passed that promotion test with 100% and the tester took a note agent knows their job but isn’t very confident yeahhhhhhhhh

vaguing a post that's on my dash that I don't want to engage with (as usual) but actually no CPTSD isn't a diagnosis for 'when things were a tiny bit bad a lot' or 'if you experienced relationships that were toxic but not abusive' it's a diagnosis describing the impacts of CONTINUOUS TRAUMA. not less significant but more frequent trauma; trauma which is ongoing/continuous/recurring in developmental years.

like I'm not trying to gatekeep here and I recognise the value of saying 'it doesn't have to be a Single Big Obvious Trauma' because one key thing about CPTSD is that generally it makes traumatic incidents Your Normal so you don't necessarily view them as unusual or concerning. but I often see people talk about CPTSD as if it implies smaller individual incidents than PTSD and that just is not the case.

most experiences I have seen people be diagnosed with CPTSD for (myself included) are not 'a little bit toxic'. they are things which, each incident taken separately, an outsider would still recognise as traumatic - medical emergencies, rape and sexual abuse, significant physical violence, emotional abuse and coercive control, homelessness, severe poverty, war, torture, etc - and the thing that makes the PTSD C is not the relative level of the trauma, but the fact that it's enough of a repeated and consistent pattern, at an early enough stage, and sufficiently embedded in everyday life, that it becomes a person's baseline for 'normal'.

CPTSD is not a synonym for emotional microtraumas or cumulative trauma or 'death by a thousand cuts'. It's specifically defining the psychological differences in response to long term formative trauma as opposed to traumatic events which you process as an aberration (eg the difference between regular violence against you from trusted adults in childhood vs being physically abused for the first time in adulthood with existing experience of healthy relationships). Traumas causing CPTSD tend to be pretty similar in type, scale and severity to traumas causing standard PTSD - they are just more embedded and normalised earlier in life.

all this to say there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that cumulative microtraumas can't affect us in traumatic ways. there's nothing wrong with pointing out that there's a broad range of types of trauma, and trauma can include stuff like growing up marginalised or ill as well as abuse, war, injury or immediate loss. there's nothing wrong, too, with acknowledging that a lot that is traumatic doesn't necessarily feel traumatic to you.

but like. no. CPTSD is not a diagnosis for people whose trauma wasn't 'big enough' for PTSD. CPTSD is not cumulative microtraumas. CPTSD is a response to formative macrotraumas or to a long term traumatic situation without hope of escape or change and if you want to talk about microtraumas then do that but it's not what CPTSD is!

heres some more of the creature

i can never understand all the people going “covid’s just a cold” “it’s just like the flu”. it’s not influenza or a rhinovirus. covid sars-cov-2: severe accute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. scientifically, it can never be a cold or flu, and it will cause severe accute respiratory syndrome. that’s not posturing or dramatics, it’s science

Since we are currently on the Ashlynn Ella brainrot, I’ve been thinking about something yk.

And like, it’s honestly so, so fucked up that when Ashlynn signed the Storybook of Legends, she did it knowing full well that she was signing her Mother’s death warrant and she couldn’t do anything about it for the sake of ‘destiny’.

Granted, yes, the book was fake; but Ashlynn did not know that when she signed. To her, this was it; this was her signing her life away due to the whims of some nonsensical tradition.

When Ashlynn Ella, who is no more than 15, signed her page in the Storybook of Legend; do you think she thought about her Mother?

When Ashlynn signed her page in the book and saw her story play out; when she saw her ‘happily ever after’, do you think she was burdened by unsurmountable guilt due to the fact that she knew that by signing, she had practically killed her own Mother?

When she saw her own last name as she picked up the quill and signed, do you think she thought about Cinderella, and how one day her Mother would die and she would one day become Cinderella; just a title. No longer Ashlynn Ella, no, simply another character repeating another story.

Do you think her Mother thought the same thing? Or her Grandmother? Or every Cinderella that came before?

How many generations of Cinderella have been forced to kill their own mothers before they put a stop to this?

its been insane witnessing the full force of propaganda and american imperialism with my own two eyes as an adult these past few years. obviously ive known abt it plenty and seen it before, but witnessing it at this age with this much force is... dystopian and crazy

posting on here is like my sisyphean boulder i'm constantly rolling tbh

i’m sooooooooo stressed about a message i just sent but i am glad i sent it bc if i hadn’t i would’ve spent the rest of however long thinking about sending it and i don’t like that at all but also my heart is literally pounding in my chest what if he hates me and doesn’t want to be friends anymore…………………

I just read the translations for the !! SS Arc's secret orders/orders/penalties and...(cw for violence and death, as well as slightly spoilers)

Isn't this taking "the horrors of the entertainment industry" just a tad too far????? Seriously, what actually -

okay sitting at work so I’m working out shiloh, durge run edition. he already exists in another game as a literal villain (mob boss edition) so translating him into dark urge is a bit fun. one of his Big Things is that he’s a murderer but he has a strict honor code irt certain ways of fighting and killing so—I’d diagnose him.. lawful evil? and I’m playing him that the urges in act 1 kind of consume him a bit and take over, and he isn’t resisting them at all. it’s only once he goes into act 2 that he’ll begin to try and get them under control—not because he wants to rise above them but because he cannot tolerate being under the thumb of something else, or under the compulsion of something he doesn’t control completely, including his own impulses & deteriorating mind. gunning for taking the cult as his own and being minthara’s evil wife. also he’s 6’11”. 7’3” with the horns.

.

The thing is I am definitely not happy or chill in the Immediate Sense lately but I am, big picture, so fucking happy with the person I am.

It's like. My brain was made by and for consistent trauma and since that trauma stopped about 5-7 years ago, it is incredible what the amount of resilience and cleverness and flexibility and thoughtfulness I developed to survive can do when it's not being all spent on surviving. like I had a hundred ton weight on me so I had to get REALLY STRONG to stay in the same place and not get 100% crushed, and when that weight came off I found I can use the strength it used to take to stand up and I can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

I was talking to my mum the other day and she said, "you've got the 'fuck it' energy at 30 that most women don't find until their fifties at least" and I'm like yeah man. Imagine how unstoppable I'll be in 20 years.

and it just occurred to me that when we move, I might try to find a new therapist. there might be one/a few right in the town we're moving to (I haven't checked), but we'll be really close to a city then. so I could get there regularly (maybe. it's very scary but maybe I can manage it). so. I should probably do that? maybe find someone who'll like.... do more than just accept that I've got social anxiety (because that's what I said when I first saw my previous therapist) and help me figure out the real problem.

so I caught covid from canadian nationals and did in fact have the 40 degree fever + cough of death response for a couple days :( the fever is gone but the cough is not and i can barely get through workday afternoons without falling asleep

oh the body is rly not having it today huh 😐