#trauma and flashbacks

[geelizzzie]

Whumptober day 15!

We're finally at the conclusion of my day 3! Tokigawa... he deserves better. He deserves good people in his life...

Day 15: Childhood Trauma | Painful Hug | "I did good, right?"

Summary:

The discarded knife. The plasters. A soft cloth on ragged edges.

A retelling of chapter 16 from Tokigawa's perspective.

[hinamie]

to moving forward

[chloesimaginationthings]

Gregory reminded Michael of some bad FNAF memories,,,

[dying-weeds]

[jeremysknoxes]

poor wymack is traumatized by neil's terrible clothing

[myiliterallyhavenolifegoals]

i'm unwell!!! because in stede's eyes, ned low was right!! ned says "he [ed] only likes you because of your bumbling amateur status" and calls stede blackbeard's "pet" just like izzy did in series 1

so stede steps up as a captain, kills the man who harmed his crew, and suddenly, for once in stede's life, he isn't a joke! the gentleman pirate is taken seriously and welcomed into the pirate community!

and what happens less than 24 hours later? ed calls their night together a mistake, AND LEAVES.

yes, obviously the situation is more nuanced, and these old men are once again struggling to communicate, but i 100% understand why stede went a bit of the rails at the end of episode 7. stede's been so focused on trying to help ed, that he's completely ignored his own ongoing identity crisis and trauma, and after the incident at the academy in series 1, this meltdown was long overdue.

[rival-ado]

devolving shenanigans

[thenationofzaun]

Another thing I hated in Season 2 is how often and explicity they call Vander "father". Sometimes it's more powerful to leave things unsaid, especially when they are perfectly understandable already. We know already that Vander (and Silco) were surrogate fathers to Vi and Jinx. You don't have to beat us over the head with it by having them call him father every time and even DAD💀

They did it very sparingly in Season 1 ("he's our father too" and "you're my daughter, I'll never forsake you"). The rest of the time it's left unsaid and packs much more of a punch because of it! Vi and Jinx also never directly refer to the men as "dad" or "father", they only ever call them their names. It's just another way that Season 1 was much more mature than Season 2. It had restraint that Season 2 didn't.

[ursiday]

Doodles of Elsa and Viktor from a little while back that ended up going along with this small animation I did

[mintypsii]

based on this post

update: here's part 2!

[psychocitysblog]

Why does being alive have to be so hard?

[geelizzzie]

Whumptober day 3!

Happy October 3rd to all! I'm really excited about this one. It's a two-parter with the second part coming later this whumptober... I just really like Tokigawa. A lot. I hurt him with love <3

Day 3: SET UP FOR FAILURE | "I warned you."

Summary:

The blade. The wrist. The blade on the wrist.

She was holding the knife up like a gutted fish.

The blood, sprouting up like a flower.

“Tokigawa Yukito.”

“TOKIGAWA-KUN!”

[furiousgoldfish]

A common struggle of cptsd is having what we think are 'exaggerated reactions', or 'overreactions' to things; we believe that we should be able to stay calm, collected, peaceful, pleasant and well behaved in any situations. Our common responses of intense anxiety, anger, panic, shock, pain and grief, at situations that other people are able to respond to with minimal emotion, are a source of shame for us. We feel like we don't have it under control enough, we feel like a failure for not being able to stay collected, for having these big embarassing spill of emotions that sometimes stop us from functioning completely.

It feels like it's us who is wrong, if other people are able to have 'rational' and 'appropriate' responses to things, and we don't, it has to be an 'us' problem.

But then we sometimes see people reacting in an unsual or intense way to various things, and we think nothing of it, right? If someone responds with intense laughter or tears or panic at something that might not seem that big of a deal, we don't immediately think it's innapropriate or shameful. We consider that everyone is different, and reacts to things differently. And maybe that person had something happen to them that would cause a reaction like this, maybe they have a specific reason for how they react. And in most cases, we find it normal to accept their reaction and comfort them if necessary.

Sometimes we'll even rationalize or tolerate actually harmful reactions, like people reacting with rage or violence to issues that don't require that kind of response. We take their aggression as just a great intensity of wanting something to go their way, and we dare not criticize or shame it, we understand in that case, that people can't help wanting something, and that it's natural for them to fight for it.

So why is it so shameful and mortifying for us to have reactions of panic and pain, which essentially, are not harming anyone? Because we've been shamed for reacting in any way that inconveniences anyone, and we're used to comparing ourselves to what we believe are 'normal' people, and judging ourselves harshly if we come out short.

I don't think I've felt ashamed or mortified for any reaction I had to anything, until I was getting shamed and punished for it. People in general, don't question their reaction because they have no reason to, they trust their own judgment and their own emotions, if they naturally react badly to something, it's a bad thing, and thats that. But we are often punished and made to question our own reactions, often to cover up the abuse we reacted to. We were made to develop a deep sense of shame for having a bad reaction to abuse, so that another person might abuse us all they wanted, and we would only be able to look down, feel bad, and blame ourselves.

I want to argue that our reactions are appropriate and rational, considering what happened to us. Let's take a simple example: if a dog bites a person, and that person becomes infected, or very ill, or close to death as a consequence of it, this person will naturally become scared of dogs, right? And nobody will judge them or consider their bad reaction to dogs innapropriate. If something almost kills you, you will react badly do it. It's an appropriate reaction considering what had happened.

In that same way, if we suffered continual abuse, that constantly reminded us that we're worthless, incapable of anything, unable to live on our own, cannot be loved, cannot be redeemed, intrinsically evil, and this abuse brought on struggles with anxiety, depression, cptsd, suicidal feelings, it cost us years of our life that we spent in pain and shame, then yes, everything that reminds us of that abuse, everything that causes an emotional flashback or that same feeling of shame, will have an extreme reaction! It would be unnatural if it didn't.

And today's world is filled with disapproval, judgment, shaming, and even vitriol that is used to control others. Even gaslighting is starting to become common. Every dirty look, change of tone in someone's voice, burst of anger, pointing out our flaws, lashing out on us, showing less than perfect satisfaction, all of that is likely to be triggering to a person who's been trough abuse. We would not have been sensitive to it, if it hadn't almost killed us. Our reactions are appropriate, considering what had happened to us.

Even if the rest of the world is hell bent on judging you for having extreme reactions, you don't have to judge yourself. You know that your reactions are there because of what happened to you, because you need to be protected from this. You're not over-reacting, you're reacting in the only way anyone in your circumstances would. If people fail to see or understand the circumstance, that's their problem. You are not here to carry the shame of the world's ignorance.

[dying-weeds]

I'm not ready to move forward

[mlady-magnolia]

Welt really was about to black hole Aventurine’s ass and I think that’s so real of him

[schmerzstille]

wie viele tage noch bis es sich normal anfühlt?