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probablyhuntersmom · 1 year

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An Uncommonly Discussed Trauma Symptom

Disclaimer: This is in no way a substitute for therapy: it’s only psychoeducation. Please consult a therapist and/or hotline and get the help you need if you are experiencing mental health difficulties, especially if experiencing distress or issues that feel unmanageable.

Warnings: Mentions and discussion of suicidal ideation, death, abuse and violence.

Special thanks to @ashanimus and @childlikegoblinqueen

Ever heard of "the sense of a foreshortened future"?

If you have suffered trauma over a sustained and long enough period of time, you may find that you can't imagine yourself living long. You can't see yourself reaching milestones, because it hardly makes sense to your mind that you can go on for that long...given how much you have felt like you've escaped danger, given just how many close calls you have had in life.

Yet the sense of a foreshortened future is a separate thing from suicidality.

If you have both of those together though, it really isn't fun because they may feed one another in a cycle, in the way that symptoms under the same mental health condition have the potential to do the same.

It isn't a desire for pain to end (which is what suicidality is), more so a generated expectation that takes root, and a framework which a survivor tries to fit their experiences into, with the goal to get things to make as much sense as can be. Because it's often the easier thing to devise a simple formula, to feel certainty and to manage one's expectations: rather than embrace the grey areas of uncertainty about how life will turn out.

It's almost as if this feeling of a foreshortened future is in a tug-of-war match between what appears to be solid reasoning, and a person's natural survival instinct along with the hunger for a meaningful life.

This symptom isn't on the *official* criteria for a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist to make any diagnoses, it is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) or International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10). But informally it is sometimes categorized as an avoidance symptom under both PTSD and Complex PTSD, and also under longer-term depression.

(however, I think it can extend to other conditions. The key criteria is it emerges from repeatedly experiencing horrible things until it makes sense in one's head to expect themselves not to last much longer)

If you hop onto Google Scholar to find proper research about it, the findings are very scarce because it's hard to define it, empirically measure it and quantify it in the first place.

Again, it's not the same as suicidal ideation because a foreshortened-future view is an expectation, while the latter is about a desire.

I wasn't taught about this symptom in any training and supervision before becoming a licensed therapist, nor did any of my own therapists bring it up as psychoeducation when I saw them. It was only through online articles on informal websites that I stumbled upon the phrase and it all clicked for my long-term experiences.

But I feel it is good knowledge for anyone providing psychotherapy to bear in mind.

In The Owl House, the grimwalker lore weaved into Hunter's arc, can shockingly be linked with this symptom, symbolically and thematically.

But the show's age rating means it would likely be too dark for the writing team to explicitly incorporate it into Hunter's dialogue.

Hunter was a lamb marked for the slaughter early on.

He has questioned his survival and ability to thrive.

The following article on Psychology Today describes Belos's long-term influence on Hunter pretty well and provides info that strengthens the points I'm making in this whole post:

Link

It's bad enough that before Hunter and Luz found Belos's mindscape, he struggled with the fear of failure to the extent that there was already the raging inner battle between his primal survival instinct and the already knackered part of him that sought eternal rest from his suffering (showing up as suicidal thoughts):

Fast forward a number of episodes...and we see the looming horrors in Hollow Mind that culminated in Hunter's discovery of what his predecessors went through:

followed by permanent rejection by his parental figure:

The power held by a foreshortened-future view, and its potential to isolate you - to make you feel like you're invisible, or a ghost - can be strong.

What Hunter said to Gus in the following screencaps sums up what it feels like pretty well:

In the context of having an abuser, it emerges from the negative beliefs they impose on you. It gets tricky if those beliefs are internalized, and which may remain internalized even after you get to safety and away from said abuser. Internalized until they become what you expect of your life.

It's about those thoughts which you know in your rational mind are lies, but you feel their apparent truth. They go more silent when you practice self-care but they return to try and reel you in again, and to a degree, they succeed in getting you to believe them all over again, before you renounce them once more.

Being in the C-PTSD Club along with Hunter, I personally experience the feeling of a foreshortened future as a voice deep down which almost always says that life feels too long and it therefore feels absolutely weird, like it doesn't make sense. Life feels too long, contrary to that commonly heard cheesy quote, "Life is too short to blah blah blah".

When I reached milestone birthdays like my 21st, it was confusing and made me irritable, feeling an itch deep down that I could not scratch.

The voice asks me why the heck I'm still around when it apparently doesn't make sense. It's a pervading feeling which can be pretty annoying, though I have it far enough in the background that it's like noise instead of being a source of distress.

It's not the easiest thing to explain this, but Hunter may have confusing thoughts creeping into his head like "Caleb didn't last long, why would I?" whereby such thoughts have a strange feel to them. They aren't exactly hard rules, nor are they distant enough that they can be easily brushed aside. Brain hurty, emotions spooky.

After the horror of this night:

I can definitely see Hunter wrestling with this symptom from time to time. No doubt. It was a major loss of autonomy and control that would significantly aggravate what was already brewing deep down.

I'm doubtful that the crew even established this on purpose (unless they actually consulted trauma experts and/or experienced mental health practitioners), but...this one symptom ties in with grimwalker lore so perfectly...it's hella fascinating that all Hunter's predecessors' lives (including Caleb's) were cut short. Prematurely.

They came with an expiry date set by their abuser: something very characteristic of this foreshortened future feeling, though not unique to survivors of abusive home environments (e.g. if you experienced natural disasters over many years, yet had a loving family, you could also feel like you may not live long). And Hunter's experience of seeing the grimwalker graveyard in Hollow Mind is a shockingly visceral and visual metaphor to symbolize a concept like this, which matches perfectly with his symptomology as a Complex PTSD survivor.

The battle for inner peace has a high price: it is ongoing, and extends beyond him being physically free from Belos. Because Hunter can't just trim away the Belos-related memories from his earliest years and formative years. He can't forget, but he can choose to give those memories less attention, and choose not to let them take the steering wheel in the long-term.

In my opinion, the possession scenes don't just portray the physical experience of an abuser returning to try regaining control or restoring the status quo of having the survivor in their grasp.

The scenes also represent the abuser's imprint upon the survivor that lasts beyond the duration for which Belos is present in Hunter's life. Belos is the kind of abuser that is so insidious that he knows he could leave some marks that outlast his directly physical presence, in the event that he meets his own end. He would have definitely thought about this. Leaving the kind of grisly reminders that won't ever technically fade away (not to be confused with how they can certainly "fade further into the background" via therapy, new positive experiences and the support of loved ones).

For example, the patterns of the permanent scars on Hunter look so much like the patterns on Philip's own face and body. When possessed, the markings were dark green, later faded to the colour of scar tissue once Belos leaves his body.

As we all know, it's hella sad to imagine Hunter having to look at himself in mirrors throughout the rest of his life. It was awful enough that he had the haircut-related panic attack.

If we tie all that back to the symptom of a foreshortened-future view: Hunter might be left with a spooky nebulous feeling (that will alternate between coming back to haunt him, and subsiding) that he too has some expiry date that is different from how the people around him naturally and confidently expect to live a substantially long life. As a cult survivor with C-PTSD, Hunter can't afford the luxury of those natural expectations.

I don't mean that he might plan a day in the future to end his own life, not at all. But he may have a strange ghostly expectation of how long more he has till his life may come to an end, and he wouldn't be sure of how this subconscious expectation came about.

The darker days of navigating the confusing mess of his complex trauma may feel like exhaustion from paddling and swimming to keep your head above water to breathe.

Speaking of water and drowning, plus the theme of sinking down vs. rising back up above the water surface...the fact that Camila jumped in to bring him back up, his friends helped to pull him out, and Flapjack passes new life to him...this is also some crazy powerful symbolism for surviving complex trauma.

Falling back on a support network, your "tribe", that won't abandon you.

My other Hunter analyses (link) go into more detail about his support network and why he needs it.

I was talking to a friend about all this: she has relevant lived experience and mentioned that poor Hunter would reach a milestone birthday and perhaps cry at least a bit on that day, maybe even during the birthday party: out of sheer confusion. The confusion would be silently screaming "But...this doesn't...make sense?". And he might feel confusing waves of darker emotions along with a strange sense of joy.

He may make a decision to start a family with Willow, and a confused questioning voice will bother him now and then with "How are you still here, doing this and living to see this?".

(...also, when is his birthday...? Is it documented in some Emperor's Coven records that they will find..? Even the mere concept of having a birthday is messed up for him to think about, given the purpose behind his creation)

Complex trauma changes its survivors' relationships with the world, not just with people, and this can even apply to their relationships with things like joy and how joy is experienced.

Flapjack's absence would have bred survivor's guilt. It might translate into Hunter questioning whether he is worth the love and effort his friends put in for him. This feeling could emerge at random moments over the years in his life.

Visually, I feel that these two frames - the lighting (which I'd say is unique among all his scenes because they are parts of his arc that stand out so much), his pose, his expression - somehow capture the experience of how complex trauma is chronic and long-term:

The currently most known C-PTSD memoir out there, What My Bones Know by journalist Stephanie Foo, has some content that I feel matches nicely with what Hunter is experiencing in the two separate scenes above.

The author describes something she calls "the dread" (if you get the book, it's first mentioned on page 51). I would call it the amalgamation of multiple things such as shame, the fear of impending harm, self-doubt where you question whether you did something wrong, fearing that someone hates you, etc.

And basically, good lord my poor boy in the first screenshot..with that expression of suspecting what he thought was Belos's presence in the room: something about it fits the book author's words, feeling like she was "on the precipice of fucking everything up".

That's certainly something that would cross Hunter's mind multiple times as he processes the worst night of his life. That he could have done something to prevent all that.

With so much pre-existing worry that his friends and family might actually hate him, the possession scenes and Flapjack's death would definitely shake his foundation and I'm sure he isn't past this kind of ingrained thought pattern at all:

Second, the book author calls C-PTSD a shapeshifting "beast" (page 316). And when she fights it, she must use a different strategy depending on what form it takes, and that it will keep coming back from time to time in another form. Which is why there is a particular exhaustion one feels from having to adapt to each battle.

For Hunter, the second screencap of him fighting Belos's coercion in a direct physical manner is the first of many battles he has to win in his mind, even after Belos is gone for good. Outlasting whatever invisible assailant is trying to get him, as he faces inevitable episodes of being retraumatized in the future: these are called emotional flashbacks (one of the symptoms of C-PTSD).

Being a survivor of complex trauma who experiences a weird sense of time via a foreshortened-future view, can feel like being on the outside looking in.

But! To end this meta on a hopeful note, I should reiterate something from my most recent long meta about Retraumatization vs. Self-Soothing, the first part of Hunter's important speech in Thanks to Them touches on wild magic and palisman. Wild magic represents freedom, while palismen (quoting the Bat Queen) represent close bonds in relationships, emotion, and conviction.

Applying this to how we can navigate the swampy waters of a foreshortened-future view, Hunter can use his newfound freedom and sense of agency to create the story he'd like to tell about his life. It is pretty much impossible to avoid bringing beliefs from our young formative years into adulthood. But expectations (which have a direct link with emotions we end up feeling) of ourselves and of life can be altered over time, so they become less rigid and instead more open to new possibilities.

He has an inquisitive mind which is a big plus point in understanding the impact of what he has been through, and I have full faith that he'll do just fine in that regard because of the courage we have seen in him.

Among the hobbies he explores in the future, flyer derby will be one example of an excellent outlet for him because of its physicality: trauma and grief are not only emotional battlegrounds but also highly physical ones. The body is also very much involved e.g. feeling the lead-like weight of depressive moods in one's body, feeling the physical tension of hypervigilance, etc.

It's fantastic that he has Luz, Willow, Gus and company, he will have a very meaningful career, and he'll have everyone else in his large found family.

His story...his heart...his resilience and vitality...it's all truly inspirational.

We might learn even more about the grimwalkers in the finale and that would undoubtedly prompt me to do a shorter Part 2 on top of this meta.

#toh analysis #toh hunter #grimwalkers #the owl house #loz writes a meta #huntlow

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transmutationisms · 7 months

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emdr therapy has got to be on some hokey 1960s bullshit right… i don’t trust anything that claims to unveil ‘repressed memories’ lmfao and i thought even the psych establishment kinda agreed on that

ok here's my emdr take because i've poked around on this and Some People definitely do report feeling like it was helpful to them. i think, if you have some traumatic memory / experience that you want to talk about, and you are in an environment where you feel safe and supported (personally, could not be me with a clinician but, my experiences are not universal) then emdr is basically just trauma-informed therapy. the actual eye movement part is basically nonsense / placebo in the sense that the specific type of movement that's happening there isn't, like, mechanically unlocking hidden patterns in your brain or however francine shapiro put it. however, i do think that it's possible that For Some People, the mere fact of having trauma therapy be paired with some kind of body movement / awareness might be helpful to them. again, it's not that there's anything specially useful about moving your eyes back and forth, but i do think there are plenty of reasons that cultivating some kind of bodily awareness thru movement could be helpful / enjoyable / simply a useful distraction when talking though a traumatic memory. so personally, i would not do emdr but i would also not do any other form of psychotherapy unless like, wilhelm reich came back from the dead and offered to just go ham. anyway though i definitely agree with you that if a clinician is claiming to be able to actually UNCOVER 'hidden' memories or whatever, that's a bad sign. but i'm not plugged in enough to the emdr practitioner community to know how common those types of claims are, and tbf, plenty of plain-jane trauma therapy practitioners have made and continue to make those claims as well lol.

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cat-eye-nebula · 10 months

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Tips & Tools for Releasing Stored Trauma in Your Body

🌻Somatic Experiencing: Developed by Dr. Peter Levine, Somatic Experiencing can release trauma locked in the body. This method is the result of a combination of stress physiology, psychology, neuroscience, medical biophysics and indigenous healing practices. (Videos on youtube)

🌻Mindfulness and Movements: going for a walk, bike ride, Boxing, Martial arts, yoga (or trauma-informed yoga), or dancing. People who get into martial arts or boxing are often those who were traumatized in the past. They’re carrying a lot of anger and fighting is a great release for them. Exercise helps your body burn off adrenaline, release endorphins, calm your nervous system, and relieve stress.

Release Trapped Emotions: 🍀How to release anger from the body - somatic healing tool 🍀Somatic Exercises for ANGER: Release Anger in Under 5 Minutes 🍀Youtube Playlist: Trauma Healing, Somatic Therapy, Self Havening, Nervous system regulation

🌻 Havening Technique is a somatosensory self-comforting therapy to change the brain to de-traumatize the memory and remove its negative effects from our psyche and body. It has a calming effect on the Amygdala and the Limbic system. 🌼Exercise: Havening Technique for Rapid Stress & Anxiety Relief 🌼Exercise: Self-Havening with nature ambience to let go of painful feelings 🌼Video: Using Havening Techniques to rapidly erase a traumatic memory (Certified Practitioner guides them through a healing session)

🌻Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychotherapy technique often used to treat anxiety and PTSD. It incorporates rhythmic eye movements while recalling traumatic experiences. This combo changes how the memory is stored in the brain and allow you to process the trauma fully.

🌻Sound & Vibrational Healing: Sound healing has become all the rage in the health and wellness world. It involves using the power of vibration – from tuning forks, singing bowls, or gongs – to relax the mind and body.

🌻Breathwork is an intentional method of breathing that helps your body relax by bypassing your conscious mind. Trauma can overstimulate the body’s sympathetic nervous system (aka your body’s ‘fight-or-flight’ response). Breathwork settles it down.

Informative videos & Experts on Attachment style healing: 🌼Dr Kim Sage, licensed psychologist 🌼Dr. Nicole LePera (theholisticpsychologist) 🌼Briana MacWilliam 🌼Candace van Dell 🌼Heidi Priebe

Other informative Videos on Trauma: 🌻Small traumas in a "normal" family and attachment: Gabor Maté - The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture 🌻Uncovering Triggers and Pattern for Healing: Dr Gabor Maté 🌻Understanding trapped emotions in the body and footage of how wild animals release trauma

Article: How Trauma Is Stored in the Body (+ How to Release It)

Article: 20 self-care practices for complex trauma survivors

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 9 days

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By: Paul Garcia-Ryan

Published: Apr 18, 2024

Paul Garcia-Ryan is the board president of Therapy First.

A comprehensive review commissioned by England’s National Health Service, released last week, found that gender transition medical treatment for children and young people has been built on “shaky foundations,” with “remarkably weak” evidence. The independent study — led by physician Hilary Cass, the former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health — incorporates multiple systematic reviews “to provide the best available collation of published evidence,” as well as interviews with clinicians, parents and young people, in reaching its conclusions.

Referring to young people who have already been treated under these dubious circumstances, such as those at the Tavistock Centre’s now-closed Gender Identity Development Service, Cass wrote, “They deserve very much better.”

In the wake of the Cass Review’s release — which has rocked the British medical and media establishment, and might soon reverberate in the United States — many are asking how we got here. How did clinicians come to recommend the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to thousands of children and adolescents when there was insufficient evidence that these treatments were safe and effective?

Part of the reason is that “the toxicity of the debate is exceptional,” as Cass notes in her foreword: “There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media, and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behaviour. This must stop.”

I know all too well how the absence of good-faith, healthy debate on this subject can affect clinicians and patients. When I was 15, a therapist affirmed my conviction that I was born in the wrong body. After more than a decade of hormonal and surgical interventions, I detransitioned at age 30. I had come to realize that my transition was motivated by my difficulty reconciling with being gay. Today, I am a licensed clinical social worker and board president of Therapy First, formerly the Gender Exploratory Therapy Association, a nonprofit organization that advocates psychotherapy as a first-line treatment for youth gender dysphoria.

Usually in psychotherapy, treatment approaches are refined and improved by vigorous discussion, research and dissemination of new information. When it comes to youth gender treatments, though, professionals who raise concerns have been censored and subjected to reputational damage, threats to their license and doxing. As a result, countless gender nonconforming young people have been badly served.

Therapy First has been the target of silencing and intimidation efforts. Now with a professional membership of more than 300 clinicians based in 36 states and 14 countries, we are joined in our concern regarding the quality of mental health care provided to gender dysphoric youth. Even though the organization is apolitical and non-religious, with many of our members being LGBT, we have been falsely linked to the religious right. Despite being strongly opposed to conversion therapy, or trying to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity, we have been accused of practicing it.

What I’ve learned is that therapists who cite the poor quality of evidence in support of medical interventions for youth gender dysphoria, or who advocate traditional principles of psychotherapy in this area, are likely to be vilified — sometimes by fellow clinicians. Last week alone, eight complaints were filed against one of our members’ licenses by other therapists for simply posting, on a professional Listserv, the link to one of our organization’s webinars, on trauma-informed mind-body practices.

An activist website has labeled our therapists as part of the “global anti-transgender movement” and listed details from their personal lives, including the names of their children and other family members. Last month in London, the Telegraph reported, a medical conference that explored evidence and heard from seasoned therapists and doctors regarding the treatment of gender dysphoria was interrupted by masked protesters who set off a smoke bomb and attempted to force their way into the building.

In addition to worrying about activists outside the consulting room, therapists apparently must now also be concerned about whether their patients are wielding hidden cameras. This month, an undercover video recording of a therapy session was posted online, presenting the clinician as a practitioner of conversion therapy, yet the would-be video sting merely revealed a clinician engaged in normal therapeutic exploration. In the current climate, any therapeutic response other than immediate affirmation is considered transphobic.

It isn’t right that professionals must risk their livelihood and reputation to help young people struggling with gender dysphoria. If the culture of bullying persists, I fear that fewer clinicians with a developmental approach will be inclined to keep working with this population. These young people will be left with clinicians who aren’t following the science, many with good intentions, but others who might behave more like activists than mental health professionals.

The Cass Review made clear that the evidence supporting medical interventions in youth gender dysphoria is utterly insufficient, and that alternative approaches, such as psychotherapy, need to be encouraged. Only then will gender-questioning youth be able to get the help they need to navigate their distress.

[ Via: https://archive.today/83ZJa ]

#Paul Garcia Ryan #Ben Appel #Bernard Lane #Cass Review #Cass Report #medical corruption #medical scandal #medical malpractice #gender ideology #gender identity ideology #queer theory #intersectional feminism #gender cult #religion is a mental illness

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textk4kira · 3 months

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Cisgender, straight aces have cisheteronormative identities. And can get affirmations for their ace identities from the ace community.

They can get support for conversion therapy (what is ace conversion therapy? Anti-gay conversion therapy is targeted at making gay people associate gay attraction with trauma and pain? what do you think anti-ace conversion therapy is?) from aces. What resources do //LGBT// groups have for htis?

What LGBT resources do they need for religious trauma they cannot get from the ace community? From other religious trauma groups? Do religious trauma groups exclude cisgender, straight ace?

What specific LGBT resources for csigender, straight men who do not want to date need? Be SPECIFIC. What resources do they need from groupsmade to give rights to Lesbians, Gay Men, Bisxuals, and Trans People? You haven't listed a single LGBT specific resource uet

Being raped for not experiencing sexual attraction is a feminist issue, not an LGBT one. What LGBT specific resource do they need that they cannot get from feminist groups?

Every point you listed actually happens to cisgender, straight women. Should all LGBT groups acomodate all cishet women?

Hello again anon!

I will address each of the points you have made, with some additional information at the end of this post.

I would also like to point out that ace/arophobia tends to go hand in hand with anti-trans/TERF discourse, so I would like anyone reading to please keep that in mind.

Now to address the points you made:

Asexual/Aromantic people do not have cisheteronormative identities as they do not conform to society's expectations on how people are 'supposed' to behave regarding sexual or romantic relationships. These expectations include but are not limited to: Being in a monogamous, heterosexual/heteroromantic relationship with a fellow cisgender person. This argument is also used against bisexual people who are 'straight-passing' individuals.

Asexual people receive medical interventions including conversion therapy to make them heterosexual. Please look up 'hyposexual sexual desire disorder' as an example of anti-asexual medical maltreatment. Coercing an asexual person into having sex to 'cure' their asexuality is a form of corrective rape AND conversion therapy. The asexual community is a part of the LGBTQIA+ community and this has been the case forever. If an asexual person is seeking comfort or resources from other queers, such as myself, I will do what I can to help them.

I do not know if religious trauma groups explicitly exclude asexual individuals, so I cannot answer this. Pushing asexuals to only interact with other asexuals in regards to their problems, is actually a form of marginalization, which is in fact a form of oppression.

The love and support of the LGBTQIA+ community, as well as community-wide solidarity, is, in fact, a 'resource'. The time that I am spending to respond to your ask, as opposed to uplifting aromantic men is in fact, the 'use of a resource'. Yes, emotional labor is a finite resource that I am currently using to address you.

I will not address this point, for obvious reasons.

To conclude, here is a list of resources specifically for asexual/aromantic individuals (note, this is just a short list, I will try to find more in the future):

AUREA - Resources (aromanticism.org)

Aro 101 and Resources – Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week (arospecweek.org)

Understanding Asexuality | The Trevor Project

About AVEN | The Asexual Visibility and Education Network | asexuality.org

Understanding the Asexual Community - Human Rights Campaign (hrc.org)

Navigating LGBTQ Identities and Religion | The Trevor Project

Culturally Competent Psychotherapy for the Asexual Community | Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy (societyforpsychotherapy.org)

I would also like to mention that I do not interact with radfems, TERFs, or Gender Critical Feminists as stated in my pinned post, if this describes you anon, or any other readers, please move along. I will not address you.

I hope this was helpful!

#anon ask #ask #asexual #asexuality #aromantic #aromanticism #aromantic men #asexual women #acephobia #aphobia #arophobia #ace #aro #terfs dni #transmeds dni #ace discourse

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uselessheretic · 2 years

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Ed, Trauma, and Coping

I wanted to examine the way Ed's character is broken into several archetypes throughout the series and what these roles tell us about him. This will be talked about from a trauma-informed perspective, but I am not a psychologist so take anything I say with a grain of salt.

Throughout the show, we see Ed represented through several versions of himself, all of which have a different name: Edward, Blackbeard, and The Kraken. All these identities are a part of who he is, they're not performances or something he's forced into doing by others, but serve a purpose to Ed of ensuring his survival. This unconscious splitting of self is a result of sustaining substantial trauma at a young age and acts as a coping mechanism that he carries well into adulthood.

Extent of Trauma and Impacts Now

It probably goes without saying, but Ed got issues. He grew up in an impoverished household where he was exposed to domestic violence at a young age. We only see one scene depicting the violence he was exposed to, but as an audience we can infer that this wasn't the only act of abuse he witnessed his mom suffer. It's also likely, although not canon or confirmed, that Ed was also subjected to some form of abuse as well. With the way he behaves and what we've seen of his childhood, it's more or less definite that Ed has c-PTSD, complex post-traumatic stress disorder. c-PTSD differs from PTSD by being a series of traumatic events sustained over a period of time, and can have more extreme and long-lasting symptoms.

We can see the way that this shaped Ed the most clearly in episode 6, where Ed is triggered within the show and experiences a flashback. We get a glimpse into the severity of the impact of his trauma here by a few things. One of the most significant being his memory loss.

When Ed says that The Kraken killed his dad, he wasn't lying. In the moment, that was what he believed, it wasn't him telling stories for a laugh. When children suffer from highly traumatic events, their experiences can be too much for them to handle, and as a form of protection their minds will put up barriers to spare them the pain. This often carries well into adulthood until something comes along to trigger the memories and erodes the barrier. The combination of preparing to kill someone he knew personally, along with being exposed to the imagery of The Kraken, tore down that wall and forced Ed to re-experience his repressed memories.

Another indicator to the extent of his trauma is that when he goes into a panic state he hides, and we see that the flashback he's experiencing isn't a single moment, but is ongoing even as Stede talks to him. It's common for flashbacks to distort of the person's reality, where it's not just a memory they're revisiting, but an event that they feel like is happening to them again in detail. Even when Stede knocks on the door and opens it we can see the way Ed flinches, and how this blurs into the moment of his father throwing dishes and striking his mom. There's a blurring of reality occurring here.

His trauma leaves him immobilized, hypersensitive, and in a reactive fearful state. Basically, he got issues. Really big issues.

Compartmentalization of Self

Ed got issues, but also, Ed is an extremely successful and famous pirate. We see him blow up and isolate at times, but we also know that he's renowned worldwide and has the skills to back it. The way he's able to achieve this is through compartmentalizing his trauma and taking on different selves that suit his need.

Those selves are: Ed, Blackbeard, The Kraken, and although not named in the show as such, his childhood self.

The way I like to think about them is through the lens of the Internal Family System, a model of psychotherapy that identifies several parts/sub-personalities as a way of addressing trauma. And I would like to reiterate again, I am not a therapist and I don't have training or anything. This is just how I chose to interpret Ed's character. I'm playing fast and loose with this, and wanna try to not go too far in depth on the specifics.

Anyways, I' leaning on Bessel van der Kock his book The Body Keeps the Score for how I'm defining terms in this.

So, a brief introduction

"The core of IFS (Internal Family Systems Therapy) is the notion that the mind of each of us is like a family in which the members have different levels of maturity, excitability, wisdom and pain. The parts form a network or system in which change in any one part will affect all the others. In trauma parts of the self go to war with one another. Self-loathing coexists and fights with grandiosity; loving care with hatred; numbing and passivity with rage and aggression. These extreme parts bear the burden of the trauma. We all have parts that are childlike and fun. When we are abused, these are the parts that are hurt the most, and they become frozen, carrying the pain, terror and betrayal of abuse. This burden makes them toxic – parts of ourselves that we need to deny at all costs. Because they are locked away inside, IFS calls them the exiles.

At this point other parts organize to protect the internal family from the exiles. These protectors keep the toxic parts away, but in so doing they take on some of the energy of the abuser. Critical and perfectionistic managers can make sure we never get close to anyone or drive us to be relentlessly productive. Another group of protectors, which IFS calls firefighters, are emergency responders, acting impulsively whenever an experience triggers an exiled emotion."

Parts of trauma, abuse, and pain is pushed onto the "exile" who carries that burden and is often locked away. Protectors exist to protect those exiles: Managers who handle the day to day life keeping things together often through perfectionism and criticism, and firefighters who respond in emergencies that act out in extreme and often damaging ways. It's all one person, struggling to cope and putting on the necessary hat in the moment to do so.

Van der Kolk goes on to say:

"Each split off part holds different memories, beliefs, and physical sensations; some hold the shame, others the rage, some the pleasure and excitement, another the intense loneliness or the abject compliance. These are all aspects of the abuse experience. The critical insight is that all these parts have a function: to protect the self from feeling the full terror of annihilation."

Seeing the way Blackbeard and The Kraken are treated in the show immediately reminded me of this since they fit so well into a manager and firefighter role, respectively. Ed's clear throughout the show that he is Blackbeard and he is The Kraken. They're not performances, they're a part of himself and they serve a purpose: Protection.

Blackbeard, the Manager

The first iteration of Ed we meet is Blackbeard, the feared infamous pirate captain. As the manager, he's built himself up from poverty and abuse to be in the high place he occupies now.

Blackbeard is cruel and violent, but he's also calculating and brilliant. He's applies a rigid control to his entire ship, using fear, violence, and manipulation to hold his crew to a set standard, and is even able to offload the worst of his actions onto them while still reaping the benefits of his reputation.

Ed wouldn't have survived this long without Blackbeard. Blackbeard gets shit done. Blackbeard gives him power, he evokes fear and respect. Blackbeard has kept him going for as long as he has.

Edward, the Child Exile

One thing I love and find really interesting about Ed is how when he's triggered or feels emotionally unsafe, he reverts to behavior that's more childish in nature. We see this in a couple of places, whether it's hiding in a bathtub clutching a soft fabric, or fleeing tearfully from mockery at the French dinner.

These moments come at high points of emotional insecurity and are ones that are coupled with flashbacks to his childhood trauma, tying it directly to his younger self. It's an incredibly vulnerable place for him to be in, and for the majority of the ones we see on screen, Stede is present to reassure him and let him know he's safe. He defends him from the French captain's insults and does so again when he's hurt at the party. More than that, he's available to offer assurance that this part of him is okay to have. Whether that's telling him he wears fine things well or affirming that he's his friend and agreeing to pretend the whole murder plot never happened. These moments in the end are ones with positive outcomes and healthy developments for Ed.

That is, of course, until Stede himself is the cause of triggering his exiles. David Jenkins had said before that Ed hadn't ever been hurt by rejection as badly until then. When he triggers his exile, it's severe. Not just a few minutes of heightened sensitivity and fear, but days long of hurt and hiding. He builds a pillow fort for comfort! Which might seem silly, but is heartbreaking when you consider that survivors of child abuse often will try and physically hide even as adults as a learned behavior.

And this time, Stede isn't there to pick up the pieces. Lucius and the crew try, and to some extent, it does help as they assure him that his feelings are valid and that he will be okay. That, of course, gets majorly fucked up when Izzy intervenes (which I have MANY thoughts on lol) and confirms all of Ed's greatest fears that he is weak, vulnerable, and in danger. Another commonality with survivors of child abuse is viewing your childhood self with contempt, a weaker version who has to be isolated and ignored. Stede spent weeks making Ed think that was untrue, and when he left it showed Ed that he was right to want his childhood self gone.

It's only natural for Ed to not want to confront this part of himself. It makes him feel weak and scared, and that's a tragedy in and of itself.

"Keeping the exiles locked up stamps out not only memories and emotions but also the parts that hold them – the parts that were hurt the most by the trauma. Schwartz: “Usually those are your most sensitive, creative, intimacy-loving, lively, playful and innocent parts. By exiling them when they get hurt, they suffer a double whammy – the insult of your rejection is added to their original injury.”"

And what happens when Ed is at his lowest, most vulnerable, hurt in a way he hasn't felt in decades? The Kraken comes out.

The Kraken, the Firefighter

Oh, babygirl...

The most important thing to remember about The Kraken is that he's there to keep Ed safe. He's the last resort, the weapon hidden behind glass to break in case of emergencies. The Kraken isn't there to hurt Ed, he's there to protect him.

Bessel van der Kolk describes it like this:

"Firefighters will do anything to make emotional pain go away. Aside from sharing the task of keeping the exiles locked up, they are the opposite of managers. Managers are all about staying in control, while firefightrs will destroy the house in order to extinguish the fire. I’ve met firefighters who shop, drink, play computer games addictively, have impulsive affairs, or exercise compulsively. These can blunt the abused child��s horror and shame, if only for a few hours."

We first meet The Kraken when Ed is young through the murder of his father. And it's easy to view The Kraken as defined by violence and violence alone, but The Kraken wasn't born to hurt, he came from the desperation of a young boy trying to protect his mother.

When we see The Kraken commit acts of violence, they're not explosive moments fueled by rage, but ones seemingly calculated to achieve the best effect. Lucius, the person other than Stede who saw him at his absolute lowest, was tossed overboard with a smile on Ed's face. I'd argue we can see shades of this in other places too, often it follows moments where we see Edward, the child exile, touched upon.

Edward screams that he's not a donkey and kicks the captain; The Kraken hands Fang a fork and says to skin him.

The Kraken was also something formulated by Ed at a young age, and you can tell with the way he acts. He's cruel and violent, but there's a childishness to it too. He's committing these acts of violence, but at the same playing dress-up because it makes him feel safer this way. He switches between marooning Stede's crew and sobbing at the windowsill alone.

Ed's hurting and The Kraken is willing to sink the entire ship as long as he can make that pain stop. But just like the manager and the exile, this is still a part of him that's just trying to survive. He can't lock away the negative aspects of his person and call it a day, he tried that with Stede, and it ended in disaster. None of these are performances or false selves, they're all him.

So, what now?

Ideally, he'd go to therapy, but I've heard that it may be hard to access in the 1700s or something.

What Ed needs is a safe place, where he can learn how to cope with his feelings without fear of exclusion or hurt. That doesn't mean accepting everything about him no matter what! Stede should probably tell him that it wasn't cool for him to try and murder his whole crew. Still, Ed needs a place where he can feel safe to express himself.

It's not just that he feels embarrassed to do so, it's that the totality of his emotions is too much for him to bear. When Ed said he wants to curl up and die, that's not him being dramatic, that's an expression of how hard it is for him to deal with this much emotion at once and the vulnerability that comes with it.

Like I said, it isn't as simple as deciding that The Kraken and Blackbeard aren't his true selves and that they need to be locked away. They're here for a purpose: to protect Edward.

Although they may not always fulfill that in the most balanced way possible, they still serve a role, and in some ways, there's some gratitude that needs to be expressed to them for keeping Ed alive. Because there's no way that Ed would've survived all these years if it wasn't for them.

In a season 2 (dear lord, am I manifesting) I'd really love to see Stede interact with all sides of Ed, especially The Kraken. He might not always make the best choices, but The Kraken is just trying to survive, and I'd love to see him treated softly and with kindness.

Ed is coping with an immeasurable loss, triggered, and scared. Survival and destruction can look shockingly similar when in a state like this, and mistakes are easy to make. Naturally, it doesn't excuse his actions, but it's a very human response based on coping in the only way he knows how.

#our flag means death #edward teach #stede bonnet #ofmd #long post #ofmd meta

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ukrfeminism · 11 months

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10 minute read

Thousands walk past every day without noticing it or knowing anything about the lives being transformed inside. Nestled behind the sunflower-hued door of a Georgian terraced house, on a busy Brighton street, the Brighton’s Women Centre (largely known by its acronym the ‘BWC’) – is home to those facing unique difficulties, in particular those at risk of reoffending.

The need for a place like this is great: statistics show that compared to men, women who receive a custodial sentence (prison time) are more likely to be complex and vulnerable individuals, who’ve experienced trauma and abuse – and while 95% of male prisoners’ children remain in their own homes when their father is incarcerated, the same can be said for only 5% of children whose mothers are jailed.

One woman who knows about this heartache first-hand is Hayley*, an evidently caring and straight-talking 43-year-old mother of five, who has been engaging with BWC for six years.

“I’d reached the point of no return when I first came here,” she tells me, as we sit in a quiet meeting room in the centre’s attic, leaflets about the help on offer scattered across a nearby table. “My life was a mess, a shambles really.” Hayley, like many women who’ve been to prison, has dealt with addiction issues, abusive relationships, and unstable housing, all of which contributed to her committing an offence and serving time whilst pregnant. When she left HMP Bronzefield six years ago, Hayley describes herself as ‘broken’.

“I’d started to wake up when I was arrested, but when I came here, it was the first time I really felt I was being listened to and that there was hope of change. I was pregnant again, with a set of twins, and I’d already had three daughters taken off me. Was I really gonna go through that again?” she shares, reflecting on how far she’s come since first walking through that sunshine yellow door. “When you go through the justice system, you meet a lot of people and go to a lot of places. You meet probation officers, and they’ve got your file in front of them… you instantly feel judged.”

She adds, “You’re scared to be totally honest about your situation in case it comes back to bite you later on. People get scared they’ll lose their children if they ask for help [with a substance abuse issue]. You feel you’re drowning. But it’s not like that in BWC, it’s a women’s only space that has a different energy. There was no chaos in the building, it was just calm.”

Hayley was first referred to BWC under court orders via her probation officer following a pre-sentence report, which she says is what ‘saved’ her from another stretch in prison. She now also credits her case worker, Marion, for also ‘drip feeding’ her information about the signs of coercive control, narcissism and abuse too, during their chats over cups of tea. “I started to feel a bit empowered and could recognise behaviour that wasn’t right for the first time.”

Unlike a refuge or shelter (accommodation for those fleeing abuse), the function of a women’s centre can sometimes be confused – which is understandable, given that the likes of BWC seem to… do it all, for anyone in need of help. As well as having staff on hand for practicalities such as housing issues, financial problems, mental health support (counselling and psychotherapy is available) and food poverty (the latter being the service that’s seen the biggest increase in demand over the past year), women’s centres provide a safe space to talk – which can ultimately be the biggest game-changer for many. There’s also a cheerful nursery on site, Toy Box, so that mothers can attend appointments without fretting about childcare.

All of which is why the newly announced £15 million government cash injection into 40 women’s charities and centres in England and Wales, like the BWC, that support those at risk of reoffending, is so crucial. But is it enough, given that a recent Women In Prison report found nearly half of all women’s centres are concerned about their survival? What else can be done to stop women – and mothers in particular – from going to jail, and tearing apart families in the process, traumatising a new generation? Why are 3,219 women ending up in prison each year in the first place, with most having committed a non-violent, low-level offence?

Victims before perpetrators

“We often say that women who’ve gone to prison were victims before they were perpetrators,” says Damian Hinds, Minister for Prisons, Parole and Probation, who joins me at BWC. “We know female offending is typically driven by factors such as drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, and mental health issues. Around 60% of women in prison have experienced domestic abuse and about half have some kind of drug problem, so we need to tackle those underlying issues with earlier intervention and better support, to stop the cycle of offending.”

He praises the Female Offender Strategy that began in 2018, with the aim of tackling the root causes of female offending and reducing prison numbers (Hinds’ team also shares that between June 2018 – June 2022 the number of women sentenced to immediate custody fell by 37%).

However, whilst news of the funding is a welcome step in the right direction "that provides a much-needed respite for organisations working tirelessly to meet the needs of at-risk women, or those in contact with the criminal justice system”, there's still a long way to go, says Sonya Ruparel, the Chief Executive of Women In Prison (a charity that has supported women in the criminal justice system for 40 years). Their work sees them have a presence inside prisons, in the community and ‘through the prison gate’ as they help women to resettle in their communities.

"The money is providing a temporary solution to a long-term problem, and this £15m available pales into insignificance when compared, for example, with the £200m the government are investing in an extra 500 prison places for women," she explains. "Despite the government’s commitment to reducing the women’s prison population, they are projecting it will rise by up to 35% in the next three years.

"Without real investment in services that support women to address the root causes of crime such as domestic violence and abuse, debt and homelessness women will continue to be unnecessarily swept into the criminal justice system."

Female inmates, the majority of whom have been convicted of fraud (14%) or shoplifting (19%), also have to grapple with being incarcerated by a system designed with men in mind, and it is estimated that women sent to prison are seven times more likely to self-harm than men. Each year, 17,000 children are impacted by maternal imprisonment too.

Helping women to break the cycle of trauma is something that Lisa Dando, Director at BWC, and all her staff, are passionate about. They explain that a ‘trauma-informed’ approach is key when dealing with any woman living with multiple disadvantages [something that can be lacking during arrests, for instance, if officers haven’t been specially trained] and that a shortage of decent emergency accommodation sees women who’ve recently left prison instantly set up to fail.

Too many are housed far from home – away from their support networks that help them to stay sober and happy – and are forced into mixed gender living situations, with shared bathrooms, toilets, and broken locks. All of which see their fight or flight responses fire up, particularly if they’ve been victims of domestic abuse or sexual violence. It’s much harder to stay sober when you’re scared and lonely.

The UK also continues to put pregnant women in prison, when other countries don’t. “Women give birth in prison here,” Dando adds. “I don't understand why the children are being punished for a crime their mothers have committed. The prison system is damaging in so many different ways and I'm also not convinced that the rehabilitation work that takes place inside, especially for women on short term sentences, which the majority are, has enough time to really make a difference.”

She adds, “It seems illogical [to break families up in this way] when there are alternatives, like women’s centres and non-custodial sentences, that are proven to work.” Dando, of course, caveats that this does not mean she supports people who’ve committed violent or very serious crimes going without punishment.

It’s a sentiment that Hinds seemed to agree with during our interview too, along with the need for better trauma support training to be instilled across the justice system as a whole. “Trauma-informed services and spaces for these women are vital,” agrees Marion Taylor, Manager of the Inspire project at BWC, who has worked with Hayley. “It’s about working with women in a way that recognises they have trauma in their backgrounds, that shapes the way they’ve developed and react to certain things.” Consistency is also key; BWC is able to offer twelve sessions with a therapist, whereas the NHS offering typically hovers at around six to eight.

Part of the newly announced funding, of which BWC has received £761,280, will also be spent on creating better links between women’s centres and the police, which (as suggested by the Casey review) is rife with misogyny, racism and homophobia. “[The review] is a big part of why we wanted to form a partnership with the police, to divert women away from contact with them if possible,” Dando explains. “We want to step in early and provide a different model of support, to protect women from having to experience being in a police cell or the damaging effects of a service that is struggling. We’d like to bring a different view and educate the police on a new way of working.”

In terms of feeling the impact of previous government cuts to services, Dando diplomatically says that since she “joined fifteen years ago, it’s been peaks and troughs” and that currently, the centre looks set to be financially ‘safe’ for the next two years. She highlights the financial gains of custodial sentences being a last resort too, pointing out that incarceration costs around £42,000 per inmate compared with a community sentence coming in at around £2,000. Around 87% of women given a non-custodial sentence do not go on to reoffend either. Dando adds, “And really, we’re all at risk of needing a women’s centre if our circumstances suddenly change.”

When asked by Cosmopolitan UK as to whether the new £15 million funding allocation is enough for women’s services, Minister Hinds said he feels it’s a “substantial investment” and that the scheme will reduce the £18 billion overall cost of reoffending for the taxpayer. “Female offenders also benefit from other support the justice and health systems provide, like the Probation Service and Government’s £3 billion 10-year drugs strategy investment.”

Coming back from darkness

Someone who is a prime example of a non-custodial sentence working is Sarah*, a 60-year-old animal lover who explains that she snapped after a long-running dispute with her neighbour escalated during lockdown. The neighbour, she says, made an illegal roof garden on their building, that Sarah repeatedly said wasn’t safe – and her point was proven when a dog later fell off and was injured. Later on, whilst in the vet’s surgery, an argument between the neighbours grew heated and Sarah admits that she pulled her neighbour’s hair.

Her situation, Sarah points out, is a prime example of circumstances changing in an instant – and to her credit, she repeatedly acknowledges that she shouldn’t have become physical in that scenario. “I do sometimes wake in the night and think how could this happened? I pulled her hair. Yet I've been punched in the past, and it never goes to court. It was all just blown completely out of proportion… I used to work for probation, I spent five years working with one parent families.”

Ultimately, after sleepless nights spent imagining how she’d survive in prison, Sarah was given a non-custodial sentence of community service work, which she completed in a PDSA charity shop, “I was put in a position in court, where if I opened my mouth and tried to stand up for myself, I knew I would go to prison,” she reflects. “So I stayed quiet and left it to my solicitor, who managed to reduce my sentence down to 50 hours of non-custodial work.” Alongside her sentence, Sarah was also issued an eviction order, which is what led her to BWC to seek help with housing.

“It was last chance saloon,” she shares. “I’d tried to access other services but found they weren’t able to move fast enough for me. It had reached the stage where my family were exhausted with it all too. My kids are older – my daughter is a doctor and my son's a respected musician – they came with me to court, but they didn’t have the facilities to help me, whereas women’s centres do. Even things like utility bills, I've brought them here as I just couldn’t have handled them alone.”

Now, Sarah is in a much better space – both mentally and physically – having found alternative accommodation with BWC’s support, and once her 50 hours in the shop were up, she decided to stay on as she found it good for her confidence and sticking to a routine.

Hayley now says she’s now able to be there for all of her children and is clean and sober. She is also single, having broken free of her pattern of repeatedly entering into abusive relationships, and tells me she’s teaching her 17-year-old daughter to spot the red flags that she missed early on. “My kids have seen a lot of things and experienced a lot of trauma, they've seen me beaten up, drug dealers come through the doors, windows being smashed… But now it's like, mum's not that person anymore,” she says. “They can see I'm not running to men, or looking for a man to fix me, or putting up with being spoken to in a certain way. I can finally set the right example.”

For now, it sounds as though the likes of BWC and the forty other women’s centres that have received funding at least have a little space to breathe – but is allowing them a moment to pause and catch their breath really enough? Especially given that new stats show one in five people in the UK are living in poverty right now, and that debt and homelessness are precursors to potentially committing an offence. Is it right that women’s centres have had to fight so hard – and wait so long – to receive adequate financial support in the first place, given the incomparable work they’re doing? And whilst these forty centres can feel short-term relief, plenty of other incredible organisations around the UK are still struggling. Let’s hope this is only the beginning of the recognition, and that the pressure all women’s centres are feeling will be eased on a more permanent basis in the near future.

*Name has been changed

You can donate to Brighton Women's Centre here and Bankuet, the food bank association that work alongside the BWC, here

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pinksparklelps · 3 months

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Wanted to elaborate more on my IFS. This gets long so buckle in folks

First off, IFS stands for Internal Family System, which is a kinda psychotherapy thing. "IFS is a transformative tool that conceives of every human being as a system of protective and wounded inner parts led by a core Self."

This was introduced to me by my mom, who if you didn't know has gone through college and has a master's degree in all this mental stuff, as well as working at a place to help people who are struggling.

Basically it helps you connect to yourself more, and access those parts of yourself that have been wounded or are protective, and is used in therapy. It's not just therapy, but an expanded way of understanding yourself.

This is not to be confused with multiple systems, which is caused by Dissociative Identity Disorder. IFS is a thing everyone has, as we are all comprised of different parts and experiences. It is evidence-based, and you can look up more information if you don't entirely believe me.

The IFS is made up of three roles; Managers, who are the protective parts of you, and help manage emotions and tasks in daily life. Exiles, who hold memories of hurt, fear, and pain, like they're holding your trauma. Firefighters, who seek to ward off the bad emotions caused by the exiles, which manifests in coping mechanisms that are either bad (substance use and the like) or good (listening to music or something to distract yourself.

IFS also includes the core Self, like the genuine version of you, and can identify, observe, and help in lessening how extreme a role may be, or make one more productive, and help them all coexist in an effective way. It includes positive traits like the eight C's and five P's, and the presence of each helps you personally identify how available the Self is, and what still needs to come out.

The eight C's: Confidence, calmness, creativity, clarity, curiosity, courage, compassion, connectedness

The five P's: Presence, patience, perspective, persistence, playfulness

I created characters/sonas of the parts of my own Internal Family System, which right now comprises of 5 firefighters, 2 exiles, and 3 managers.

Euphrosyne (Mirth) is the more childish things I enjoy, as well as my excitement and hyperfixation on things I love and have grown up with, such as Disney, robots, the color pink, dresses, and more

Oizys (Miseria) is the more emotional part of me, which shows itself in her elemental theme. Instead of distracting, this is the part that makes me hyperfocus on bad memories and the emotions that come with them

Asteria is the part of me that loves and worships the stars, and amplifies the comfort and calm I feel from the night sky and the moon. It holds all my beliefs and feelings surrounding the night and anything associated with it

Aphrodite I'd rather not expand on, as she has a more personal role derived from a personal experience

Soteria (Alexis) is essentially a knight, which shows in her design. She's the most defensive, in which no matter where bad emotions come from, whether the other roles or outside forces, she immediately shields me off; most often manifesting in heavy disassociation and avoidance, which are the times I get quieter and seem to disappear for a while

Pasithea (Pax) is the part that prioritizes my own comfort and safety, and keeps the things that are soft and make me calm nearby as much as possible. Like my Hornet plushie, my yin-yang bracelet, my music boxes, and anything else that's really special

Teles (Camille) is the part that prioritizes work and perfection, and oftentimes is what gets me so focused on documentation of games I currently play. She focuses on keeping things known to me, and trying to make everything perfect no matter how long it takes, so she and Pax butt heads a lot

Minerva (Aria) is the part that prioritizes my love and connection to music, as well as keep all my special and favorite songs memorized for me to sing. She ties memories and experiences to songs, so that when I'm thinking or feeling something, I have the perfect thing to express myself

Kitty and Skylar are my exiles, and in being so, I'm not gonna talk about what specifically they represent; only that they are designed how I looked during the period of time in which the memory occurred

#IFS #internal family systems

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starry-fantasies · 2 years

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A Clinical Analysis of Cloud's Psychology, Part III - Reintegration and Unconditional Love

This is the conclusion to my series on Cloud's psychology, where I will discuss identity reintegration. The original was posted on Reddit. You don't need to have read the other posts to understand this one, but it's highly encouraged so you can follow my overall train of thought. I'll still include a quick and dirty review of the important concepts from Part II that will be relevant here. To provide some background, I'm currently training in clinical diagnosis and psychotherapy to become a psychologist. I want to apply what I know to break down our understanding of Cloud in a clinical context.

Part I - Trauma, Dissociation, and Psychosis Part II - Identity, Self-Concept, and Mako Part III - Reintegration and Unconditional Love [you are here]

I find the term reintegration very fitting, considering that Cloud's recovery is portrayed by multiple Clouds coming back together again into one whole person. We've established how Cloud's sense of self was shattered through a combination of trauma, Jenova cells, mako poisoning, and his innate desire for strength. In the real world, he'd likely need therapy over his entire lifetime in order to reorganize his identity. But since this is Final Fantasy, Cloud has access to a special metaphysical experience. When Cloud and Tifa fell into the lifestream, he was able to literally pull Tifa into his subconscious and enable her to help organize his memories. I'm going to discuss how and why this works, as well as why Cloud needed Tifa specifically. I'm NOT trying to put a shipping angle on this, I'm just primarily interested in what it took for Cloud to heal, and it's impossible to ignore Tifa's importance in this case.

Quick Recap of Self-Concept

Self-concept, or your understanding of who you are, is made up of three main parts:

Ideal Self - Who you want or aspire to be

Real Self - Who you actually are

Self-Image - Your mental picture of yourself

A good self-image relies on congruence between the ideal self and the real self. Basically, the more similar they are, the better your self-esteem. If they are dissimilar, then it creates incongruence that reduces self-esteem.

Cloud's ideal self wants to be strong, but his real self never made SOLDIER, resulting in incongruence and low self-esteem for much of his life. After Zack's death, Cloud's ex-SOLDIER persona was born inspired by his ideal self, made to help him process his trauma. This boosted congruence but caused him to dissociate from his real self, leaving him vulnerable to manipulation.

The Importance of Tifa

The cornerstone of identity reintegration in the real world is relational support. Because the individual can't rely on himself to reorient who he is, he needs someone else that is able to do that for him, to contain his uncertainties. This often refers to the therapeutic relationship between a patient and his therapist, where the therapist's assurance provides support to the patient and helps him gain the confidence to safely explore his identity. It's clear that for Cloud, the person who helps him reorient his sense of self is Tifa. While Tifa serves the important role of helping Cloud clarify his memories, this alone isn't sufficient for reintegration, the same as how confronting people with the truth doesn't resolve their delusions. It's Cloud's relationship to Tifa that gave him a source of stability to ground him.

In Cloud's subconscious, Tifa helped Cloud remember key parts of his past that explain who he is in the present and why he knows the things that he does. In psychology, the subconscious contains information that isn't immediately part of a person's awareness, therefore this tells us that Cloud indeed still has his real self buried within him. One of the Clouds is different, a child version of him that is meant to represent his true feelings and therefore can be thought of as his real self. This child Cloud ends up explaining the roots of his identity, primarily his ideal self and how it came to be. Child Cloud explains to Tifa that the reason he wanted to join SOLDIER was because he failed to protect Tifa from falling at Mt. Nibel. This tells us that Tifa is at the root of Cloud's ideal self, something that I will keep emphasizing as the key to her importance.

Because Tifa is the root of his ideal self, she is also a massive determinant of Cloud's self-image. This is precisely why Tifa ended up being the final key to Cloud's breakdown at the Northern Crater. When a relational support is feeling anxious or overwhelmed, this spills over to the person relying on her. Prior to Cloud's disappearance after he gave Sephiroth the black materia, Tifa wasn't able to fully be there for Cloud because of her own confusion and apprehension towards Cloud's ex-SOLDIER persona. This only escalated when Sephiroth used her memories against Cloud, casting doubt on whether or not the Cloud she saw in front of her was Cloud from Nibelheim. Remember, the looking glass self draws self-esteem and self-image from how other people see the individual. When Cloud was unsure of who he was, he attempted to look to Tifa for reassurance, and in the moment she was unable to provide that.

Once they're in the lifestream, a large part of what Tifa did was help Cloud affirm that his memories are real. The spent a lot of their time in Cloud's subconscious comparing his memories to Tifa's. But, it was only when Cloud recalled memories that even Tifa couldn't recall that they truly began to make progress with Cloud's identity reintegration. Tifa didn't dig up Cloud's memories, but notably she prompted Cloud to recall why he wanted to join SOLDIER in the first place. Through this, Cloud was prompted to remember the failures that led to his enlistment. Cloud seemed hesitant to talk about his childhood memories related to this, but Tifa provided continuous encouragement as he walked through what happened. And, by recalling why he wanted to join SOLDIER, Cloud was reminded that he never lived up to that dream, directing them to reflect on the Nibelheim Incident again.

Unconditional Love

If we're trying to look at this from a psychology angle, I'd argue that confirming Cloud's memories isn't the most important thing Tifa did for him. The treatment modality that real world therapists use for identity reintegration is called unconditional positive regard, which is unconditional acceptance of a patient as he is. This is telling the patient, "I'm not here to judge you, I will see you and accept you for who you are." This is how the therapist helps the patient manage his fears and anxieties, creating the space for safely exploring his identity. But Tifa isn't Cloud's therapist, she's a dear friend who has a personal relationship with him. When talking about how loved ones help people experiencing identity problems, we say that their unconditional love is what supports the individual. This is why Cloud needed a loved one to be there with him in his subconscious, so that he could find the courage to explore it. Tifa's devotion in particular is so strong that she decided to stay with him in Mideel, when he was at his weakest. Cloud can easily find assurance that she is there to stay and that even when he is weak, she will still accept him. Also, it's worth mentioning that by allowing Tifa into his subconscious, Cloud is expressing unconditional love for her as well. He doesn't blame her for doubting him and still seeks comfort and reassurance from her.

Remember that Cloud's self-esteem is built upon his ability to protect those he cares about. However, Tifa's unconditional love allows him to reshape how his looking-glass self works. Crucially, she affirmed that Cloud did keep his promise, that he did protect her during the Nibelheim Incident. It's a fairly quick moment in the OG, but arguably one of the most important things Tifa says in the story. Cloud felt like he's been failing Tifa for years, but once Tifa tells him that he kept his promise after all, she is telling him that his real self is more congruent with his ideal self than he thinks. Remember, Tifa is at the root of Cloud's ideal self, which is why he cares so much about what she thinks. By providing affirmation, Tifa gave Cloud a means to reconceptualize his self-esteem in a more positive manner. Her unconditional love is also what gives him the courage to openly admit his facade to the rest of the party later on. There also, when Cloud explains how his ex-SOLDIER persona was an illusion, the party doesn't judge him or chastise him for it. They listen to him openly and accept him for who he is, providing unconditional love through their unyielding support for the main mission. This is another rather quick scene, but very necessary for Cloud nonetheless.

Tifa provided Cloud with unconditional love and affirmed congruence between his real self and ideal self. This positively affected his self-esteem and overall self-image, giving him a pathway back to accepting his true self and reintegrating it into his self-concept. It's very clever how the true retelling of the Nibelheim Incident manages to clear up their memories and provide Cloud with affirmation at the same time. I think this is why Cloud is able to reintegrate his identity so shortly after revealing that he was there at the Nibelheim Incident.

Final Thoughts

Something else that came to mind while thinking about Cloud's reintegration is the fact that mentally, he is still around 16 years old. Developmentally, Cloud is still in a period where he would be exploring who he is and looking to the people around him to affirm him. Self-esteem is important for everyone, but especially volatile during adolescence. Teenagers are especially sensitive to other people's opinions, which only highlights the fact that Cloud truly needed to hear affirmation and encouragement from someone else. Because of this, and because of the emotional growth that Cloud experiences, I'd argue that in some ways you could think of his character arc as a coming-of-age story.

Cloud's personal journey is my favorite part of FFVII, and it's amazing to me how well it fits in with real world psychological concepts. I believe that it will be largely preserved from the OG, with expansions to add depth and nuance to Cloud's experience. He's the hero that was never really meant to be a hero but ended up saving the world anyway, and one of my favorite characters in fiction. I hope that my analysis successfully conveys the deep appreciation I have for Cloud's character.

I also might do a similar analysis on Sephiroth eventually?

#final fantasy #final fantasy 7 #final fantasy vii #ff7 #ffvii #final fantasy vii remake #final fantasy 7 rebirth #ff7r #ff7 remake #ff7 rebirth #ffvii rebirth #cloud strife #tifa lockhart

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messymaelstrom · 2 months

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With this post about complex ptsd going around, I wanted to post some actual resources about it. It's no good to just say 'you may have this' without pointing people towards information about cptsd and resources that can help in easing symptoms and treating it.

SO. If CPTSD sounds a little bit like home, I whole-heartedly encourage you to learn more about it. The more you know, the more you can help yourself.

The C is for complex. And my god, is it complex. When I first learned of it, everything clicked. All of my problems suddenly made sense. CPTSD can be the root cause of several mental illnesses including major depression, anxiety disorders, and even borderline, among others.

Fortunately there are a LOT of resources for CPTSD, and it's a growing field of research and targeted therapy.

Resources:

The Body Keeps the Score - a book I cannot recommend enough. It details a lot of the scientific evidence for cptsd as well as the behavioral patterns associated with it. It also discusses solutions to the problem.

Waking the Tiger - another book by Peter Levine

Peter Levine is an excellent resource. I recommend reading his books and listening to his videos on YouTube. They are commonly found on the NICABM channel.

Complex PTSD: from Surviving to Thriving

Complex ptsd workbook

When the Body says No

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

Patrick Teahan: my absolute favorite childhood trauma therapist on YouTube. He (among many others) is at the forefront of cptsd treatment, and has pioneered a new childhood adverse experiences test that specifically discusses issues that lead to the development of CPTSD. There are compelling journal prompts at the end of most of his videos, and he also discusses reparenting your wounded inner child. Absolutely wonderful resource. Look through his community page because he posts profound affirmations each day.

Additional advice/notes:

Healing from cptsd is COMPLEX. It’s not an easy thing to do. Beware of people selling easy solutions. You cannot exercise, diet, manifest, talk, feel, or positive think your way out of it.

If you have cptsd, especially the kind that developed in childhood, you are more likely to have other chronic health conditions. Cptsd can cause autoimmune disorders and chronic pain. The pain itself is often psychosomatic, where you feel a lot of pain but doctors cannot find a physical reason for it. It's a frustrating pain to have, but it's REAL.

I believe a common trap to healing cptsd is thinking that psychotherapy is enough. In my experience, and from what experts say, it doesn't really address the roots of the problem. You will need additional and more diverse treatment like group therapy and inner child work at a minimum.

And the unfortunate truth is that you cannot heal relationship wounds without experiencing safe relationships. (I'm stuck here)

You will not heal effectively while you exist in the same conditions that made you sick. You will not heal effectively if you are maintaining relationships with the people who made you sick.

Reparenting the inner child might sound like a fake solution. But it's actually extremely effective. I really had doubts about it, but I've found that talking to my inner child is an extremely fast way to get out of a triggered state.

#mental health #complex ptsd #cptsd #trauma #childhood trauma #cptsd is genuinely the fucking worst. living with it so hard.#you're fighting every single day against your own dysfunctional brain pathways & it's exhausting.#but the effort is worth it.

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citylawns · 8 months

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I had my last psychotherapy session for at least six months today because my therapist is going on maternity leave (I'm so happy for her, I love her so much) and I felt okay afterwards. I bought myself a treat and cried a bit.

What I really want to say and don't know quite how to say it is my therapist confirmed that I experienced sexual abuse as a child and I only just realised/remembered that a few days ago. I was crying and dissociating for days, called in sick to work, started getting veritgo that I couldn't get rid of.

But after that, I paradoxically feel the healthiest I have ever felt. I feel like everything is clearing. Like I am freeing myself. That things actually make sense for the first time in my life. I don't remember much about what happened, and maybe I won't ever remember. I think I can make peace with that, I dont really want to remember anyway. I also cant force it. But for the first time I want to take care of myself instead of harm myself at these memories and very visceral and uncomfortable emotions and I think thats also a first for me. Like over the weekend I very much did self injure in some way but I dont have that urge now. I was very much trying to hurt myself last year.

There are a couple things I want to say

(1) therapy has saved my life. trauma informed psychotherapy specific to the issues I have experienced.

(2) I share my emotions a lot on here (knowing the risk, knowing the benefit) and get people telling me "don't be sad just be happy :)" and "all you talk about is your pain is your life really that miserable?" and I want strangers who read this and think those things to understand that yes, life has been that painful. it's been devastating in more ways than I can even express but its been beautiful too, and I'm trying my best to have more beautiful moments. but you need to learn to not go around and invalidate someone's pain or tell them to change it like they have control over that because you don't know their history or what they are coping with. they might not even fully know. it's not wrong to feel bad. it's not bad to be in pain. it's not bad to be unhappy. it tells us when something is wrong. I wrote something about that a while ago before I even fully understood it, and I still forgot it and got angry at myself for feeling sad. I will keep reminding myself of my own lessons.

(3) when people say "it gets better" they are half right. we can all only speak from our own experience, so in mine I want to say that I have fought for it to get better. tooth and nail. better isn't perfect. but my god its not what life was before. better also looks different for everybody.

(4) I wouldn't change a thing about my life despite it all. I'm just so happy I get to live

#personal

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sagittastory · 1 year

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#5 What is Somatic Based Therapy?

CBT is well renowned for its talking, and easily accessible techniques. However, it is also unfortunately known as being ineffective for treating more complex psychiatric disorders. Henceforth, Somatic Therapy became another form of care for those afflicted with their series of unfortunate events. Somatic therapy includes talk therapy, but also concentrates on other methods of working through emotions and events (so is effective for PTSD), for example via the movement of your eyes you can limit flashbacks that could potentially cause a relapse and otherwise considerable emotional distress. It "incorporates body-oriented modalities such as dance, breathwork, and meditation to support mental healing".

Unlike standard mental health therapy, such as CBT which focuses predominantly on the mind," somatic therapy incorporates body-oriented modalities such as dance, breathwork, and meditation to support mental healing. In addition, somatic experiencing therapy sessions include talk therapy and mind-body exercises.

Beyond the standard somatic therapy, numerous subgroups use its framework in specific ways. These include:

Sensorimotor psychotherapy 1:

A comprehensive therapy that uses the body as both a source of information and intervention targets.

The Hakomi Method 2:

Psychotherapy that integrates scientific, psychological, and spiritual sources, focusing on four core concepts: gentleness, nonviolence, compassion, and mindfulness.

Bioenergetic analysis 3:

Body-psychotherapy that combines bodily, analytic, and relational work based on understanding energy.

Biodynamic psychotherapy 4:

A combination of allopathic (medical) and holistic therapy modalities that include physical massage by the practitioner

Brainspotting:

In addition to mind and bodywork, this therapy incorporates eye positioning to retrain emotional reactions.

Those on the ASP tend to benefit from Somatic as I believe many hold forms of trauma similar to PTSD and can allow for those with alexithymia to bring awareness to the ways their body responds to their environment and experiences.

#therapy #mental problems #mental health #mental illness #autistic community #complex ptsd #actually ptsd #somatichealing #somatictherapy #cognitivehealth #cbt therapy

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faesystem · 1 year

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Can DID form without ‘trauma’? Technically yes. Can DID be endogenic? No.

Confusing title, I know, but bare with me. I’m just trying to clear up some common misunderstandings I see surrounding trauma and DID.

TLDR: The definition of ‘trauma’ within the field of psychology is constantly being explored to determine the best use of it. There is no singular ‘correct’ definition, and it is important to consider the context in which its being spoken about. Within the context of DID, the idea that DID can be ‘non-traumagenic/endogenic’ is inseparable from the idea that it is not real/not a disorder. Even if someone with DID technically does not have ‘trauma’ by certain definitions, that does not mean that the label of ‘non-traumagenic/endogenic’ is appropriate, and labelling it as that has incredibly harmful connotations and perpetuates ableism against DID systems.

(Before we begin, a quick clarification on 2 things.

This post is about DID. DID and OSDD have a lot of overlap, but all of the scientific literature I have ever read has been about DID specifically. Therefore, I say DID here. If anyone has further information surrounding OSDD and would like to open up that dialogue, please do so.

Plural is an opt-in label for people to describe their personal experiences feeling like multiple people. Not every DID system identifies as plural, and not everyone who’s plural has a CDD. I have so much to say about this term PLEASE ASK but this isn’t the post for discoursing about terms. This is just to clarify how I view the term to avoid confusion.)

First, let’s look at the word trauma. There’s a reason I put it in quotation marks and that’s because I am referring to a very specific definition.

The DSM-5 defines a traumatic event as exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence.

Yeah, so, a very strict and narrow definition of trauma. This definition does not include things like emotional abuse, neglect (that did not lead to/create concern of serious injury), robbery (that did not include serious violence/threats of serious violence). Even physical abuse that did not lead to or create concern of serious injury does not count as traumatic by this definition.

This means that it is possible for someone to develop DID without experiencing certain definitions of trauma. However, that does not mean endogenic DID exists.

(Note, it can exist I suppose in very specific circumstances of DID systems who were plural endogenically prior to having been exposed to the events that lead to the development of DID, but DID cannot develop endogenically.)

What does endogenic mean? Endogenic, in this context, tends to get summarised as ‘any system that forms for any reason aside from just trauma’. Which, when paired with the DSM definition for trauma, seems to encompass a lot of DID systems.

Except it is important to acknowledge that incredibly narrow definition of trauma is not the right definition. In fact, there is no ‘right’ definition of trauma in the same way there’s no ‘right’ definition of anything. However, in order to get as close as we can to right, its important to understand the context of the conversation being had.

When it comes to DID specifically, its important to recognise the context of what trauma means. Specifically the fact that the idea DID can form without trauma is rooted in things like the sociocognitive model of DID. This model is not saying DID is able to form without trauma, it is saying it’s not a real disorder and people are deluding themselves into believing they have it due to psychotherapy and media. It also says that those with DID who remember trauma are actually experiencing false memories caused by psychotherapy and media.

Pretty fucking ableist!

And the ‘natural multiplicities’ movement (the precursor to non-disordered plurality) was the exact same thing. Theorising that DID is actually a non-traumagenic and non-pathological experience, pushing for the demedicalisation of the disorder. You know, despite the fact that studies indicate it is a trauma response disorder and that, you know, it’s a disorder.

This is why people use ‘endogenic/non-traumagenic’ and ‘non-disordered’ interchangeably when speaking about DID, because it means the same thing in the context of DID. To say DID can be endogenic you’re saying DID can be non-disordered. You’re saying DID is not a disorder.

That’s why there’s such drama and discourse surrounding endogenics, because there’s a lot of really horrific ableism surrounding the idea of endogenic DID that a lot of the wider plural community perpetuates. Even just lumping DID in as inherently plural when plural is not inherently disordered pushes this same idea. That DID is not a disorder, that it’s just this natural thing or that people have been manipulated into believing they have it. It’s why people are so mad, because its perpetuating ableism we’re facing.

Do I agree with anti-endos? No! Because they all seem to further conflate DID and plurality which perpetuates ableism, and also a lot of them are jerks.

And like, look. Me? Personally? Not a big fan of the term traumagenic and I don’t use it to describe our DID. Not because our DID is non-traumagenic, but because it a) opens up the idea that non-traumagenic (and therefore non-disordered) DID exists, but also b) it creates this false understanding of how trauma relates to DID. It’s why we see that multigenic DID BS where people believe ANPs are non-traumagenic alters because they didn’t split from trauma.

DID is not traumagenic in the same way PTSD is. It’s a dissociative disorder that formed as a defence mechanism. I think the term adaptive is more useful in explaining it, but honestly there wouldn’t need to be a term if people stopped conflating the idea of being non-traumagenic with DID.

Even ANPs are adaptive, they’re there because they’re a part of the defence mechanism your brain adapted.

And also adaptive puts more emphasis on the fact that the disorder as opposed to the trauma that caused it. For some systems, uncovering blocked trauma memories and figuring out what caused their DID can be useful. For others, its seriously not. Like us, for example. Our psych has confirmed we show no signs of blocked or hidden memories in childhood, and we’ve figured out our DID probably formed primarily due to a lack of structure (or, as she put it, ‘chaos and discord’) in our life. Which was trauma because it seriously impaired our ability to develop as a child and caused us to have a life long complex dissociative disorder, but also is technically not trauma by things like the DSM definition. But regardless of what definition you use, it’s not appropriate to call it non-traumagenic or endogenic because that is synonymous with not-disordered when it comes to DID.

I swear this was meant to be more put-together than it is, but whatever. I hope this has clarified some shit for some people.

#syscourse #discourse #education #educational content #DID #actuallydid #dissociative identity disorder #long post #Oh boy howdy is this long #DID education #Is it crosstagging to put it in the endogenic DID tags? Is that wrong?#I'm not going to just in case

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