Ptsd Tw - Tumblr Posts

any advice for being therian with dissociation/depersonalization?

so i realized very recently that i'm otherkin and therian through an IRL friend, and it's my understanding that many therians have "phantom limbs". i think it's really cool and i really want to identify more with it and my animal identity but i'm really worried it'll make my dissociation worse. i have PTSD and i already struggle with perceiving my body as non-human (in a bad way), and i also happen to have non-wing related psychosomatic pain ^^'

i know it's different for everyone, but personally i do want to identify at least partially as human someday for my health. i'm just hoping to get some advice on how to go about therianthropy in a healthy way, so my DMs are open! this community seems really awesome and accepting and i really hope to participate :3

"Ugh! That arrogant, self-righteous, douchebag! With that over-inflated superiority complex! Nothing's changed with him! Coming down here acting like he can tell ME how I should feel! His hypocritical attitude, saying that I should be OVER IT!?" he wheezes it out in disbelief, rubbing his head, teeth and jaw clenching tightly.

And the overflow strikes; the dam bursts, tears stinging the corners of his eyes.

"THEY'RE the ones who got rid of me! Brutally cast me out in the WORST way imaginable! I... I... I couldn't even have imagined it myself back then! I had no idea anything could be so so... savage and cruel! But I was on the receiving end of that new term being delivered! Punishment — they called it! And he wants to act like I should just be over it?!" His anxiety and adrenaline are already spiking, he can feel his heart rate along with it, he tries to remember to breathe as the knot in his throat twists and pains him.

A brief moment between Harry and a mind healer

She signed contracts to utter secrecy, which she had at first found rather insulting because of course it would always be private. She had been able to tell, however, that this client would need a lot of time. Most clients had one or two traumatic events – and inevitably the sessions pulled up other things too, things they hadn’t realised had troubled them. But merely explaining what had happened to him (though bits of it she knew – everyone did) had taken several weekly sessions now, and despite all her contracts, there were still uneasy shifts, glances, long considerations before eventually, ‘I can’t tell you exactly why, but essentially...’

He was secretive and private and struggled to articulate himself – getting snappy when she gently prodded at sore spots, occasionally treating her with suspicion.

[[MORE]]

It was hardly unusual, especially with her male clients, who had usually been begged and pleaded with by loved ones before they actually came to her. Now, she thought as she watched him finish scoring out his anxieties over the past week and hand the sheet back to her, it might be the right time to pick up on something she was acutely aware he had stepped around.

‘I want to begin today's session by talking about your childhood.’

He blinked at her, and though he didn’t move she though he seemed to shrink into himself slightly. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘I’m here because of stuff that happened in the war.’

‘I understand that,’ she said calmly. ‘And last week when we outlined some of the events that happened to you, we thought about some of your responses and patterns of grief. Often these reactions are rooted in our childhood experiences.’

He looked away from her. ‘Well you know the story, everyone knows the story. I was orphaned.’

‘Is that your earliest memory?’

‘Only if I think really hard. I can just about remember the green light,’ he said. Something dark crossed his face. ‘I know what happened very clearly now, but that’s all I could remember before. I didn’t know what it meant until much later – I was always told they died in a car crash. When I was really little, I thought perhaps they had crashed into a traffic light or something; it was the only thing I could think of to explain the light.’

‘And what about after that?’ she asked. ‘What’s your earliest memory that has clarity?’

He stared at her for a moment. ‘Tugging on my aunt's skirt,’ he said at last. ‘To get her attention while she was doing the washing up.’

‘And did you get it?’

‘No.’

‘Your earliest memory, then, is of rejection,’ she said simply.

He was very stoic – she had noticed that. Lots of her patients were, though many cried, or got irritable. He just have a small, single nod, looking down at his knees. ‘Well, yes,’ he said flatly.

‘It wasn’t a happy relationship? With your aunt?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Tell me about it.’

He looked irked. ‘I don’t really want to. It doesn’t matter. I don’t think about it. More important stuff has happened – people died-'

‘I think it does,’ she said firmly. ‘I think it’s directly contributing to how you are processing trauma and grief today.’ She pulled over her notebook; the quill over it paused, and she flicked back a few pages. ‘Last week, you talked about the guilt you carry regarding your godson. You talked about the horror you felt looking down at Remus and Tonks and realising another child had been orphaned. And you said you didn’t want Teddy to have a life anything like yours, that you didn’t want him to have the same loneliness that you did.’

‘I only meant – all orphans probably feel like that,’ he said giving a slight jerk of his head. ‘It just comes with the word. It’s an inherent... You can’t fix that. There’s always going to be a thought that your life could have been different, that you might have been happier.’

She watched him closely, because she could see his cheeks going pink and his mouth opening and closing slightly, his eyes still fixated on his knees.

‘But yeah,’ he said suddenly, in a restrained sort of voice. ‘I’ve thought about, it a bit. Since I got Teddy. About...’ he sighed for a moment. ‘They never wanted me,’ he said in a low voice. ‘They made that clear.’

‘And trying to get your aunt's attention, and failing – do you think this is characteristic of your childhood?’

‘Yes,’ he said, a little hoarsely. ‘I... I don’t remember that well but I think Dudley had pushed me over, and I was, you know, all scraped up. But she just carried on with the dishes.’

‘So you asked for help, and you were rejected for it. And I think that’s followed you,’ she said. ‘I think it’s clear, when we look back on the last few weeks and all the things you’ve told me – and it’s something you have said to me yourself – that you never looked to adults for help, or asked for it. You did things on your own and felt you had to take responsibility. And I think that’s left you with a lot of guilt about things you shouldn’t feel guilty for. Because you were a child, and you needed help.’

He was silent for a few more moments, and then he said, ‘I did... I asked some people for help. I asked my godfather for help. I could write to him and he always responded. He came and lived in a cave in Hogsmeade so that he could help, as much as he could.’

‘But then he died,’ she said simply.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Because... I rushed off to go and rescue him, I fell for it... but I did try,’ he added fiercely. ‘I did try and get help before I did that, I did-'

‘But you felt ignored?’

He paused, and nodded. ‘It felt impossible – no one I trusted was there.’

‘So can you see, Harry? Can you see that it was not your fault? That you were a child, taking on an adult responsibility, because of a lifetime of being forced into that role? That you learnt – as one of your earliest life lessons – that you would not get help even when you asked for it from people that were supposed to be responsible for you?’

He did not say anything, and she let the silence stretch for a little while, before speaking again. ‘Tell me more about your childhood. What else do you remember?’

Nate started speed skating competitively again to find cold weather a lot less agonizing, after Neo-Plasma's attacks on Opelucid and Ghetsis' attempts on his life. He figured the best way to deal with the sudden intrusive memories of that part of his life that happen sometimes was to try not to let it ruin something he already loved before the incident.

That said, unexpected snowstorms still bring those memories back, and he avoids the Giant Chasm as much as he can. He's trying to recover from the lingering trauma, and he thinks speed skating might help with that.

This is important to me because when I was hospitalised, I met my best friend, who expirienced horrible trauma not different from andrew's trauma. Yeah she has a totally different personality from Andrew, but she had a lot of the same PTSD effects as he has. After 2 years of intense therapy and surrounding herself with good people she's so fucking okay. Yeah she still has problems but she's okay and she dates my other best friend and she's okay and it inspires me so much that Someday I'm gonna be okay. People can heal from their traumas and it's important to show that.

It's important to me to have hope that my mental illness isn't going to keep limiting my life. Because we find ourselves in books and I find myself in andrew.

not to go off about this again but absolutely fuck the extra content. it’s so stagnant to assume that andrew never gets better and it’s so gross of nora to insinuate that you have to slice off every part of yourself affected by trauma until there’s nothing left. sometimes trauma means you have lasting scars but they don’t have to define you - and this isn’t to say uwu andrew never has nightmares again, it’s to say that despite the nightmares; despite the memories that will never go away and despite the bad days where the mere thought of being touched makes him feel sick. despite all of this he RECOVERS. he learns to laugh when neil trips over his own feet, learns to smile to himself when nicky calls and he realised he missed him, learns that on the good days he can hug renee goodbye and it’s good. it’s safe.

to suggest that because he’s been through trauma after trauma he’s never going to recover and change is so harmful; to suggest that he never learns to smile, to laugh, to love. to do things he enjoys just because he wants to, to express to neil that he loves him because neither of them ever thought they’d get the chance. no one is saying that people can’t have healthy and fulfilling relationships without I love you’s and marriage but if anyone deserves to have that, it’s andrew and neil.

let them recover.