#like going to a dissociative expert for therapy has been so good but
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hi, I really like your blog and your antipsych thoughts have been very helpful to me. i hope this is ok to ask for advice (sorry i have brain fog and this question is vague)? i think i'm looking for 'unconventional' advice or suggestions, the kind that someone in the psych system would not necessarily recommend to me.
i have had a bad history with therapy, but i very much need some kind of mental support that i am not getting otherwise in my life (issues like CPTSD, DID, among other things). im in a position where i /can/ go to therapy, and i've been with a therapist that specializes in the things that are causing me the most problems for a year and theyre fine (i.e. has not ever helped me figure out anything about how to improve my life but has been someone who can perscribe me stuff, and hasn't done anything actively harmful to me like other therapists and psychiatrists have), but going is so upsetting for some reason (maybe because the therapy environment has been so bad in the past?) and not at all helpful. it's useful for me to have a relationship to a psychiatrist/therapist for medication and other 'navigating the system' reasons, but it's absolutely unhelpful. i am very frustrated and disillusioned with the whole concept of 'therapy' in general (maybe due to my history)!! but i don't know how else to get help!
it's harder because of the brain fog. i also feel very isolated partially because i'm in a not great environment, and partially because i have multiple mental illnesses in addition to not being a very nice person. i have felt really let down by supposed friends i've come to for help who just said therapy speak stuff like 'you should get help....' and 'sorry i don't have the emotional bandwidth to help <3' and stuff like that. it really makes me feel like i'm too messed up to be able to ask for help from regular people and i have to go to the psych industry but of course i've already been failed by them too :(
hey anon!
I think what you've said makes so much sense. I feel like we're so often told "go get help" but when we do try to seek support, it isn't as simple as just going and easily finding a therapist who is able to provide all the support and care we need. It can be so hard to find and pay for therapy in the first place, harder still to find someone who specializes in a therapy style to meet our needs, and sometimes we might not just be in a place in our life where we are in an environment that allows us to do in depth therapy work. And I just want to say that it isn't your fault if therapy isn't meeting your needs right now--that doesn't mean that you're failing at therapy. You absolutely aren't alone in feeling dissatisfied with therapy and wanting other options.
For me, what's helped when I've been considering making changes about how I approach my mental health has first been sitting down and really taking a thorough look at what things are working and what things aren't working. It seems like you've done a lot of that already--you know that it's helpful to have a therapeutic relationship to get meds and for help in the system, you know that the therapy environment hasn't been particuarly helpful for other types of healing work, and it seems like another thing you're thinking about is how to get mental support from your friends and other people in your everyday life. I think those are really good starting places to consider where you want to go from here. It might be helpful to make a list of what feels like priorities to focus on right now--do you want to develop more skills for navigating crisis? Do you want to focus on changing your relationship with dissociation? harm reduction for self destructive behaviors? building resilience and cultivating relationships in your life? There's no right or wrong answers here--you're going to be the expert on what feels most important right now.
I also just want to say that I think it's really shitty when we're made to feel like we're too crazy or too needy or too messed up to be able to be cared for and supported in our community. I've definitely had people tell me that, and it really hurts and makes me feel hopeless, like I'm always going to be struggling and that there's no chance that I'll be able to get better. But fuck that. We deserve to have meaningful connections in our community, access to resources that help us, and to be able to build resilient relationships where getting emotional support isn't considered an unmanageable burden, even if we're mad/mentally ill/ neurodivergent. I'm sorry that you haven't been able to rely on your friends and community that way, although I know it's hard when everyone we know is struggling and people don't have the energy or skills or knowledge to be able to help each other.
This is getting long, so I'm just going to list off a ton of random tips and suggestions, and I hope some of them might resonate with you.
Join a peer support group aligned with antipsych values. Hearing Voices Network, Alternatives to Suicide with the Wildflower alliance, Multiplied by One, FEDUP trans/intersex eating disorder support groups are all great options.
harm reduction! this can be especially applicable for self-destructive behaviors, but just in general moving outside of an "abstinence-only model." working to understand your actions on a spectrum of totally chaotic, unmanaged behaviors to more managed, intentional relationships with those behaviors. embracing any positive change as an important step instead of self-blame and all-or-nothing thinking.
Trying to think of the best way to describe what I'm thinking here, so I might not have the best phrasing. But basically, spending time separating your ideas for what wellbeing and quality of life look like for you from the psychiatric system's ideas of what a "normal," "healthly," quality of life looks like. For me, this looked like realizing that I wasn't actually interested in getting rid of all my hallucinations, but instead I just wanted to lessen the distress I experienced and find a way to hallucinate without panicking. So I guess just in general--really exploring what is actually important to you for your wellbeing and not limiting yourself to mainstream definitions of "recovery."
Unconventional coping skills, or coping skills that traditional psychiatry deems "risky." I've talked with some people who things like getting tattoos and piercings are actually incredibly healing for them, and are an important part of their "therapeutic" journey. Not going to go into detail or promote other "risky" coping skills on Tumblr lmao, but more just say that it's okay if there's things that therapists view as risky that you might have another perspective on how it fits into your personal healing.
Building up your and your loved ones capacity for community care. This can be a really hard one, because I know it always frustrated me when I would see people talking online about how great things like care webs or the power of peer support when I just didn't have any of that in my physical everyday life. So I'm not just going to put this here like it's a magical solution or something that's easy to accomplish. It's something that can take a ton of work and we're allowed to be frustrated about that. I think one strategy that helped me with this was spending a lot of time building my own understanding of my own capacity to help, my own needs, and what ways I would like to be cared for. That helped me start small, just by having conversations with my loved ones when I wasn't in crisis and saying "Hey, this is how I would like things to go when I'm in crisis. This is something that helps me when I'm hallucinating. This is a way you could let me know that you can't support me tonight but still leaves room for us to have connection. This is how I can help you. Let's talk openly together and develop and practice how we want to care for each other." Starting with just one person and one conversation really went a long way for me in terms of eventually building up an actual support network and for me was super instrumental in healing work.
Setting out an hour a week that's my "self therapizing time." just using one hour a week to look up new resources, try out new skills, journal, do self-inquiry, participate in activism, do something that brings me joy, read something new about mental health, literally anything that feels intentional in that hour. trying out a lot of new things and quitting a lot of new things!
Incorporating your physical needs. I'm sure we've heard a million times things like "get sleep, nourish yourself, go outside," and all that is great but often feels fucking impossible when we're mentally doing not great. but I guess just saying it can be good to be aware of how our physical body impacts our mental health in other ways. things like trying to get our sensory needs met, embracing movement that feels good + making space for rest, embracing things that bring our physical body pleasure whether that's tasty food, sex or other kinds of physical intimacy with other people, if it's using substances in a way that feels helpful or joyful or fun--anything really!
Here's a bunch of random orgs and resources that I have found helpful: Fireweed Collective, Wildflower Alliance, Project LETS, Mapping our Madness, Mad Survival Tools, Organizing Guide for Psychiatric Survivors, MindFreedom Resources, Multiplied by one (I can't personally vouch because I haven't been to their groups, but I have a friend with DID who attends these groups and had positive things to say about them.)
I'd also add on this book: "Psychosis, Dissociation, and Trauma: Evolving perspectives on Severe Psychopathology" although I do want to give a warning that this book is a heavy academic text that has a lot of clinical and stigmatizing language. For me, it had some helpful information that helped me make connections between my experiences of trauma, dissociation, and psychosis, but I would not recommend reading it unless you feel like you're in the right headspace and can deal with wading through a lot of the psychiatric narrative.
These are all just some things that sometimes work for me, so please feel free to disregard anything that doesn't resonate with you. I'd also love it if followers could add on with any tips, resources, any "unconventional" advice!
thanks for reaching out, anon, and I hope you have a good night 💜
#personal#antipsych#antipsychiatry#resources#going to copy and paste most of these things over into a seperate post just for links to resources if anyone wants that#mad pride#mad liberation#<3 followers please add on!!
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Do you have any recommendations on finding a good therapist for treating DID?
(Sorry about how I think this has been sitting in my ask box for like a month I kept saying Id respond to it later XD)
Honestly? Its a complex thing and unfortunately finding therapists - in my opinion - is largely a game of shopping, luck, and fishing for someone who works well.
Typically though, a few things I find to be green flags.
They work with / help / are trained to help LGBT+ people; even if you arent LGBT+, therapists that are LGBT+ therapists tend to have a better perspective and better mindset to approach DID related issues. It's not a red flag if they don't explicitly say LGBT+ necessarily, but it is something I like to see
If they say they work with dissociative disorders, thats an obvious green flag
If they say they do EMDR I tend to consider that a relative green flag, as EMDR is a really useful tool for trauma processing and while its controversial as to if it is a good standard for people with dissociation, being certified in EMDR tends to signify that they have a dedication to working with people who have trauma and have dedicated time to that; so even if you dont plan to do EMDR, I like to see therapists that COULD do it
If they are trained and capable of working with personality disorders, particularly cluster B personality disorders, that is a good sign. Even if you don't have a cluster B, Cluster B personality disorders tend to be stigmatized WITHIN the mental health system and also tend to be considered "difficult patients" - so if they are more than comfortable stating that they work with Cluster B personality disorders, they are probably going to be better at dealing with some of the more extreme core beliefs, emotional dysregulation, and chaos that can come with working with someone who has DID
Some RED flags:
If they are a religious - particularly Christian or Catholic or have anything about 'healing through god / faith' or anything like that - run.
If they don't at least have PTSD on their treatment list
Trust your gut honestly
Also know what you need and what you want out of a therapist / out of therapy. "A good therapist for DID" could mean a lot of things depending on where you are in your journey and what sort of approach, level of help, and what not you need.
If you are early on, having someone that is familiar with complex trauma and dissociation that can help you figure out how to get a sense of stability, manage your trauma symptoms, learn self care and what not can be super helpful and you might not necessarily need a DID expert as the first stage in DID recovery is stabilization and is focused less on identifying all the parts and communicating with parts (though that will inherently be part of it) and more about trying to establish a sense of stability. For some systems, this might be able to be done pretty well even without a focus on DID and a good C-PTSD therapist that has a good rapport and good match generally can do you a lot of good
If you are later on in your recovery, having someone more DID familiar might be helpful in navigating the more complex nuances and conflicts that can come between parts.
If you are late stage in your recovery, having someone that is familiar enough with the concept and terms to generally follow the flow of discussion and experiences as well as open and respectful to learning / understanding your experiences can be plenty of enough for some people. In these cases, if you have issues that feel like they need a specialist more, then as long as the therapist is comfortable working with you, is familiar with DID and dissociation, and is capable of handling a C-PTSD / PTSD patient, then needing to be a "DID therapist" is honestly really not too important.
The latter is actually our situation, our therapist is an autism/adhd specialist first and foremost that got training and went through a deep dive relatively recently on complex trauma and complex dissociative disorders. Its by no means his expertise, but he is familiar and capable of following along which is honestly all we need at our stage
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hey, feel free to ignore this if you want, im just kind of going around to systems online looking for advice or input.
in my pinned post i have information on the stuff i’ve been going through… if you’re up to it would you be comfortable reading it and giving me thoughts?
ps. if the post is deleted when u get to it the part of me that is 110% sure there is no possibility of any sort of system causing disorder deleted it lol
hey, we checked out your pinned and it sounds to us like you’re struggling with something serious that very well could be a dissociative disorder. we’re not a doctor, expert, or clinician, and we can’t diagnose you. we can’t say for sure what specifically it is you’re going through.
what we’d recommend more than anything else is therapy. we know you’re probably doing your due diligence when it comes to seeking a diagnosis, but having a reliable therapist who you trust could be immensely beneficial and help give you the tools you need to properly understand and look after yourself.
we’ll link our resource post for questioning systems, which has a ton of links where you can learn more about different dissociative disorders if you’d like.
good luck with everything. we hope that soon you can get the support, guidance, and resources you need in order to properly understand what you’re going through. unfortunately, we think a therapist would be much better equipped to help you here, more than any system on tumblr can.
🐢 kip and 👻 ghost
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5.7.22
We had to do Telehealth today for my psych appointment. Wes, my greyhound, has been very unwell the past two days (loaded up on pain meds & feeling much better now, thankfully). We talked a bit about the parallels between my worst experiences in the public system & some of the ways I’ve been feeling in therapy lately. Not to say that my psych would ever or could ever do anything to compare to those people, but some of the stuff has triggered memories of it. We talked about how sometimes being presented with options can feel like an ultimatum, if I don’t feel like any of them work for us. We also talked about her uncertainty over the time she’s been learning about DID & OSDD. How she would stop what we were doing & she would need to wait til she had supervision to continue, which we never came back to. How that has impacted our trust with her. How she felt she couldn’t keep going with things second guessing herself & trying to protect us for things getting worse, but in reality, it in itself made things worse.
Let me be clear. My psych has been upfront about her skills & experience from day one. I started seeing her when she was a new grad just started her clinical endorsement. She learnt all the therapies she now knows while seeing me. She did all her 4 levels of EMDR training while seeing me. I chose to continue with her with full informed consent. She has gone above & beyond for me & would have done anything in her power to help me form a new relationship with a more experienced psych. So, any mishaps along the way were not her fault. She knew the trust, safety & consistency I had with her was more important than her skill level & experts agreed that it was going to be more helpful to continue than to change.
Anyways. We also talked about how we would continue to meet the pats where they’re at. To allow the littles & teens a space to feel safe. To check with parts before we disclose anything. & to focus more on values rather than goals. That we’re going to try to get some stability & comfort rather than being able to get out of home, start working, to have a life that is happy even. Because they’re too big & they seem like something I’ll never achieve. They don’t seem worth the effort.
We saw this post the other day
& I guess it came at a good time. It fits with our refocused outlook on therapy. Our focus isn’t to make everything be what the world wants or expects of us. It’s to help work towards us being us. To find some more stability & comfort for our system, to improve that for everyone. Improve communication & meeting the needs of parts. I think taking the pressure off will help. I think we’re more likely going to find meaning in life this way than just forging ahead with EMDR processing when it’s not safe for the system to do so.
We talk about how it was difficult for us both to learn EMDR isn’t quick. It’s touted as this way to make everything better in a few appointments, but in reality, maybe that works for single trauma but not for complex trauma, dissociation, parts. It’s kinda painful to accept. It feels like a massive letdown. But moving past that. Allowing the journey to fill my meaning in life, that’s where we’re at.
I think I may have repeated myself a few times due to my level of tiredness. I may repost the second half of this in fewer words tomorrow because I think it might be important to others too.
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discourse in mental illness communities is so toxic that it kinda triggers me everytime i see it.
#its... a lot#madd community is pretty drama free actually btw we lucky#like now that i'm getting recognized as a system OOOO boy you have no idea how many bad takes i've seen on this site#like going to a dissociative expert for therapy has been so good but#like the community online?? haha no its poorly researched take after poorly researched take#upsetting that i don't think i'll ever find a community for that like i have with madd
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Writing a Character with DID -- Part 1
I would like to eventually make a big master list, but that takes more organization and thought then I am currently capable of, so I’m going to post these little snippets and then eventually put them into one big post/document.
*Disclaimer -- I am not a doctor, not do I even play one on TV, however I have been officially professionally diagnosed with DID and am undergoing therapy for it. I have done a lot of research on the subject, and am also the expert on my own experience, but there may be times when I get things wrong or word things in a way that unintentionally lead them to be misconstrued.
You cannot tell when someone has DID.
Overt DID is pretty rare. Huge oscillations in accent, affect, clothing choices, etc. in quick succession are the exception and not the rule. This isn’t Clark Kent going into a phone booth and coming out as Superman. Most cases of DID present themselves as covert. However, even in overt cases, most people’s first thought will not be “Oh, this person has DID.”, it will be “Oh, this person is really weird.” You are much more likely to be branded by the average Joe in the street as a rogue theater kid than someone with a dissociative disorder. On that note, when it comes to people noticing changes, most people really don’t care to pay enough attention, and when they do think something is up, the human mind is amazing at brushing it off as literally anything else. There are tons and tons are just weird and wacky people in the world who don’t have DID, who change their looks and likes with every passing fancy because that’s what happens to make them happy. Do you want to know how many times even well before I got diagnosed that I have been called ‘eccentric’? I can’t count that high. Unless you are a trained professional observing a client over an extended period of time you as a lay person cannot tell who has DID.
Specifically looking at the majority of cases that present as covert, you are not going to be able to tell when someone switches. This is not the dramatic eye rolling and head nodding you see on TV. It’s more like several moments of dissociation (hence the name of the disorder), maybe a few blinks of confusion, and then back to whatever they were doing. I think most people have had the experience of walking into a room and completely forgetting what they came in there for. It’s similar to that, but with mild to intense episodes of dissociation and happens a lot more often.
DID is a disorder that specifically tries to hide itself from the host/main fronter. Most people who have DID don’t know they have it, and don’t find out they have it until being professionally diagnosed. That’s not to say that you can’t have an inkling that you have DID and then find out you are correct, but most of the time it’s not until psychiatric intervention (and usually after being incorrectly diagnosed with everything else under the sun). Because DID forms in early childhood, the missing time, the identity alteration, the feeling of lacking an identity, the dissociation, etc. becomes your normal and you don’t notice it. And again, the human mind is really good at making up excuses for itself. Many times, a person isn’t diagnosed or thinks they might have the disorder until they are finally out of the dangerous and trauma inducing situation that they are in and are in a safe space. Upon being in a safe space, sometimes alters will act up or act out because there former ‘job’ has been uprooted.
Too add to all of this, surmising whether or not someone has DID is really gross and literally none of your business. Not only are you making assumptions about a person’s trauma, it is also literally none of your business. It also feels very much like trying to clock someone as trans -- there is not exclusively trans look, and there are no gross details that can tell you for certain that someone has DID. DID is also a highly stigmatized disorder, and openly claiming that someone has it can be detrimental to them. Also did I mention that it’s none of your business. I love to be nebby as much as the next fellow, but you need to learn to draw a hard line.
In conclusion -- if you are writing someone with DID, someone who just met them, or even someone who has known them or awhile, are not going to be able to tell they have the disorder.
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(Thank you)
1. Can you be a system with absolutely no idea what caused you to split? Or to not be aware of your trama at all?
I’ve only very recently come to terms with the fact that I have trauma and haven’t done any work on it yet. I don’t have an event I can point to and go “this traumatized me.”
2. What does it feel like to have an alter front?
3. Are systems usually aware they’re a system before they’re diagnosed?
4. Do alters always know what they look like beforehand? Previously I thought alters knew everything about themselves but one of the answers I got mentioned hosts sometimes helping to figure out names.
I'm curious what kind of answers you've gotten to these so far that made you seek us out, of all people, lol
1. Can you be a system with absolutely no idea what caused you to split? Or to not be aware of your trama at all?
Absolutely, both of these scenarios are not only possible, but completely normal. We're going to switch these around and talk about them in the opposite order, starting with, "not aware of trauma at all". The purpose of a system is to hide trauma. When you're young and going through traumatic situations, and you dissociate, what usually happens is one of two things. Either the child mentally goes away (dissociates, imagining being in a different situation, ignoring what's happening to them in the moment), or they imagine actually being someone else ("this isn't happening to me, it's happening to someone else, I'm (fuck it, uh) Zoro, and I, Zoro, can handle this"). Both of these scenarios lay the groundwork for the creation of a system, and both cases lead to the loss of memory of traumatic events when a child experiences that extreme level of dissociation over prolonged periods.
What this means is, there is no one event that creates a system. It's event, after event, after event, until the child can no longer form a cohesive sense of self. They've become too reliant on dissociation as a coping mechanism, these dissociated parts have taken on a life of their own, and a child's identity has become so fractured and they're so confused that they can't tell who or what they are, and the memories of why are scattered between these parts.
It's not as easy as pointing to an event and saying, "That was it. That was what happened, that's what did this to me-- to us."
This sort of plays in to the next point of, "why did a specific alter split." And this can apply to childhood, later, hell, today, ten years ago, fifteen years from now. It's not always as easy as pointing to a specific event for each alter, either. Some alters take months and years after an event to come forward and make themselves known. This can make pinning down their "origin" almost impossible. What made them could have happened a long time ago. Sometimes it's not a specific event, but a combination of several events, just like in childhood. Are your parents always fighting? Maybe, by the tenth time they're blowing up at each other and you're curled up in your room trying to ignore it, a part finally splits to help you handle that stress. It wasn't specifically the tenth fight-- it was the combination of ALL of the fights.
2. What does it feel like to have an alter front?
This depends. I'm old. I've experienced a lot of different feelings when someone else fronts. When I was kid, it sometimes felt like I was asleep. No memories of it, just blissful darkness, no real time loss, things would go dark for what felt like ten minutes, and then I'd be back, several hours later, barely even realizing I had missed an entire day. I also had pretty bad maladaptive daydreaming, and sometimes I would go into my daydreams while another alter took over. I just thought this was normal. I was just REALLY good at multi-tasking, you know?
When I got older, and I learned more about what was happening, sometimes it would feel like a battle to the death-- two of us fighting desperately for front. Sometimes it honestly felt like a punch to the head-- a knock out when I lost, unpleasant darkness, fear, anxiety, what was I going to come back to? Other times, when I won, I was left with a massive headache and exhausted. Sometimes I welcomed the break, and over time, it became easier. It became like watching things happen through a foggy window. Sometimes I wanted to do something, and I couldn't, and sometimes I felt helpless and lost. As communication got better, I could see more clearly, I could ask for things to happen, I could occasionally... steal a moment, use a hand, set something straight on the counter that was bothering me.
When an alter fronts, it can feel like a lot of things, depending on the situation, depending on communication levels. There's no "one way" or "right way".
3. Are systems usually aware they’re a system before they’re diagnosed?
I would say, in the age of the internet, it's more likely than not that someone is aware they're potentially a system, than it is for them to be completely unaware at the time of diagnosis. Before the internet, before you could just google symptoms, a lot of people weren't aware prior to diagnosis. Even these days, it's not unheard of for someone to only find out around the time of diagnosis, because you don't always realize you're losing time, or have amnesia. Your alters aren't always so completely different that the people around you notice and point it out. The entire point of this disorder is for it to be unnoticeable. It really just depends on the person, their exposure to information about the disorders, and how bad their dissociation is. Some know, some don't. Some go seeking therapy for help with other issues and eventually it just comes out over time that you have something else going on. Sometimes you suspect, and you go to therapy specifically for it. It's different for everyone.
4. Do alters always know what they look like beforehand? Previously I thought alters knew everything about themselves but one of the answers I got mentioned hosts sometimes helping to figure out names.
Not at all. It's actually really common for alters to be... essentially blank slates in the beginning. Let's look at the example above, of the child dissociating out of a bad situation. If they're going away into their daydreams, the body is essentially left unattended. Any alter that forms in that moment could considered to be "blank" at the start. In the other scenario, you know who Zoro is, what they look like, what they like and dislike, what their history is. It doesn't even need to be a character you know of, maybe you, like me, had MaDD, and you'd become one of your characters, your OCs. I had one.
She was strong and had superpowers and was beautiful and confident-- and that was one of my first alters. I imagined being her often enough that I could eventually take the other route, disappear into my mind while she handled it herself (this was totally normal multi-tasking, apparently). She knew who and what she was right off the bat. What she looked like, her history, her personality. In the first scenario, that alter may or may not come up with that information on their own. They may remain blank until communication is good, and then they might start to grow, maybe you do help them find a name, maybe they find it years later on their own. Again, there's no "one way". It depends on the circumstances.
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You sent a second ask with some more questions, and I think this leads into the next one.
Is it normal for an alter to feel more comfortable in the body than the original host?
Like, you look in a mirror and you think “yeah this is [alter name]” Not really as a negative or positive feeling, just a neutral and true one. Being trans (or mistaking the presence of a different gender alter [the alter in question] for it?) might also effect this.
This can happen, yes! In the case of my OC/alter, of course she looked like me. She was everything I wanted to be when I was a child. She can look in the mirror and say, yup, definitely me. This is what I've always looked like, and I'm perfection.
I have another alter that just... isn't bothered by appearance. He looks in the mirror and it's like, "yup, I guess so, cool -finger guns-"
There's a lot of reasons some alters might be more comfortable in the body than others, and they're all totally normal.
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And finally. The last question:
What is a tupla?
This is, surprisingly, a very loaded question.
First, right off the bat, the use of the term tulpa is cultural appropriation. I don't claim to be an expert, but to put it simply. The actual practice of tulpamancy is nothing, NOTHING, like what it's being used for in system circles. Here's a really, REALLY good post on how it's been twisted from the original practice and westernized.
The more accepted terms in system circles are willogenic, parogenic, and thoughtforms. These are "headmates" that are intentionally created. They're imaginary friends brought to life through meditation and practice. Some systems claim to be DID/OSDD and say they've intentionally created some alters, making them "mixed origin" (it's more likely that someone has convinced themselves that it was intentional and their choice in an attempt to feel a sense of control over their situation). Some endogenic systems claim to have intentionally created their entire system (which, because on the levels of dissociation needed to create alters, I don't believe is possible without a traumatic origin).
I hope this all helps, I hope it all made sense, if you have more questions, let me know!
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I’m A Creep
Fandom: The Messenger Jack x Rin Davies
Word Count: 5k
Warnings: suicide discussion, oral sex, penetration, mention of masturbation, angsty whomp because OOOOF is Jack a Whomp!character
Note: The events of this fic contain spoilers for those of you who havent seen The Messenger. It takes place after the end of the movie. Read at your own risk if you haven’t seen it! If you want it’s free on Tubi :)
Present Day:
Jack stood beside Rin in the dead of night watching her sleep for just a moment. Only a moment because she roused the instant she sensed him breathe. Sitting up, she quickly reached inside the nightstand. He knew her routine, Rin was impulsive about making sure her leather motorcycle gloves were on before she let him in.
Jack wordlessly pulled his shirt over his head and stepped out of his sweatpants and boxers.
Rin lifted her covers and opened her legs to him. Obliging, Jack lowered himself onto her showering her neck with kisses. His tongue and lips trailing down along her collarbone, erection hard against her thigh. A hand found its way under Rin’s t-shirt and over a naked breast where he pinched at a nipple.
“Jack,” she was breathless. “Stop. Don't touch my skin, please.”
Jack pushed himself up by the arms, “How is this enjoyable to you, duck?” A northern term of endearment. “My thighs ah touchin’ you aren't they?” The moonlight caught his eyes as he teased her with the head of his cock. “What about this, inside you?” Suggestively whispered.
Rin moaned but held her cool. “It’s not the same. Like you said, that's inside. It's just my.. skin. From my..” her voice trailed off.
“Would it be so bad? I just want to feel you under me without fuckkin clothes.” Jack took a chance and kissed her. Tongue pushing inside of Rin, but she stiffened. “Sweetheart,” now he whispered, just his fingertips brushed her cheek. “Please, love, just touch me”
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Several Weeks Before:
Rin sat alone at a center table in the middle of the visitation room. This wasn’t her first rodeo, probably won’t be her last. She flexed her hands outwards the leather of her gloves cracking and flexing in a satisfying manner. No one was going to come and see her. Besides, the solitude allowed her to quietly spy on all the other nutters around the room.
Just to her left Rin noticed a pretty redheaded woman and her son as they sat across from probably the most attractive guy ever in an institution. There was a tenseness to the way he sat, shoulders hunched and hands between his legs. His hair unruly and a blank stare that wasn’t really focusing on- she came to realize- his sister and nephew. Rin knew him from group therapy where he was equally quiet, eyes glassy from a psych med cocktail. The majority of his speaking hours tucked away in that overbearing therapist’s office.
“Jack, will you please just look at me?” his sister, Emma tried her best to reach out to her brother. “I.. I think Martin and I made a mistake.”
Jack only stared straight ahead between Emma and his nephew, Billy. The preteen looked uncomfortable and scared as his mother nudged him softly. “It's ok. Billy tell Uncle Jack.”
“I did, Mom” , his voice quiet. “I'm supposed to say no. That you should get me help before it's too late.” Rin watched as Billy folded his arms and laid his head down. “Only I can't. It's all night and day, Jack. I can't sleep because they don't have you.”
“Best leave him here with me then, Emma.” It was the first time anyone heard Jack speak in weeks. His sister had a posh accent, so Rin was surprised when Yorkshire dripped from his lips. “For good, right?”
“That's not fair. You are sick, Jack. You weren't caring for yourself. You.. you got too involved with that murder. You were hurting yourself,” Emma struggled with tears. “I want to take you home.”
“Oh like I'm some kind of fookin dog? Emma you and Martin made it clear I belong here. She's right, maybe it was all dad. That's traumatic you know.”
“You deserve someplace warm! A home. Please, Jack. I found this in your things.” She slid a newspaper clipping towards her brother. “That's the boy who drowned. Why.. why didn't you tell me?”
“Loads of kids drown in pools,” Jack stated bluntly with a shrug. “Why should your pool be any different?”
“I never said it was our pool.”
“I recognized the address in the article”
“Jack, it's from two years ago.”
“I got lucky. Ah we doon here? I have walls to stare at. Here Billy you can have this back,” from between his knees he produced a glass paperweight with a scorpion inside. “Tell all ya mates Crazy Uncle Jack sends his loov”
Jack tried to stand but Emma grabbed his arm. This was Rin’s cue to swoop in. She swiftly moved from her table to theirs.
“JACKIE!’ I've been looking for you everywhere!” His eyes panicking in her direction. “I'm Wren,” she took her glove off and reached a scarred hand in Emma's direction. “But my brother couldn't say it so you can call me Rin” She smiled brightly.
Emma tentatively shook Rin’s hand, smiling in turn. Rin took a moment as her mind’s eye zoned in on what was inside of Jack’s sister. It was a loneliness, a desperation to take care of her little brother but protect her son from the same fate. But most importantly Rin felt a small tingling of warmth from somewhere deep inside of Emma’s heart. It was white and pure and instantly recognizable as hope. Even though it was tiny it was growing and starting to spread, and Rin knew Emma was eager to share that with her brother.
“Wow,” Rin blurted, “I wish my brother was as invested in me as you are. You’re a good person, Emma. Trust me,” she winked. “Woman’s intuition.”
Emma narrowed her eyes and studied the crazed looking woman standing between her and Jack. The scars on Rin’s hand raised some alarms, but Emma ignored them. She omitted a relief and let go, “Well thank you. Can you talk some sense into my brother?”
Moments later, with the visitors gone, Rin sat down in Emma’s place. “Thank you is a start,” she teased Jack.
He rolled his eyes and slowly turned in her direction to face her dead on. The intensity of his eyes took Rin by surprise. “Thank you,” the sarcasm poured like a waterfall.
Rin took off her other glove. “Now, Mr-”
“Jack is fine.”
“Jack. Tell me,” Rin feigned a German accent, “Und why do zey sink you are crazy.”
He blinked slowly.
“You got sectioned. What bullshit excuse did they force you to believe? Because it seems like Lovely Emma is desperate to get you out, and we know how hard that is.”
Jack took an impossibly deep breath, “Schizo-effective disorder with some dissociation, post traumatic stress disorder, non-suicidal self injury disorder and depression.”
“Fuck me, that's a trail mix of bonkers. Now ask me”
Jack closed his eyes. They were shut for so long that Rin was certain he had fallen asleep having given in to his meds. His hunched, thin body sort of folded a bit in on itself. A moment of possible self-soothing when he started to sway.
“Jack?” Rin's tone fell quietly with concern. She poke his arm carefully avoiding touching the skin. “Darling what cocktail did these quacks put you on.” She was an expert after all these years; if the drugs were working, no way would he be this much of a zombie.
Green blank eyes hidden behind enviable eyelashes attempted to focus “Seroquel. Clozapine?” His words start to slur a bit. “Fine. How fucking barmy are you?”
“Well,” the young woman softened, “I have suicidal ideations with self-injury tendencies myself, severe clinical depression, a bit of the old borderline personality disorder and wait for it..” she practically whispered a few inches from Jack’s face, “total emotional attachment to partners.”
The skin around Jack’s eyes crinkled as he squinted just enough to indicate his hazed brain was trying to process everything Rin just unloaded. His lips parted to speak but he paused resulting in a gobsmacked expression. “You’re barking.”
“Says the sexy scarecrow with journo clippings of dead boys.” Rin pursed her lips and crossed her arms, “Why are you really in here Jack.”
“I’m fucking mad.” It was matter of fact.
“To quote the Cheshire Cat, we’re all mad here, love. Look at me,” she held her hands aloft to display gnarled and prominent scars covering both hands in their entirety. “I developed a gift or two by primary school. See I can touch a person, and I know what they are feeling. Except it.. It goes deeper than that. I can PICTURE their true selves. It’s a bit overstimulating, but no one can lie to me. Not really. Doesn’t do much for my sex life. Or lack of one really. Honestly, you put a cock in your mouth only to find out the guy you’re with is fantasizing about slitting your throat and wanking in your blood.”
Jack shook his head, “Jesus christ.”
“Well yes! My parents were religious zealots, right? They got wind of my gifts. Tried to use me in the church, but I rebelled. Long story short, darling Mumsy and Papa decided if they may be stuck my hands in boiling grease I wouldn’t be able to use it anymore. It’s not in my hands though. It’s in my skin,” Rin smiled almost pleasantly. “Sometimes I get a bit over the edge. I stop shielding myself from the pure air around folks, I suffocate in it. Then,” now she held out her wrists, “I have my little accidents.”
Jack’s mouth hung agape. His brows furrowed in confusion, “You are off you’re fucking nut.”
“That’s all relative. Now, you can tell me why they REALLY sectioned you. What power or ability are they masquerading as mental illness, or I can find out my way.” Rin shrugged.
“Why the fuck do you care? I’m sleeping at night. I have food and a bed and a shower.”
“Und electro-shock zerapy, und coma inducing psychopharmaceuticals, und most importantly you has lost your voice und a chance to harness your ability correctly.” that mock German accent again. “You shouldn’t be here, Jack. Emma certainly doesn’t think so, and neither do I. You’re special. Or that bitch shrink wouldn’t have made you the living dead.”
Jack snorted followed by a rather loud. “Just fuck off. Fuck off. Fuck off. FUCK OFF!” he screamed in Rin’s face. Not once did she flinch, arms crossed again in a challenge. Disgusted by her, Jack kept bellowing his words thick with anger and cotton from the meds, “I DON'T BELONG OUT THERE EITHER! I DON'T BELONG IN HERE! I DON’T FUCKING BELONG ANYWHERE. HE’S DEAD. SHE’S DEAD. EVERY SINGLE FUCKING ONE OF THE CUNTS IS DEAD! DEAD DEAD DYING! JUST LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!”
He shot up out of the chair to leave, but Rin caught his large hand. Skin to skin, hands so small together they barely covered just his one. Instantly her body stiffened as she gasped for air. Tears immediately stung her eyes as she crammed them shut. There in her mind was just a large body of water. Ocean waves crashed overhead as she sank far below the surface. Dark, cold, horrifying that sensation of being drowned. Rin choked on the last bit of oxygen in her lungs and started to suffocate. The hand she held brought her mind’s eye around to opening under the water to see Jack floating near-motionless in front of her. It took all of her strength to push against the tide towards him where she held his face in her hands. Death and decay flashed above them, the dead peering down from boats just waiting for Jack to return to the surface.
Rin strained to convey that tiny bit of hope Emma had passed along to her earlier as she pressed her forehead into Jack’s in the icy deep. There was no reason in particular that she was drawn to him. Not in the hospital or here trying to save him from drowning slowly. Was he attractive, undoubtedly, but that wasn’t all or it. Maybe it was now that she knew he was a messenger, a harbinger of death. That was itself a form of an empathic gift. Or it was just compassion.
Suddenly Jack’s eyes burst open. In that languid way your body moves underwater, he pushed her away. His arms and legs thrashed around in a panic as if he only just realized he was allowing this place to kill him. There was an instant loss, and Rin’s inner self slammed into a brick wall. The physical Jack had severed the connection between her body and his. To resurface that suddenly forced Rin gulping in blessed oxygen that she never really lost. It was an illusion, where the two of them had been. He really had shoved her back though, she realized that now. Storming out of the visitation center, Jack left Rin alone to cry.
--------
Several days later
Rin lounged against the wall outside of Jack’s room with her gloves firmly in place. Patients weren’t SUPPOSED to fraternize outside of the common rooms, but Rin had been here a few times before. She knew which orderlies and nurses to finess, and which to avoid. In this case Jerry was the giant, affable St Bernard of a man that kept watch in this particular hallway.
“Wren back so soon?” he teased. “What are you doing hanging around the human handbook for the recently deceased?”
“Delightful, Jer. How is he? I mean really.” Rin hooked her thumb in the direction of the room.
“Easiest patient I’ve dealt with on account of he rarely speaks, pops his meds and keeps to himself. Gave us a bit of a row when he first got here, but I like the guy. I don’t know what to believe though. His sister’s been sniffing around administratives.” The orderly shrugged his massive shoulders. “Heard you took quite the piss on visitation day.”
“I didn’t take the piss!”
“Did ya do your handsy thing,” Jerry made jazz hands.
Rin’s eyes almost rolled back in her head, but suddenly there was a figure in the doorway which caused her to jump. “How about we don’t talk about the nutter like he isn’t 10 feet away and only 27 years old?” Jack insisted. His arms crossed and shoulders sagged in their usual way.
“Can we talk?”
Before Jack could truly answer, Rin had already pushed past him and sat down on his bed. His mouth hung somewhat agape before he eventually joined her. Jack attempted to sit close, just for some human contact, but the young woman beside him shied away.
“Right,” a retort. “You’ve started being just as bloody fucking annoying as they were.”
Startled, “Who?”
“You know those.. Schizo delusions I’m here for.”
“The dead?”
Jack’s green eyes narrowed and Rin knew there was a sarcastic remark just sitting there waiting to be released. Instead he curled his posture as if he was trying to fold in on himself. Make himself smaller, less noticeable. “Dissociations sparked by my father’s suicide.”
“Psycho babble bullshit jargon. Congratulations, you’ve become a parrot.” Rin waved her hand, “Jack has anyone ever-.” There was a hesitation.
“Has anyone ever what? Go on, enlighten me then”
Rin started stripping her gloves off but thought better of it. A sense of foreboding, of drowning and clutching her chest for hair flashed across her mind. The loneliness emanated from Jack without her touch. That empathic conduction of her skin. Reaching instead to place the soft leather against his cheek, her thumb brushed his bottom lip. Her eyes searched for him in that moment where time stood still before a mouth replaced a thumb.
To not only Rin’s surprise but his own, Jack didn’t recoil. His body relaxed as instinct took hold. There was a fervor in hands that got tangled up in hair. Tongues fought each other as arms made their way around bodies in an embrace. They held one another tight, the desperation apparent.
The spell broke when Jack laid Rin down on the bed and let his warm mouth trail down her neck. He was awkward and hungry like a teenager. He fumbled around her chest to attempt massaging her breast.
A snort came from Rin simply to hide the panic of rushing water when Jack’s lips came into contact with her skin. Maybe hers found it easier to beg off that inner eye from opening, but now she didn’t have a choice. They weren’t as deep with the surface just rippling only a few inches away.
Before she started to lose oxygen again, Rin began to squirm. “ Stop. Please?”
Jack sat up and faced forward as if nothing had transpired. His cheeks flushed and a hand tugged at his tee-shirt embarrassingly then stuffed between his legs. He blinked a few times as he breathing calmed.
“I only came to ask you if anyone had ever shown you affection. Held you. Emma.. Emma” Rin inhaled deeply as she forced Jack to hold her glove hand. “I know she sort of longs to hug you.” Back on his cheek to make him look at her. “Obviously I got my answer,” she laughed.
Jack silently replied by pushing his forehead into Rin's. They laid down again this time with their heads on his pillow legs and arms tangled up in each other. Jack nuzzled the edge of his nose into the skin behind her ear; her breath caught. Then the couple seemingly melted together.
“Jack you seem less-” fingers twisted up in his curls.
“Like a walking coma patient?” hand gripped the thick of her thigh. Then reaching a shelf above Rin Jack seized one of those creepy glass paperweights housing a floating tarantula. Turning it over underneath to show a tiny white envelope. “I started hiding my meds. Pass them along to my sister when she visits.”
Just under the surface of the water, still struggling for air exploded before Rin's eyes. Perhaps she had passed something between Emma and Jack. Was it her own faith that was transmitted to him? That first touch that woke him up after all this time.
The next few weeks became a game of trial and error. Of how little or much Rin and Jack could consume of each other. Kissing was no longer an issue once the meds began to wear off, lips and tongues and mouths. It felt more like standing ankle deep in a bathtub. Warm and comforting; it was Jack that was overpowering.
Eager to make up for a very long very lost amount of time. He stumbled along Rin's body uneasily because of how little clothing she removed at first. Not that he was in a rush to reveal what was underneath his oversized shirt and sweatpants. He wasn’t the one recoiling when the stimulation overwhelmed.
“I'll take off my shirt. Touch me here, but where the fabric of my bra is. Tease the nipple with just your fingertips. No that's.. maybe under? Touch them. Oh God. Now your mouth. Right there. Are you.. you took your shirt off too?” (She marveled at how defined, muscular Jack's body seemed despite his slight stature)
Jack took initiative now and slid his fingers inside of Rin. He pumped them a few times guided by her ``Oh.. maybe you can touch me.. Do you feel.. It’s like a bud or a kernel.. Here let me.. It’s just right.. OH GOD. Right like.. ” And she would ride his hand and fingers that circled that bud.
Rin would cry out in surprise. Her body exploded in ecstasy. They weren't drowning anymore. Just swimming, bobbed under the water and surface. It was the sense-memory of suffocating, coupled with the dazzling pleasure of Jack's warm tongue as it teased her nipples, his strong fingers teasing her clit at the same time. His hot skin meshed with hers washed out by fear. She apologized as they scrambled to arrange themselves.
“Don't think I'm going anywhere for quite some time, my love.” His words changed with the possessive my in lieu of the once meaningless sentiment. He would steal a chaste kiss from Rin whose cheeks flushed to match his own as he made that familiar adjustment between his legs. In the future, Rin would come to him without a bra but reluctant to take her shirt off when Jack kept on never minding.
Jerry became an ally of sorts. He always had been on Rin's side after she read him her second section. It wasn't difficult to get him to believe in Jack's abilities. Staff has whispered down the corridors that Jack had suddenly found himself aware of a suicide attempt. That dead reporter Emma mentioned, his fiancé had taken more pills than Rin ever fathomed any number of her attempts. (She had a flare for dramatics: slit wrists) Jerry mentioned Jack had a tantrum the likes of a toddler screaming the name Sarah whatever over and over, pounding his fists into his head to make whatever haunted him. Sure enough, this Sarah was found nearly having bled out and foaming at the mouth.
“How would he even fucking know, poppet? Not unless Jack really was chatting up her dead fiancé “ As if that was all he needed, Jerry turned his back and caused distractions all the nights the Empath and her Beautiful Broken Man longed to be together.
It was stunning the way Jack learned to manipulate the system. Only Rin, and reluctantly Jerry, knew he pocketed his meds. Safely tucked away in those ugly arachnid globes in the pockets or purse of Billy and Emma. He started talking more in group therapy and far less in private sessions. Engaged in conversations with his sister and nephew, true ones that resulted in a simple smile or a laugh free from a facetious tone. To the staff and doctors those fucking psychopharmeceuticals worked. To Jack’s sister and nephew and whatever Rin was to him, there was a slowly lifting weight making the air around him lighter. Yet Rin kept her hands to herself.
More trial and error. In the midst of fervent kisses, Rin took Jack in her hand. A stroke or two was all she got in before he spasmed and came. The mortification that flashed in his eyes as he curled in a fetal position between her and the wall while she whispered reassurances in his ear. Touching him, caressing him and eventually taking him into her mouth became easier and longer with practice and patience.
They laughed into each other’s mouths before Rin let her tongue trail down over his stomach. Anxiously Jack took off his pants and boxers, lying backwards. He held the back of her head, moaned and twisted as she licked and sucked on him. His hips bucked and thrust upwards.
-------------------
Present Day, Again
“Would it be so bad? I just want to feel you under me without fuckin clothes.” Jack took a chance and kissed Rin. Tongue pushed inside of her, but she stiffened. “Sweetheart,” now he whispered, just his fingertips brushed her cheek. “Please, love, just touch me?”
Rin took a moment to think. He wasn’t drowning anymore. She could push that old feeling out of her third eye and bury herself in new ones. She took a hold of her shirt and tossed it on the floor. She took the erection that twiced against her thigh and held it just outside of her pulsating and ready sex. With hands that sunk into her vunerable skin, Jack buried himself inside of her.
That fire from Emma all that time ago poured from Jack’s body into hers. It pushed back the water as he pumped rhythmically into Rin. Building into a frenzy quickly, his pelvis crashed into hers before she could really come around to what was happening. It briefly conquered the fears from before; caused hot tears to spring to her eyes that flowed uncontrolled down her cheeks.
In his fervor, Jack noticed and bent to kiss them away. The gesture she had made that first time, a thumb brushed across her cheek and lower lip as he slowed his pace. Wren,” he took to calling her that tentatively. “What is it?”
Before she could answer, Jack became distracted by something in the corner of the room. Eyes passed between Rin and whatever it was that she couldn’t fathom or see. She took his chin and focused it on her as they crashed together and apart again in another wave of building friction. It was too late though, he had abruptly pulled out and away from her.
“NO! STOP! LEAVE ME ALONE! CAN’T I HAVE ONE MOMENT OF FUCKING HAPPINESS WITHOUT ONE OF YOU LOOMING OVER ME LIKE A FUCKING PERV.” He used fists to beat out a rhythm on his temples as he scurried to the corner of his bed with knees up to his chest.
In the frenzy, Rin had been knocked to the floor. Jerry had rushed in, he was never too far away just in case. In a whirlwind, he picked Rin up with one hand and with the other attempted to intervene between Jack's fists and his head. What could either of them do? If attention was drawn to the room, surely the doctors would realize Jack had gone unmedicated for weeks. Jerry’s eyes wide gestured towards Rin’s hands. She shook her head, but Jack carried on.
“Go on Jenny Wren, there has to be something your hands can do. I’ll lose my job and you’ll be separated. They’ll put him back in the Zoo.” He was already yanking her arms forward and trying to remove her gloves before she could consent.
Rin knew The Zoo. It being rooms that could be monitored with two way mirrors. You got a bed and a blanket. They controlled when the lights came on and when they turned them off. No privilege, no real structure. They fed you, bathed you, and gave you “playtime” when they said. No matter how you suffered from mental illness no one deserved that. She would never forgive herself.
“JERRY LET ME DO IT MYSELF!” Rin bellowed if only to out yell Jack and his fit. “Make her go away! LEAVE ME ALONE” he cried underneath her. Her hands free, she flexed them a few times before joining Jack on the bed. She clutched his forearms and struggled to get a grip enough to pull them away from self-harm. “JACK! YOU HAVE GOT TO FUCKING STOP, MY DARLING.” She slid her hands over his temples before he could punch them anymore. She used the heels of her palms and pressed.
It was immediate, the way her mind opened to him. This time he was floating along the tide in a boat surrounded by what Rin could only guess were dead people. They grabbed and tugged on Jack’s clothes. Rin sat on the other side from him between two oars; she used one to swat at the ghosts who tried to pull them back in. But there, walking along the surface, was a beautiful young woman. Blonde hair flowed in waves down her back. Sarah.
“You said we would be together, Jack.” She was angry. “That’s what you told him when he warned you I overdosed. I survived that attempt, but not the second one. Where is he Jack? Why isn’t he here waiting for me?”
Jack stood up and the boat began to dangerously rock. Rin took his hand and he squeezed it in return. He bellowed at the dead woman, “YOU SURVIVED AND HE MOVED ON. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOU BEING FUCKING STUPID, SARAH. WHAT I TOLD YOU WAS MEANT TO EASE YOUR GUILT. HE LOVED YOU. YOU WERE SO LOVED. HE DIDN’T CARE ABOUT YOUR MISTAKES. YOU HAVE TO LEAVE ME ALONE. ALL OF YOU. I’M FUCKING DONE. MOVE ON. GO SOMEWHERE ELSE. I CAN’T BE THE ONLY ONE OF MY KIND. AND FUCK OFF BILLY TOO, MATE.”
“Jack?” Rin spoke softly. The hands gripped her tight in place of him. They started to pull her in with him because he was useless now. He stood up to them for possibly the first time in twenty years. They would take her instead then.
Jack seized Rin’s body before she could go over in his place. He held her fast and tight and shielded her from them. “NO. You don’t fucking get ANYONE I love. Not Billy. Not Emma. Not Martin. No Wren or Rin. AND YOU DON’T FUCKING GET ME ANYMORE.” He took the oar up in his free hand and swung it around the bodies in the water. He jabbed it forward like a sword at Sarah still pacing the side of the boat. “GO, SARAH. HE’S WAITING FOR YOU. I PROMISE THIS TIME” Jack insisted and pleaded.
Then it was so silent it deafened both Jack and Rin as they clung to one another in the boat. In a flash and explosion, they separated and landed back on the bed in the room in an institution. Jerry panted and pawed at the two of them dazed and uncertain. Jack blinked a handful of times with no recollection of what just took place in his head and Rin’s. They never knew or remembered Rin had learned.
Jack scoured the room for any sign of Sarah or anyone else. He rubbed his eyes a few times then sighed heavily. “I.. I want to go back to my room now.” It was matter of fact.
Jerry nodded and helped him back into his clothes. Jack stumbled a bit but managed to kiss Rin sweetly before being led away and down the hall. Rin knew Jerry would probably give him something to help him sleep at least for the night and probably into tomorrow. She was afraid Jack had woken up a second time. Not just from his nightmare of the last twenty years, but whatever happened between them. It was a price she had to pay sometimes when she helped. There was something Rin longed to say earlier. What made her cry was an ember somewhere deep inside of Jack that he had never experienced before. For the first time in his life, he had hope.
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*TW: cutting, therapy, break down. a little longer then usual at 2500 words
The therapist greeted the couple as they walked in and sat down on the couch. “Thank you for allowing Natsu to sit in today, Lucy. I don’t want you to think of this as a couples counseling per se, because you’re still my primary client. But I feel that him being here to understand your struggles, as well as his, and being able to express them in a safe environment, will help in your healing process. And thank you Natsu for agreeing to this.”
He sat forward a bit, ready to engage. “Anything to help Lucy.”
“I’d like to start with your homework Lucy, has there been any progress in trying to write out your feelings? Remember, it’s okay if you’re still struggling with that, there’s no judgment here.”
“Not... really...” Lucy fidgeted with the hem of her sweatshirt. “Every time I try to, I-I get too... I start to cry, and the panic rises— I fail at it every single damn time and that makes me feel even worse.”
“You’re not failing. Let’s reword that to struggling and recognize that simply making an attempt is the first step, a very important one to be proud of.”
“Maybe I was just kidding myself all along about writing. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t any good in the first place. It was all in my head.” Lucy could see the frown on Natsu’s face from her words, but that’s how she feels now. There was a time she thought she was a decent writer, maybe not publishing quality yet, but she truly enjoyed it regardless and now, a blank page is all she could muster.
“Natsu,” the therapist directs her question to the man. “It seems you’re unhappy with her statement. Would you say that Lucy’s a good writer? Honest answer.”
“Yeah,” he shrugged, “I mean I’m no expert, but the stuff I’ve seen is pretty good. I definitely couldn’t pull them off.”
“Lucy would you call Natsu a liar?”
The blonde paused, annoyed and offended. She wanted to say yes, only because she didn’t want to agree, but then it wouldn’t be true. Natsu was giving his honest opinion and she couldn’t deny it. “No,” Lucy breathed out. “Look I get it. You’re trying to tell me it’s all in my head, right? It’s just the pain talking, and I’ll get better, and I’ll get back into writing just like before.” Anger had slowly begun to prickle the hairs on the back of her neck the longer she clung to the dissociation. “I-I’m not an idiot! I know this is all stupid shit in my brain! I just can’t stop it!”
“I’m sorry, I pushed you too hard, let’s go back a step here. No one is saying you’re an idiot. On the contrary, you’re very intelligent. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be recognizing that it’s all in your head, and that recognition is how the healing starts. My role, today with Natsu’s help, is to bring that to the forefront. Bring it out into the open, because sometimes hearing it out loud has a different effect on how we process the information.”
“I don’t get it...”
The woman sat back in her chair in thought for a brief second. “When we think about things just in our head, versus saying it out loud, it triggers different parts of our brain. What studies have found is that talking out loud stimulates... rational... erm, reality I guess is a better term. It becomes more real to us.”
“Huh.” So, what, Lucy rolled her eyes at the suggestion. True or not, she didn’t want to agree, because her mind was still in such a strong state of denial. “I still don’t accept it. It sounds stupid.” Maybe it was just her annoyance talking, but the therapist was getting on her nerves. Lucy knew the woman was just trying to help, but her irrational side didn’t want to deal with any of this. The pain sucked, but so did the treatment. She just wanted to stay in her room, in the dark, away from prying eyes. Surprisingly to Lucy, the therapist didn’t even flinch and the gleam in the woman’s eyes almost looked sadistic in that moment.
“Lucy, I know you know it’s not stupid. That’s just your mind imagining the wrong things, which is why you need to talk about it out loud, so you can hear yourself and how wrong it all sounds.”
Ugh! She was so tired of being told what she is, what she should be thinking, and the condescending tone she wrongly assumed from the therapist triggered an explosion. All the anger she felt about herself was transferred to the therapist in an instant. “I’m wrong?!” Lucy jumped to her feet, her anger crackling through. “No shit! Lady, I’m fucked up!! You want me to talk? Fine! I hate this! I hate everything! It’s all falling the fuck apart and I feel like I’ve been tied to the damn train tracks! Everything I’ve worked so hard for is slipping away! Three years of college being washed down the drain! How the fuck do I catch up now?! I’m so behind! AARRRGHH!!! I-I don’t even wanna get out of bed anymore! I hate myself— hate what I’ve become a-and that makes me even more fucking depressed! And my friends...” Lucy dropped back onto the couch as her shaking hands flew up to cover her face and the dam of tears finally broke loose in a cascade down her cheeks. She cried long, and deep for several minutes, chest heaving and inconsolable.
In that moment, Natsu sat frozen, his eyes swinging back and forth to the therapist and his girlfriend unsure of what to do. Should he move to comfort Lucy? The therapists inaction seemed to suggest the answer was no. It made him furious, yet... she was the professional... before he could make a decision, Lucy finally uncovered her face and look dead at her therapist. Almost forgetting him all together.
“My friends, seeing the looks on their faces...” Lucy dug her fingers into the fabric of her pants in an effort to ground her unraveling mind. “It hurts so fucking much! I must be getting on Levy’s nerves, she didn’t sign up to be my nurse, a-and Natsu, he’ll surely get tired of a basket-case of a girlfriend. I can’t blame him if he left me, I’d leave me too. It’s all just falling apart—” Her chest heaved in a heavy sigh. “I can’t see a way out anymore.”
Seeing the whites of Lucy’s knuckles the harder she clenched onto her leg and seeing the heavy breathing similar to that night in the ambulance. Natsu feared that Lucy was heading towards a panic attack. Wanting to reassure her, Natsu reacted this time and reached up from his seat, quickly grabbing her arm to gain her attention. “Lucy, I’m not—.”
But Lucy screamed and yanked her arm back, face grimacing in pain. “Tsss—Owww!!”
“leavi—” Natsu pulled back immediately. “Oh, shit! I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to! Did I grab you too hard?!” He didn’t think so, but based on her reaction, maybe he had.
“N-No,” she cradled her arm, turning to shield it from him. “You didn’t, I’m fine, it just caught me by surprise.” Lucy quickly brushed it off for fear of requiring an explanation. “Really. S-Sorry, I-I’m probably just too flustered.”
But that explanation didn’t satisfy Natsu. Lucy’s yelp was clearly pain related if buttressed by the fact she continued to hide it. “You’re lying to me,” he reached out, “I’m not mad, just please tell me the truth because it’s obvious there’s something wrong with your arm.”
“N-No, I’m not,” she tried to act like it was true. “See,” she waved it as if showing it was fine. “Nothing’s wrong...” till she accidentally hit it again and flinched, biting her lip just in time to stifle a scream. But she knew in an instant that she’d been caught.
His eyes and tone softened in an effort to lower her inhibitions. “Yes, there is.” Natsu took her arm and started to pull up on the sleeve of her sweater.
Lucy instinctively turned her head away. She didn’t want to see his reaction to the bandage around her arm. Even when he continued to speak, questioned what was underneath it, she answered in one worded responses without looking. But at his gasping sound, her eyes closed in shame. She could see what he saw all from behind her eyelids, all the horizontal cuts running across her left arm. The red, angry lines in varying stages of healing. She kept most of it grouped around the middle of her arm between the wrist and elbow crook. At first, she’d tried what that EMT had done, merely jabbing her arm with a pen or digging her nails into the skin. But it wasn’t enough, so she’d moved onto cutting. It had started out small, just a couple of lines were enough to silence the horrid voices in her head, but like a junky’s tolerance, Lucy had to keep cutting, more and more, deeper, just to feel the same numbing results.
“Is this what I think it is?” Natsu’s shaky voice questioned with moisture filling his eyes. “Oh, Lucy, why didn’t you tell me it was this bad.” Now he knew why she’d started wearing long sleeves even when the weather was warm.
“I’m sorry... I didn’t want anyone to know... but it was the only thing making the voices stop.”
Without another word, Natsu pulled a surprised Lucy into a tight hug, tears of his own spilling. “No, I’m sorry, it’s my fault this is happening to you. I should have dealt with Touka long ago. I should have protected you better. This is on me, but Lucy I’m never gonna let you go, I won’t ever leave you because of this. We’re gonna get through this together. I swear on my life, we’re gonna get through this together. Do you believe me?? Please, tell me you believe me?”
“I do...” she did. The man wore his heart on his sleeve. It was a trait Lucy found most endearing, so how could her heart not accept his words? They sat there in an embrace while time stood still, and a small measure of relief fell over her. It wasn’t much, but it was a glimmer of hope, an ember, and one she hadn’t felt in a long time. This man who’d caged her on that train and captured her heart, she could easily pin all of her pain onto him, but he could also be her salvation. His strong arms wrapped around her broken frame made the scary world fall away, to remind her how much more she yearned to stay within it.
Once he felt Lucy’s body relax, Natsu pulled back, wiping away her tears as well as his own. “Is this the only area?” He gestured at her arm without judgment. And when she nodded, he let out a sigh of relief.
Now that the moment was waning, the therapist who’d been waiting patiently and observing spoke up. She offered the anxiety medications again to Lucy and with Natsu’s gentle coaxing, the blonde finally agreed to it. It couldn’t hurt right? If they didn’t work, she’ll just stop taking them. She didn’t want to see the anguish in Natsu’s eyes anymore, especially now that she realized how much he was internalizing and struggling alone with. He was in just as much pain as she was, so it was time they both do what they could to heal, together.
As they were about to leave, Natsu paused and questioned the doctor. “I have a question. I just realized, even though today was a big episode... Lucy didn’t have a panic attack. Why is that?”
The blonde looked at her boyfriend before her eyes landed on the therapist with an expectancy of an answer. She hadn’t realized that either. Shouldn’t her outburst have triggered one?
“I’m glad you asked,” the woman smiled. “Panic attacks are often triggered by suppression. When you’re trying to hold in your emotions, refusing to let it go, and not show it, but today Lucy let it out. She didn’t hold back so there was no need for her body to react physiologically.” She reached out and placed a gentle hand on Lucy’s shoulder. “Sometimes a good cry and scream goes a long way. Please remember that.”
It was quiet on the taxi ride back to Lucy’s apartment. Not an uncomfortable silence, but maybe just enough had been said in the hour long therapy session that they both still needed time to process it all. Despite her breakthrough, she knew it was still a long battle ahead. The poor coping skills she’d latched onto now needed to be reversed, and frankly she didn’t know if she could do it alone. Of course, she could ask Levy... and the woman did deserve to hear the truth going on... but Lucy really didn’t want to put that kind of pressure on her best friend. Levy had done so much for her already and as much as she appreciated it, it also contributed to her emotional pain. She glanced down at her hand held so tightly by Natsu and wondered... no... The man was struggling as well, so to add hers into his mix, is that really fair? But by that same token, their pain was also a shared one. If there was anything to take away from the session is that perhaps it is together, they’ll better find the end of the rainbow.
Once they arrive at the building and get out of the taxi, Natsu started walking towards it. Lucy tugged back to stop him. “Lucy?”
“Before we go in...” her voice lowers, hesitancy brimming in her tone. “I have a question to ask.”
“Of course, anything.”
“I can’t—, don’t want to do this alone anymore. But I also don’t want to put that kind of burden on Levy.”
“Lucy,” he pulled her hand up, clasped between his palms to his lips where he kissed the fingers gently. “I will do whatever you need me to do.”
She sighed. “Can I move in with you? A-At least until I get control of the panic attacks and the... the thing?” Her eyes flit to her arm rather than say the words aloud. “I know this would intrude on Gray, but I would feel much safer.”
Natsu paused for a second in thought. “I don’t think Gray will mind. I certainly don’t.” He smiled. “We’ll be there for each other.”
“Are you sure? Because there’s still a few things I haven’t mentioned like nightmares. I-I don’t wanna freak you guys out.”
“A promise is a promise, and when I said I’ll do anything, I meant it. Will it be scary, probably, I’m not gonna lie, but I’m willing to do whatever I need to get us through this.”
Lucy’s eyes gloss over, but a tiny smile ticks up at the corners of her lips. “Thank you, Natsu.”
He smiled back, “I’m the one who should be thankful.”
“For what?”
“For not dumping me. As much you’d worried, I’d leave you, I was deathly afraid you’d leave me. I brought this on us, so I wouldn’t blame you from running away.”
“Oh, Natsu.” This time a true smile finally graced Lucy’s face. “I’m not going anywhere either.”
#nalu#nalu au#nalu fan fiction#nalu fan fic#Natsu dragneel#Lucy heartfilia#Natsu x lucy#strangers on a train#ch 26#tw cutting
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It’s chill if you can’t answer this/don’t want to answer it but I have a therapist who is unwilling to try brainspotting because of our DID, but your earlier post seemed to imply it’s a normal and helpful tool even with DID. Are there any resources or testimonies you can share to potentially show my own therapist about brainspotting with DID?
I mean I don't think it is necessarily the most "normal and helpful" tool in all cases. I think it is a bit experimental currently so I would say trust your therapist and their comfort zone as a clinician before you look back at my experiences and my therapist's comfort zone as a clinician.
I actually haven't read too much into brainspotting myself, partially on the account that I want to really come in as a patient perspective (for once) and not have my tendency to be really interested in treatment methods detract from my ability to actually be engaged in it. None of the statements I will be saying right now are going to be from scholarly or academic sources since, again, I have intentionally decided to not dig too deep into it. From the brief reading I did before agreeing to give it a go as well as discussions with my own therapist, it seems to be I guess "made" for a lack of better words by a psychologist by the name of Dr. David Grand [x] [x] [x] and it is a bit of a pioneering treatment to PTSD and C-PTSD. Brainspotting is often compared to EMDR, it seems to be a lot less over stimulating and over whelming and tends to be a lot less risky for people with dissociation [x].
With that being said, it really is only really discussed as a "better alternative to EMDR" for people who have complex trauma and mind find EMDR too "strong" or overpowering. This comes with the implication that Brainspotting can still be too much / overwhelming for a patient as well, albeit that it would likely be less overwhelming than EMDR.
It's a relatively new form of treatment with research supporting it as another "power therapy" (2003 based on a quick not checked google search, compared to 1987 with EMDR) and considering how poorly researched DID can be, I don't think there is sufficient information to firmly say if it is best / ideal or not.
Additionally, from what I've discussed with my therapist on it and his training / certifications on it, it seems as though there is a lot of nuance and specialized training for doing brainspotting with patients with complex trauma / DID. He also mentioned that the specialized training sessions that he did and took leave for didn't really satisfy him / make him confident so he took a few months to independently seek out more information and training with expert specialists before offering to work with it with me to make sure he was prepared and knew what he was doing to keep me also safe.
As it is, I can't say too much since I didn't read extensively into it and mainly read only enough to get the idea and concept understood on my end then just trusted that my therapist knew what he was doing before starting it.
If your therapist is uncomfortable doing brainspotting, it's honestly probably valid and there is probably a reason (may she think it is too experimental / unclear on how it works with DID or lack of confidence that her training matches up to what she might face with a patient who has DID and brain spotting, or having not been trained specially for Brainspotting and DID) and I would trust her personal judgement on it considering brainspotting is also very much dependent on the capabilities of a therapist. If she doesn't feel like it would be a good idea, she is probably trying to be responsible in the sense that she does not think she could do you justice / keep you safe while doing it.
If you are still interested in it, I would still recommend bringing it up with your therapist and discussing your thoughts and feelings about it and see where that goes - at least given you trust your therapist which I am assuming. If you don't trust your therapist entirely and still want to try, you could always seek out another therapist to test the waters with.
Also do take everything in this post with a grain of salt. I have said it a number of times, but this is not an academically researched explanation / description of brainspotting as much as a briefly google searched and "word of mouth from my therapist" explanation / description of brainspotting and I may be partially / entirely wrong.
-Riku (Host)
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Inflicting Misery ch.3
Pairing: August Walker x Reader
Summary: A mission gone awry puts in the hospital on life support. In the meantime, August tries to process everything.
Author’s Note: This chapter will be in August’s POV and the following chapters will be back in reader’s POV.
Warning(s): none, just angst and floof :)
word count: 2094
“How have you been, August?” Dr. Tolsen asks me, like we’re old friends catching up over a cup of coffee.
“Why don’t you ask the bags under my eyes?” I bark. I haven’t slept in forty-eight hours. My brain is starting to play tricks on me, begging me to close my eyes for just an hour. But every time I blink, all I can see is Lorenzo shooting that damn bullet through Y/N’s chest and her dying in my arms.
No. She hasn’t died yet. What happened to her is much worse. She’s stuck inside the nation’s top medical facility and hooked up to a million machines that are breathing for her, keeping her heart beating, keeping her body working. She’s at the goddamn misery of those hideous machines. If they switch off, she’s gone.
“You went on a recent mission to Las Vegas,” Dr. Tolsen says. “Would you like to tell me about it?”
“No,” I growl.
But Dr. Tolsen has been my therapist for long enough that he knows the game I’m playing. He doesn’t bother getting frustrated. Instead, he addresses the heart of the matter. “Your partner, Agent Y/L/N, got hurt during the mission. How does that make you feel?”
How does that make me feel? Like I want to rip Lorenzo’s head off of his body. Like Y/N should have moved faster, should have gotten her gun out sooner, should have stopped looking at me with that light in her eyes like I meant something to her, and maybe she wouldn’t be in that goddamn hospital right now.
Helpless.
It makes me feel absolutely fucking helpless. Because I watched it all happen. Because I didn’t protect her. Because that bullet should have gone straight through me, a man who’s more monster than human, and yet it went through the best woman I’ve ever known instead. And now she can’t even breathe on her own.
I did that to her.
It’s my fault.
I may as well have been the one to shoot her.
“These are all reasonable emotions to be experiencing when someone you care about is dying,” Dr. Tolsen says, and that’s when I realize that I just said all of that out loud. I tend to dissociate during these therapy sessions. If I’m too far inside my head to even realize my mouth is moving and words are tumbling out, it somehow makes it all easier to say out loud. “It’s times like this when it’s crucial for you to remember that emotions in and of themselves aren’t good or bad. They’re just emotions. But it’s how you choose to react to them, the actions you take in response to those emotions that is good or bad.”
I know that. He’s said that at least a hundred times by now. He probably thinks that if he repeats it enough times, I’ll start turning into a better person. The thought is laughable. I’m beyond saving. Doesn’t he realize that?
“Have you visited her yet?” Dr. Tolsen asks.
No. I haven’t gone anywhere near her. It’s my fault she’s in there to begin with. Me being around her now, when she’s desperately in need of a miracle, will only make things worse.
“I think seeing her will provide you with some much needed closure,” he says.
Closure? She’s not fucking dead.
“Not yet, but--”
No! She’s not gonna die. She’ll recover. She’ll get better. But if I come to visit, that’ll ruin everything. I have to stay away and then she’ll come back to us.
“To us? Or to you?”
This isn’t about me.
“It’s been about you since day one,” Dr. Tolsen argues. “This woman cares about you, and deep down you know it. I think that’s why you’re feeling so guilty. You think you’ve corrupted her somehow. That getting shot was her consequence for daring to care about you.”
Everyone who gets close to me dies. That’s just how it works.
“You didn’t sign her death sentence, August,” he says. “And whether this woman lives or dies--none of that will matter if you can’t see that. You need to forgive yourself. You did not put her in harm’s way. She knew the job she signed up for. She knew what she was getting herself into. You did not do this to her. She’s not in the hospital right now because of you. August--look at me.”
My eyes jump to his.
“Hear me when I say this: You. Did. Nothing. Wrong.”
Yeah, right.
He repeats himself, again and again. “You did nothing wrong. You did nothing wrong. You did nothing wrong.”
He says it enough that the words fight through the barriers of my mind and suddenly my head is in my heads and I’m crying, I’m fucking crying like a baby and I can’t stop, not even to get air in my lungs and it’s hurts, oh god it fucking hurts.
...
She stood out in a crowd of beautiful women. Even from the first moment I saw her I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her. I wanted this woman.
I go to take a seat beside her at the bar. I give the bartender my order and turn to her. She keeps her head down, trying to be as unnoticeable as possible, but I can’t take my eyes off of her. I eye the glass in front of her.
“Vodka your drink?” I ask.
She looks at me for the first time. Her eyes are a deep brown and there’s a flicker of innocence in them. Her cheekbones are sharp and that mouth--
I want that small mouth wrapped around my cock. As if hearing my thoughts, my cock stirs to life in my pants. I’m grateful for the dim lights in the bar. She can’t see my body’s reaction to her.
“Usually nothing’s my drink,” she confesses, and her voice is like a smooth velvet. “But tomorrow’s my first day at my new job and I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight without some help.”
I say nothing, letting her continue. I like the sound of her voice as much as she likes to talk, apparently.
“I’m sorry, I talk when I anxious,” she admits with a blush. “And when I’m drunk. And when I’m anxious and drunk.”
“You’re really that stressed about your job?” I wonder.
She gives me a sheepish smile and then pauses, looking a me with a defensive expression. “I’m sure you’re nice and everything, but I have too much going on right now to have a hookup, so you should probably try your moves on some other drunk woman.”
That makes me chuckle. “I don’t do hookups, either. I was just trying to have a conversation.”
Her face flushes. God, I love how easy it is to get a reaction out of this woman. “Oh, shit. I’m so sorry--that was rude. I didn’t--I just, um... I’ve had a little too much to drink and it’s turned me into a bit of a ballsy bitch.”
I offer her my arm. “Why don’t I help this ‘ballsy bitch’ find a cab? You’ll need sleep before tomorrow.”
She gives me a grateful look and takes my arm. Her hands are so small that they can’t even wrap around my entire arm. I wonder how big my cock would look in her hands--though now I’ll probably never get a chance to find out.
I wave over a cab for her outside and open the back door for her.
“You’re really sweet,” she says before she enters the cab. “I’m so sorry for talking your ear off and being rude. This isn’t really my best moment.”
“Let’s just hope you’re having a better moment tomorrow,” I say. “A good first impression with the boss is crucial.”
She giggles drunkenly. “Yeah, they are, um... what’s your name?”
I say the first name that comes to mind. “Henry.”
She blinks up at me and damn, those lashes are long. This woman is completely gorgeous and she’s so unaware of it. “I’m glad I met you, Henry.” And then she kisses me. Her mouth moves clumsily against mine, sloppy due to her drunkenness, and I let her kiss me for a second. I even kiss her back before pushing her away. “I’m sorry, I thought you wanted, um... I’m sorry.”
I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear and assure her, “Believe me, I wanted that. But I’m not about to take advantage of a woman who’s too drunk to remember me in the morning.”
She opens her mouth, but the cab driver honks his horn impatiently, and whatever she was about to say dies on her lips. She gives me one last smile before getting the cab. I close the door behind her and watch the car drive off.
Little did I know that my company’s new agent we’d hired a week ago was starting the next day. And it was her, my little drunken girl that I’d already thought about fucking the life out of. God, was I in deep shit.
...
I run through the halls of the hospital. My feet can’t carry me to her room fast enough. After what feels like a year I make it to Room 246. Half the team is already in there, crowding around Y/N’s bed. I pause in the doorway. She looks up at me. She’s actually awake.
“You’re awake,” I say, stating the obvious like an idiot.
She smiles, but I can see the strain on her face. She’s exhausted. “You can’t get rid of this ballsy bitch that easily, August.”
Hearing my name in her mouth... God, I should be sent to hell for the things I’m thinking. She just woke up from a fucking coma and all I can think about is fucking her.
“How are you feeling?” Savannah asks, our team’s weapons expert and medic. She runs a hand down Y/N’s arm and I know it’s meant to be comforting but dammit, I’m seconds away from cutting Savannah’s hand off. No one touches Y/N. No one but me.
“Tired,” Y/N confesses. “The doctor came in just before you all got here. He said they performed surgery on my lung. They got the bullet out but my body’s going to need a while to recover.”
“Of course,” Savannah said in a soothing voice. This girl was really getting on my nerves right now.
“Is there anything you need from us?” Lorenzo asks.
Wait.
Lorenzo?!
What the fucking hell is he doing here?
I look over to see him standing in the corner. How the hell had I not noticed him already? In two strides I’m in front of him, his shirt in my hand. I punch him hard in the jaw before I feel someone pull me back. Savannah.
“What the hell, Walker?” she shouts.
“He fucking shot her!” I exclaim. “He shouldn’t be here--he shouldn’t be anywhere near her!”
“August!” Y/N calls out. Her tone is pleading.
I force myself to breathe and take a step back. Lorenzo clutches his jaw. His eyes are watering. Savannah wraps an arm around him and drags him out of the room, leaving me alone with Y/N.
“It was an accident,” Y/N insists. “He wasn’t trying to hurt me.”
“Yet here we are,” I say bitterly. “If he know what’s good for him--”
“Please,” she sighs. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
I look into her brown eyes, as alluring as ever. “Want do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t want to talk,” she admits. “Can you just... can you lie next to me?”
I hesitate.
“Don’t make me pull the crippled card,” she jokes.
I take in a breath and move to her bed. She does her best to slide over to make room for me, but these stupid hospital beds are built for twelve-year-olds, so there’s hardly enough room for us to both fit. She moves into my arms and rests her head on my chest. Shit, she can probably hear how fast my heart is beating. Her hand rests on my stomach. The touch is completely innocent, but I fucking want her. I’ll take her right here and now if she’s willing. But I hear her breathing slow and even out and I know she’s fallen asleep. With her in my arms--with her awake and breathing and talking--my body finally relaxes. I close my eyes and let sleep take over.
#august walker#august walker imagine#august walker mission impossible#august walker has a heart and i will prove it#henry cavill#henry cavill kiss
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repression
Hello friend,
This is a big topic and not a lot to go on, but I am certainly happy to wax poetic on it in the hopes that some weird concoction of squishy noodles sticks to our cranial walls. Brains are these weird, fatty, wrinkly computers piloting our meat bags like some Cronenberg-esque monster in a mech anime. Generally speaking, they do a great job at keeping us alive, even unconsciously, but sometimes they get a little over active. I know memory repression has wormed its way into our collective consciousness, especially when the concept was co-opted by, hopefully, well meaning psychologists that led to the Satanic Panic, but most experts in the field nowadays think that the idea that we bury memories to be later uncovered is pretty much flimflam. We currently have this idea of dissociative amnesia in which we cannot recall pieces of autobiographical information that might be traumatic as a way to protect ourselves from reliving and re-experiencing those events, causing more harm to our bubbly, smart sacs, but even that's debated.
I mean really... we don't know how our brains work. I don't know that I personally have ever experienced a repressed memory, but I've definitely had to unpack why I have had such visceral reactions to certain stimuli. In those cases, yeah, it's generally been some sort of event that created a subconscious association that caused my synapses to fire and shout, "Hey! This thing is bad!" without any conscious input. I think the biggest issue is that we as a people don't really know how to talk about our thoughts and things get lost in translation when we try to explain our experiences to others, and we create this bizarre dialect of vague but specific language to talk about something that approximates our brain space.
I think the more common form of repression these days, though, is just extreme compartmentalization. Our brains file things away in harder to reach places because they feel like they can't deal with them right now, and that's fair. It's also hopeful. Whether or not they are making correct assumptions, our brains are trying to tell us, "Hey, this is a lot, and our needs aren't being met." So we try to meet those other needs and prioritize, because while our brains are ridiculously complex biological computers, they do have limits, and are doing lots of things to keep us alive that we generally don't have to think about. When they overload, systems can shut down to maintain some form of homeostasis, and then we experience things like anxiety and panic attacks.
Regardless though, your brain is trying to protect you, and sometimes it gets a little overzealous. This general process happens for all of us all the time. We don't have to make conscious connections from one thing to the next, and that usually isn't a problem, but it can be. The good news is that in almost everything I've read on the topic and my own personal experience in therapy, we can alleviate that by ensuring our other needs are being met and working through some of those associations our brains have deemed harmful.
I hope this helps in some capacity!
With love, friend!
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Notes for The Vanishing Prince: Chapter Nine
Yay, Chapter Nine is finally posted! As I mentioned over on Ao3, I’ve been looking forward to sharing this one for a loooong time. I don’t have much to share in the way of cultural notes, but I still had some pretty big things I wanted to talk about… Like info about the mental health topics from the therapy scene, plus a ton of rambling about things I’ve been researching and/or planning for a while. So if that’s something you’re interested in, well… enjoy? //laughs
As always, I updated the Pinterest inspiration board with images inspired by the new chapter. (I actually did that last month, which was when I originally intended to post the chapter before my schedule fell apart… So anyone who was checking the board during that time got an accidental sneak peak of what was coming next. Oops? ^^;) You can check the board out here.
And with that, on to the notes!
Cut for a writer babbling on and on about mental health research, references to earlier events in the series, and also violins (!!) …
Akashi’s Childhood Friendships
So the first scene of Chapter Nine features a headcanon of mine that has been popping up throughout the series… Which is that when Akashi started going to school, he attended a private elementary school that mainly catered to elite, wealthy families and their children. He was generally encouraged to spend time with his classmates, rather than seeking friends elsewhere, and he never made any close friends from a different social “class” until he started going to Teikou. (Which he joined specifically because he asked his mother if he could go somewhere that was different from his elementary school.)
As this chapter reveals, he never told his father about the friends he ended up making through basketball, because of the values he was modeled earlier in life. This was actually brought up alllll the way back in The Fast Train to Kyoto. (Though it was pretty vague!) In fact, Akashi referenced it in the very first scene:
Maybe it was the echoes of his father’s voice inside his head, just another series of frosty words he ached to forget:
“It is not for an Akashi to associate with just anyone. Your time is valuable, Seijuurou, and so is your reputation. See that you don’t waste it, on trivial pursuits, or persons unworthy of your stature.”
Akashi cringed. ‘Persons unworthy of his stature? What a ridiculous idea. Everyone he had ever known who had made his life worthwhile, had no particular wealth or rank to speak of. (With the crucial exception of his mother.) He had long ago discarded this principle of his father’s as nonsense.
I also explained the backstory with his elementary school and his struggle to make friends in a lot more detail in Chapter Three of Fast Train. (As well as why he decided to go to Teikou, and how he started making friends there, particularly Midorima.)
That aspect of his childhood turned out to be pretty important in the series, so I thought it was worth mentioning that Akashi did talk about it before… Especially since those early values still affect how he sees his friendships, plus it’s one of the reasons why he’s been trying to keep those friends as separate from his home life as possible. (Until Furihata came along and wanted to sleep over at his house, and he just couldn’t say no to his BFF, apparently? //laughs)
Attachment Theory, Disorganized Attachment, and Dissociation
So, uh… I’m not qualified to talk about any of this, like, at all. //laughs That being said, I’ll start with a big disclaimer: I am not a mental health professional, or an expert about this subject in any way whatsoever. So if anything I say doesn’t make sense or I get any of the details wrong, I sincerely apologize in advance! This is just based on the research I’ve done and some first-person accounts I’ve read over the years. As a non-expert, I find a lot of psychology theory to be difficult to research in general… Since a lot of the science is still being studied and verified, and things are becoming outdated all the time.
Okay, so with all that being said… In this chapter, Akashi’s psychiatrist brings up a theory in psychology called attachment theory. If you’d like to learn the basics of how it started, the Wikipedia article has a decent overview of the initial studies. Basically, the theory has to do with the idea that children bond with their primary caregiver (stereotypically the mother, but it doesn’t have to be) either successfully or unsuccessfully, based on how the caregiver responds to the child’s needs. A child who bonds with their caregiver in a healthy, successful way is said to be “securely” attached, while an unhealthy bond is an “insecure attachment.”
From there, it gets more complicated… There are a few different types/forms of insecure attachment, and these types can be classified in different ways, depending on the study. (There’s also something called “attachment style,” which from what I can tell is an idea inspired by attachment theory, that adults will have a general style of bonding that originates from their main caregiver bond in childhood. This idea is often used to help adults work through issues in their adult relationships.) For example, there’s generally an “anxious” form of attachment where the child is overly scared and tends to cling to their caregiver if they try to leave, out of fear that they won’t get the care they need. Then there’s an “avoidant” type where the child tends to push the caregiver away or ignore them, and can seem very apathetic and independent. (Even though they’re actually just as scared on the inside of not being cared for as an “anxious” child.)
As you can imagine, there are a lot of theories about why this happens, and what exactly in the caregiving process could contribute to it. What’s more, some children display both anxiety and avoidance… A form of this is called “disorganized attachment.” As Akashi’s psychiatrist explains, this describes a behavioral pattern where the child clings to their caregiver AND pushes them away, sometimes very close together. This style seems to often develop when the child has been through some kind of early trauma, often severe abuse or neglect. It also seems to be prevalent among people with dissociation disorders, which isn’t surprising, given the common thread of childhood trauma between the two. You can read more about that in this article here.
Actually, I first learned about disorganized attachment—and attachment in general—when I was reading a blog many years ago that was written by someone chronicling their experience with Dissociative Identity Disorder. As I researched the subject in more detail, I came across a few explanations about how children with this attachment style tend to act very confused and distressed around their caregivers, and I found the descriptions really sad… It helped me begin to better understand some of the difficulties that these children go through, and how it affects their minds when they’re still developing. It’s not hard to imagine how a child who longs to be taken care of but also has painful experiences of being denied that care (for whatever reason) can really struggle with trying to make sense of their reality and survive it on an emotional level. And that struggle causes lasting damage.
It’s important to note, though, that some psychologists will caution against assuming that a child’s attachment to their primary caregiver always dictates how they will attach to other people in their life, or in their future relationships. Also, there’s some evidence that children may struggle with attachment issues not just because of the actions of their caregiver, but also due to their own personality/ genetic predispositions. You can read more about both of these topics here.
Way back when I started planning this series, and deciding how to portray Akashi’s backstory, I found myself returning over and over to the concept of disorganized attachment… I wasn’t sure if it would make it into the fic directly, and it’s certainly not the only thing that influenced my portrayal of Akashi’s mental health. But it was definitely something I had in mind from the start, and helped shape the series, so I’m glad that I did end up referencing it in some detail.
The Akashi Family Servants
Since I just introduced the housekeeper, now seems as good a time as any to mention this… Originally, I didn’t plan for the servants who work for the Akashi family to have roles in the series at all? XD Takeda is the only one who’s mentioned in The Fast Train to Kyoto, and he doesn’t have a name. (I refer to him as either Akashi’s “driver” or “valet” depending on what he’s doing… This was actually before I’d decided that Takeda is the one who drives Akashi around when he’s in Kyoto. OTL) Then I mentioned several of the servants during Furihata’s visit in Storming the Castle… But almost no one gets a real introduction? Except for the butler, Ginhara. //laughs
One reason why I took so long to give them names/describe them is that I try to mostly stick to writing about canon characters in fics, instead of creating a ton of OCs. (I consider the families of the KnB characters to be canon, since they’re in the fanbooks. XD) But I enjoy coming up with minor characters, if it feels like a good fit for the story! Still, you can really tell that I didn’t know I would end up using these characters as much as I did, because their names are alllll over the place… Especially Takeda, which is roughly the Japanese equivalent of naming a character Mr. Smith or something? (LOL.) For a while I really regretted that I didn’t come up with a more interesting name for him, since he ended up being in this series CONSTANTLY. Also, I recently received this incredible comment on Chapter 5 of The Fast Train to Kyoto and it’s one of my all-time FAVORITES:
“Yo the drivers probs just sitting in the front like
Mmm this tea is piping hot”
(And they signed their name Yeet too, omgggg XDD)
… So yeah, I have decided this is totally Takeda’s reaction, to Akashi and Furihata’s whole “friend breakup” in the rain in the first story. //laughs
That said, I kind of love that Takeda has such a generic name now? Especially after he showed up at Seirin in sunglasses in this chapter. (Like maybe Takeda isn’t even his real name, because he actually had an exciting former life as a secret agent or something like that, and now he’s working for this super rich kid from a powerful family and maybe he’s actually hiding some epic skills so he can double as Akashi’s bodyguard if he needs to…? I DON’T KNOW, I HAVE WEIRD HEADCANONS.)
In any case, I enjoyed coming up with the characters for the Akashi family staff, even though it took a while! And I’m glad a few of them were able to play an interesting part in sneaking Akashi out of the house, so his dad wouldn’t find out about Furihata. (Though we don’t know what any of them think about that, or not yet, at least. XD) There will be at least one more member of the staff who gets an introduction, which should be coming soon. But for now, we’ve got:
Takeda, Akashi’s personal valet (and driver, sometimes)
Ginhara, the Akashi family butler and head of staff
Umagami Ichiro, Yukimaru’s groom
Inuyama, Akashi’s father’s personal valet
Hanamitsu Atsuko, housekeeper for the Akashi mansion in Tokyo
The Akashi family chef (name???)
(Plus some maids, who I also did not name)
… And as you can see, most of them still don’t have given names, even the ones with family names. That’s how disorganized I’ve been about this. //laughs
Also, I have a feeling no one was actually wondering (lol), but if you happen to remember this scene from Episode 63 in the Teikou arc in the anime:
In my headcanons, this guy is the head chauffeur for the Akashi family household, and he used to drive the whole family around. (Which would mean that he was also mentioned in The Fast Train to Kyoto, in a brief flashback about Akashi and his parents! Where he’s just “the driver.” XD) Now he mostly drives Akashi’s father to work, and sometimes chauffeurs Akashi as well, when he’s in Tokyo. (Whereas Takeda drives him around in Kyoto.) I briefly referred to him as Onoda in Chapter One of The Vanishing Prince, so… I guess that’s the name I came up with for him? //laughs
TL;DR… I’ve really enjoyed writing about the various characters who work for the Akashi family, and I had way more fun including them in the story than I expected. <3 (Maybe I should give in and post character sketches for all the OCs in this series sometime… That would be a project. XD)
Beliefs About Ghosts
I might go into this more in a future chapter, but I did want to briefly discuss how Reo talks to Furihata about ghosts, and how/why they haunt certain places… There are a LOT of different beliefs all over the world about whether ghosts are real, and why they appear. There are also lots of theories about whether they need the help of living humans to pass on or not.
For this fic, I tried to include some of the most common beliefs in Reo’s response, including the “revenge” ghost stories that are super common in Japanese folklore. But it’s not a comprehensive explanation by any means, and there are a lot of people who believe in ghosts and spirits but wouldn’t agree with the ideas Reo mentioned. (Basically, I had to pick among a bunch of different supernatural ideas about ghosts for the fic, and these are some of the ones I chose to include? But that’s not to say that they’re representative of my own beliefs, or of every Japanese person who believes in ghosts, either!)
The Akashi Family Curse (…?)
So I know some readers have been discussing this and making predictions about it in the comments for a while now… And while I don’t want to spoil anything about where the story is going, I’m really excited that I finally got to reveal another piece of the legend/rumors about the Akashi family curse:
Furihata’s mouth dropped open. It never occurred to him that some people might still think that the Akashis were cursed, centuries later. Or that these rumors were somehow connected to their catlike eyes. Was that maybe even how the peasants in the legend came up with the curse in the first place? Were they just creeped out, by this super-rare genetic thing that ran in the family?
Or… could it be true? Could the Akashi family really be cursed?
I can’t remember if anyone specifically connected the dots about the legend being connected to the “catlike” eyes or not… But if you saw this coming, YES YOU WERE TOTALLY RIGHT AND I AM IMPRESSED. <333
As for what the legend/rumors say about how the curse works, and whether or not it’s actually real… I guess I shouldn’t go into that just yet, for the sake of spoilers. XD But hopefully you can have fun guessing for now! And I’m glad I can finally point to the connection between the idea of a family curse and the “catlike eyes” to explain why I kept including so many passages like this one:
He and Akashi were walking through another long passageway. This one was lined with life-sized portraits—and oddly enough, Furihata recognized some of the faces. He had seen them in paintings in the Tokyo house.
“Are these your relatives?” he asked. They didn’t resemble Akashi very much. But a few did have the same unusual, catlike pupils.
Akashi nodded, as he glanced up at the huge frames. “They led the family, several generations ago. This one was my great-great-great-great-great grandfather.”
He gestured to the largest painting. The steel-haired man in the portrait wore a piercing frown. Even his posture was severe, somehow.
… Yeah, there are a BUNCH of descriptions in A Spark of Light of portraits of Akashi’s relatives, and how some of them have the same eyes as him. Also, as I’m sure a lot of people noticed, I mention Akashi’s eyes A LOT throughout the series. And this is one of the reasons why I wanted to emphasize it so much. XD
(Well, okay and also like a lot of fic writers, I enjoy pretty descriptions about eyes. XD BUT I WOULD’VE TRIED TO CUT MORE OF THEM IF IT WASN’T SUCH AN IMPORTANT PLOT POINT… Or so I’ll claim, anyway. //laughs)
And Finally… THE VIOLIN
Ahhh I’m so happy I finally got to post this scene! I’ve been saving the moment of Akashi playing his violin for Furihata for a loooong time… I foreshadowed it briefly back in Storming the Castle, when Furihata notices Akashi’s violin case sitting in his study. But I got the idea for this scene even earlier… All the way back when I drafted that part in The Fast Train to Kyoto, where Akashi plays his violin after he writes to Furihata to tell him they can’t be friends. (YES. IT HAS BEEN THAT LONG.)
So, yeah… I had no idea know how long it would take to get there, but I definitely knew that Akashi would have to play his violin for Furihata at some point. And I wanted it to be a Really Big Moment in their romantic arc. So I did the best I could with it. (Because, I mean… How could I NOT include a scene where Akashi plays the violin for Furihata? That just had to happen, come on. //laughs)
As I mentioned over on Ao3, I do have my own idea about which piece Akashi plays for Furi… I might even mention it directly in the next chapter, but I’m not sure yet? (Either way, if you have a piece that you’d like to imagine him playing instead, you have my blessing. xD I tried to write it in such a way that he could be playing a lot of different songs!) So here was my thought process on that…
I figured Akashi would probably decide to play something on the simple side for Furihata, rather than anything too technical/demanding on the ear. I also realized that he was probably thinking that Furihata would like a sweet, romantic sort of song, because of this scene from Storming the Castle:
“Oh, r-right.” Furihata let go of the flower. He managed a laugh. “Sorry. I’m being weird, huh?”
“I just never realized you had such an interest in roses,” Akashi said, with a hint of humor. “But it shouldn’t surprise me, really.”
Furihata didn’t follow. “Why’s that?”
The edge of Akashi’s mouth dimpled. “Well, you are a romantic, after all.”
And that was when I realized… ROSES. Like, what if the piece had to do with roses, because Akashi was remembering that conversation about Furihata’s romantic side that they had in his rose garden…? So in my head, Akashi plays a version of The Last Rose of Summer, which is this really sweet, old Irish song that was later set to a poem of that name, written by Thomas Moore. It’s an easier piece to play, so it’s a little difficult to find a nice version of it by a professional violinist. But I did find this arrangement that is SUPER old-fashioned and adorable:
And my personal favorite version with strings that I found (and linked first on Ao3) is probably this one. Though I believe the violin doesn’t start until around a minute and a half into the recording?
(My sister and I thought the first soloist *might* be a viola… Apologies if we’re wrong though!! We took band a thousand years ago in high school but didn’t play in an orchestra, so we’re basically clueless about anything with strings. XD)
Anyway, I just thought that the song would be fitting because of the whole “bonding over roses” connection to Storming the Castle, and the fact that they’re still on summer vacation in this story… Plus the words of the poem are kind of the most Oreshi thing I’ve ever heard??? It’s REALLY sad, but also all about friendship. You can hear how it’s sung and see the complete lyrics in this version by Charlotte Church if you’d like (again, the song starts at around 1:30), but I’ll also include the beginning and end of the poem here:
Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone,
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone.
…
So soon may I follow
When friendships decay;
And from love's shining circle
The gems drop away
When true hearts lie wither'd
And fond ones are flow'n
Oh! Who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?
… TELL ME THAT’S NOT AN ORESHI KIND OF POEM. It’s all about friendship and being afraid of being alone, and I just… gahhhh. T_____T
Also, you might have noticed that the versions I linked don’t have any parts where the soloist plucks the violin strings, which I described Akashi doing at one point… That’s because I like to think that in between playing a simpler version, Akashi also slips into a few sections of Variations on the Last Rose of Summer by Ernst, which you can see the violinist Midori playing here. (Unlike the other versions I linked, this is one of the hardest pieces ever written for violin, period… Apparently it’s so difficult that many top-tier professionals won’t even play it in front of a crowd! So for those of you who want to picture him playing something more badass, I’ve got you covered. XD)
(And while we’re still on the subject of different versions… My all-time favorite when it comes to different instruments playing The Last Rose of Summer has got to be this one. BECAUSE IT’S A KOTO, LIKE OMGGGG YES. Honestly, if my series had a sound, I’d like to think that it would be this…? Because roses and traditional Japanese instruments, that’s why. //laughs)
Also, I’m not sure whether anyone was curious about this part of the scene:
Akashi chuckled as he unlatched the case. Resting on a bed of crimson silk was a delicately carved violin. Furihata didn’t know how to tell if an instrument was well made, but he was pretty sure that this one had to be.
So I do indeed headcanon that Akashi would have a really nice violin… For those who might not know, violins can be EXTREMELY expensive, most notably at the professional and soloist quality levels. As in, the famous Stradivarius violins are valued at $10 million or MORE, for example. XD Though I personally tend to think that Akashi probably wouldn’t play a Strad himself… He’d have too much reverence for the instrument for that. //laughs (Although I wouldn’t be surprised if his family owns a Stradivarius and lends it out to some world-famous soloist… Which is apparently how it works in real life, by the way!) But I still imagine that his violin would be a super fancy one, maybe somewhere in the $100k range or something? (And now I’m just imagining Furihata finding that out and freaking out, lol.)
And last but not least, since I’m already rambling a lot, I would like to credit a new favorite YouTube channel of mine that I discovered while writing the violin scene… I really wanted to make sure that I described the violin playing correctly, because like I mentioned, I understand nothing about stringed instruments whatsoever. (I was a very mediocre flute player, once upon a time. //laughs)
So while I was hunting for references, I stumbled across TwoSet Violin, and OMG THEY ARE THE COOLEST CHANNEL EVER. I’d recommend them to literally everyone, even if you don’t play the violin or have any interest in classical music! They’re two professional violinists from Australia who make tons of super-entertaining content, like analyzing the way actors pretend to play instruments in movies and Chinese dramas, or trying to play the cheapest violin they can buy on Amazon. And it’s FANTASTIC. XD They’re super skilled and funny, and they even inspired me to listen to classical music again, so yeah, I can’t recommend them enough. <3
Well, this post turned out a lot longer than I expected…? //laughs In any case, I hope it was interesting, and thank you for reading! And as I said over on Ao3, thank you again to all of my lovely readers for your patience, especially while I dealt with my grandmother’s passing. I have the next chapter of the fic drafted, just like last time, but it does have some issues so I’m not sure how long it will take to edit. (Hopefully less time than this one did. OTL) I’ll definitely do my best to post it as soon as I can. In the meantime, I really hope everyone is staying safe, and see you then!
#the vanishing prince#kat writes fanfic#text post#long post#kat writes about basketball dorks#akafuri#good lord this post was loooooong#and the chapter was long#everything I write is long XD#but I'm so glad I got to FINALLY POST THIS#I can't even begin to express how long and painstaking the editing process was#BUT WE GOT THERE IT'S ALL GOOD#and I had a lot of fun writing a lot of these scenes#the adorable dorks continue to be adorable#Takeda and Ginhara also amused me this time for some reason#and the housekeeper#oh and Seirin was back YAY#I missed Bokushi though he wasn't in this one as much XD#also yay violins <3<3<3
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How to Get Diagnosed #ActuallyAutistic in Just 26 Years
First off, this is not a poor-me story.This is a journey to #AutisticJoy story…
I’m a singer/songwriter, pretend Rock Star with a decent following… after at least 5 other careers.
I’m also #ActuallyAutistic. Or my fave hashtag… #AutisticAF.
Two most frequent private-message questions I get?
Not about lyrics, my guitar playing, or even my mohawk…
1. Could I be autistic?
2. Should I get a diagnosis?
Well, here’s my way-long, way-detailed, way genuinely autistic answer…
I was born in 1953. Long before autism or Asperger’s were widely discussed in medicine or popular culture. More or less, just beginning in the 70s.
At least by 1957, at 4, I knew I was “different.” Family and neighbor kids told me so.
A lot.
In kindergarten, a teacher reported I was unusually creative, but “stayed to myself.” After 2nd grade intelligence testing, I was tagged “gifted.”
But my behavior was “odd.” Solitary. Formal in speech, a know-it-all. “Insensitive to context,” liked talking and playing in class. “Inattentive” to lessons.
I had one close friend at a time… In fact, only one I remember in all of primary school. In 4th & 5th grade. Jeff.
Wonder what he’s been up to the last 56 years…
My intelligence: uneven. My reading skills were off the chart, but verbal learning, most of education at the time, was difficult for me. Math tested high, but I was so impulsive on quizzes, I needed remedial classes.
Tests were a silly game to me. It was fun to be the first-one-done. I couldn’t have cared less about grades. I’m a process-, not results-oriented guy.
And most glaring? I was disliked, even hated, by schoolmates, cousins, perhaps even parents.
I was a target for mockery, hate speech, bullying, physical and sexual attack, and later molestation. And universal disappointment: “You’re not living up to your potential.”
A history of dozens of jobs, dozens of relocations, lost years in a cult, lost years in badly matched relationships…
And honestly? A history of causing great pain to others. Inadvertently perhaps, but not always. Then circling back to the couple of decades in what most would label a “cult…”
Something was just not right with this picture.
I first sought diagnosis at 17 following suicide attempt #1 in 1970. The experience was horrific.
I felt badgered by the therapist, “I know you have a secret you want to tell me.” I wanted so badly to please her. But had no idea what I was feeling, much less why.
As still happens under great stress, I temporarily lost language ability. I became mute. Which has several times been interpreted as “resistance,” “guardedness,” or even “passive aggression” by “helping” professionals.
I didn’t try therapy again until my first year in grad school, 1980. The psychiatrist summarily dismissed me without a plan when I didn’t respond to imipramine (an anti-depressant)– possibly I pissed him off. I seem to have a talent for stepping on therapist toes.
But in 1991, I entered the mental health system and essentially never left. Every new psychiatrist, psychologist, therapeutic social worker confidently diagnosed me… with something entirely different.
Between 1991 and 2016, I was diagnosed with adjustment disorder, major depression, type II Bipolarity, rapid cycling bipolarity, malingering, borderline personality disorder, dissociative disorder NOS (including discussion of multiplicity), PTSD….
There have been additional discussions of various anxiety disorders (especially social anxiety), attention deficit, schizophrenia, TIAs, stroke damage…
Pretty sure I’m leaving a few out.
With each new diagnosis, each and every professional confidently told me he or she had nailed it.
This time…
And they could help.
I was medicated accordingly with imipramine, Prozac and all the modern SSRIs, Welbutrin, Effexor, Lithium, depakote, tegretol, gabapentin, klonapin, lorazepam, respirdal, the occasional syringe of haldol, provigil and other narcolepsy drugs, sleep aids, supplements like fish oil, more I’ve forgotten….
And offered suggestions of Abilify, Seroquel, other anti-psychotics, electro-shock (ECT)…
As well as therapies including Jungian, supportive, interpersonal, analytical, psychodynamic, cognitive, task-centered, solution focused, dialectical behavior, cognitive behavioral…
I was myself a counselor from 2001 to 2011. Strange, but true.
Not one of these interventions helped me materially.
Not one.
And I experienced some very concerning side effects: tics, emotional numbness, difficulty thinking, feeling like a stranger in a strange mind. I totally gave up on treatment and medication in 2011. Bouts of suicidality ensued.
A very few friends and one wife threw the term autistic around over the years, but I never followed up. It seemed so unlikely. I was so bright. So articulate. Even somewhat successful… for a few months at a time.
And without conscious awareness, I had become adept at hiding the fact I was actually dysfunctional… perhaps the majority of the time.
Plus, I could pass for “normal” by masking… when not under stress. I learned by junior high to practice my favorite classmates’ neurotypical behavior in the bathroom mirror. Hide stimming, meltdowns, panic attacks, the total autistic burnouts lasting sometimes months, years…
In 2011, the intimacy of the most successful relationship of my life forced me to look inwardly as deeply as I could in order to avoid losing my third wife. (We are still together, deeply in love, but live in separate houses a few hundred feet apart. She needs breaks from my intensity. I find even her company exhausting after a few hours.)
My now-third wife had a family member with “high-functioning” autism, what we used to call Asperger’s (and what we now call, simply, autism). Watching this young boy negotiate his world was like watching myself in a magnifying mirror.
We had so many behaviors in common. Mine were just somewhat better disguised. With my wife’s encouragement in 2012, I began reading articles, books, online forums…
In 2016, when we separated briefly, I finally re-entered therapy. This time, I contacted various experts in adult autism through Indiana University’s Indiana Institute For Disabilities Community (IIDC).
Bingo.
Every symptom…Explained.
Every “flaw” in my character… traced back to this pervasive developmental diagnosis.
I am making progress in a kind of task-oriented counseling. Working on strategies to accommodate characteristics that just ain’t gonna change…
But the key gifts that external, credible diagnosis gave me:
Accepting I really am different, with very different needs from neurotypical folks.
Providing for those needs, as I discovered them. For instance, understanding my “special interests” are not hobbies. They are central to my survival. My job.
Reducing stimulation, sensory & social. Accepting I will have few intimate relationships in my life and becoming cautious about “friendships,” only those few folks who take the long, long journey to know and like me. After a lifetime naively assuming each new stranger was a new friend, my motto became, “Don’t like me? Don’t hang.”
Spending unashamed time… alone. I have a radical need for autonomy, while simultaneous difficulty managing independence when any other human is present. As much as I crave intimacy, I must manage my time with humans. Say less than 5 minutes with a stranger before anxiety or panic sets in, maybe 2 hours with my wife. Which brings me to…
Over the last few years, I’ve not only experienced reduction in anxiety, depression, suicidality, dissociation, night terrors, meltdowns, panic… I’ve come to realize my natural state.
Finding love. My neurotypical wife and I respect, admire, encourage, and desire one another. Pretty much a first for me.
Autistic joy.
Not disease…
Joy.
When I’m creating words or music, walking alone in Nature, watering my garden, cooking, fermenting pickles, making bread, decorating, yard sale-ing, reading, loving my pets, meditating, even shaving…
I’m in the flow.
There is no time. There is no space. No surroundings. No memory. No pain. Just lizard-warming-in-the-sun…
Joy.
Everything that restricts that joy? Gotta go. Good riddance…
So, diagnosis?
Yeah.
That’s my story.
And this time, I’m sticking to it.
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if you don't feel comfortable answering this it's ok, but my counselor -in the past yr- uncovered that i have parts and is supportive, even tho i go back and forth between wanting him to know. he’s worked with me for years. no one has ever addressed parts with me and ive been in therapy since I was 9. anyway i was wondering how you figured it out, how you know if it's DID and not DDNOS, and what resources you used to help you figure this all out. tumblr is unreliable and I want to understand. ty
I don’t mind answering but please keep in mind that I can only speak to my own experiences and I’m not an expert or anything. DID/DDNOS (now OSDD in the DSM) is often experienced differently from person to person so my experiences might not apply/line up completely with yours. If it’s possible to work through this stuff with a professional I would really recommend that.
That being said, I was diagnosed with DID a little under a year ago. I was inpatient at a hospital that specialized in trauma and dissociative disorders so I was very fortunate to have professionals who were very familiar with the diagnoses to help me figure things out. Prior to that I had never considered that I might have DID despite having been in therapy/in and out of treatment for most of my life. It’s not uncommon for the diagnosis to be missed…these disorders can be very covert and there is a lot of misinformation about what DID/OSDD looks like and how common it actually is. It wasn’t until after I was diagnosed that I really became aware of other parts.
The reason I received a DID diagnosis and not OSDD is because my parts are distinct and I have amnesia between them. The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation describes OSDD1(the subtype most similar to DID) as "Having chronic dissociative symptoms such as identity alteration, but the alteration and separation between identities is not as severe as in DID. There may be identity disturbance, but not the presence of clearly separated parts or amnesia."
From my understanding the label matters less as treatment is essentially the same for both disorders, however asking your therapist what he has observed and if he has thoughts on the diagnosis might be a good place to start. Feelings of ambivalence around talking about this stuff is common and might be something else to explore with him. Again, I can’t speak to what is right for you/your system but I’m a big advocate for seeking professional help when possible.
As far as resources go I would look towards well established organizations/researchers for information. The Sidran institute has a good deal of information on their website as well as recommended readings and other resources.
Hope this helped, wishing you well on your journey xx
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Ah nevermind I just saw it! Unfortunately got kinda hidden between other posts. As far as I am concerned I don't know how much it at this point really affects my siblings. A few days ago one of my brothers showed abusive behaviour towards our younger sister too that caused me flashbacks since trauma with my mother doing similar things to me was involved. With the current Corona situation I unfortunately can't leave myself and she keeps telling my siblings how it's all their fault and just(1🦚
-parenting. So they think they only get disciplined for misbehaviour when they really actually didn't do anything wrong. My mother threatened before to take me to court for slander if I spoke up about something she told me. I am 18 now but cabt work or afford a lawyer or to move out so I'm basically fucked and wouldn't be able to take in my siblings :( - 🦚 (2)
Uff, I... don't remember sending that. I knew I sent some untagged ones back then which i mentioned but damn. I don't know when i sent it or what triggered me that badly that day.vlike what exact Corona news... for the promise I mentioned I have vague ideas of what I may have meant. Either that I originally promised myself to not try and harm myself until I meet certain people who mean the world to me, or that I promised myself to make the person who I planned to meet happy. Legitimately see (1)
them smikez make them laugh. They also suffer from mental health problems so yeah. I kinda just promised myself silently to make them happy. They loudly promised to make me happy. We are just very good friends for context. Like siblings pretty much. I kind of developed this probably unhealthy dependence on her which I think might play a role in why I completely shit down when I sent that. Uff. I guess I should look into how to not put my life into my friends hands at this rate...(2)
Also am just going to add that I'm also 🌺. That was my first tag I believe. I responded with the same tag after the answer to make it easier. I might just tag with both from now on d96xt idk geht I keep changing tags - sorry about that!(I also think i tagged one as either ☆ or ♡?? Really sorry if I'm causing confusion! Illl try to stay consistent now!) -🦚
I've mentioned in a previous one that I tend to kinda zone out when sending in stuff under huge emotions. I just noticed that this resulted in me thinking I sent in something completely different from what I did. Like before I would just be like "I dont recall what I said, but I'll recognize it when I see it!" But in one of the recent ones of mine you answered I was confused for a moment because I thought I had remembered but it was something totally different. Am I losing my mind here? -🦚🌺
Hi there,
First, I hope it's okay that I'm answering your asks at once! Since I've answered your other asks, I figured it might be easier just to answer them all in one place to help both of us keep track of them easier. Hopefully that's alright with you!
Also, there's no need to apologize for using the different tags on your asks. I'm just glad we got it all sorted out so you can watch out for your asks a little easier!
It's really unfortunate that your brother has exhibited some of the same behaviors as your mom. While it's not surprising because kids tend to model the behaviors they see, it is unfortunate that your sister has to be subjected to the behaviors and they cause you flashbacks. Neither of you deserve this!
It must be frustrating to know that you're currently stuck with your mom because of COVID-19. It makes sense that you can't afford leaving right now anyway, but maybe this is something you can work towards over time. Maybe, once quarantine eases up at least, you can start working on saving up money to eventually get your own place. Perhaps you could also use this time right now to think about what it might look like when you do move out, like if you'll be able to take your siblings with you or not.
As for what your mom said about suing you, this honestly sounds like one of her many abuse tactics to try to control you using fear. Though I'm not a lawyer or law expert by any means, I know she would need proof that you were making things up in order to actually sue you for slander. I don't she has this proof since you're not actually making things up. This is why I truly think that she's just trying to manipulate you by threatening to sue you, but I obviously can't know that for sure.
It's really great that you have the type of relationship with this friend you mentioned! It's amazing when you find someone that you care about so much that it gives you motivation to keep going. You mentioned not wanting to rely on friends so much in this way, but it didn't sound like you or your friends are being harmed by viewing them as a reason to keep going. Everyone needs these reasons and there's nothing wrong with those reasons being other people. You're going through a lot and deserve to have support from your friends, so it's wonderful that you care about them (and vice versa) this much! While it may help to try to find more reasons to keep going, I don't personally see anything wrong with your friends being a rock for you. You can always check out our reasons to stay alive page here if you'd like examples of what helps others keep going.
Finally, I don't think you're losing your mind! Some people tend to dissociate when they get overwhelmed emotionally, so I don't think what you're experiencing is a sign that you're losing your mind. Sometimes people subconsciously check out mentally when they get overwhelmed, which sounds like could be what's happening here when you don't remember what exactly you sent in your asks. I know I mentioned grounding techniques before and you mentioned that they can be challenging when you're around your mom, but I learned something in therapy last week that might help because you can likely do it without your mom noticing. Basically, just pick something in your surroundings and mentally pay attention to the very fine details of the item. For instance, I've been practicing this with my bookshelf in my bedroom and I mentally describe the colors of the shelf, the texture, the details of my books on the shelves, etc. This helps orient you to your surroundings in the present moment, which can be helpful when you're emotionally overwhelmed. It can also probably be done without your mom noticing. Maybe this is something you can give a try when you feel overwhelmed like you did when you sent your asks and didn't remember the content afterward. Again, I don't think this is a sign that you're losing your mind and perhaps this is something that could help when this happens to you.
I hope to hear from you again soon!
-Samantha
#abuse#trauma#family#COVID-19#coronavirus#🦚🌺#🦚#🌺#advice#advice blog#mental health advice#mhasamantha#Anonymous
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