One of the most useful things I’ve learned about recovering from trauma is that my decisions need to be judged according to the incomplete information that was available to me at the time.
So, say I’m deciding whether to eat chicken at a restaurant. All evidence is that it’s a good idea. I’m hungry for chicken, and I usually feel good after eating it.
I eat the chicken, and I get food poisoning. The resulting illness causes me to fall short of responsibilities, and creates numerous problems for me and the people who depend on me.
What happened?
Trauma brain says: “This happened because I am Bad At Making Decisions. If I had made The Right Decision and not eaten chicken, everything would have been fine.”
Recovery brain says, “According to the information that was available to me, the chicken was unlikely to make me sick. Eating chicken was a Good Decision with Bad Consequences. This happened to me because I had incomplete information.”
The “trauma brain” response makes all decisions really hard, because each decision involves the prospect of being judged by a future self that has more information.
“Should I buy the $2 mouse pad or the $3 mouse pad? If I buy the cheaper one and it doesn’t work well, it will be my own fault for not buying a better quality one…”
(Then I might end up paying myself $1-per-hour to agonize over which mouse pad to buy, which is probably an ACTUAL unwise course of action.)
But if I foster the “recovery brain” response, I can start to trust that my future self will judge my decisions kindly.
“If I buy the cheap mouse pad and it doesn’t work, then I only gambled $2 on it. If I buy the $3 one and even it doesn’t work, then I’ll have more closely guessed how much I need to pay for a mousepad of sufficient quality.”
And then later when the mousepad doesn’t work: “Well, that didn’t work. At least I made a decision. The outcome has given me more information about the options available to me going forward.”
(Meta level: Decisions you made prior to reading this post about how to treat yourself were probably good given the information you had access to about trauma and recovery!)
tl;dr: Bad results are not always evidence of bad decisions. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt about why you do what you do.
Tag: trauma
The thing about rebuilding after trauma that a lot of people don’t get: The point of healing isn’t to “go back to normal;” it’s to build a new life that works now, using what we have to work with now. So maybe somebody wouldn’t have turned out to be [descriptor here]sexual if they hadn’t gone through [trauma here]. But if they are [descriptor here]sexual now, and it doesn’t cause them cognitive dissonance, then that’s what “normal” looks like for them now.
Exactly!
And it’s no one else’s business what the trauma is, or why the person who went through it is comfortable with the particular label they chose for their sexuality, not someone else’s business to determine the validity of that person’s chosen label.
(And hey, if they change thier mind later, than that’s ok too, because sexuality can be fluid, and recovery is not a “point a to point b” journey, but an ongoing process that can sometimes take an entire lifetime.)
Asexuality is a minority orientation not an (evil) ideology
Okay but ace/aro is kinda like an ideology. Not that it’s evil per se, but it can hold a person back from growth once one has latched onto it and found the tumblr a-spec community.
I know quite a few people who identify as ace/aro or aroace. I’ve never met one who didn’t fall into one of these categories. They came to that label as teenagers, usually not entirely through puberty yet. Or they came to it after a sexual-related trauma. Or they came to it as a result of having a mental illness that affects their ability to connect to people or to identify those connections correctly (such as BPD for example). Or they came to it as a result of a side effect of medication, often anti-depressants. Or they experience dysphoria to the extent that having anything to do with sex in their current physical bodies is unimaginable. Or they’re dealing with internalized homophobia.
I think they latch onto a-spec labels when they have the above by misunderstanding what sexual attraction/romantic attraction is for “allosexuals”. They get their idea of attraction from TV shows, beer commercials (sex) and jewelry commercials (romance). They have very little interaction with IRL people where they talk about sex and romance. Or if they’re school-age, they actually believe all the lying/bragging that goes on about who’s fucked whom, and the intense period around puberty where it seems like everyone has a bf/gf and are PDA’ing all over the place.
Anyway, they’re at one of those vulnerable points I mentioned in the 2nd paragraph and they stumble upon the labels ace, aro, or aroace. It seems to fit them perfectly! And once they identify as that, they find a whole group of online ‘friends’ who accept them for all the things they are. Oftentimes, these ‘friends’ are adults, a category they feel separated from and hold resentment towards because mom and dad won’t let them be on the computer 24/7 or give them all the things they want. But here are adults who don’t do any of that and ‘validate’ everything they say.
So they fall into the a-spec community. And for many of them, as time goes on, they still identify as a-spec even once they really aren’t anymore. They’re just unwilling/unable to give up on the ‘validation’ that the a-spec community gives them.
Why do I say they aren’t really a-spec anymore? Because they do start to have sex and/or romantic relationships same as everyone else. Only because they’re inculcated in the a-spec community, they come up with all sorts of other names for what is really just being like everyone else, us evil ‘allosexuals’. They’re not experiencing romance, they’re in a QPR. They’re not experiencing sexual attraction, they’re just ‘sex positive’. Stuff like that.
They have blogs that are full of the same kind of lusty drooling over celebs that all us ‘allosexuals’ have. But they can’t admit it’s attraction, so they come up with ‘it’s only aesthetic attraction.
Or they are involved in kinks that are quite decidedly sexual and that yield sexual pleasure when performed. But that’s only being ‘kink positive’ or identifying the pleasure they get as only being sensual pleasure.
Or they have blogs/AO3 accounts full of fics that are extremely romantic and/or sexual. Often in great detail, often bordering on the obsessive or fetishistic. But somehow this isn’t indicative of the fact they experience romantic or sexual attraction.
Despite all their denials they, for all intents and purposes, are experiencing the exact same things that allosexuals experience (because not all allosexuals experience ‘attraction’ 24/7 or under all circumstances). They are clinging to the a-spec labels because of the ‘validation’, comfort and familiarity that the a-spec community gives them.
To me, this feels a lot like what people who eventually leave cults like Scientology say. They weren’t able to leave the cult because they didn’t want to lose the friends/family/familiarity that they got in the cult. They were afraid of what the world might be like without the comfort they had within the cult.
I believe that there are people who are genuinely asexual. But that they are an extreme minority. Most (who are not simply teens who have yet to pass through puberty completely) are simply unwilling to admit that they have left behind the structural things that make up the ‘ace/aro identity’.
I don’t like posting “discourse” here anymore, so I apologize. However, I think this is important to address because of the arguments here and their historical impact on LGBT+ people. In particular, I want people to pay attention to the language used in a response like this because it mimics anti-LGBT+ rhetoric.
It is clear that anti-asexual/aromantic “discourse” does not aim to discuss the boundaries for asexual and aromantic people in LGBT+ spaces. Instead, it aims to completely dismantle our identities and disempower us through the invalidating tactics ironically used by anti-LGBT+ groups.
LGBT+ identities have been referred to as ideologies and/or cults in religious, conservative, and radical spaces, who view these identities as dangerous to youths who could get “drawn in.” In addition, LGBT+ people are told they identify that way because of their age, trauma, neurodivergence, disability, or illness.
This not only invalidates the identities of youths who are beginning to form a sense of self, but it removes the sexual agency of people who have experienced trauma, neurodivergence, disability, and/or illness. The only identities that go unquestioned are heterosexual and cisgender.
The pathologization of LGBT+ people has been a problem for a long time, but it’s also something that has been impacting us as we reach new levels of visibility. Not just with online platforms, but in our media and for some, in their doctors’ offices. This ties into ableist attitudes/removal of sexual agency.
In addition to this, belittling the agency and struggles of LGBT+ people in times of conflict has been a problem that is affecting asexual and aromantic people as well. It is fairly easy for someone to position any struggle we experience as something that it is not – e.g. dramatic teens whining on the internet.
What this does is create barriers for people like us to solve real issues that we want to overcome, such as having adequate health care, preventing abuse, building healthy relationships, supporting suicidal people in our community, educating parents on how to support their children, etc. etc. etc.
This does this in much the same way it creates barriers for LGBT+ people to address big issues such as homelessness and abuse. You implicitly deny that these are real problems, by creating strawmen “issues” that seem petty and immature making it easier for you to deny our experiences.
Even things like microaggressions and lack of representation warrant discussion, but these things too are chalked up to people being dramatic and entitled. This effects the LGBT+ community as a whole, and denying these things perpetuates cisheteronormative values at our detriment.
As for youths, puberty is a time of accelerated growth, identity formation, and a search for accepting communities. It’s important not to group cults and gangs in with identity-supporting LGBT+ organizations including those that accept and support asexual and aromantic identities.
Why? – because it’s not acceptance that creates conflicts for youths. It is lack of acceptance. If youths are not well supported by organizations that provide resources and education, they seek out incredibly harmful spaces that promise acceptance but perpetuate abuse.
There may be valid criticisms of LGBT+ spaces and aromantic and asexual spaces, but these absurd comparisons with “cults” actively shut down these conversations instead of expose real problems that we can fix to make our communities safer for everyone. So, the “cult” language is unacceptable.
In addition, within these spaces we develop our own language because our cisheteronormative society fails to represent different facets of our human experiences. Redefining our terms in a cisheteronormative context is disempowering, once again ignoring our agency to identify ourselves.
For example, QPRs aren’t romantic relationships. Sex positivity is not the same thing as sex favorability, and participating in sex doesn’t invalidate asexuality. Aesthetic attraction is not sexual or “lusty,” and “lusty” isn’t a fair term to define sexual attraction as it is often used in a perverse sense.
Having a fetish or kink does not invalidate one’s identity because these things aren’t inherently about sexual attraction. You also do not need to be able to experience something to write about something. The argument that writing sex and romance invalidates asexuality and aromanticism is absurd.
LGBT+ people also may not act within the “boundaries” given for their identity due to a variety of factors such as the pressure of society to adhere to cisheteronormative standards. Policing their behavior does not allow for them to grow in acceptance. It simply shames them.
The same goes for asexual and aromantic people.
Some people remain with their sexual and gender identity their whole life, while others change. Misidentification can happen to anyone and is not the fault of any one community. Also, misidentification is not always a stressful or traumatic experience, rather, it’s a process of knowing one’s self.
Yet, this is something that you use and that anti-LGBT groups have used to convince people they don’t know themselves. TERFs use it to convince people to de-transition. Radical conservative Christians use it to “convert” people to heterosexuality. It is harmful thinking.
If your arguments mimic very real anti-LGBT+ arguments, maybe you should reflect on that and finally figure out that you’re really a massive bigot who cannot accept that people live contrary to your current beliefs and expectations. Nothing you said was okay in any way nor does it help LGBT+ people as a whole.
I have tried three times to write out a calm, reasoned response to “ace/aro is kinda like an ideology” and I can’t do it. I’m glad actuallyasexual did, so I’m piggybacking on their response so people can see that, but I just can’t. I’m too angry. I’m so angry about that original response to OP that I can’t point out its flaws without letting that anger seep into my reply.
(Which isn’t allowed in ace discourse, because if I’m angry, that apparently negates the validity of my response, because everyone knows that angry people are inherently wrong, and that people who are emotionally detached must have superior logic, right?)
I’m angry that it pretends to be supportive while claiming that asexuals are either too young, too traumatized, too incapable due to mental disorder, too medicated, too dysphoric (and seriously, how can anyone read that trans people must inherently misunderstand themselves without feeling angry?), or otherwise too vulnerable to accurately understand themselves and/or their sexuality, leading them to incorrectly identify as asexual.
I’m angry that it tries to paint “things that asexuals do that prove they aren’t asexual” in a “like us allosexuals” way, but reverts to purity-coded wording that implies those behaviors are bad (”lusty drooling” and “kinks…[that] yield sexual pleasure when performed” and “obsessive or fetishistic”).
I’m angry that it claims that young asexuals who talk to adult asexuals online only cling to them (and, by extension, to asexuality) because of teenage angst and the fact that their parents don’t coddle them or give them whatever they want (since they must just be greedy).
I’m angry that it implies anyone who once identified as asexual but later changes labels suddenly loses all “validation” from the community, and all support, and all friends who are asexual (though they are quick to always put “friends” in quotation marks).
I’m angry that “friends” is always in quotation marks, implying that being friends with other asexuals isn’t actually real friendship, it’s just fake manipulative friendship (that is being perpetuated for some reason that isn’t explained).
I’m angry that it says asexuals are “for all intents and purposes” just like allosexuals because allosexuals “don’t experience ‘attraction’ 24/7 or under all circumstances” while ignoring that asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction. That demisexuality is a lack of sexual attraction until, suddenly and after knowing someone for a very long time, developing sexual attraction to just one specific person. That grey asexuality is for those people who aren’t sure if they’ve maybe felt sexual attraction in the past, or know that they’ve felt sexual attraction maybe once or twice in their lives, or who don’t feel sexual attraction for the majority of their lives, and that all of these are perfectly acceptable definitions because the word was Specifically Created to be as broad a term as possible to include everyone who doesn’t easily fit into asexual or non-asexual labels.
I’m angry that it claims all these behaviors prove that someone isn’t asexual (or aromantic, let’s not forget it also briefly shit on QPRs) while ignoring that asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction, and that aromanticism is a lack of romantic attraction. That it ignores the fact that sexual or romantic attraction aren’t required for any of the preferences or behaviors that were listed.
I’m angry that it derrides the existence of non-sexual, non-romantic forms of attraction.
I’m angry that it claims that “structural things” make up an “ace/aro identity” instead of, for example, asexuality and aromanticism being legitimate orientations.
I’m angry that someone can sit down and, with a clear conscience, write a manipulatively worded response that says “Hey, you’re not evil! You’re just cult-like, and every adult asexual on this site is lying to (and faking friendship for) every young asexual for some reason that is never explained, and all asexuals shun everyone who once ID’d as asexual but now IDs as something else, which causes people not to change their identities, and also most all of you are not asexual because asexuality should be defined by behaviors despite the fact that no one else’s identity is defined by behaviors. But hey, I’m just being reasonable here. I said you weren’t evil, didn’t I? Your identity just holds vulnerable people back from personal understanding and growth like other cults do, and it’s not even a real orientation. That’s all.”
I’m angry that people think any of this is anything but flawed.
I’m just so angry. I don’t understand how anyone could not be.
It’s also utterly dismissive of every adult who spent their life thinking there was something wrong with them, only to learn in their third or fourth (or older) decade that they’re not, and never have been, broken. That there’s a word for what they’ve are, what they’ve ALWAYS been, far before they found the label to “latch onto.”
It’s just…such a shitty position to take. Frankly, any time you decide to lecture other people about what you think their sexuality is, or is not, it’s a shitty position to take.
You don’t get to decide for other people whether or not their identity is valid.
You aren’t the gatekeeper for their relationships, or the nature of their sexuality.
Your interpretations of whatever aspects of their life you may have glimpsed, based on the biases you already hold, are not more accurate or more meaningful than the conclusions that their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences have brought them to.
And what you are doing is far more harmful than any “attachment to a label” that you’re crusading against ever was.
I’m glad for those who have responded already to that unmitigated pile of horse shit that was the first response to the OP, and awesome, wonderful things they’ve said.
There is one part of it that I want to address myself, and it’s that bit about trauma causing someone to identify as asexual as if that invalidates a person’s self-identification.
Because there is no fucking way that invalidates an identity, and to assume and claim it does so not only denies a person agency, but can be traumatic or reinforce trauma all on its own.
Yes, some people identify as ace after trauma.
Yes, some people do so BECAUSE of trauma.
Ditto aro.
And there is nothing wrong with that.
And anyone who wants to say otherwise can chew on molten rocks because I have absolutely no patience for that. Just a fuck ton of rage.
Oh, and another thing, on the romance and fluff and sexy times and kink fic-writing meaning a person can’t possibly be aromantic and/or asexual.
The author is not the characters, and conflating the two is a dick move and also really sarding annoying.
There is a mistaken notion that trauma is primarily about memory—the story of what has happened…It’s a too-simplistic view in my opinion. Your whole mind, brain and sense of self is changed in response to trauma.
In the long term the largest problem of being traumatized is that it’s hard to feel that anything that’s going on around you really matters. It is difficult to love and take care of people and get involved in pleasure and engagements because your brain has been re-organized to deal with danger.
It is only partly an issue of consciousness. Much has to do with unconscious parts of the brain that keep interpreting the world as being dangerous and frightening and feeling helpless. You know you shouldn’t feel that way, but you do, and that makes you feel defective and ashamed.
My mental health has been taking a steady dive the past few months, and there are honestly times I would just like to yell at everything in my head to be quiet. Except it doesn’t work. Anyways, Anabasis is really, really cathartic for me and I was wondering if you could post anything from it? I don’t care what, since literally everything you write for this ‘verse does the trick.
Hey anon, I’m really sorry for the week-long wait, and I hope you’ve been coping okay. Writing Anabasis is pretty cathartic for me, so I’m glad it’s good for other people, too.
I really wanted to finish up this section so I could post it for you – hope you like it! This snippet follows immediately after the last snippet I posted. (So I think this marks the first time I’ve posted two bits that actually connect!) It also makes reference to this snippet.
In which Anakin explains his new tattoo, Padmé learns she was baby Vader’s secret hero, and Orn Free Taa should probably start running.
Warnings for discussion of slavery, references to Anakin’s transmitter explosion, and very oblique references to conditioning and abuse of children.
All of that said, this is actually a pretty happy snippet.
They talked in circles for another two hours, and by the
time Padmé saw her guests out, very little had changed. Taa and his cronies
remained unmoved, and still planned to bring their bill to a vote, in spite of
their demonstrated inability to defend it with anything other than easily
debunked talking points. She was still less confident than she’d like to be that
they would fail. But at least they now seemed more sullen than smug. And they’d
kept glancing nervously at Anakin and then away.He’d joined their meeting ostensibly as an unofficial
representative of the Outer Rim Territories, but he’d referred more often to
Imperial policies than to Tatooine. As political tactics went, it was both
transparent and stunningly effective.And Padmé would be lying if she said she hadn’t enjoyed
watching it play out.So she was more than a little surprised when, after the last
of her guests had gone, Anakin turned to her with a set jaw and shuttered eyes
and snapped, “I’m not going to apologize.”
I don’t know all the reasons why I like dark things, and I don’t think I need to know them all, but… I was just looking at the blog of that person who said I “dehumanize and fetishize” gay men, and I saw that he was quite young (15) and his blog was all full of pastel colors and references to his mental illness and something dawned on me that I hadn’t thought about in a Tumblr context at all.
Part of my PTSD is about experiences I had in hospitals, and because of that one of my triggers is… not pastels, all by themselves, but like… have you ever stayed in a hospital as a kid? And everything is covered in soothing soft colors and all the nurses wear scrubs with like… cute animal drawings on them and everyone talks in a sing-song voice and reassures you things won’t hurt when they OBVIOUSLY will and you’d rather they tell the truth, accept that you have good reasons to be scared, and get it the hell overwith?
Yeah, I think I just figured out why those kids’ blogs give me a weird tingly feeling of creeping dread.
And I think I figured out, also, where my intense leeriness of “safe spaces” and trigger warnings comes from too–even though as a person with PTSD I’m supposed to want them.
It’s because in my experience, people who were trying to make me feel safe were LYING. They were lying because it was in their interest–in mine, too, but in theirs–for me to feel calm and soothed. For me not to feel despair, or anger, or blind screaming rage.
…Is it any wonder I like the stories where the people with the knives and the cruel smiles and the mind games are blatant about it? Or that I might want a few knives of my own, even though I have no desire to hurt anyone who isn’t going to get off on it?
I don’t want those kids to not need safety.
I want them to stop pretending safety looks the same for everyone.
Yes, this.
When people tell me “You’re safe,” I don’t think of Helpful Adult saving me from the monsters under the bed. I think of my teachers, saying the people who hurt me would never do such a thing, and I should stop lying because I was perfectly safe. I think of the people who used to hug me until my lungs wouldn’t fill and my ribs creaked, and got away without a whisper of a reprimand. Because they were pretty and soft, and I was cold and harsh.
That’s not safe, to me. That’s the most dangerous place in the world, because the people who live there will do anything- anything at all- if it means they don’t have to acknowledge how nasty their walled garden has really gotten. Because if I defend myself, they can’t pretend anymore. And they sure as hell won’t defend me.
THIS.
I have experienced a lot of passive-aggressive emotional abuse in my life and let me tell you – my abusers had a vested interest in keeping me calm.
Upset means resistance. Upset means that they have to face the damage they’ve caused. Upset means that you may finally realize that you should leave. Upset means that you might just get up and leave. So they soothe you. They make you doubt the validity of your feelings. They make you feel guilty for getting upset. They make you think that the issue was your fault in the first place. They make you feel like getting upset is pointless. They make you feel like you have wronged them and yourself by being unhappy.
You do not have to let yourself be soothed. You do not have to let them take the fight out of you. If you do not feel safe; you do not have to feel guilty for getting yourself out. You do not have to feel guilty for being upset when someone has wronged you. You do not have to feel guilty for seeking your own brand of safety.
This is the most poignant description of what it actually feels like to be helpless in an institution that I’ve ever read.
It’s a special kind of violence to be hurt and to be told that it’s kindness. It’s intensely intimate and perverted. Succumbing to it is… spiritually destructive in a way that I have a hard time putting to words. Just… in my safe space I’m always fighting because as long as I continue to struggle that very special form of violence can’t take hold of me and I’ll be okay.
Like… when I get triggered about some of these experiences I’ll even have fantasies about dying while resisting. I mean… I don’t want to go into details because super triggering but… just think about that for a moment.
“It’s a special kind of violence to be hurt and to be told that it’s kindness. It’s intensely intimate and perverted.”
My experiences are not exactly the same as yours, but this, yes.
This is why I have such intense reactions to unkind SJ, whether it’s “sit down, shut up, and listen” (gee, what might that resemble?) or “representation means heroes with no serious flaws.”
Because that particular “shh, shh, shh, if we pretend utopia is already here, it soon will be” lie has hurt me EVERY TIME I’ve heard it.
I’m learning now that the roots of a lot of my trauma was this exact “your life is perfect, you’re not allowed to feel anything other than happiness, you’re ungrateful,” yelling more if I cried, any inkling of talking back or standing up for myself was met with twice the punishment, etc
So while it’s understandable that those in a dark place seek softness and gentle color, and there’s nothing wrong with that, those of us forced into it seek the grime as a form of truth and expression that wasn’t allowed for us, or a fictional playground of violence and anger where we can actually scream our frustrations onto a canvas.
And telling people that they should ditch such exploration for holy goodness is just another form of telling us our anger shouldn’t exist
Boom.
soon after the events of ‘the search’ garak casually says “i’m afraid i won’t be able to have lunch with you today” and doesn’t understand why julian looks that unnerved
Garak walked through the open doors of the infirmary. It was early, but such a visit was necessary. He had a client of sorts arriving at the station that morning who wished to discuss important matters. He needed to alert Doctor Julian Bashir to the abrupt change of plans. He half expected the dear doctor not to be at work that early, but as he entered the doors, the doctor looked his way and offered a polite but puzzled smile.
“Good morning, Garak,” the doctor said as he turned completely towards him, the central console abandoned, “Is there something I can do for you?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” Garak said. He stopped an arm’s length away, “I’m only here to inform you of a change in plans. I’m afraid I won’t be able to have lunch with you today.”
Something washed over the young man’s face. It widened the doctor’s eyes, paled his skin, tightened his lips in. Garak blinked. His own certainty over the matter nearly wavered. He thought to turn to peer behind him, but with those brown eyes frozen on his face, he was certain it was his words that triggered the reaction.
“Doctor, is something wrong?”
Julian blinked. His mouth flapped open, shut, open. Then his eyes jerked away.
“N-no, I’m sorry,” Julian said, “It’s nothing.”
“I’m afraid your appearance betrays your feelings, my dear doctor,” Garak said. An invitation. Julian wavered physically, perhaps mentally, at the suggestion. Then he sighed.
“Remember when I told you about the changelings taking us? And the computer simulation of the station?” Julian asked.
“Yes.”
Pause.
“Well, you were on the station, of course. When we were on the way to the escape pod to escape the attacked station, you helped us. Before we got there though, you were shot, and… you died. I tried to help but there was nothing…” Julian’s voice drifted, sank, disappeared. Then he lightly shook his head twice. “Before you died, you spoke to me. Your words were, ‘I’m afraid I won’t be able to have lunch with you today.’ Word for word.”
Ah. Well that certainly explained the grave face the good doctor had put on, and the continued lack of eye contact. What a transparent man. Delightful, but as see-through as the station’s glass. Garak smiled softly.
“How unfortunate. I apologize for triggering such a memory, Doctor. That was not my intention. If it is any consolation, matters are not so dire. One of my off-station clients is arriving on the station this morning and wished to speak with me over lunch. I’m afraid their arrival and meeting is important enough to miss ours for. If you would like, we can meet for dinner this evening. Perhaps it will ease your anxiety over the matter.”
Julian finally looked at him again.
“Only if dinner won’t be a bother,” Julian said.
“I wouldn’t offer it as an option if it were problematic,” Garak said. Julian smiled again. It was delicate, near fragile, and sent fire through Garak’s heart for a moment. He batted down the flames.
“I’d like that,” Julian said.
“Excellent. We can dine wherever you wish. How does nineteen-hundred hours sound?”
“That’s fine.” There was a lightness in Julian’s voice again.
“Good. We can meet outside my shop.”
“Sound good. Thank you, Garak.”
“No, thank you.” Garak turned, paused, then looked back at Julian. “Oh, and doctor, I would never be so foolish as to let someone on the station kill me with a phaser. I’m aging, my dear, but my senses aren’t dulling quite yet.”
Julian’s smile warmed.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Garak nodded, turned, and left the infirmary, happier with the day’s events now that matters were settled.
Hi Internet Dad, feel free not to answer if this ask is too depressing, but I’ve got an existential melon-scratcher for you: with all the Awful Things going on in the world (and the US specifically), do you have any advice on how to keep from becoming hopeless? Because I’ve been struggling a lot with how to even go about my day-to-day when all I can think about are the horrors that I see in the news. I’m desperately trying to believe that things will get better, but it’s hard to believe. Help?
I think this is easier for some people than for others. Compartmentalization can be learned, but some people also do it very naturally while others don’t. So it’s tough to offer advice on how to separate the personal life you have to live from your membership in a society that feels like it’s crumbling around us.
I was re-reading an old post I made recently which I think relates to this. I have a really tough time with sadness. Some people, most people, can process sadness and rebound – listen to a sad song and then be fine, watch a tragic movie and come out okay, have a good cry and feel cleansed – but often I have only two levels, “not sad” and “nothing but sad”. So I don’t read books or watch movies where the main character dies, I don’t read fic tagged “unhappy ending” or “major character death”, I don’t watch sad real life stories (much; depends on how well I feel like I can cope with it on any given day). Because unlike most people, it will still be affecting me days later, and that makes it tough to function.
There are a lot of coping mechanisms for the terrible news in the world around us. The one I favor is not watching the news. What news I get, I read, rather than watch, because I can control my consumption, I can stop and do something else for a little while, and I can look up counterpoints while I’m still on the original article. I have a deal with my parents that they, news junkies, don’t get to watch certain news stories while I’m home – if Trump is on the TV, for example, the deal is we mute it, and I tolerate the rest of the news that they’re constantly watching.
You can also look up inspirational stories, I’m pretty sure there are websites dedicated to happy news like people rescuing babies from riptides and such. Or you can resolve that every time you feel like you’re drowning in the horror, you do one thing to help fix the world, like calling your senator or scheduling to go to a protest or giving a dollar to a charity, and then you’re allowed to go back to your actual life.
Also, and I want you to really listen to this: “it’s hard to believe things will get better” is a huge flag to me because it’s something people with depression say A LOT. The struggle you’re dealing with doesn’t have to apply to you personally for it to be a personal problem. If you are having trouble functioning in your personal life because of the outside world, that can still be depression. So you should consider this, do a little self-examination, and maybe speak to a doctor or a therapist about how you’re feeling. They can help you sort out whether this is just “maybe I’m watching too much news” or whether you have a chemical imbalance going on in your brain.
It is a tough time we live in. So you are certainly not alone in struggling with this. But if you’re struggling this much, I hope you can find some ways to climb out of that a little, because I think the world is still worth hoping for.
does anyone else think about iron man 2 and get emotional because tony stark is so obviously depressed, withdrawn, and falling apart but no one notices and just passes off all his reckless behavior as just The Norm (including a lot of fans??) and only when Fury finally brings to light that Tony’s DYING and giving away all his things, making plans for the future of his company, etc does anyone pay even the slightest attention and eVEN THEN no one really does anything about it??
Once he’s replaced the palladium everyone’s like “great everything’s back to normal again” as if that changes the fact that tony withstood a CRAZY AMOUNT of trauma?? He’s always just getting beat around and because he outwardly laughs it off everyone assumes he’s fine I’m so mad someone needs to give him a hug and say it’s okay not to be fine
PTSD is your brain trying to make sure you DON’T DIE.
Humans are really good at adapting so that we don’t die. That’s kind of our whole *THING*. We adapt.
If something BAD and SCARY and DANGEROUS happens, your brain tries to teach you to react better next time. If the Bad Scary Dangerous thing happens a lot, that’s reinforcing it. With CPTSD, the Bad Scary Dangerous thing happened often enough and frequently enough that your whole psyche developed around it.
You learn to notice the tiny things that signal the Bad Scary Dangerous Thing might happen – even if you don’t consciously know that you know that – so that you are braced to react and defend yourself. They become triggers so that you are primed to respond.
Hypervigilance? Better to panic unnecessarily than to get dead because you didn’t recognize a threat in time, right? It’s uncomfortable and a waste of energy but you’re not dead.
Nightmares about the Bad Thing? Dreams are PRACTICE. You are trying to learn how to react better or faster or more effectively next time.
Avoidance? Dissociating is better than just completely breaking and shutting down entirely.
The thing is, even if you are not in that situation anymore, your brain did not get the memo. It is trying! But it takes a lot of work to convince it that “No really, it is safe now!”
I guess what I’m saying is cut yourself some slack. You are doing your best and you’re not dead. ❤
The realization that PTSD is a survival response helped me be less angry at my brain for the way it was behaving.
When my PTSD was pervasive and controlled my whole life, I didn’t understand that in situations of abuse, it can be difficult for even an outside observer to determine which things were dangerous. So your brain just labels anything or everything involved in the situation as dangerous. That’s how you wind up having fight/flight/fawn/play dead responses to innocuous things like telephones or shoes or the word “sweetheart” – because part of your brain figures that maybe they were part of what hurt you and thus should be interpreted as dangers. It’s the same survival-related pattern-recognition that allows us to spot camoflaged snakes in the grass, only in recovering from abuse, your brain is trying to spot snakes in the interpersonal relationship.
The process of recovering from PTSD often involves unpairing neutral simuli from survival responses. So you’re retraining your brain to understand that telephones and shoes and the word “sweetheart” do not signal imminent danger, and to instead recognize which interpersonal behaviors actually are dangerous.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 