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Lots of therapists are like that, yeah. Amazing at boundaries and emotion regulation at work, but absolute shit at it in their real life. Probably gets a ton of “you must be a shit therapist” / “aren’t you a therapist?” comments.

Can't get over that bit right after Jin Zixuan dies, when they're back in the Burial Mounds and Wei Wuxian is losing his shit about how everything is ruined, and he says, what am I supposed to do now?

And the narration stops to describe him hearing himself say that, and knowing just how bad that proves the situation is.

Because he's not supposed to be the one who says that. Other people say that to him. And he answers them, always. That's how this works.

That's just such a fantastic bit of characterization. I think it might be the clearest statement we ever get about how Wei Wuxian identifies, as a person.

He identifies as someone who can fix it. When there's a difficult situation that's stumping other people. That's what 'attempting the impossible' really is, for him. If he can resolve the trouble by being strong or charming or shameless, that's fine. If he can solve it by being terribly clever, that's excellent. If he has to solve it by figuring out what body part to sacrifice or what crime to commit, well then that's how it has to be.

But if he can't solve it, then he doesn't know who he is anymore.

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it’s actually a balance of this and continuing to put in effort to nurture the relationship

having to come to terms with the fact that love is not an everlasting performance in which you attempt to retain the attention of your significant other but rather a release of control and putting faith into them and trusting them to choose to stay with you no matter what you have to offer

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I find it interesting how people frame this as “defending” Shauna or “apologizing” for her instead of just doing the basic “why do people do what they do” analysis.

For the vast majority of “bad” people, there’s trauma or some other environmental impact that made them that way. There’s 2 things that cause animal behavior: genetics and environment. And with genetics, even the ‘bad person genes’ will only affect someone’s behavior if it’s ‘switched on’ by a traumatic event.

And the thing about Shauna, and really all the survivors but I think most glaringly in Shauna, is that even though she was never very present with Callie or Jeff and even though she always had secrets she did convince herself she moved on. Adult Shauna in s1 would not go hunt down the daughter of Hanna, because it had been years since she’d even spoken to another survivor other than Tai. Adult Shauna is regressing back into violence and manipulation and loneliness because she’s scared. In the past months she has seen two of her friends die, has been blackmailed and stalked (at least she believed so), and has been forced into interacting with the wilderness. Her friends tried to hunt her and kill her just like they did in the wilderness!!! She’s regressing because the only way she knows how to deal with fear and loss of control is to take control back by any means, especially through violence. Because she’s a heavily traumatized woman, not because she’s been hiding some sadistic evil side for 2 seasons. She’s forgetting that she’s not just a girl in the woods forced into butchering her friends for survival.

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Genuinely curious if there’s licensed therapists out there who consider themselves “antis” in a fandom context. If so, I’d be interested in having a respectful conversation about your reasons.

Of course there’s no way to prove that you’re licensed unless you doxx yourself and I won’t ask for that so I’d have to just go off of vibes based on my knowledge base and my interactions with other therapists online.

Hell, I’d even open this up to college/grad students in a MH therapy degree program. Just to see how your perceptions of human behavior at this point interact with fandom discourse.

To be specific, I am meaning “anti” to mean “people in fandoms who believe that other people in general should only enjoy and promote content that they perceive as morally upstanding.” This covers a wide variety, I know. Mainly I am trying to avoid these sorts of things that I am NOT considering criteria for being an anti:

“I find some stuff gross but I don’t care if anyone else likes it”

“I find some stuff gross and I’d personally not want to be friends with someone if they told me they liked that stuff when I first met them, but I wouldn’t automatically assume that they condone that stuff IRL and I will defend them from harassment if people accuse them of such without proof”

“I know this specific person who reads content that triggers them specifically as a method of self-harm and I think that it’s in their best interest to find better coping mechanisms”

I would even include “content that promotes bigotry” under stuff that might make someone an anti if they believe that others shouldn’t enjoy it. My reasoning being that it seems to make the gray areas easier to navigate for discussion purposes, but also because “enjoy” doesn’t necessarily mean “agree with” and people can enjoy media about horrific things as much as they can enjoy studying historical horrific things.

To be transparent, I was an anti under this definition until I was in my social work masters program. Throughout my experiences in school, I began to loosen up on my judgements about what a person’s inner world is like based on their outward behavior, because we can’t assume until we really know someone intimately, especially when you’re considering outward behavior that doesn’t result in harm being done to any real people or the self. If anyone else has had that experience I’d like to hear about that too.

I doubt this will reach the people I want to talk to because I don’t actually know what kind of tags to use, but anyone is free to reblog this I suppose? I’m just kind of casting a line into the dark and hoping for a bite.

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I saw something earlier that said that oDylan sees his innie as a separate person, hence the strong reaction to the cheating and also his respect for him as a person whereas Helena and oMark see their innies as extensions of themselves and therefore someone they can control.

I like this idea, but I hope that we can still get to that self-compassion I mentioned. Self-compassion is so demonized in our culture, we are so used to forcing ourselves through things and putting up with misery for the sake of productivity. But it is ideal to see yourself as a human being just like anyone else. So I hope that Helena and oMark can see their innies as separate people but also parts of themselves, in a way where they feel connected to their innies and have their wellbeing at the forefront of their mind along with their own.

I was really hoping for oMark to have a more loving relationship with iMark, and not just in a selfcest kind of way. I want him to love iMark because he’s part of him. But I don’t know if either Mark is capable of self-compassion at this stage. Maybe iMark is, but I’m not sure. I really really hope that the end of this show involves the Marks learning to love each other.

I was really hanging into the part of the intro in season 1 that had one Mark holding the other one bridal style and carrying him through the elevator door. It evoked such a sense of “it’s okay, I got you” that I desperately want to see play out.

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i was thinking about this in bed last night lol Gemma 100% knows that this is iMark and not her husband

salty take: gemma is intelligent. she is a russian lit professor. she walked through doors and experienced the gaps in her memory and understood what that meant, and knows the door she's on the other side of is another severed precipice. she was rescued by her man soaked in blood who kissed every part of her face and called her his baby and clearly did everything in his power even years later to deliver her from hell. she does not think HER mark moved on, she knows a part of him is trapped in hell now just as she was, and it looks like it found a reason to stay. it is devastating enough without twisting it into her thinking he's got a wife and children.

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I was really hoping for oMark to have a more loving relationship with iMark, and not just in a selfcest kind of way. I want him to love iMark because he’s part of him. But I don’t know if either Mark is capable of self-compassion at this stage. Maybe iMark is, but I’m not sure. I really really hope that the end of this show involves the Marks learning to love each other.

I was really hanging into the part of the intro in season 1 that had one Mark holding the other one bridal style and carrying him through the elevator door. It evoked such a sense of “it’s okay, I got you” that I desperately want to see play out.

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it's amazing how much i rely on fan media (is there another therm for that?) when feeling down, like something bad happens in my life and i inmediatly go to read fanfic, enter tumblr or something and dont talk to anyone about it

healthy? idk but it does its work fine

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Fandom Problem #6729:

Antis red-faced screaming "GO TO FUCKING THERAPY!!!!!!" when someone likes taboo or darkfic when any legit therapist (that ISN'T some random unqualified guy the church got to tell you to go do Jesus about it) would tell you that its normal to be intrigued by things we'd never ever want to personally take part in and that fiction is a safe and healthy way of exploring darker subjects, that its human nature to want to experience EVERYTHING and that fiction is a safe way of experiencing unsafe dangerous things in a way that will cause no real-life harm, or to help process and work through trauma.

Any real therapist would and its THEIR behavior therapists would find alarming (likely feeling a lack of control over their lifes making them feel the need to try to control others, with a misplaced sense of duty.)

Oh okay but a 15 year old on Tumblr says that would be "retraumatizing" yourself so fuck medical degrees I guess.

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Hello, i found this old post in the tags and noticed that you’re also a therapist 👀 What’s your hottest take about a specific show/piece of media 👀

i want old insane fandom tumblr back so to encourage interaction and positivity everyone who likes/reblogs this post will get a fun lil fandom ask from me!

all i ask in return is that you go send a silly lil ask to someone else! message that fanartist you've loved for ages! bother one of your mutual for headcanons! say hi to a mutual who reblogs a lot but doesn't post their own thoughts much! encourage people to say hi!

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My therapist just told me my problem is that I need to write more fanfiction.

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If you say you want to become a therapist or whatever, and then turn around and say you want proshippers dead, maybe you shouldn't be anywhere fucking near people's medical records or be in charge of their well-being in any way, shape, or form.

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I can almost guarantee you that if you go to any therapist and explain your Fanfiction Beliefs whatever those beliefs might be the therapist is going to nod politely and hopefully try to ascertain what about the fanfiction situation is causing you actual distress

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i can’t handle reading about therapy sessions 😂 i could barely handle writing a “my blorbo goes to therapy” fic myself even

adding to "he would not fucking say that" by extending it to "his therapy would not fucking work like that"

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I started watching Hannibal recently and I just know it’s gonna get So Bad with the therapy stuff and I just have to take off my therapist hat while watching 😂

I've had many therapists and if any one of them started quoting a philosopher without, like, asking if I had heard the quote before, I would think them at best an insufferable asshole. What is the therapeutic point of that. I get like showing that Hannibal is a bad therapist and the dangers of white men with credentials, but at least make him a real therapist right? Is it scarier if he's a good therapist who also eats people or if he's a bad therapist who also eats people? Is it more morally complex? Sorry, excuse me, is the name Hannibal Lecter not cultural cache enough to clue us into his internal motivations without also having to make him a shitty therapist?

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Good for you, and good for your therapist. Engaging in disturbing thoughts/feelings in a safe and healthy environment is healing, even if it upsets people on the internet.

i love having a therapy session with my therapist who is like 'okay so we're gonna work on exposure therapy and doing art therapy to express your thoughts in a safe and healthy way' and then i come on this site and ppl are like 'thoughts and expressing those thoughts are bad, youre a terrible person if you ever think these thoughts, especially if you draw/write about it' but then i gently remove/block those ppl and open clip studio and ao3 and my heart heals again

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that’s what makes characters interesting

Is it a coincidence that all my fav characters are in urgent need of therapy?