehendingly.

"Your punch bowl," he said, nodding at it, "You're overflowing."

Potter followed his gaze, "Shit," he gasped, ceasing pouring and casting a quick charm to clean up the spill.

Draco cleared his throat uncertainly, it had been a long time since he'd felt anything akin to embarrassment about his sexuality.

"Sorry," Potter said, glancing up at him. "I didn't mean to-"

"You apologize a lot," Draco commented.

Potter tilted his head, "I put my foot in my mouth a lot," he said.

He chuckled, "I suppose, but you also apologize for existing."

His jaw clicked shut, clenching. "I don't know what you mean."

Draco realized that he'd stumbled onto something seemingly sensitive without exactly meaning to. "I mean," he said carefully, "That you've apologized to me for being surprised about something, for having basic human needs like someone to help with all of the work of hosting a party every week, for not knowing who was walking in your kitchen, for telling me about your life as though it's some sort of burden-"

"You sound like my therapist," Potter said, shoulders tense. He avoided making eye contact and Draco felt his heart twist uncomfortably.

Potter had been honest with him, had handed Draco little bits of himself like a gift. Taking a deep breath, he decided to return the sentiment with a little vulnerability of his own. "Yes, well," he said, voice light, "I've spent enough time with mine to know what one sounds like."

The other man tilted his head at Draco, "I didn't know you saw a therapist."

"No one does," he said with a shrug. "But I needed to," he continued. "I was really fucked up after the war, still am if I'm being honest. He helps me straighten out my thoughts, you know? Get things into order a bit."

Potter nodded, "Yeah. I get that."

He gave the other man a tentative smile, "So," he said, intent on changing the subject, "What needs to go out there?"

"Oh, none of it," Potter said, waving a hand. "This is all stuff to refill later. Sometimes we get busy playing games or I don't want to miss the movie," he hurried to add like his needed an excuse. "Plus at the beginning of the night, I feel like I'm intruding," he added, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Oh come now, Potter," he teased, "Don't you simply love being the third wheel?"

The other man laughed, "Or fourth in the case of Ron, Hermione, and Blaise."

"And who doesn't love the lectures about putting yourself out there more?"

He nodded, "Or the pitying, 'you're next.'" he added with a shudder. "Merlin I hate that."

"So, instead of enduring their advice and pity, you were hiding in the kitchen-"

"I wasn't hiding!" he protested, but he was laughing, eyes bright.

Draco continued like he hadn't been interrupted, "-and doing what exactly?"

"Daydreaming," Potter replied, a little shyly, tipping his head down and glancing up at Draco from under his eyelashes.

"Anything interesting?"

Potter shook his head, "Never. They're all terribly mundane-"

"Tell me?" he asked softly, barely daring to hope the other man might because the truth was that both of the daydreams Potter had given him had made him feel more feelings than he could even name.

He tilted his head again, looking curiously at Draco. "There's this one I have in the kitchen a lot, actually," he said, voice soft, wrapping Draco up in the cozy, casual intimacy of a soft confession.

Draco sat down on the stool across from Potter and leaned his chin in his hand to listen.

Bemused, Potter continued, "It's just this daydream of him coming into the kitchen, seeing that I'm working on something that I'm not particularly enjoying, and putting his hands over mine. Sometimes it's dishes, or cooking, or cleaning up, or prep work," he said gesturing to the counter full of things to be brought out later. "But he gently empties my hands and holds them in his as he turns he around to look at him."

He said nothing when Potter paused, waiting with baited breath for him to complete the picture.

With a little shake of his head Potter continued, "I expect that he'll kiss me and I lean my body into his to receive one but he just pulls me into his arms and dances me around the kitchen. We sway and turn to music that only he can hear and I don't mind not being able to anticipate where he'll lead. It's nice just to be held and cared for," he finished with a little shrug.

"You've got a lovely mind," Draco murmured, because it was true and he really enjoyed hearing about the ways that he daydreamed.

"It's a trauma response," Potter replied, matter-of-factly.

"Sorry?"

He shrugged, eyes on Draco's left ear as he said, "I learned how to dissociate when I was pretty young. I was always trying to imagine a better world than the one I lived in as a child," he added. "So I just got good at imagining things that made me feel better."

"What were you trying to dissociate from?" he asked as the door to the kitchen opened.

Potter's attention snapped away from Draco and to whomever had just entered the kitchen, "Hi Blaise," he said with a smile. "What are you looking for?"

"You, actually," he replied as he sidled up next to Draco. "We were wondering about getting a game of Exploding Snap going?"

"Yeah," Potter said, grinning at him, "No problem. I'll be out in a sec to get the cards."

Blaise rapped his knuckles on the table, "You're the best," he said with a wink before he disappeared.

Potter turned to look at Draco, "Sorry-"

"Why?" he interrupted.

"Why what?"

"Why are you sorry?"

His brow furrowed as he looked at Draco, "I just trauma dumped on you."

"You didn't," he replied. "Why are you sorry?" he pushed.

"Because I spent five minutes talking about a daydream that wasn't even based in reality."

"I asked you to," he replied steadily. "Why are you sorry?"

"Why are you pushing me?" he asked, hands on his hips as he scowled at Draco.

He shrugged, "Because I want you to stop apologizing for being a person."

"I-"

"Harry!" Ron bellowed from the other room and Draco could have strangled him.

"For Merlin's sake," he hissed under his breath. "Yes, coming!" he called. "Fine," he snapped at Malfoy, "I'm not sorry. Is that better?"

"Much," he replied with a smirk.

"You're impossible," Potter replied but the corner of his mouth was turned up in a pleased smile.

He nodded, "I know, if you ask Pansy it's probably one of the reasons I'm single," he said with a wink.

Potter picked up one of the bowls of chips, "Really?" he asked. "I find it rather charming," he said before pushing his way out into the living room.

Draco had to stand in the kitchen and pick his jaw up off the floor before he found himself able to leave the kitchen and join everyone else.

-------------------

(Part Two) | (Part Four)

[coolhumanoidbeing]

Shout out to people with Complex Dissociative Disorders (parents edition):

If your parents genuinely changed and improved overtime

If your parents were absent when you were a kid because they were sick / ill / working / otherwise indisposed

If your parents were not your abusers

If your parents would have acted differently if they knew you were being abused

If your parents didn't have the resources or knowledge to help / understand you

If your parents were loving and yet still neglectful

If your parents inadvertently invalidated / didn't believe you, but now do

If your parents weren't your primary caregivers when the abuse happend

If you weren't abused at all and your trauma was medical / environmental / etc

Had emotionally and physically present parents but you still had disorganized attachment with them as a kid because of your delusions / paranoia / etc.

If your parents regret how they treated you

If your parents loved and love you but acted the way they did because of substances / mental illness

If your parents are not completely bad people, or bad people at all

If you still get along with your parents regardless of what they did

If you ever invalidated your own traumatic childhood experiences because your parents were "too nice"

Your trauma is not less valid if you get along with your parents today. Sure, you needed disorganized attachment to your primary caregivers as a kid to develop a CDD. But that can take plenty of formes, and they don't all include your parents being monsters.

Edit: any other emotions regarding your parents are also valid and okay, and I couldn't mean that more. Childhood trauma survivors go through so many rough emotions, and self-invalidation is sadly way too common. Your feelings are a direct result of what happened and that makes them normal.

[starstruckodysseys]

never stop blowing up is so fun bc 99% of the time it’s near incomprehensible and high octane action and then every so often out of nowhere someone will make a character choice that sucker punches you in the gut. and then it’s back to the antics so fast you get whiplash

[didtipsandhelp]

When you're dissociating and someone asks you if you're okay

[xxacidnekoxx]

me: I am traumatized and I am drawing art to cope with it and posting it to maybe reach other people who share similar trauma hoping things become a little less lonely overtime as I read other people's stories and ways of coping .. it happens that I can only draw furries and anime that well but I think its okay it doesnt make my art less meaningful... what people seem to think I am like before they get to know me: "UwU I jsut wanna forget teh twamas and sad times :< and draw CUTE FLUFFFIES XDD 🌈OWO BOYKISSERS >//< im just a kittyboy on all the druggies >w< tee hee"

[furiousgoldfish]

me: you know what, I should try talking about my problems. Maybe if people knew I would feel less alone and someone might even help me.

the voice in my head: the main part of your problem is that you're having voices in your head that make you upset. You can't tell people that, you'll get institutionalized.

[interstellarsystem]

Plurality and Suffering

This was going to be a reblog to someone else's post, but this deserves its own. My wording might be slightly weird because I'm having some disorganised thinking, ask to clarify if you need.

People online have such an issue with plurals presenting themselves as happy, or enjoying the fact that they're a system in the slightest. If you're not all doom and gloom, people just... Assume you're faking it for fun? As if plurals have to share their suffering online? As if they have to suffer?

"You're clearly treating plurality like its all fun and games! Look at all these silly, lighthearted posts! Not a hint of distress or trauma! How can you be diagnosed with DID when you're clearly not disordered?"

Do you ever stop to think for more than 5 seconds about personal safety? There's people who hate systems left and right, cringe subreddit posters, and generally people who would take that information and use it against you in some way. You don't share your personal name and address online, so why should we share the ins and outs of our daily struggles? Our trauma in any amount of detail? Anything that could be used to hurt or manipulate us further?

Not only is no one else entitled to that information, but it's not safe to share in a place where strangers can see it. We don't share a list of our triggers for the same reasons--we don't want to hand out the keys to our trauma to anyone who happens to see us online.

Not every plural has to suffer either, mind you. So many types of systems tend to not struggle due to their plurality or even anything remotely related to it, and that's okay! You don't need to suffer to be real, suffering isn't a prerequisite to being plural. I'm not even just talking about nondisordered systems here either.

Systems with CDDs can heal. DID, OSDD, DDNOS, anything. They can get to a point where life is worth living if it didn't feel like it already. It could be through final fusion, but it could also be through learning to live together happily as a collective. They can get to a point where the major suffering of the past is far behind. Having a dissociative disorder is NOT a death sentence, I promise you. Things can get better, either through therapy, or medication or just time and learning itself--all while still remaining happily plural.

Acting like disabled people (or even a subgroup of them) will never ever be able to live a life with any happiness or one even worth living at all is an ableist argument used to support so many horrible things thrown toward disabled people of all kinds. It's a few steps away from saying we need to be put out of our misery because we can never live a meaningful, happy life. We've seen this exact argument used against all kinds of mentally or physically disabled people, saying it's cruel to keep them living. And that's absolutely ridiculous.

It's so sad that these sentiments are common in CDD spaces. Yes, there are struggles that come with the disorder, but you can heal. The idea that you will never be okay is a lie. You might not be at a neurotypical level of functioning, but you can be happy, and you can be happy being plural. You are worth it, your disorder doesn't change that, and neither does the general community vibe of "everyone has to suffer and hate their system". You can be happy, you can love your system, you can grow together and make life what you want it to be.

Being a system of any kind is never, EVER a sign that your life will never be good. It's never a sign that you can never feel happy again. It's never a sign that you should just give up. And being required to show off how much you struggle in order to have the basic amount of respect--people just simply believing that you experience what you say you do--is absolutely ridiculous. You don't need to suffer at all, and if you are suffering, you don't need to do it forever--much less share that with people who could use it against you.

Do better, for yourselves and for others in your community. It's okay to be in pain, it's okay to wish things were different, it's okay to share experiences and gather support, but it's not okay to act like no one who is plural could ever have happiness in their life, or claim that those who don't suffer as much as you are fake. Stop spreading the sentiment that suffering is the only way.

[al-luviec]

something simple to try to get out of art block (it didn't work)

[frogaroundandfindout]

Alfred calls Dick to check in after losing track of him for several days. Dick begins to tell Alfred that he doesn’t know what to do but interrupts himself in a panic about Bruce needing his help. Alfred assures him Bruce is fine and tells dick he’s worried about him (Batman: The 12-Cent Adventure #1)

[cosmossystem]

personally i think you should be legally required to have discovered your plurality and learned to function as a system for at least three full calendar years before being allowed a voice in syscourse. because when you don't, we end up with newbies regurgitating the same dumb fucking takes over and over such as "children can never have alters" or "endogenic systems were invented last year" or "your trauma wasn't bad enough to cause xyz" or even my personal favorite "there is never any overlap between DID/OSDD and MADD/BPD/literally any disorder"

[coffin-ramblings]

Ashley is "very not good" and "in fact very bad". That is what the promo card tells us.

The flippant attitude to cannibalism and murder, the abuse and manipulation of Andrew, and constant death threats to Julia prove that, so why do they need to say that? Isn't that enough to prove that she's a bad person? On the same promo, we are told Andrew "exists" and is a "doormat extraordinaire", which while true, is a lot more complicated than it looks. He does not just "exists", he was the one who raised Ashley thus one of her "creators", and he is not that much of (if he ever was) a doormat extraordinaire, he lets Ashley make the choices because it's what he wants, and has asserted power several times throughout the game for his and Ashley's benefit. So is what the promo says about Ashley completely true in light of that? Is the truth perhaps a lot more complicated, as it was with Andrew?

Furthermore, it's quite odd how Ashley is quick to accept being called a "tar soul" and how she implies she's a bad person too when she and Andy buried Nina's body.

And in Decay vision, if she kills Andrew, she goes on a rant about how she's glad he's dead, despite it clearly being the worst thing she has ever experienced.

While it's easy to think that she's having a mental breakdown and saying stuff out of madness, I have seen someone (can't find the post though) argue that this is Ashley's attempt to continue her self-narrative that she is a "bad person". She believes no one likes her because she's a bad person. She thinks not even Andrew likes her, and she "has to" drag him the "good person" to be her level of the "bad person" to keep him stuck with her. And when she kills her brother, her parent, her best friend, her soulmate, her everything, she immediately jumps to the justification that she is glad that he died instead of being devastated that he tried to kill her, because bad people can't feel remorse and heartbreak from having to kill someone they love, right?

And I'm inclined to agree with them. Ashley's thought process of pranking Nina is that she'll have her back as a friend after she learns her "lesson", even though she isn't happy being constantly left out or avoided by her.

She didn't hate Nina then, she was afraid of being even more lonely than before if Nina takes Andrew's attention away from her. And her initial reactions to Nina's death was to go "oops", try to justify why she died, cover it up by burying her, and after she's buried, Ashley says that she can just forget about her by not thinking about her for a long time.

That is not the reaction of someone "bad" reveling in their victory of an innocent person's death and trying to get away with it, that is the reaction of a kid who went through something traumatic, not want to get in trouble for it, and trying to rationalize it with something that sounds like an adult in their life (Renee?) would say. Then their brain triggers dissociative amnesia because remembering it would cause great stress and PTSD. Given how stressful Leyley's life was and still is, it makes sense that's her brain's main coping method, and Nina's death was just another instance of it shunting trauma away in an attempt to keep PTSD from happening. It is likely that amnesia made Ashley quite forgetful, as dissociative amnesia does not affect just one singular event, it also affects other memories as an overprotective measure. This also may be why she develops such a flippant attitude to their crimes: joking about them helps her not have to confront the weight of what they just did. Thus, even that attitude being a marker of her being a "bad person" is more questionable. Really, her actions that have the intent to directly harm people are what her make a bad person, but I digress.

The idea that her flippant attitude is perhaps not a good marker of her being a "bad person" is best shown in Episode 1 after they eat the neighbor. Ashley is made aware that her devil-may-care attitude is quite abnormal and worrying for Andrew, which worries her. If she talks before going to bed, she gets visibly confused and worried at Andrew saying she needs to see a professional.

When he later asks how she's so unbothered by the cannibalism, she replies she says she compartmentalizes nervously, which she then follows up afterwards with a joke to not have to dwell on it.

That specific coping method of compartmentalization is the same thing Andrew's brain does in his dream in Episode 2, where it ends with him having a flashback of burying Nina.

In fact, it's interesting how we never get to see adult Ashley's every day psyche. This is not the same as seeing her thoughts and perspectives in the waking world, nor is it the same as the Burial vision where it's Ashley's self-narrative of her life from childhood to adulthood and how she potentially changes it. We never get to see her dream without it being a vision, a glimpse of what her mind looks like in the present processing her experiences in the every day and the past.

This is particularly crucial because while Nina appears while Andrew's brain is doing its standard compartmentalizing of Andrew's current stresses, the only times Nina appears in Ashley's head (outside of Burial vision) were flashbacks of when she is doing this as a child. While it's framed as the moment when Andrew "proves" his devotion to her, flashbacks similar to PTSD ones can happen alongside dissociative amnesia, and they do occur in dreams. Even though Ashley has forgotten Nina's name and eyes, she is always there, haunting her dreams.

This all suggests that the plot twist of our perceptions of the characters in episode 3 is that when we finally get to play Ashley in her normal dreams or see her mental breakdown (maybe if she kills Andrew?), we find out that she feels some sort of guilt for Nina's death and perhaps their other crimes. Even though she insists to herself she doesn't feel guilt about that because she is a "bad person", it is all a lie that she manages to convince to herself and the audience. This would be very shocking as we're in her head a lot of the time, so we'd assume she can't lie to us. But she has all along, just like how Andrew has to us.

[keets-writing-corner]

guess who's still thinking about Lucifer >.<

anyways thought it'd be fun, given my previous post about his dissociation with conversations, to try and guess what his takeaways were from his phone call with Charlie based on his reactions

Maybe I'm wrong about what he's catching and what he's missing but either way I had fun

strike through= what he missed bold=what he caught neither bold nor strikethrough= he might've heard it/made it out through the white noise, but not enough to connect the dots RED= only heaven is in red cuz you cannot convince me otherwise that that's not a trigger word for him

Idk thought it’d be fun to try and guess what Lucifer is ACTUALLY hearing with his dissociation filter on let's GO

Lucifer: [insert absolute fail of hello]

Charlie: Hi Dad! Lucifer: Hey! How are ya? Oh! Wh-wh-where are you these days? Charlie: You know where I am, Dad… I’ve told you before…

Lucifer: You hAve? Oh. yeah Uh, erm well I um uh

Charlie: I told you when you called me five months ago! Or did you not listen?

Lucifer: No no no just forgot! I just forgot. I’ve been really busy with you know… um. iMpOrTanT tHiNgS

Charlie: Well I’m actually running a hotel to rehabilitate sinners, maybe you saw our commercial?

Lucifer: No? Sadly I… missed it!  Lucifer: You know I haven’t been watching much TV lately! Scrambles the brain!  Lucifer: but hey! A hotel! Fun!

Charlie: Listen, Dad, I’ve got kinda… a big ask?

Lucifer: -spit take- Yeah?! Of course! Anything in my power is yours for the asking you just name it

Charlie: I need to speak to heaven! Well, whoever’s in charge up there above Adam above anybody, I need to go to the top!

Lucifer: NO Lucifer: no no no no Lucifer: That’s uhahah no…

Charlie: Look! Dad! I don’t ask you for much. I never have, but this-this is really important to me. It’s the most important thing I’ve ever done and I… need… you… I need your help

Lucifer: I-... I don’t know Charlie

Charlie: Please just- Come see what I’m trying to do. You’ll see why it’s a really good idea and heaven is bound to agree if I get the chance to talk to them

Charlie: Please dad

Lucifer: wait… you’re… INVITING ME OVER??? Lucifer: ABSOLUTELY Lucifer: I’LL BE THERE IN AN HOUR

___

so yeah, he can semi follow along but like crucial bits and pieces ARE being left out

[starrynightteam]

OSDD system when they start to open up:

[dykedvonte]

Why do you think did Curly let Jimmy go before the crash? I've seen the theory Curly briefly thought about crashing too but didn't expect Jimmy to go through with it

I generally believe it was shock and a bit of denial.

It’s the sort of thing where Curly knew Jimmy enough to know he blows up at things but he never would’ve expected him to go through with something so crazy. He gives Jimmy way too much benefit. It’s just his nature and the dynamics he has with Jimmy. They have a stable relationship as friends but it’s stabilized by the unhealthy toxic aspects that keep him in it. He’s like this with Anya, taking the gun is something he really shouldn’t have kept off the record, so is Swansea’s feigned hostility toward Daisuke. He doesn’t want to get people in trouble and doesn’t want to believe anyone would cause trouble other than to themselves. He’s a very lenient man.

I think the words were hollow in his head. Said but not really meant like all the times Jimmy lashes out and says something cruel to him or others. He never means it, if he did why would he still be Curly’s friend? Curly’s head wasn’t in the right space in that moment, he just got through panicking with Anya and if the sound design is anything to go by, was panicked and preoccupied going to confront Jimmy. I mean, the flash of the warning signs before he runs back are identical to the dissociative episode of sort he has when going to talk to Jimmy to do his Psyc eval.

There is this sort of assumption in fanon that Curly was the idealic person for the job and simply failed. None of them were the idealic people to be there, it’s Curly’s entire concern with the ladder he chose. I see more interpretations of him being purposefully ignorant where I see him as just always looking the wrong way or not in a place where he can see it. There’s something different about seeing something than being told about it in the human mind. It may just be the psych student in me but Curly def has some sort of cognitive dissonance just like Jimmy but when it comes to his role as a Captain vs who he is.

They blur in his head to where if you ask him if he was acting as a Captain or a friend or himself to his crew he couldn’t answer. Not with confidence even if he did. There are many times we see that Curly himself is not in the right headspace to lead the Tulpar and that’s outside of anything with Jimmy. He’s spacey, he’s not sleeping, he’s deeply unhappy with himself and life. It’s why there’s believability he crashed the ship. Maybe the others saw it, or maybe Jimmy heard enough of it to spin it in a way that made Curly seem suicidally depressed.

So the tdlr is I think it wasn’t so much letting Jimmy go, more so not seeing the severity of what he was allowing to transpire. In his mind it’s just another one of Jimmy’s bluffs, cruel words, off words but just words. Jimmy rarely ever acts, why would he now? Maybe he’s never seen it because Jimmy hides those actions? Either way, he just never thought he’d really do it.

[bbcphile]

Mysterious Lotus Casebook and Complex PTSD Representations: Part I

One of my favorite things about Mysterious Lotus Casebook is how surprisingly nuanced and unusual its portrayal of complex PTSD is. So many shows either introduce character trauma to make the character Sad and Brooding, Angry and Violent (if they’re a villain) or Hesitant to Start a Relationship (if it’s a romance), and that’s usually as in-depth as it gets. If they address the unique after effects of child abuse that lead to complex PTSD at all, it’s usually either explain why a character is a homicidal monster (which is all sorts of problematic) or it’s limited to a single phobia, which can be overcome by the Power of Love, or it’s just something that crops up occasionally for Plot and then forgotten about the rest of the time. 

Mysterious Lotus Casebook gives us two deeply traumatized characters–Li Lianhua and Di Feisheng–who each have clear symptoms of complex PTSD, and yet, their cPTSD manifests completely differently because of the types of traumas that caused it and their relationships to the people causing the traumas. And their manifestations of cPTSD affect just about every level of their being, including their sense of self, their decision-making, and their relationships with others, and it includes some of the incredibly important manifestations of cPTSD that are almost never shown in media while avoiding the most insulting stereotypes! 

PTSD vs cPTSD

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is an anxiety disorder caused by experiencing a single (or short lived) traumatic event (an accident, assault, medical emergency, fighting in a war, etc), where the symptoms last for longer than a month. Symptoms include things like reexperiencing the event (flashbacks), avoidance (of things related to the event), changes in mood (depression, anger, fear, etc), and issues with emotional regulation (hypervigilance–being constantly on the lookout for threats–irritability/angry outbursts, etc.).

Complex PTSD happens if someone has experienced long term, chronic/repeated trauma that induces hopelessness and no chance of escape (survivors of extended child abuse, human trafficking, domestic violence, prisoners of war, slavery, etc.). It’s also often interpersonal in ways a car crash or medical emergency is not, and is particularly linked with chronic trauma during childhood: chronic stress hormones introduce literal physical changes in a growing brain, particularly the amygdala (which processes fear), hippocampus (which is responsible for learning/memory), and the prefrontal cortex (which is responsible for executive function), so it can affect every aspect of life and also affect a child’s progression through developmental stages. In addition to these physical changes to the brain, the prolonged trauma–particularly the helplessness–distorts a child’s sense of self, the perpetrator, and the world in ways that alter their decision making, their memory, and their future relationships. 

For instance, whereas a traumatic event that caused PTSD might make you depressed or not trust the person who harmed you (or to fear driving), the trauma from cPTSD might make you suicidal, blame yourself for your victimization, decide to isolate to avoid interpersonal relationships to keep from getting hurt, or become obsessed with never being harmed again.

Basically, cPTSD has the core symptoms from PTSD with some extra challenges, including issues with emotional regulation, self-concept, interruptions in consciousness, difficulties with relationships, perceptions of the perpetrator, and systems of meaning.

DFS and LLH: CPTSD Symptoms

There’s so much more to say about this than I can cover in this superficial introduction, so this will be the first of a series of metas; I’m hoping to go into more depth about some of these categories in future posts (the DFS and emotional regulation/violence one is already drafted, so stay tuned). 

Difficulties with Relationships (problems with trust, communication, missing red flags): Both DFS and LLH have a history of trusting the wrong people and not trusting the right people, both in the past and in the present of the show: in the past, LLH missed the fact that SGD hated him and DFS missed the fact that JLQ was obsessed with him, and as a result, both sects were destroyed, many people died, and the two almost destroyed each other. If they had communicated with each other instead of fighting at the donghai battle, they might have realized they were being set up and could have worked together, but their difficulties with trust after perceived betrayal made that impossible for them. They both have a history of overlooking red flags in the present–DFS in particular, keeping the red-flag-personified-JLQ around despite her history of poisoning people, including himself–and they both tend to struggle with relationships in the present: LLH runs away from and/or drugs the people who care about him, and DFS sends endless mixed messages by not telling Li Lianhua most of his plans to help him. 

Self-Concept (Self-hatred and self-fragmentation): Li Lianhua is basically the poster child for having a negative self concept: he has an overdeveloped sense of self-blame and responsibility, even believing he deserves to die for leading his men to their deaths, and once he learns he was manipulated and SGD was behind it all, he seems to think it’s his own fault that he was manipulated, lied to, and abused. His self-loathing is so extreme that he imagines his earlier self, Li Xiangyi, to have died, and tries as much as possible to be nothing like that earlier persona. His repeated insistence that Li Xiangyi and Li Lianhua are NOT the same person is reminiscent of the fragmentary sense of self that comes with more extreme trauma, like Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) or Other-Specified Dissociative Disorder (OSDD), where traumatic experiences are so painful that people form different alters, or differentiated self-states, that can have different names and skills and memories and identities. 

Di Feisheng doesn’t have the self-hatred or guilt that LLH does, and it seems like he tries to skip over questions of self worth, blame, or hatred by focusing exclusively on staying true to his code of ethics he’s developed for himself and focusing on gaining the strength necessary to fight for his freedom from mind control and the Di Fortress. But even though he’s kept his Di name, kept his goals the same since escaping Di Fortress, and hasn’t tried to separate himself from his trauma the way LLH did with LXY, he’s even more willing than LLH to take on different identities: it’s literally one of his martial arts skills. The Bone Constriction Skill lets him become someone else for a time, whether that’s a child or Shi Hun. It fits well with his willingness to be whoever he needs to be to accomplish his goals: he’s perfectly willing to be seen as a heartless villain if it lets him protect LLH, and he’s willing to flirt with and pretend to be jealous of JLQ to get information from her, and he’s willing to be LLH’s a-Fei, both with and without his memories.

Interruptions in Consciousness (Amnesia and nightmares for Everyone): LLH and DFS both have nightmares and flashbacks/memories of traumatic events, and as mentioned above, both have interesting hints of having fragmented/fluid senses of self. They both also dissociate, or separate themselves from the present when dealing with traumatic things:  LLH spaces out and gets stuck in his past memories about SGD when talking to FDB after burying SGD, and DFS dissociates from physical pain so as not to make noise both after he’s been stabbed and poisoned with Wuxin Huai and again when JLQ is torturing him in her water dungeon.

They both also have dissociative amnesia that takes away trauma memories, although one is from a poisonous incense plus the magic of qi macgyvering:  LLH forgot the existence of his older brother who died in front of him, and DFS as a-Fei had just about all of his memories (except a few of killing as a child) taken away. Amnesia is a huge part of cPTSD, because it’s the brain’s way of trying to protect you from truths that you might not survive. It can manifest as blocking out one single traumatic event, a bunch of thematically or temporally linked traumatic events, a skill set related to the trauma, or, in the case of something like DID or OSDD, just about everything. It’s endlessly fascinating to me that the show gives us one example of definite traumatic amnesia through LLH, and then seems to almost transform the experience of having DID and being a new part and finding yourself with a new name and very little else into an exaggerated fantasy setting (interestingly, people often report experiencing debilitating headaches when they try to regain memories behind the amnesia barrier). I doubt this is what they were actually going for, since DID is almost universally portrayed incorrectly and offensively in media (one of the alters is almost always portrayed as a serial killer, but that’s a rant for another day), but the different names and the presence of amnesia with LLH made it a fascinating enough parallel that I had to mention it.

 Problems with Emotional Regulation (Lashing in vs. lashing out): Li Xiangyi and Di Feisheng are polar opposites when it comes to struggles with emotional regulation: whereas LXY turns his anger inward, directing it all toward self-hate in what’s often called a “toxic shame spiral,” both after the donghai battle and after he finds out about SGD’s role in his shifu’s death, DFS lashes out physically at those who have harmed him, usually via choking people, although he is usually exerting an impressive amount of control over his emotions and strength. To put in perspective just how different their emotional strategies are and how much effort DFS puts into emotional regulation, compare how much more calm he is than LLH during any revelation of past betrayal or painful information, any scene where they confront the people who have abused them, or any scene where they learn they’ve been wrong about something big; LLH is most likely having an emotional flashback (re-experiencing the emotions from the earlier traumas) and DFS is probably compartmentalizing them or dissociating from them to process later/never so he can stay semi-functional and not show a potential opponent a weak spot. 

NOTE: This means that DFS is loooong overdue for a very dramatic breakdown when it eventually all catches up to him and he can’t distract himself from it anymore.

Perceptions of Perpetrators: In this way only, Di Feisheng has one advantage: he knows the head of Di Fortress is a cruel, abusive tyrant. While he clearly still fears him, even as a physically strong adult (he has nightmares, flashbacks, and dedicates his life to being free from him, which means he still to some extent feels young, small, and helpless when he thinks of him), DFS knows that he hates him and wants to be free of him. This is probably part of why he’s spared some of the self-hatred LLH experiences: he knows he didn’t deserve the abuse because seeing it happen to other children means he knows the abuse wasn’t a personal reflection on him. It does, however, motivate him to want to be stronger and invulnerable so as to never be helpless again, and that obsession is what drives him to have a single-minded focus on reaching the pinnacle of the jianghu.  

It’s so much more complicated for Li Lianhua (and for a more detailed analysis, check out this meta): the childhood perpetrators were manifold–a slew of bandits, whichever children and adults on the street would abuse him for existing and being poor–it probably felt like life itself was to blame. It’s no wonder that when his shifu and shiniang took him in, they were the ultimate rescuers whom he hero-worshipped, so when he felt he made a mistake and his life fell apart, he blamed himself: at least there would be someone to blame that way and something he could do about it (try to kill his past self and hate everything about him). It’s also very telling that LLH doesn’t blame JLQ or YBQ all that much when he learns they poisoned him, and that he’s more angry that SGD murdered their shifu than he is that SGD set him up, hated him, and was the real mastermind behind everything he had blamed himself for; he struggles to stay angry at people who harm him, and would rather blame and hate himself for being tricked than hate the person who tricked him. So, whereas DFS tries to destroy the people who abused him, LLH tries to destroy himself.

If you read this far, thanks! I’m probably going to be posting the DFS and emotional regulation/violence against perpetrator meta next, because it’s drafted, but if there are any of these you desperately want me to talk about more sooner rather than later, let me know! :D 

[ckret2]

One of the things that came with immortality—mature, cosmic-scale immortality, not baby immortality like you found in vampires with a few measly centuries under their belts—was an expertise at meditation.

And it had nothing to do with being particularly wise, or serene, or enlightened (although Bill would argue he himself happened to be all those things). Even the most rambunctious, cantankerous, petty, spiteful, impatient, silly immortal in the multiverse could drop into a thoughtless trance deeper than the Mariana Trench with nothing but five seconds' notice that he had some time to kill and there was nothing interesting on TV. 

Most mortals struggled with this idea, the same way fish struggled to understand how it was so easy for land mammals to hold their breath underwater. They didn't understand that it was a necessary survival skill.

Some millennia were boring. "You've had every conversation you can imagine with every person you know, you won't see a fresh planet for an eon, you're floating in the void of space, and your only company is the glitter thrown off of dead stars" boring. So boring the only way to get through them was by holding your breath until they were over. And in those times, the only way to endure the soul-crushing mind-shredding suicide-inducing boredom of those long, slow, dull millennia was knowing how to productively dissociate for the next five thousand years without so much as needing a snack break.

Bill was very old. Bill was very good at meditating.

It wasn't doing him a bit of good.