I don’t like minimizing the importance and gravity of Laios and Toshiro’s fight into just being a childish squabble, even if to a degree it is framed that way, because to both of them it has a lot of personal significance and emotional weight and runs very deep to their characters… The fight isn’t nothing it’s a LOT, they made up but it’s not something easy to express and to get over for either of them which makes it all the more meaningful! I’m on both sides but there very much are sides, there’s no "they’re both having a ball, Toshiro and Laios hand in hand yay" side to the fight, that comes after
The fight with Toshiro WAS very scary to Laios, almost existentially so, but it’s moreso the "I thought I’d made a friend!!" bit and my god. My god actually
Like it’s not "just" about oh his friend liking him less than he thought, THAT IS SO MUCH. It’s a bond he thought he had being a lie it’s all the time and moments spent together either being a lie from his perspective or marred now looking back. It’s not only being upset at Toshiro for lying but upset at himself that he’s so easy to fool, it’s being upset that there’s something so wrong with you that you can’t even tell if your "close buddy" even actually likes you or not, it’s like. Holding my head. He can’t trust his own vision of events that happened do you see. There’s always this film of distrust that it could be a lie that should be there when he interacts with people there’s always this sense of cloak and dagger to expect backstabs out of nowhere because you CAN’T see it coming you CAN’T you CAN’T there’s something about you which makes it impossible so you CAN’T-
He’s so scared of not being able to read people. He knows it’s a weak spot he has, he’s always known. All of these bits are centered around social expectations and betrayals, the assumption that he doesn’t belong either in society or with other humans.
And Laios’ level of awareness is actually sort of complex to analyze, but it’s there, there’s how out of him and Falin he was the one sensitive to the ~aura of hatred~ he felt from the townspeople, there’s of course his nightmares whispering to him about the mocking looks, and how yeah actually he realizes that his gold stripper coworker was taking advantage of him. There’s of course the Winged Lion speech about his trauma and how he fundamentally mistrusts/dislikes humans to some deep seated degree, this distrust that he still keeps under control always. There’s how pre-canon he often wanted to suggest eating monsters but never worked up the courage to bring it up with the others. There’s how he gets across as stoic when he isn’t being enthusiastic…… We don’t know how aware and wary he is exactly in the moment but we do know he has some anxiety around social stuff, and looking back he does notice and aughh augh, the sense you have to hide yourself to not get hurt and be on your guard and shit and.
When you don’t know what to look out for and when to look out for it, the general ‘common sense’ of not always trusting people or noticing when someone’s messing with you becomes hypervigilance in social settings
"Man they really know what you hate huh". Being socially unaware literally plagues him, he knows, he knows it so well.
It’s so quick that it’s almost hard to digest how literal and blatant Laios summoning his monster to crush all the people who’ve hurt him is. His literal go-to coping mechanism for comfort in his literal monster-induced emotionally intense nightmares, saving him by taking away the upsetting element (the humans)
"Monsters are his coping fantasy, where they can whisk him away from humanity, all the hurt it’s caused him and its arbitrary rules" with the subtlety of a brick. Monsters are his comfort safe zone "because they kill humans" yes but no it’s because he pits them as the guardians against humans who to him are in the role of the agressors. To him they represent freedom from the shackles of what it means to be part of humanity, a fundamentally social species
461 notes
·
View notes
This may not be a new observation for people familiar with hypnosis and trauma, but has anyone noticed how hypnosis seems to work on very similar mechanisms as trauma does?
I was already deeply familiar with trauma academically and personally when I recently started researching hypnosis, and the similarities are making me understand more about how trauma triggers form.
Both hypnosis that induces hypnotic triggers and trauma triggers cause you to associate something with another thing on a deep, subconscious level. Obviously associations can occur in other ways, but only in trauma and hypnosis have I seen such a deep correlation where a single phrase can cause someone to very reflexively perform an action or experience strong emotions.
Additionally, both trauma and hypnosis can induce a dissociative barrier between the trigger and conscious awareness. I read this post on amnesia play for hypnosis kink and I was just struck by like. Holy shit. That is what it feels like when I find an alter with trauma memories I am not supposed to know, and for a second I can remember everything and as I am starting to react emotionally suddenly it all starts to slip away until it feels blank and blurry and I have no idea what it was even though I knew it just a second ago. (Which is why I think to have a full understanding of hypnosis you cannot just look at therapeutic use because I do not think in therapy a memory barrier would be induced like this.)
And it makes sense, right? Like a brain is a brain, its going to have the same structure and mechanisms even in different contexts so it makes sense that it's not that different but I was still quite shocked by it.
And the thing it is making me realize about how trauma forms has to do with what hypnosis is and how it works.
At its core (at least this is what I have read, in several places, though it is a theory and not confirmed, which is fair it is hard to confirm for certain anything about how the mind works due to the nature of it) hypnosis is a heightened state of focus. Generally during hypnosis you are focused and relaxed, and the relaxation is how you can clear your mind enough to focus only on the hypnotists words and the feelings they make you feel.
This made me realize that trauma formation occurs during intense focus as well. The focus is based on fear; one needs to be highly focused on what is going on in a survival situation or a situation where they are being hurt in order to best navigate the situation and get out as quickly as possible, and because that is a High Priority all of the brain is focused on it.
I believe this heightened state of focus in trauma accesses a similar part of the mind that hypnosis does, albeit through violent and unpleasant means, and this is why things that occur during trauma formation can trigger these feelings that were felt during trauma formation to come back.
This is just my personal observations do not take this as academic truth but I am very interested in studying these similarities. If anyone knows any academic papers on this or personal experiences people have written on this topic I would be very interested in reading them.
I will be researching it but of course looking up hypnosis and trauma brings up mainly how hypnosis can be used to treat trauma (which is relevant to the topic still) and it will be hard to find something talking about specifically how hypnosis can sort of mimic trauma on a mechanical level.
(tw: violence)
It's like as if trauma is being attacked and torn open, and hypnosis is surgery. One is violent and damaging, and one is careful and can be healing, but they both reach inside of you to touch the same places.
122 notes
·
View notes