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veryvincible · 3 years

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Ive seen a few blogs talking about Tony Stark with OCD and I was wondering what your thoughts on it were? I know it's not canon but would it be an okay headcanon?

Oh, goodness. This is a doozy.

First of all, I do want to give the obligatory "any headcanon is okay" when it comes to stuff like this, because some people do pick up comfort characters that aren't exactly like them and then use headcanons to push their characterization around until they become a more efficient catharsis vessel, and there's really nothing wrong with that in a space where characters are pushed around all the time anyway. Your headcanons are yours, and you interact with media how it best suits you. Just don't go talking like this is The Way The Character Absolutely Definitely Is, because not only is that misleading, but also it's kind of stepping on other people who need different headcanons for other reasons.

Now that that's out of the way.

You've come to the right place! I have actually been diagnosed with OCD and have been dealing with it now for a long, long while; funnily enough, the OCD is what led me to worry about the OCD, which is what led me to research the OCD in-depth for many, many years. Not to brag or anything. B) Like, literally not to brag, because it's a mental illness. Anyway, jokes aside.

I'm going to go by the DSM-5 and personal experience with the diagnostic process for now. I know some people have their gripes with the DSM, but it's what we're going with.

Before that, though, I do want to lay some things down here. Though it's not outlined by the DSM exactly, it's common among mental health professionals and people with OCD to categorize different symptoms based on causes of OCD. Because OCD is inherently ego-dystonic, your intrusive thoughts are going to attack whatever it is you care about most-- people with primarily contaminant symptoms might fear illness, people with primarily aggressive symptoms might fear hurting others, etc. There's no standard for what these categories are, really. Different places teach different things, and some people disregard them entirely. But it's good to know they're out there, some examples being contaminant and aggressive OCD as mentioned before, as well as pathologic doubt/completeness, religion, self-control, and superstition. There are more, less, or different categories depending on where you look, so we can just leave that there.

Now, onto the actual diagnostic criteria.

In order to be diagnosed with OCD, you need the presence of obsessions OR compulsions, OR both. So, you kind of don't need the whole set to have OCD, though it's argued that some people view "primarily obsessive" and "primarily compulsive" types of OCD as... plain old OCD. "Pure O OCD" especially has been criticized, as its based entirely on the concept of compulsions being in one's head as opposed to external, which then raises the question of whether or not we're defining mental illness by the sufferers or the observers. Regardless, this is what the current DSM says: obsessions, compulsions, or both.

They must be time-consuming (>1hr/day), cause clinically significant distress, or cause impairment in social, occupational, or other areas of functioning. So, could you be considered OCD if you're perfectly functional to the outside world but dysfunctional psychologically? Yes! Could you be considered OCD if you're mostly okay with the compulsions (often seen in people who believe their compulsions are rational responses to rational fears), but you can't function in day-to-day life? Yes! OCD is defined by how it affects you, and there are so, so many ways that it can do that.

The symptoms of OCD can't be caused by physiological effects of substance abuse or other medical conditions.

The disturbance cannot be better explained by the symptoms of another disorder (i.e. if excessive worries are better explained by an anxiety disorder, you're more likely to be diagnosed with something along the lines of GAD; if your difficulty discarding possessions is more in line with a hoarding disorders, you're more likely to be diagnosed with a hoarding disorder). One thing I would like to mention here is that this is often where the DSM breaks down when it comes to practice rather than theory. I'd like to specifically outline the example under this segment of the DSM that refers to "guilty ruminations, as in major depressive disorder". By these guidelines, would you be able to have both MDD and OCD if your OCD has mostly intrusive symptoms?

Well, yes, actually. There's a lot of discourse surrounding it, but here's the thing. Diagnosis is something meant to put you into a category so you can either seek treatment or get accommodations. For mental illnesses, physical illnesses... anything. This is it. I myself have both MDD and OCD, and part of why this is, is because there's an overlap between symptoms... but that's all it is. An overlap, borderlining comorbidity. And there are plenty of people who have similar diagnoses.

You'll see why I'm bringing this up in a second.

Let's go back to the diagnostic criteria and take it one-by-one.

Obsessions are defined by (1) and (2):

Recurrent and persistent thoughts, urges, or images that are experienced, at some time during the disturbance, as intrusive and unwanted, and that in most individuals cause marked anxiety or distress. The individual attempts to ignore or suppress such thoughts, urges, or images, or to neutralize hem with some other thought or action (i.e., by performing a compulsion).

Does Tony experience obsessions? Well, he very well could.

There used to be a criterion in the now-outdated DSM-IV that outlined obsessions could NOT be "simply excessive worries about real-life problems." But in the DSM-5, this was dropped. So, an obsession, by current standards, most certainly can be defined as an excessive worry about real-life problems.

Whether or not Tony's worry is excessive is debatable. We're all aware of Clint's sentiment in New Avengers that basically boils the team's state of being down to "we're extraordinary people, so we have extraordinary problems." Tony's worries are extraordinary, but... are they excessive?

I could go either way on this argument. Due to Tony's massive influence and his feelings of responsibility, we can all see why these worries might be considered realistic and average. But it's those feelings of responsibility that would make a better argument for "excessiveness"; he has taken the stance quite a few times that he's been "the only one who could see what needed to be done", or something akin to that, at least. It's not just that he has serious problems and he's concerned about serious solutions. It's that he feels such a sense of responsibility and guilt that every single problem on the planet happens to be a problem he's obligated to consider by his own standards, and if he doesn't consider those problems, he's an awful garbage man. Again, by his own standards.

One could also easily argue that he could fall prey to both aggressive-type obsessions and pathologic doubt-type obsessions, given that he's terrified of hurting people or causing harm unknowingly and that he's never 100% sure of himself, always "almost certain", and often looking to others (like Happy in Civil War, for example) to vent and try to half-validate himself as someone who really is doing the right thing.

These very obviously cause him distress, and one could argue that his Atlas-like anxiety with regards to keeping the world afloat is a huge factor in his mental cycle of thinking he's not doing enough, which means he's not enough, which means he deserves to die, which means he actually should die if he's not doing anything right, which means he has to try really, really hard to do things right, but he'll never do everything he needs to do, so he's not doing enough, so he's not enough, so he deserves to die.

And the alcoholism could easily come into play here, being a default coping mechanism for almost anything he'd encountered, obsessive or otherwise.

Now for compulsions.

Compulsions are defined by (1) and (2):

Repetitive behaviors (e.g., hand washing, ordering, checking) or mental acts (e.g., praying, counting, repeating words silently) that the individual feels driven to perform in response to an obsession or according to rules that must be applied rigidly. The behaviors or mental acts are aimed at preventing or reducing anxiety or distress, or preventing some dreaded event or situation; however, these behaviors or mental acts are not connected in a realistic way with what they are designed to neutralize or prevent, or are clearly excessive.

So, we're going back to the obsessions outlined earlier. One thing I neglected to mention there was what he's referred to as one of his biggest fears, and I neglected to mention it because of how it ties into potential compulsions.

He's mentioned that someone "taking over his brain" is possibly the worst thing that could happen to him, given that he is a man with incredible influence and incredible intelligence and if his mind falls into the wrong hands, it could have (and has had) disastrous consequences. We see a lot of Tony trying to protect his mind as a result, always having backups, always having alternatives, always having contingency plans. This could also be considered a response to an obsession with regards to “mental contamination”, which makes sense.

It's similar with the responsibility-induced anxiety; he made how many AIs, now? He quite literally can't let himself die. He needs to be up, awake, present, alive. He needs to continue doing The Right Thing. We see the same sorts of behaviors even when he's alive and kicking-- he's often in his lab into the late hours of the night. He canonically works multiple jobs at his company. He runs around holding babies around the world, for God's sake. He believes everything deserves to be cared for, loved, and he believes he has to be the one to love it, and so he does, taking up so much of his time and so much of his energy every single day in a desperate attempt to make sure he's done all he can.

This is a man whose every day life could be considered scheduled compulsions if you really wanted it to be, one after the other, in a never-ending cycle of behaviors that he canonically won't ever be satisfied with.

Tony certainly could have obsessions. He certainly could have compulsions. He certainly could have OCD.

It's worth it to mention that self-blame, even for the smallest little details, is extremely common in people with OCD, and... That's also a very Tony thing, isn't it?

All that to say...

Do I think he does?

Well, not... really. I mean, I don't very, very strongly believe that he doesn't. And a lot of neurodivergent people have created incredibly thorough explanations as to why a character not intended to be one way might still be that way-- not even as a headcanon, but quite literally, they just are that way. This is especially common among characters coded (intentionally or otherwise) to have things like autism and ADHD. Whether or not a character "has" something is difficult to decipher, but if you can outline all the symptoms and you can't come up with any other explanation for them, then, well... You've got a neurodivergent character on your hands.

But that's the thing. You certainly can explain Tony's feelings and decisions with a diagnosis of MDD and alcohol abuse. You can. Plenty of people don't really want to, especially with some more toxic beliefs in the mental health community that regard less stigmatized illnesses as somehow also less severe or less validating, and regards MDD as "just depression" in a way that more stigmatized illnesses aren't.

I don't feel terribly represented in Tony as someone with OCD-- I feel represented with almost every aspect of his struggles with mental health, but I rarely ever read through comics going, "there! There's my OCD thing!" Which isn't to say that it's never happened on a subconscious level, because... I mean, illness bleeds into every aspect of you. It's terribly difficult to find where one part of you ends and the other begins when there's so much overlap. But personally, Tony having OCD isn’t something that I really consider when I read or write (which is part of why I like having Ty Stone around so much-- I can pin a bunch of shit on him that I think Tony doesn’t have, and then I get to write everything I want while still keeping things true to the way I see them).

There are other sufferers of OCD who must certainly relate to Tony, and probably exclusively go "There's my OCD thing!" while reading his comics. I can see why.

So, again.

Do I think he has OCD? Eh. Not really my thing. But I think canon does what canon does, mental illnesses have plenty of overlap, and he meets the criteria enough that if you were to say he had both MDD and OCD, I wouldn't feel any reason to argue, especially if you’re saying it to better relate to him.

#cassks #suicide tw #sort of #ocd #is there a tag that means 'this talks about ocd but in a way that might trigger ocd'#because if there is. please tell me #i have thought many times that it would be cool to have a tag like this at some point #i'm very tired if there are any tags you want here just let me know

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vincent-g-writer · 3 years

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The Silver Screen Savant: Thoughts on Hollywood Autism, Pt. 1

When I was a child, I didn’t fit in.

A common statement, many people empathize with. However, to say “I didn’t fit in,” is a gross understatement. I stuck out like a sore thumb, and at times, still do. Now, why was this, you may ask? Well, there are things I could name. A banal little checklist of traits and characteristics would probably do the trick. But I’m not sure that would do it justice. So I’ll tell you what it felt like:

I had trouble reading facial expressions, because people’s face, and hands, and body would say one thing, while their words said another. Smiles that didn’t reach the eyes. Laughs that were a little too hearty, or loud, or hollow. Disingenuous conversations and actions frustrated me. If lying was wrong, why were, as my mother used to call them “little white lies” acceptable? Why did we smile and thank our new neighbors for their homemade casserole dish, before promptly throwing it away when they left? These things, and many others, puzzled me. But the thing that puzzled me the most, was interacting with my peers. I didn’t understand the sensation of a hundred million bees, pricking me with electric anxiety when I went to school, or played with children in the neighborhood. I didn’t understand why they weren’t constantly talking, wondering, asking- about everything. I didn’t understand how their minds worked. Most of all, I didn’t understand why it physically hurt me to look into people’s eyes, child and adult alike. On the other hand, I did notice they didn’t like me very much. “You’re weird,” they would sneer. Or “you talk too much.” And, they were right. I knew they were. Even as I would wax poetic about all sorts of nonsense, like the difference between a cocoon and a chrysalis. I knew. But I couldn’t…I couldn’t shut myself off.

And that’s just one tiny example, of a lifetime.

Back then, if you’d asked what was “wrong” with me, on a good day, I would have shrugged. Other times, when I despised every fiber of my being, I’d parrot back the sentiments of my peers. “Freak,” “loser,” and “r*tard” were words I heard often. And for a long time, I believed them.

Today, I know differently. Not to say the above struggles no longer apply. If anything, some of them are worse. But now, I now longer blame or hate myself for being different. Now, I understand.

The Lightbulb Moment

In 2014, my daughter began speaking. She was four years old. Before then, she could say “dada,” “juice,” “two,” and “go.” The rest was garbled noises, when and if she made a sound. Most of the time, she didn’t. My wife and I were concerned, to say the least. But it wasn’t exactly a new worry. My princess never crawled, never pointed to get people’s attention, or show them things, and did not play with toys. Plus a host of other concerns. So we hopped on Google, and after about, oh, half an hour of research, got in touch with a doctor. Now, I feel like I must add the caveat here that we wanted to have her seen before then. However, many issues (including a bout of homelessness) prevented that. So we were a bit…late, in that regard. No matter. Her doc sent her to a local play therapist, and after about fifteen minutes of interaction, the therapist knew exactly what was going on: Our little Princess was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

But wait! There’s more-

Once this became clear, my wife started looking into other things. Her own independent research, as it were. She kept it to herself for a month or three, then avalanched it all into my lap . Our Princess wasn’t the only one, as it turned out. And really, had I ever bothered to look…it was obvious. But I was in denial. I couldn’t possibly be autistic. So, like the stubborn Taurus I am, I dug my heels in. I refused to discuss it, for almost year. But, my beloved wife, who is much smarter and wiser than I am, knew what to do. In the name of “research for Princess,” she had me read a list of common autistic traits/symptoms. And it all came crashing down. I couldn’t deny it anymore. I was, without a doubt, also on the spectrum.

The gift of the Media: Fear, self hatred, stigma…superpowers?

Now, you might be asking, why exactly did I doubt myself? Cultural association, of course. And by “cultural association,” what I really mean is “the media.” Mostly, anyway. See, I’ve noticed a trend. In movies, tv and books, autism is usually presented in one of two ways: The Rainman, or the Idiot Perma-child, who cannot care for themselves. And I’m neither.

On the one hand, I was a straight A student. I could sleep through classes and make 100%. I was reading by the age of three or four, and I graduated highschool at fifteen. On the other, I have been known to go a full forty-eight hours without eating, because I “didn’t think about it.”

But I’m not the autistic person you see on tv. Now, that isn’t to say those people don’t exist. They do. For example, my daughter deals with much more noticable struggles than I ever have, while I have another member of my family (also on the spectrum) who is a certifiable genius. And I’ve known many others who are “obviously” autistic, whereas I pass as allistic* (see footnotes below) easily. Which is a sad discourse altogether, really. One the one hand, an “obviously” autistic person, what one might call “Low Functioning” (I could write a whole other post about why “low/high functioning” labels are harmful, however, for the sake of brevity, there’s some here, here and here) are often boiled down only to their struggles, where as people such as myself are relegated to “Not autistic enough to be my problem” or “well, you don’t look autistic.”

To quote-

“The difference between high-functioning autism and low functioning is that high-functioning means your deficits are ignored, and low-functioning means your assets are ignored.” -Laura Tisoncik

Why is this? As you might have guessed from the title of this post- I put a lot of it on the shoulders of the entertainment we consume. Nevermind certain hate organizations who swath themselves in the cloak of “advocacy” such as Autism Speaks, and Anti-Vaxcers, who think it’s better to have a dead child than an autistic one.*

I could go on. At length. However, I’m going to try and stay on track, just this once. To put it plainly, Hollywood Autism often works exactly like “high” and “low” functioning labels: We’re either uplifted to inhuman portrayals of superpowered savants, or downgraded to an “inspirational” invalid. In these stories, we’re props. The “Magical Disabled person!” as Tv Tropes puts it, there to uplift the neurotypical character from their adversity. After all, if this poor dumb sod (i.e- me) can be happy with their burdensome life, surely the pretty white able-bodied protagonist can! We’re “funny,” “scary,” or “sympathetic,” characters, who lack dimension, and nuance. We’re “inhuman.” We’re the lesser. Or at least, that’s one way it’s written. The other is the hyper intelligent, almost “superhuman,” and definitely super jackass genius, who’s much too smart™, and logical© to ever have feelings, friends or empathy. That’s it folks! That’s the show!

That’s what books, tv and movies told me, anyway. And what I truly believed for a long time. It’s why I cringed away in terror and shame when my spectrum issues were finally noticed. And why it took me so long to come to terms with it.

So, there you have it. Part 1. On the next episode, I’ll give some examples, both good and bad, and maybe even a little “what not to do,” or at least a “please consider real hard before doing this in your own work.”

If you like writing, talking about bad tropes and even worse marginalized representation, you can follow me at wordpress or at my “still has that new car smell” twitter. For now- thanks for reading.

-Your loving Vincent

*allistic= Non autistic.

*Vaccines do NOT cause Autism, however, if they DID, it would still be better to have an autistic child than one who died at the ripe old age of “easily preventable but deadly communicable disease.”

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sunsetsover · 5 years

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I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on Ben having BPD

ok WHEW you just opened a fucking can of worms this about to be the longest post i’ve ever made i hope you have your seatbelt on

let me just preface this by saying nearly everything i talk abt in this post will be based off of my personal experiences w bpd. some people experience it differently, some people might not agree w some of the things i say, but i can only talk abt my own pov. therefore, this just my own personal opinions on ben having bpd. so yh lmao

and disclaimer!! i’m not a doctor!! don’t take anything i say in this post as diagnostic criteria! i’m not an expert or mental health professional!! when it comes to your own mental health or the mental health of ppl in your life, do not consider me a source to reference like ‘oh well lauren sunsetsover said xyz’ like pls just don’t do that. do your own research. and most importantly consult a doctor!!!!!! i am not one!!!!!!!!!

also there are very few sources in this post bc most of this is just shit i’ve absorbed over the years from doctors and doing my own research lmao

now that’s out of the way let’s go! (this became part character study, part informational masterpost on bpd. also it got really fuckin long, hence the read more, so be warned lmao)

warning for potentially triggering content (abuse/mentions of suicide and self harm - nothin too bad but i do touch on ben’s behaviour and history, and this is a p serious mental health issue we’re talking abt here so! take care of yourselves!!)

ok so! some things to keep in mind before we even get to ben:

i believe (at least in the uk) borderline personality disorder is considered to be an outdated name, and one that essentially isn’t appropriate or fit for purpose anymore, so in my experience, a lot of the time now it’s referred to as eupd (emotionally unstable personality disorder) in medical settings. which is way more apt name imo, and tells you more abt what bpd actually is (but i still call it bpd bc it’s easier and ppl know what that is lmao). so like. emotionally unstable personality disorder. i bet that conjures up a way more vivid idea in ur head than borderline personality disorder does.

no one 100% knows what causes bpd, though it’s thought to be a combination of genetic and environmental factors, like most things. but the general consensus is that bpd develops when something (usually traumatic, but not always in an extreme sense. ppl w bpd have often been victims of some type of abuse in their childhood, but that’s not necessarily always the case) happens in your childhood that impacts the development of your personality. kind of a bizarre metaphor but hopefully it will help u understand: u know how in finding nemo, the egg nemo was in got damaged by the shark? and even tho the damage looked minor, it actually meant that one of his fins was permanently damaged - it was malformed, it didn’t grow right, he couldn’t use it properly? well imagine the fin = the personality; that’s what happens to a person w bpd’s personality. smth happens to us in our childhood that permanently damages our personality, and so it doesn’t grow and develop properly as the rest of us does, making it less functional than an average person’s. u can imagine how that can lead to all sorts of problem (we’ll get to them later)

but bc it’s a mental disorder that affects the personality, you can’t be diagnosed w bpd until you’re 18, when your personality is basically developed fully (i believe it can be diagnosed slightly younger, but those are rare and extreme cases). however, symptoms can start to present themselves earlier, as ur personality begins to develop and mature. (mine started presenting in my early teens)

bpd doesn’t really go away, and treatment with medication generally isn’t effective for long periods of time. however symptoms can be treated with continued therapy, and symptoms sometimes can start to ease as you get older!!

bpd also gets misdiagnosed a lot bc a lot of the symptoms are similar to that of other mental health problems. the biggest one it gets misdiagnosed as seems to be bipolar disorder, which i get tbh. i’ve always considered bpd very similar to bipolar, just like… quicker cycles. there are even memes about it. also bpd has a tendency to coexist w other mental health issues, which makes it harder to recognise and diagnose.

so now lets look at this from a diagnostic perspective

in order to be diagnosed w bpd you basically have to deemed, by a medical professional, to be meet certain criteria, and to have been meeting these certain criteria for a significant amount of time. there are some variations to this criteria, and proposed subtypes and basically different flavours of borderlines but i’m not even gonna go there. i’m just gonna talk abt what i’m most familiar w and how i think that applies to ben.

i’m copying and pasting the diagnostic criteria part from here bc as far as i’m aware this is the criteria doctors use for diagnosis. there are 9 different ‘indicators’/’criteria’, and you have to display or meet at least 5 of them in order to be considered for a bpd diagnosis:

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment

this is one of, if not the biggest part of bpd. that trauma i mentioned earlier? often stems from or is related to abandonment, or perceived abandonment, in childhood, be it physical or emotional. for example, a child that’s being abused by one parent might feel abandoned by the other parent if they don’t do anything about it, even if the second parent has no idea the abuse is going on. sound familiar? a similar thing happened to ben, with stella. phil not doing anything about the abuse ben was facing at the hands of stella - even though he didn’t know it was happening, even though phil did do something once he found out - was an abandonment to ben. and that’s just the tip of the abandonment iceberg for ben - kathy faking her death and leaving him was an abandonment (even when he thought she was actually dead), phil’s own abuse was an abandonment, as was his reaction when ben came out, and so on. and abandonment like that skews your thinking so you believe that everyone is going to abandon you, sooner or later, that they must be abandoning you for a reason, you must be a terrible person, you must be unworthy of people’s effort/time/love etc etc.

even when paul died, that was an abandonment to ben! like logically we know - and ben probably knows too - that paul didn’t want to die, he didn’t want to leave ben, he didn’t deliberately leave ben. but that doesn’t matter. mental illness is illogical, bpd is illogical, esp when it comes to abandonment. e.g. my therapist had to cancel a few of our appointments once bc she was ill, and it felt like an abandonment. like it was personal somehow, like she wasn’t coming into work bc of me, bc i was too much work, too hard to handle. ofc that wasn’t true, but that’s how it felt. it’s illogical. so ofc my solution was to just not go to my appointments even when she came back, bc like what other response is there lmao. it’s just that everything a person does feels personal, like it’s because of/about you, even when it isn’t. even when it has nothing to do w you. that’s probably why ben can come across at selfish at times, like he’s making everything about him. because it is all about him, in his mind. everything is because of him, is his doing, his fault etc. his way of thinking is skewed into thinking like that, bc shit keeps happening to him and ppl keep leaving him, so it must be his fault.

and!! ‘frantic efforts’ isn’t necessarily what u think it is!! it can be desperate begging ‘i’ll do anything to keep you in my life’ type actions, but it just as equally can be lashing out and abandoning someone in order to prevent them from abandoning u first - a ‘get them before they get me’ mentality (the whole scene where phil was in the hospital comes to mind - the ‘why doesn’t he love me back?’ was the more desperate part of him, tho it wasn’t necessarily an ‘effort’ per se, but then him trying to kill his dad basically in order to have the abandonment be at least on his own terms? that’s lashing out, and def qualifies as a ‘frantic effort’ lmao). and how often do we see that in ben? lashing out at jay in the hospital because he knew he was mad at him, and he’d rather hurt jay physically before he could hurt him emotionally? ben trying to support callum and showing him kindness, only to turn around and threaten to out him when he finds out callum asked stuart to sort him out? everything that happened w his dad, trying to fuck him over before his dad can get there first, trying to get rid of keanu so he can’t be abandoned in favour of him (although that didn’t really work, but it rarely does work the way u want it to lmao). and the biggest one to me, though probably one that people have already forgotten, is him breaking up w that guy he was seeing in newcastle even tho they were into each other bc he ‘had to, otherwise [he] would have ruined his life’. even tho we don’t really get details, that says it all to me. it’s v much a pattern that’s present in ben.

2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by extremes between idealization and devaluation (also known as “splitting”)

i feel like this one doesn’t need much explaining lmao

here is a definition of splitting from here (which is a very good article on splitting imo if u wanna read more abt it): ‘Splitting is a term used in psychiatry to describe the inability to hold opposing thoughts, feelings, or beliefs. Some might say that a person who splits sees the world in terms of black or white, all or nothing. It’s a distorted way of thinking in which the positive or negative attributes of a person or event are neither weighed nor cohesive.’

a little explanation of it from me: ppl w bpd can sometimes have very simplistic, all or nothing views on things. and splitting is basically when ur opinion on something or someone changes very quickly (sometimes instantly), often to an extreme (e.g. going from loving and idolizing someone, to absolutely fucking hating them, or from having a neutral opinion on something to suddenly becoming extremely angry abt it) sometimes without even having an identifiable trigger. it links into black and white thinking, which u may have heard of before - u either love someone and they can do no wrong, or u hate them and they disgust you. either something is amazing or it’s terrible. there is no grey area, no in between. it goes back into the whole ‘not being able to regulate ur emotions properly’ thing lmao there’s rarely nuances to our emotions or feelings, we’re all or nothing a lot of the time. so splitting is when ur opinion rapidly changes to one of these extremes. sometimes u can even go back and forth, splitting over and over on the same person/thing which is super fun.

ben splits on his dad all the time. all the fucking time. he doesn’t care about phil at all and wants to ruin him, then he wants phil’s approval and to be welcomed back into the family fold and the business. then ben hates him and wants him dead, then 5 minutes later he wants his love, wants to be a good son again. that’s splitting. u can also see it w jay, too, but no where near as extreme as w his dad. and i’ve seen it a couple of times w callum too, but again, it’s way more subtle. u probably wouldn’t notice it if u weren’t looking for it, whereas w phil it’s obvious.

but like i don’t need to explain ‘unstable and intense interpersonal relationships’, do i? just look at the relationships w phil, w jay, w lola, w callum, even w paul - they were unstable back when they first got together, and were arguably kind of intense too. (he settled a bit w paul, but his death/perceived abandonment fucked him up a lot beyond the expected ways). he’s always arguing w the ppl he loves. he tried to get poor billy killed, and yet since then he’s had no problem w him!! none of his relationships - apart from maybe his mum and ian (i don’t include lexi bc she’s a child) - are stable. and i would definitely describe his relationships as intense lmao

3. Identity disturbance: Markedly or persistently unstable self-image or sense of self

u can see this most - as most things - in his relationship w his dad. he fluctuates between seeming to know his worth (and demanding other people know it too), knowing he deserves his dad’s love and approval (why else would he be so mad abt the fact hes not getting it, if not bc he knows he’s worthy of it? if he didn’t think so, he wouldn’t be so angry abt not getting it - he’d be accepting/understanding, wouldn’t he?) and being desperate to do anything to get his dad’s love/approval, even things that are below him, turning into a child, begging to know why his dad doesn’t love him, why he’s never been enough. that scene where phil had found out abt ben trying to frame keanu and leaving him for dead is the epitome of this. u can see ben fluctuate between a hurt, traumatized little boy, begging his dad for some answers, some explanation as to why he’s not enough, begging him not to start drinking again, and a man who is angry, angry at his dad, angry at himself for crumbling like this, bc he should be stronger than this. u see him change multiple times in that one single scene. go watch it again. you’ll see it too.

some more examples: his absolute certainty that he is better and more qualified than the likes of shirley and keanu for working with his dad, and then being like ‘my dad was right, i’m good for no one’ - they don’t line up. does he have self esteem and know his worth or not? also his entire relationship w callum is an example of this - all those changes in his attitude towards cal and their situation? he often treats callum like they’re equals who understand each other, yet sometimes it seems like he thinks he’s superior to callum (e.g. the scene outside the cafe), and others he behaves (keyword) as though he thinks he’s not good enough for callum (why else would he just take all that shit from whitney and not say anything in retaliation? why, if not because he deems it more important that callum has an easier time of it than he does; that he regards cal’s comfort more important than his own? and why would he do that, if he held himself in such high regards? i mean he certainly acts like it sometimes, so why not then?)

also like……. who is ben? is he the bastard who cares about no one but himself, who’s always causing trouble not only for himself but for the people he cares about? is he the guy who just completely folds when people he knows hurtle abuse at him, accepting it lying down, who thinks he’s no good for anyone? the guy who goes out all night and drinks himself silly and purposefully gets himself into fights? the guy who shows callum so much empathy even tho it brings him nothing but pain, who loves jay unconditionally, who tried so hard to help bobby when he came back from prison? which one is he? which one does he want to be? does he even know?

(and you could argue that people are just multi-dimensional, but there’s just such a vast gap between these different facets of ben’s character and he can flip through them so fast it’s jarring, which is why i think it’s more like he straight up doesn’t have a consistent sense of self. which is a big part of bpd)

4. Impulsive behavior in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)

again, does this need explaining?

doing illegal shit, excessively drinking, becoming unnecessarily violent, fucking up his relationships, just generally doing reckless things regardless of the consequences - this has always been a part of ben’s character.

(his constant hook ups could be another one, but the jury’s still out on that one. if anything it’s less the sex that worries me and more the flippant attitude he has when meeting up w ppl - they could be anyone and do all sorts, at the end of the day)

it became most obvious recently around the anniversary of paul’s death - drinking himself sick, gambling all his money away, deliberately starting fights. but even before that and since then it’s been there.

it’s basically just a way to self sabotage.

i feel like this one isn’t a consistent part of ben’s behaviour like the others are, but it is undeniably there, so.

5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-harming behavior

although ben (to my knowledge) hasn’t displayed any suicidal behaviour, he has at times spoken in ways that could kind of sway that way. (i’m no good for anyone, i’m not worth it, why do you care etc)

also self harming!!! just because he doesn’t hurt himself in a direct way doesn’t mean he doesn’t deliberately put himself in situations where he’ll get hurt, and that is self harm!! letting stuart beat him at pride was self harm!! picking that fight w those homophobes at e20 was self harm!!! drinking to excess is a form of self harm!!! putting himself in harm’s way, even if he doesn’t get hurt, is self harm!!!! just bc he might not be self harming in the traditional sense doesn’t mean he’s not hurting himself!!! this one has been on my mind for so long!!!! oh my god!!!!! he absolutely has a pattern of self harming/self destructive behaviours, and just a general disregard for his own safety and well being!!!! the fact that it doesn’t worry more ppl in his life is so upsetting to me!!!!!!

6. Emotional instability in reaction to day-to-day events (e.g., intense episodic sadness, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)

aka the biggest part of bpd: pt 2

i feel like this definition doesn’t really do justice to this aspect of bpd. this is basically you literally having no control of your emotions. ‘day-to-day events’ have fuck all to do with it half the time. u could be sitting there minding ur business and all of a sudden you wanna smash up the entire room, for seemingly no reason. one time i was crying - like uncontrollably sobbing, a complete mess - and had been for maybe half an hour? and then all of a sudden, literally mid sob, it stopped. like it just stopped. i was done, i wasn’t sad anymore. i went from inconsolably crying to perfectly fine in a split second. can you even imagine that? it’s fucking crazy. that’s what having bpd is like. it’s like mood swings x1000 (that’s why i describe it like bipolar on a smaller scale - their mood swings last days/weeks/months, ours last minutes/hours, sometimes days but not often). you can be fine, then all of a sudden you’re not. or you can be not fine, and then all of a sudden you are. you can be ecstatic, then all of a sudden all the joy gets sucked out of ur body n u wanna die. then 5 mins later ur fine again. u can cycle thru every single human emotion in the space of a few hours with no warning whatsoever. u can go from feeling so many emotions u don’t know which one to focus on to feeling none at all. it’s exhausting. so yes ‘day-to-day events’ (this can be as minor as the way someone speaks to you, or not enjoying ur food as much as u thought u would, and it can make u terrifyingly sad or spark uncontrollable rage in u) can trigger it, but it’s like… at least that’s kind of justifiable. most of the time u just cannot regulate, control or predict ur emotions whatsoever. and often the emotions u do feel are not appropriate for the situation at hand lmao

on top of that, ppl w bpd have massive problems processing their emotions. while most ppl have the capacity to identify what they’re feeling and why, ppl w bpd often can’t. and bc they can’t identify it properly, they don’t know how to process it. that’s why emotions and feelings are so often black and white - we might develop the ability to recognise Big Emotions, like love and hate, happiness and sadness etc, but we can’t figure out the smaller, nuanced emotions. it becomes or, not and.

this is also why our emotions feel so big and all encompassing!! we can’t ignore our emotions!! they are our focus in a lot of ways. when ur sad, it feels like the world is ending, every single time. when ur happy, ur euphoric and nothing else matters, and so on. every emotion has the volume turned up to 100. that’s why our emotions sometimes come out in extreme or unhealthy ways - our emotions often feel so big we have such a hard time handling them. so we go to drastic lengths, whatever they may be, to cope.

(also bc most ppl w bpd are victims of abuse, we’re often hyperaware of other people’s moods, which can impact ours. someone can be annoyed for some innocuous, innocent reason, and yet bc we can sense it, we become scared or defensive and may lash out.)

and ben… little old ben, have u ever seen him have a rational reaction to anything in his life? how often have we seen him have an appropriate response to smth? my dad is shit, so i have to destroy him. failing that, i have to kill him. oh, my brother isn’t gonna let kill him? time to punch him in the face. my daughter ate all my cereal? it’s Overreaction Time. (this one in particular is Very Me like yes lexi is a child and he was unfair but my 7 year old cousin once drank all my j2os and i almost had a breakdown so i Get It) i’m feeling like shit? time to antagonise these homophobes until they beat me in the middle of the street. i sleep with this man once? time to get overly involved. he shows me a little bit of love and kindness? time to develop feelings for him despite him insisting he’s straight, the fact that he’s with a woman and i have been harassed and beaten by his homophobic family multiple times. but it isn’t going the way i wanted it to? time to impulsively hit him for not knowing what he wants, then immediately regret it.

and like. he went from crying his eyes out in his dad’s kitchen to threatening kat slater within the span of what, 10 minutes? he went from trying to kill his dad, to falling tf apart w jay, to trying to manipulate his dad - who had just woken up from a coma - for his own gain again, in the span of maybe an hour. if that doesn’t say rapid cycling, inconsistent emotions idk what does.

like idk enough about the old bens to say if this is a consistent characteristic of his or not (although based on the fact he killed a woman bc he was angry w his dad, i’d say it’s fairly safe to assume lmao) but ever since he came back his reactions and emotions have been pretty much never once been rational, stable or consistent.

(and like i wanna say i am saying all of this from the perspective of the bad days. so if you’re thinking ‘well, ben isn’t like that all the time’ ur right. neither am i. some days i’m fine, some days it’s not that bad, sometimes i can cope. but i still have bpd, even on those days. and imo, so does ben.)

7. Chronic feelings of emptiness

this is one i don’t really see in ben. we maybe see moments of emptiness, but certainly not enough to call it ‘chronic’.

also a lot of the moments we do see emptiness in ben, i feel like it’s forced emptiness, more for his own benefit or for the benefit of others rather than actual genuine emptiness. it’s not that he’s not feeling anything, it’s that what he is feeling he’s not showing. that’s very different from actually feeling empty.

8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)

this! is! such! a! massive! part! of! having! bpd! and it’s a part that no one ever fucking talks about either!!!

and again, does this one need explaining?

ben is anger. he’s a ball of it, and he has been for a very, very long time. he’s angry at his dad, at the world, at himself. for all sorts of reasons, both complex and simple. if i sat here and tried to get into all of it this post would be twice as long as it already is. and i don’t think i really need to, anyway. it’s not as if any of us need to dig very deep to see it, is it?

‘frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights’ like i really don’t need to elaborate do i? bc what does ben do when he’s angry? his temper flairs up, he gets physical, lashes out, makes threats.

and he’s so often angry in response to emotional pain, which is the saddest (and for me, most relatable) part. just look at paul’s anniversary, how angry he was just in general, to everyone - even his mum, who is like the only exception to his anger since he’s been back - when he was just hurting and sad. how angry he got when he found out keanu had replaced him in phil’s will, when really he was just hurt. he gets angry and violent so people don’t see him as weak bc he’s hurting. he has been conditioned to get angry instead of getting sad. it’s not healthy at all.

there is so much more but i feel like it’s unnecessary for me to get into it. bc u know. ben’s not exactly subtle in his anger is he lmao

9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms

this is the only other one that i don’t see in ben at all, and it’s one that i don’t really experience myself either so i don’t even have any insight to offer lmao

so!! more or less 7/9!! that’s a passing grade for diagnosis!!! welcome to the club, mr mitchell!!!!

all of this, of course, has been purely from a medical, diagnostic standpoint (w some of my personal experiences sprinkled in lmao). there’s so much more to say from like a ‘living w bpd day to day’ standpoint but like, this post is already way too fuckin long so i’m just gonna hit on a few that i feel are important in regards to ben, and ones i have’t spoken abt yet

most ppl w bpd have a ‘fp’ or ‘favourite person’ (tho it can be multiple people), which sounds nice but it’s kind of a really complicated and difficult thing tbqh. here’s the best definition i could find: ‘When someone with BPD uses the term “favorite person” to describe someone else, they are typically insinuating that this is a person they cannot survive without. For BPD sufferers, the favorite person is the person who is a source of emotional support and dependence. This individual has the ability to truly impact the BPD sufferer’s day in either a positive or negative manner. The favorite person to someone with BPD holds a critical role in their lives by holding the power to ‘make or break’ the successful navigation of daily tasks and struggles.’ it’s a difficult thing to explain/understand (so please feel free to google ‘favourite person bpd’ to get a better understanding), and is not always as dramatic as it sounds, but it’s like… even if they aren’t a source of ‘emotion support’, ur mental wellbeing can hang on this person’s every move. (which is not healthy, i know, but it’s just a thing that happens w bpd!) and phil is absolutely ben’s fp. ben hates phil, and yet is still so desperate to be in his good graces, in his life no matter what that costs him… and ben’s self esteem, his actions, his moods are so dependant on phil. it just?? makes so much sense to me. i realize it may not make much sense to someone who doesn’t have any understanding of what a fp is, but like if u do, i’m sure u see what i see.

i think maybe jay was another fp of ben for a while in the past. i don’t think he is as much since ben has come back, but in the past?? maybe. like less in the ‘my happiness is dependant on u’ way and more in like a ‘i’m very very attached to u and need u in my life and would maybe go crazy if anything or anyone got in the way of that’ way.

and i think callum might be sneaking into territory now too tbqh. it would explain why callum’s actions and words have such an impact on ben’s moods despite not much really happening between them. and like i wanna say: someone becoming ur fp is not a choice. it just happens. it’s not like ben is going ‘oh im going to get overly attached to u just for a laugh’, no. this would be completely out of his control. and when it happens, it fucking SUCKS. so if that is what’s happening, it’s going to have a massive impact on ben - and it seems like it already is.

and like taking the whole fp thing out of it (bc i know it’s complicated and hard to grasp) bpd would explain why ben seems to be so attached to callum even tho very little has actually happened between them!!! like bpd will have u falling in love w someone who just shows you basic human kindness and decency, and i mean that very literally!!! bc like i said when you have bpd, you struggle to navigate and handle basic emotions, so all the nuances of romance and love? jesus christ. it goes back into black and white thinking - i either love this person or i hate this person, there is no in between. so callum, showing ben kindness? showing him support with what’s going on w louise and what happened w phil? not hating him and thinking he’s despicable and evil and all those things people say about him? and ben, having bpd? he probably wouldn’t be able to comprehend that maybe cal’s just being friendly, esp not after they slept together. so ofc he would latch tf on to that. i would latch tf on to that. his behaviour towards callum just seems very on brand for having bpd to me, genuinely.

and !! all those things whitney said the other night !! people complained about him not arguing back, but like… she’s almost saying what ben wants to hear, when it comes to callum. bc i touched on it before but like the thing is when, you have bpd ur thought process is like ‘i care about this person, they are good, i don’t deserve them, i am bad, i am going to ruin them, i’m probably manipulating them into spending time with me and caring about me, but i can’t let them go, i need them, i bet they don’t even like me, i don’t deserve them, i don’t want them to get hurt, i don’t want to hurt them, i am going to hurt them, in the end.’ (and eventually it spirals into ‘actually they’re probably going to hurt me first bc everyone always does so let me completely destroy this relationship so it’s unrecoverable and hurt them now so they can’t hurt me later’ but that’s another story) and whitney more or less confirms that for him!!! in essence, what she says to him is ‘you’re bad, he didn’t want anything to do with you but you manipulated him into it. you don’t deserve him, you’ve hurt him, you’ve hurt me, how could you do this?’ so like… ofc he’s not gonna argue w her. he’s already had a shit day, all of the fight is gone from him, and he agrees w her!! i’m sure he was thinking that he deserved what whit was throwing at him - not necessarily for what he’d done to her, but because he is Bad and callum is Good and he needs to stay away from him, otherwise he’ll ruin him. bc that’s just what bpd brain tells u, even when u’ve got no basis to believe it. (unless ur splitting or experiencing a big emotional high, but again, that’s a different story)

and that kind of makes sense as to why he’d go to the wedding. going back to the anger instead of sadness thing - he’s hurting, so he’s going to get angry and vengeful. he has been hurt, so now he is going to hurt in return. esp considering both callum and whitney have seen him in such a vulnerable state. it’s probably a pride thing, too.

also just to expand a little more on the ‘unstable sense of self’ thing - ppl w bpd (and also victims of abuse, but sometimes that particular venn diagram is a circle) tend to change the personality based on who they’re with. which is what most people do, yes, but i mean the Extreme version. it’s a trauma response thing - u’ll reflect parts of a person’s personality back at them, or even take bits from personalities of ppl u know they like in the hopes that they’ll like u more like that, as opposed to ur real personality (if u even know what that is). and sometimes those parts stick (esp when you idolize the person u stole them from/they’re your fp), and it’s like u all of a sudden realize ur entire personality is built of parts of other ppls personalities that you’ve stolen. so it makes sense to me that ben seems to have so many differing personalities/sides to his personality, bc he’s learned which parts to show to who, and in what situations - in response to his abuse as a kid, if nothing else.

(and before anyone can even go there: that is not an act of manipulation. it’s a trauma response. it’s something that happens without us consciously having any say in it, as a way of self-preservation. it’s like if i make myself likeable and appealing to u, you’re less likely to hurt me, physically or emotionally. and yes ben has a habit of manipulation, but this is not a part of it. none of ben’s manipulation is directly bc of his hypothetical bpd, it’s bc that’s just who he is. i don’t ever want to see the two equated, or see anyone say any shit like ‘ben must have bpd bc he’s manipulative’, ever.)

just for the hell of it, here are some spicy bpd memes, bc that’s how we communicate on the internet. (here are two in particular seem quite relevant to ben rn lmao + bonus one for phil!!)

so! there we are!!! i’m sure there’s some important stuff i overlooked and that this is not what u expected when u sent me this question, but there are so many misconceptions and stigmas out there surrounding bpd that i wouldn’t have felt right half assing it. and i hope, if nothing else, u learned something abt bpd that u didn’t know before :-)

if u read this far ur a trooper lmao but if anyone has any questions, be they abt ben having bpd or bpd in general please feel free to ask!! i’ll do my best to answer them to the best of my ability 💖💖

#ben mitchell #ballum #eastenders #petty as hell but it was really bugging me that this wasnt showing up in tags so i'm posting it again lmao #sorry if u already liked/replied to it :-(#bpd #anon #question

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winifredlozano1992 · 4 years

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undothedamage-blog · 7 years

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Talking About Abuse

Strap in, this is a long one. Skip to the bottom for a TLDR if needs be.

It’s impossible to spend time in the #abuse tags on Tumblr and not run into discourse re: personality disorders.

And it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot because I’ve stumbled across the dividing line trying to figure out where I stand. And I think both sides need to remember this:

Mental illness does not make someone abusive. But an abuser with a mental illness may be particularly cruel.

It’s a point that abuse expert Lundy Bancroft has made, and he knows what he’s talking about.

Ideally, I’d like to see the abuse community create new terminology. What exactly, I’m not sure. I’m certainly open to suggestions. Egotistical abuse? Trumpian abuse? Egocentric abuse? Conceited abuse? I don’t know (personally, I prefer Egocentric). We’re not actually trained and qualified to diagnose our abusers with specific disorders. So I’d feel more comfortable avoiding terminology that is already well-defined as something specific that may or may not accurately apply to our situations and that, imo, removes some responsibility from abusers for their choices and behavior.

That said, on the other side of things I’d say to think long and hard about whether you want to attack and possibly re-victimize somebody who is in the long, hard process of recovery from abuse for talking about things like “narcissistic abuse.” Not everything is about you. And if you have experience with mental illness you should consider using that experience to fuel compassion for victims (who are highly likely to be suffering their own mental illness as a result of their abuse) rather than launching into them because they are repeating the terminology that was handed to them by somebody else. By all means, educate people via posts on your own blog. But if you must call out a specific person (whether by reblog or anon asks), remember that the person on the other side of that screen has just spent a very long time, years or decades in some cases, being put down, attacked, criticized, shamed, and endlessly treated as wrong and stupid. If you want to engage with them, don’t do it in a way that will trigger them. And don’t treat them like just another ableist asshole. They’re trying to make sense of what has been done to them and a lot of the people providing answers and hope to them for the first time are teaching them this vocabulary. These people, the ones with a large audience and significant influence, are probably who you should be asking to reconsider their wording.

However, I want to emphasize again to my fellow abuse survivors, that not all abusers have personality disorders (in fact, most probably don’t). Not all people with personality disorders are abusive (and we should really, really hesitate to add to the stigma they face). And abusers who DO have personality disorders would probably still be abusive even if they were magically no longer mentally ill. So just as I ask people to have compassion for victims, I’d ask victims to have compassion for the mental illness community and embrace language that allows us to talk about certain flavors of abuse without co-opting words from the DSM nor contribute to stigmas that harm others (especially when we consider that the mentally ill are often more likely to be victims of abuse themselves). We are, generally, on the same team. And it really requires very little effort to just abstain from using certain phrases or words.

Again, mental illness does not make somebody abusive. Don’t let abusers get away with using mental illness as an excuse by perpetuating language that implies otherwise.

It boils down to the same problem I have with people calling mass-shooters or terrorists “crazy.” For one thing, it dissolves their responsibility and that’s bullshit. For another, it further stigmatizes mental illness. Millions of mentally ill people every day manage to live their lives without hurting a fly (though many mentally ill people are, in fact, hurt and abused by others). And, perhaps most insidious, it absolves society of any blame for helping create abusers.

It is NOT mental illness that makes, for example, a man shoot up a bunch of people because his girlfriend dumped him. It is entitlement. And we need to face the fact that our culture absolutely contributes to teaching men they are entitled to a woman’s attention, affection, body, emotional labor, etc. We celebrate media that repeats the trope that even the most mediocre of man will be rewarded with a beautiful woman that adores him. We talk about the friend-zone as if it’s a real thing and it is something that women unfairly do to victimize men. We tell women that they’re feelings are wrong and they should be flattered by sexual harassment. We legislate that women’s bodies don’t belong to them (and even afford corpses more bodily autonomy than living women). We tolerate misogyny in our music, movies, television, and government. We teach women they are responsible for preventing assault instead of teaching men not to assault. We teach generation after generation that “boys will be boys” and that girls should just tolerate their bad behavior.

So, yeah. Maybe a lot of us have, in fact, been abused by somebody with a personality disorder. But unless we’re a psychiatrist, we’re not really qualified to comment on that. And we’re shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot when we frame our discussions about abuse in terms from the field of mental health. Because mentally ill or not, abusers will continue to abuse as long as they feel entitled to do so. If we borrow language from psychiatry to frame the conversation around abuse, we make it too easy for everyone to throw their hands up in the air and say “well, we can’t really do anything about it” (especially when talking about disorders that haven’t found successful treatment options).

And that simply isn’t true.

Because, guess what, we CAN do something about abuse. Now, we can’t do much about individual abusers. Only abusers can change themselves. But, and Lundy Bancroft talks at length about this at the end of Why Does He Do That, society and individuals can absolutely do things to combat problems that contribute to abuse and to protect victims. Things like:

BELIEVE VICTIMS. The rate of false accusations of abuse is, despite what MRAs would have us believe, incredibly small. Bancroft says “There is a natural temptation to speak out forcefully against abuse until the man whose behavior is under the microscope is one of our own, and then we switch sides. But we can’t have it both ways. Abuse won’t stop until people stop making exceptions for their own brothers and sons and friends.“ He also says “Nothing would work faster to end the abuse of women than having the friends and family of abusive men stop enabling them. And that begins, in turn, with making sure that you listen carefully and respectfully to her side of the story— something the abusive man never does.” (emphasis mine)

TEACH WHAT ABUSE LOOKS LIKE. Bancroft specifically advices therapists, the clergy, etc. to “provide some basic education to any male about partner abuse. Give some examples of abusive behaviors, describe their destructive impact on women and children, and explain that a man is entirely responsible for his own actions.” I think a huge aspect of why people discount women’s reports of abuse is that they don’t recognize abusive behavior as, in fact, abusive. This comes back round to entitlement and justification as well as abusers and their allies tendency to point to worse forms of abuse to say “that’s what REAL abuse looks like, what I’ve done isn’t REAL abuse.”

REFORM THE JUSTICE SYSTEM TO BETTER PROTECT VICTIMS AND FORCE ABUSERS TO FACE REAL CONSEQUENCES FOR THEIR ACTIONS. I won’t go into the details on specific changes that need to be made. This post is already super fucking long. You can find Bancroft’s suggestions in Why Does He Do That.

I’d add that we also, as a society, need to:

REFUSE TO SUPPORT MEDIA THAT IS MISOGYNIST. If it promotes the idea that men are entitled to behave in controlling or abusive ways it doesn’t deserve our attention, accolades, or money. We should also stop handing out awards to abusive men as if separating their performances and public persona from their abuse doesn’t teach them (and others) that abusers can abuse without consequence.

CHALLENGE DAMAGING IDEAS AND STATEMENTS. This is particularly important for men to do. If you hear dudes complaining about the friend zone, or celebrating rape culture, or otherwise espousing sexist and harmful ideas, call them out. Make it clear that such views are entirely unacceptable.

LISTEN TO FEMINISTS, SJWs, AND OTHER SO-CALLED SNOWFLAKES. There’s a false notion that when progressives voice concerns or complaints about micro-aggressions or subtle sexism, or whatnot that they’re focusing on small stuff and should just get over it. But the reality is that the small stuff matters. All the various small things add up to a culture that sends abusers the messages of entitlement they use to justify their abuse. Take the Bechtel Test. I recognize it is only one step in beginning to evaluate whether a movie is, in fact, sexist. But, generally speaking, any movie that doesn’t feature enough named, female characters with dialogue about something other than a male character sends the subtle message that women’s roles revolve around the men in their lives. It says that woman are accessories to a man’s story. When feminists call for more women in the writers’ room of television and movies, it goes so far beyond just wanting to level the employment playing field (though that’s important in its own right)! More women contributing to scripts means more well-rounded women characters and less sexist tropes being repeated. It means more boys growing up consuming media in which the world presented to them is not one that revolves around men.

If you’re still with me at this point in this long-ass post I just want to say thank you. I know tumblr is usually a place for more pithy communication. But I go on at length because there is just so much to say that is so important.

That said, here’s a TLDR for those who can’t handle the endless wall of text (I’m ADHD, I can empathize):

The abuse community would do well to create new terminology to discuss our experiences that doesn’t rely on language which may inadvertently harm the mental illness community.

Be patient and kind to abuse victims if you want to talk to them about how something they’ve repeated may be problematic so that you can avoid triggering them or adding to their trauma.

If somebody asks you to reconsider your language, be kind and sympathetic and remember that they may share more of your experiences than you realize.

Society can do a lot to prevent and combat abuse.

And most importantly let me repeat this:

Mental illness does not make somebody abusive. Don’t let abusers get away with using mental illness as an excuse by perpetuating language that implies otherwise.

#abuse #mental health #ableist slur #personality disorders #cr*zy #crazy #mental illness #tldr #text #triggers #trauma #talking about abuse #language #terminology #narcissistic abuse #stigma #feminism

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rouge-fox-expanded · 7 years

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Muse Post #1 (Tumblr be messing with me)

All this is copied directly from my OC pages, apparently some users can’t get to these pages so I am making a post. In short: Tumblr be daft, so I’m doing this

FOX: WARRIOR OF GOTHAM

(art by the amazing @newtraumwelt, here is his DA Page: http://nwitchgun.deviantart.com/ )

Psychological Profile (taken from my DA page)

Name: Jack Dahl (birth name: unknown)

Alter ego: Fox

Age: Mid-twenties as birthdate is also unknown

Nationality: British

Eye colour: Burnt Orange

Personality Info

Jack Dahl works for Bruce Wayne as an executive operative at Wayne Enterprises and as a vigilante operative for Batman. Fox has a working partnership with fellow operative Ronin/Joseph Kane and the two of them are rather close friends. His personalities between his two identities seem very similar, as Jack Dahl he applies a charming guiding figure to his colleagues and employees at the Wayne Enterprises Technology department, something which carries over to his Fox persona (although the vigilante operatives he works with he treats more bluntly). He is outwardly quite a laid back, calm and often a relatively cheerful person but seems to be hiding a very potent and aggressive streak of rage. He is often able to keep a lid on this under what his friends (Joseph Kane and Jude Howard) have dubbed as ‘scary calm’ in which even under great stress he is able to operate under the same clear and tactical thinking he does when things are fine. However, when his rage becomes too much to keep in line, he lets it out in what Jude has dubbed ‘Scarier Angry’ in which an already violent and hyper militant warrior becomes incredibly brutal.

Fox adheres to Batman’s no kill rule, almost religiously, but has gained a reputation for leaving his prey with lasting physical and mental trauma, this is owed to his own brutal and hellish training under the enigmatic warrior known as the Mercenary King. Fox often finds himself at odds with the people he works with (Ronin, Robin, Nightwing et al) owing to what appears to be an arrogant belief that he naturally knows how to most effectively take on almost every enemy they may face. This links back to his hyper tactical mind where during his training he was taught to learn beforehand how to best the most powerful opponents so he didn’t have to think on his feet but would just know what to do, thus allowing him to work quickly and efficiently (and brutally).

Both inside and outside of his armour Fox is considered somewhat hyper social, using his infectious charm to quickly endear to almost everyone he meets (with the exception of his opponents), he’s been known to dance and sing and whilst fighting villains he frequently does so to a selected soundtrack (something he and Jude have regarded as ‘dropping the beat for a beat down’). However, despite all this Jack is not a happy man, on the contrary he is actually diagnosed with severe depression and a number of other mental defects.

Psychological info

Owing to parental neglect and emotional (sometimes physical) abuse, the separation from his little sister at the age of twelve and a very socially harmful time at secondary (high) school Jack carries a lot of unresolved childhood trauma. This was further amplified under the unforgiving training when working under the Mercenary king. It’s believed that this training is also where he got his emotional suppressive behaviour from (or scary calm) along with his hyper tactical way of thinking and it’s almost certainly where he got his high aggression from. The victims of these aggressive bouts are usually criminals whom have committed incredibly violent and depraved crimes, notable cases are Black Mask, the late and former mercenary Chameleon and the child killer known as the Bogeyman. As said before he doesn’t kill but his violence borders on torture and he has threatened several thugs he’s encountered with castration (fortunately he’s never had to follow up this infamous threat). Fox has confessed to several fellow vigilantes that he feels he is unable to live a life other than this one, he needs to fight as it’s been conditioned into his mind and soul by the Mercenary King but he doesn’t want to fight for someone else’s cause. He frequently quotes Metal Gear Solid character Frank Jaeger (aka Gray Fox) and says:

“we’re not tools of the government or anyone else, fighting is all I was ever good at but at least I fought for what I believed in”.

Fox’s hyper social behaviour is linked to a lingering sense of monophobia and self-loathing which has manifested in the schizophrenic voice which he has dubbed Kitsune. This secondary personality is frequently loudest in moments of great stress and anguish and tries to push Fox over the edge and make him commit very brutal acts of violence and has always been there whenever Fox was tempted to actually take one of his opponent’s lives. Fox’s self-loathing is a core part of his personality and at the heart of the structure of his severe depression. The following is Jack’s own account for summing up his feelings of low self-worth, confessed to Joseph Kane at a bar whilst intoxicated:

“I don’t give a shit about what people think about me, see this is because deep down…like in my heart of hearts I know…I know I suck. And because I know that, it doesn’t matter if other people tell it to me because I already know it to be true…so they can’t hurt me with it, that damage has been done already”

Joseph Kane then immediately took Jack back to his apartment and made him sleep on the sofa, incredibly worried about leaving him on his own that night.

Fox’s depression and self-loathing plays a direct hand in his difficulty and sometimes inability to form serious relationships, in the case of his close friendship with Jude Howard and Joseph Kane he feels he has to keep a large part of his life a secret in order for them to accept and like him. This also plays a much heavier hand in romantic endeavours, he cannot fathom why someone would have such feelings for him which also manifests in a fear of intimacy (also linked back to times under the mercenary king where he reveals a lot of people used romance as a means to get close enough to try and kill him). As mentioned above Jack is a drinker, not always a heavy one but he has become intoxicated on multiple occasions. It’s during these occasions that his emotional suppression is fully dropped and all of his feelings come out in a burst making him sometimes act with hyperactive joy, become angry and aggressive (resulting in a back alley brawl with some unfortunate thugs), confused and sleepy and often at the climax of all of these outbursts intense sorrow. Whenever these moments happen in the company of Joseph Kane he refuses to allow his friend to go anywhere alone as he is aware Jack has a history of suicidal tendencies. Possibly a result of the brutal training or the litany of unresolved trauma Fox no longer cares if he dies, apparently he fears becoming the monster he was conditioned to be more so than death (this is a huge concern for all who know him).

Conclusion

Fox is a noble warrior, a loyal friend and a charming human being but this is only scratching the surface of his personality. He is a deeply damaged and traumatized individual, suffering great mental sickness, emotional instability and a great difficulty forming serious relationships due to fear of intimacy, rejection and abandonment. He believes in Batman’s mission, in what he and his fellow superheroes and crime fighters stand for and will happily fight for that and is willing to die for it.

Abilities/Skills

Athletic build and stamina

Technologically gifted, proficient in weaponry, sonic technology, computer hacking

Heightened senses (augmented sight and hearing, not to superhuman levels ala Superman but heightened to give a clear edge in battle and stealth)

Expert swordsman, proficient in almost every sword art and constantly adapting more styles into his own

Heightened Stamina, through training and sheer will is able to take a monumental amount of pain

Advanced martial arts and combat skills, trained by the most dangerous people on the planet

Family/Relationships

(Art by the amazing @hazelmuttart so check her out)

Elizabeth ‘Lizzie’ Dahl (Adopted Daughter)

Jude Howard/Okami (Best Friend/Partner)

Haley Reid/Kumiho (Sister/Partner)

Joseph Kane/Ronin (Best Friend/Partner) –character created by @dkalban

Shipping

Fox is heterosexual though as seen in his psychological profile extremely jaded and traumatised when it comes to relationships. He is a multi-shippable character but so long as the relationship feels right, he will be slow to romance so patience is key. He is quick to take a mentor/paternal role particularly if caring for children.

Role-Play relationships

(To be amended when necessary)

#Post version of Character Bio

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scriptmedic · 7 years

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Massage Therapy: Medical Applications and Mythconceptions

Hi everybuddy! Aunt Scripty here. Today’s guest post is written by Nana, a Licensed Massage Therapist in the US.

This is part 1 of a 2-part post on the basics of what massage therapy is (and, more importantly, isn’t). I’m so excited to have Nana’s posts here on the blog!

Keep in mind that even though this is a guest post, and I have not 1000% verified everything in it, it is still subject to The Disclaimer Of Doom. (The Doomsclaimer?)

I hope you all enjoy!

Nana, take it away!

Hello! LMT Nana here! ( @theoremofwhat ) You’re probably wondering what the heck I’m doing here. Or what the heck an LMT even is. I’m here today to help Aunt Scripty in her quest to dispel some Mythconceptions surrounding the medical field in a two part post on my specialty: Massage Therapy.

For the uninitiated, your first thought is probably something along the lines of, “LOL, happy ending, yo!” I’m here to smack that right out of your head.

Let’s start off with what Massage Therapy actually is. Defined by the medical dictionary,

“Massage therapy is the scientific manipulation of the soft tissues of the body for the purpose of normalizing those tissues and consists of manual techniques that include applying fixed or movable pressure, holding, and/or causing movement of or to the body.”

Okay. What the heck does that mean? I’ll put it into context for you. A massage under this definition is when a trained person uses their hands, forearms, elbows, or other parts of the body to apply force to the patient’s body, or stretching/moving joints, for the purpose of loosening muscle and connective tissue, or to stimulate fluid flow (blood/lymph).

Sweet. That’s down. Let’s continue.

Massage is one of the oldest forms of medical care, …..

….with origins going back almost 5,000-4,000 years in Polynesian, Egyptian and Chinese cultures, these are passed down through written and oral traditions. Massage became popularized in western medicine by Hippocrates, who believed that massage was a highly effective and underutilized tool that requires a great deal of knowledge and training- views still held today by professionals.

The full history of massage is quite long and complicated- something I won’t go into here. It’s quite the drama, part of which contributes to some modern Mythconceptions that organizations like the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA) are trying to smash out by regulating the practice and increasing public awareness. Studies into the history of massage, and even observances in modern populations have shown that the urge to aid hurts by applying manipulation through the hands is likely an ingrained impulse in humans.

Knowing this, one would think that just anyone could get up off the street and give a massage. While many a family member or good friend has helped that “knot” (called a trigger point) in your shoulder, giving a full body massage with the intent of aiding healing requires a lot of hands on training and knowledge of the human body. You wouldn’t want a receptionist diagnosing your cancer- you don’t want a receptionist handing your massage either.

Let’s go over the qualifications for a massage therapist, known professionally as a Licensed Massage Therapist (LMT) standardly, and/or BCTMB if they are Board Certified.

Here in the United States (where I am) regulation is left up to the individual states. I am licensed through the state of Utah, so many of the laws and regulations I will be defining for you will be through that lens. If you would like a good launching board for other states, head here.

The AMTA suggests a minimum of 500 hours of training for licensing, but states such as New York require up to 1,000 hours. Here in the state of Utah 600 hours is the minimum requirement. This translates to about 7-12 months of schooling.

During the course of schooling a therapist will spend most of their time learning medical Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, and Kinesiology. Basically? How the body is made, how it works, and how it moves. They are then trained in how this information applies to injury, illness and rehabilitation.

The rest is hands on training, identifying in person what abnormal tissue feels like, how to change it, when you should and can, when you should not massage, and areas of endangerment. And this is a VERY brief overview.

Aside from the all important training in medical A&P, we are given intensive training in the ethics side of massage. This is perhaps one of the most important separators between a LMT and a non licensed individual. LMTs are unique in the medical community because we have a specific training in how to touch.

Touch is one of the most sensitive things in the modern community- many suffer from Touch Deprivation because of stigma surrounding touch. Many perceive touch as a sexual thing. Others will react negatively to touch due to trauma in their life. Massage therapists must be prepared to present the massage in a way that cannot be perceived in a sexual, or threatening way, and may receive extra training to deal with victims of violence.

We receive training in how to conduct the massage- specifically in how to greet and interview the client, how to drape (the covering and un-covering an area to be worked.) and how to interact through out the session and how to end it.

To be licensed in the state of Utah, I had to undergo 600 hours of schooling by an accredited school. In my case it was a technical school focusing on medical careers: Nursing, Physical Therapy, Personal Trainers, and Dental Assisting. My actual course was almost 700 hours- ten months of school in total. After passing my schooling I took a national exam called the MBLEx, a test monitored by the FSMBT. (Which is terrifying, by the way. I legitimately cried when I passed. Most do not pass the first time around.) The Utah Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing required proof of my schooling and my testing scores, along with proof of residency and I was fingerprinted.

Once licensed and practicing you also need to understand that LMT’s have what’s called a scope of practice. This means we can only do certain things under our license, primarily, massage. We cannot diagnose, or prescribe anything. We are trained in Pathology so that we may identify potential symptoms, but we are under strict laws to only bring up our suspicions and direct you to your primary care physician or a specialist. We can suggest common, well accepted home lifestyle changes/ remedies with the caveat that the client must still check with a doctor before starting anything new. You should never take anything a therapist tells you as gospel truth because even if they have had excessive continuing education or 20 years of experience, we are not doctors.

Now that you know all this, let’s go over the common Mythconceptions we face in media. Because guess what? Massage is a largely misunderstood area and has been misrepresented so often I want to tear my hair out. These are things you should AVOID in your writing. Personally? I don’t care if you’re actually writing a story about a prostitute that wants to hide their illegal activities under the label of a masseuse. Figure something else out. I don’t really care if you’re going for a laugh, or a shocker. It’s an entire industry that you are undermining and actually inhibiting real world people from getting help.

Massage Therapy is purely for pleasure/pampering/rich people. Or, Massage Therapists are sex workers.

This is one that causes the most harm to my blood pressure. While massage is excellent for general mental health, it is also good for almost all areas of health, both as a preventative measure and an aid in recovery. I personally specialize in injury recovery- even more specially in rotator cuff injury. (The rotator is my favorite muscle group.) Others specialize in automotive accidents, surgery rehabilitation, trauma recovery, geriatric care, arthritis, sports, autistic children and adults, and hospital massage(for very ill people). The list is endless, actually. Specializing therapists can work independently or attached to doctors/ physical therapists/psychiatric professionals.

Changes in health care and pricing have made massage much more accessible. Many offices will accept insurance as a form of payment, and more and more insurance companies are paying for it. The industry standard in charging is $1 a minute- and considering the amount of training and the wear on the therapist’s body, this is more than fair. Other businesses will offer specials and memberships aimed at making regular massage more affordable to the average american. Depending on the office/private practice you visit, they will even help you with payment plans for your care. So even if your character is struggling financially, there are always options.

Massage being perceived as a sexual thing is a complicated subject, largely due to abuse of the term in history and cultural views(as mentioned above.) And it’s actually a dangerous one. Many, if not most, therapists are female.(This is beginning to change and it’s really exciting.) It’s not unheard of for a skeevy guy to go in for a ‘happy ending’, get refused by his law-abiding therapist, and attack her. I have not yet experienced this- but friends and coworkers have. Prostitutes masquerading as therapists also enforce this view that a massage is sexual.

In the 1800s, police began to crack down on certain businesses and drove prostitution from these places into massage parlors and bathhouses- leading to the degradation of the term “masseuse”.

So please. Do not use the term masseuse/masseur. As a professional I would say this would be the only time to use this portrayal of sex and massage- historically- and as long as you also make the commentary that there were legitimate practitioners at the time and this was an abuse of the term.

Please, please, please, do NOT use this in a modern setting unless you are prepared to make some very direct commentary on this abuse of the industry.

Aunt Scripty’s Note: Having gotten lectures from the FBI about this, it’s also important to know that a lot of the cheap / fake “massage parlors” you see (the really, REALLY easy to spot kind) are fronts for human trafficking. The “employees” may be victims of forced prostitution, held against their will or manipulated by others stealing their passports, and other atrocious human rights abuses. When you portray massage in your fiction as having “happy endings” or a front for prostitution, you are actually advertising for human rights abusers.

Now that we have that gross lump out of the way, moving on to number 2.

Depictions of a Massage in Advertising and Media.

You’ve all seen the classic image of a beautiful woman working on an equally beautiful human with the client laying face down, head resting on their arms, a gentle smile on their face with a blanket neatly arranged around their midsection, the beautiful therapist standing over them and tenderly dragging their fingertips across their skin, or placing hot stones right on the spine, and they are surrounded by nature and flowers or some shit.

WRONG WRONG WRONG.

I googled ‘massage’ and looked up images. I had to scroll for a good long while before I even found something that ALMOST represented what an actual table looks like, what proper body mechanics look like, what proper draping looks like. It’s vomit worthy. And holy-mother-of-profanities. You would NEVER rest hot stones directly on skin, much less the SPINE.

The last thing I want on my table is flowers and fluffy shit. It’s unhygienic, potentially allergy triggering, and just in my way. Licensed practitioners follow strict guidelines set up by the local Health Department, and follow Universal and Standard Precautions set by the CDC. This prevents transmission of disease.

My actual table is not so glamorous: made of standard wood or steel with a nice firm pad on top, ankle/knee bolster, and a face rest. (The face rest is either not too bad, or HELL, depending on the person. But it’s a necessary evil. That face rest is there for breath-ability when you are completely face down and I’m working on shoulders/neck.) We can dress them up in nice sheets and blankets, table warmers and the like. But they still need to be cleanable.

And you’re definitely not going to look glamorous getting a massage. At times a client is so relaxed they end up drooling and snoring. It’s fantastic. Moaning and groaning is totally normal in a non-weird way. Falling asleep and waking up disoriented is also very normal. Twitching is also normal- although it feels weird. This is a sign of the muscle releasing.

If your character suffers from any anxiety, they may struggle to fall asleep on the table, or relax completely- they may attempt to exert some manner of control over the massage- by holding arms and legs, fidgeting, or they may relieve tension through talking. All of this is also 100% fine, but the therapist will likely try to help them relax in order to allow the massage to be as effective as possible.

Next is the portrayal going the opposite way: guy goes in to get a massage and is practically torn apart and beaten by his therapist in order to get a “deep tissue” massage. This leads into the next Mythconception:

Massage HAS to hurt or leave you sore to be effective.

I’m not going to lie. Some times a massage does hurt. Sometimes it does leave you sore afterwards, technically you get a work out during a massage. Sometimes those muscles and fascia are so bound up and tight that releasing it is Not Fun™. Some muscles just don’t like to be worked. (Hee-llO subscapularis and psoas.) But there ARE ways around it. There are very gentle ways of coaxing a muscle, tendon, or aponeurosis into it’s natural state.

Also. DEEP TISSUE DOES NOT MEAN DEEPER PRESSURE. Repeat after me, children: Deep tissue does not mean deeper pressure. A gentle relaxing massage can have bruising deep pressure(not that I recommend it, and it’s probably not relaxing anymore!) Deep tissue is a specific modality with techniques to accessing deeper muscles under superficial layers of skin, connective tissues and surface muscle. It’s actually a very slow and focused type of massage. You don’t move fast unless warming up the superficial layers. It can utilize deeper pressure, but does not have to.

You might feel sore the next day; absolutely. You might feel a bit like you have the flu. This is common, but not the norm. You can wake up the next day feeling 100% fine. These not fun effects are though to be caused by the muscles getting a work out during the massage- just like the gym. The flu effects are thought by some to be caused by gunk pushed out of the tissue and back into the blood and lymph systems, or by dehydration due to increased circulation. This is why therapists will commonly tell clients to drink a lot of water/hydrating fluid after a massage. One single cause is not nailed down by researchers yet. Regardless, you should never be so sore that you can’t function the next day. That’s called an injury. (There are some applications of this in Physical Therapy, but I am the last person to ask about that.)

Men give the deepest massages/Women only do the ‘fluffy stuff’

Again, this is silly. Take me for example: I am 5 foot zero and weigh 110 pounds, struggle lifting more than 50 pounds, and I have made a big biker guy cry on a dare. I was often the one in school to get the deepest pressure once I learned how to apply myself. (We tiny women actually have a reputation in the industry for this!) It’s not about strength or body type. It’s all about your body mechanics and leverage. I wish I had pictures of me pushing my foot/ standing against a wall to get deeper pressure into a client’s traps. Cuz it looks awesome. Plus, muscling your way through a massage is most likely to injure you as a therapist.

All massage is the same.

Massage is a scientific art form. This translates to there being as many styles of massage as there are therapists and clients. It all is dependent upon how/ what the therapist feels, personal experience, and training bias. Each client will receive a massage tailored to their body.There is no universal technique guaranteed to work on everyone. Every body is a wonderful, unique body. Every body.

I personally combine techniques from Deep Tissue, Structural, and Shiatsu massages. This for me turns to a relaxing massage that targets connective tissue to release longstanding holding patterns or to prevent them from forming after injury. I also specifically target techniques to stimulate the Endocannabinoid system. (Yeah. You read that right. Endocannabinoids.)

You shouldn’t get a massage if you are pregnant/ have cancer.

It used to be believed that massage could terminate pregnancy or spread cancer cells. Recent research shows the opposite to be true. Medical Massage has been shown to decrease unpleasant side effects of pregnancy and cancer treatments. There are different treatments for cancers that would be a contraindication (such as radioactive implants) and other medical conditions during pregnancy that would warrant it as well. There are other medical conditions or medications that require abstinence from massage, but that is in Part Two.

Massage is a new thing made up by hippies/ My character in a High Fantasy World/historical setting wouldn’t experience/need massage.

This is just silly. As we’ve seen in in our history, Massage is ancient, maybe even ingrained into our species. Massage was originally a tool of Shamans and other ancient healers- and very common in Midwifery. The applications of massage are endless in all time periods and worlds.

As for the hippy thing- Yeah. A lot of us are absolutely more 'crunchy granola’ than the rest of our medical world friends. Many believe and receive training in Energy Work including Reiki, accupressure, and other meridian massages. I won’t post any information on it here as this is a medical website and we do not have scientific proof of any of it yet. But it does happen, and at the VERY least has a strong placebo effect, so if you want to include it in your story, go for it. Just put some proper effort into how these things go down.

(BTW, you’ve probably seen some manner of funny human making jokes about their weird experience with an 'auric massage’ and the therapist just floated their hands above them, right? That’s because energy healers do not have the licesce to touch. As far as my current knowledge goes, there is no government regulation regarding energy workers of this class.)

Massage is a magic cure all

This may be originating more from bias within the profession- we all want to think what we do will help humanity live better all the time. Massage has HUGE benefits and many, but can’t fix anything and everything- and it certainly won’t fix you in one session. When I was recovering from a particularly nasty whiplash injury it took 6 months of bi-weekly appointments in conjunction with other therapy to fix me. How exactly this will work out I’ll cover in my second post.

Massage is a woman’s industry

This is mostly true, based only on statistics. It’s believed that only 12% of LMT’s are male. This is changing, slowly. It’s true for some pretty messed up reasons, and those reasons should die. Those who want to hide from some brutal feminist truth should leave now.

NOTE: What I am about to say does NOT apply to those of you who have suffered through any kind of trauma. Your worries and fears are valid and will be treated as such by any competent therapist.

Many people, male or female, simply do not trust male therapists- due to homophobia and gross concepts of masculinity, that being worked on by a male will make them gay/seem gay, or the fear that they will be accosted/fondled, even if they have no history of such a thing happening to them.

I straight up call out anyone who has the homophobic view as fucked up. Sometimes the thought isn’t even consciously homophobic. Casual bigotry is still bigotry. This also shows an underlying belief that all touch is somehow sexual.

So if your character doesn’t want a man touching them because it’s 'gay’, what does that say about them preferring a woman’s touch?

This also highlights the shitty idea that only women can be caretakers/healers/provide a service for tips or so on. It’s a similar situation to how people are surprised at or even mock male nurses, belittle high ranking female anything, or how a woman can’t be a soldier or cop. But that is a debate for another time. Just know it’s fucked up and please don’t perpetuate it, please do everything you can in your stories to change this view.

If you are going to a reputable business there is no worry about any of these things of course- for anyone. Laws, company policies, and personal ethics will prevent any misconduct on the therapist’s part.

Here’s a few things to read up on regarding this: 1, 2, 3: This one is long but one of the best.

It’s a fact of life for massage therapists that at some point in our careers that we will be propositioned, or accused of inappropriate conduct (even if it is only perceived misconduct, or someone angling to get a free service).

This is not to say that misconduct doesn’t happen. Unfortunately it does. If you are including this in your story please frame it as something that is quite not okay on the part of either party, and show that the proper action is taken by authorities. This should never be portrayed as okay ever. (I’m looking at you- “hand of glory at the end of my Thai Massage Dean Winchester.”)

So there’s a number of Mythconceptions busted here. If you want to continue your research, hit up a local practitioner in your area- Many are more than excited to spread their knowledge! If you made it all the way through, congratulations! Your prize is reading Part 2: When your character will be needing/receiving massage, when they won’t or really shouldn’t, how a modern set up will go and how the therapist might be, and possible applications in a non-modern set up!

Hey everyone! Aunt Scripty again.

I hope you enjoyed that post as much as I did. Thanks again to Nana for her expertise and experience, as well as writing-focused perspective!

If you are a healthcare practitioner and want to clear up some myths about YOUR specialty, hit me up and let’s talk!

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

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