#mitigate harm

[blood-orange-juice]

I realised I have a problem with the "Childe has cPTSD" idea that has been getting popularity in fandom, but it's probably more because of my gripe as a psych professional with the concept of cPTSD in general.

It's an understudied disorder and it's not yet in the DSM-V. Therapists use the term because it's better than nothing (they have to treat people regardless of whether we have a comprehensive theory of how humans function) but as it is now it simply clumps together too many things.

It started with a very reasonable thought that prolonged exposure to moderately stressful events can be just as harmful as One Huge Trauma, and also that the effects or prolonged exposure to stress will differ from only experiencing something once.

Sadly, the most common scenario in which a Western person (the type that has access to therapy and gets to talk about it online) can get cPTSD is child abuse. This means in the cases that are studied and discussed cPTSD response to prolonged stress is mixed with developmental trauma (all kinds of insufficient parenting and a child's needs not being met), attachment trauma (not having a stable relationship with a caretaker at a very early age when attachment strategies are formed), relational trauma (any trauma gotten in relationships at any age) and just general reaction to abuse (and all the damage to agency and self-worth that comes from it).

cPTSD of a person who came back from a war will differ a lot from cPTSD of a person who was raised by an abusive parent. There are similarities, sure, and it's important to recognise that a bad family situation can be just as damaging as being in an active war zone (in that sense the term has done more good than harm), but these two people won't have the same self-concepts and coping strategies.

The concept of cPTSD can be very useful if you are trying to understand what is happening to you personally or to explain it to your therapist (or to find a trauma-informed therapist), it isn't bad. But you can't say "this character has cPTSD" and derive meaningful predictions about his behaviour or self-image from it. It's too much of an umbrella term.

So, back to our boy. Bad things only started to happen to him at 14 and it's different from someone being consistently traumatised from an early age.

Does he have hypervigilance, bizarre strategies of self-regulation, at least some amount of dissociation, occasional attention problems and intolerance to helplessness? Yeah, probably, his lifestyle would do that to pretty much anyone. Prolonged stress just does that, doesn't matter how badass someone is. Some negative beliefs about himself are also likely. Difficulty with connecting with others is a given (everyone else lives in a different reality, how would he even begin to connect).

Does he have relational trauma? Also yes, we all do. Some justified guilt and anger over how things went? Not necessary but very possible. Some irrational guilt for things he couldn't control? Again, not necessary but I could roll with that (it's a common response to helplessness. guilt is easier to stomach than the loss of control).

Would he behave like a child abuse victim, thinking himself completely worthless and constantly doubting and pitying himself? I don't think so. He looks like a person who has never been abused in his life. It's very fun to write and I understand the appeal of it (I'm probably occasionally guilty of that too) but it's simply not how he's portrayed in canon.

He wouldn't think of himself like a child of narcissistic parents would either (having to be the best to prove his right to exist). He was long past the age when he could have gotten that type of trauma when Abyss and the Fatui happened to him. Also his resilience comes from somewhere and I think it's from having a loving family. Sure, it wasn't a perfect family (I have a lot of questions for them) and now it's irreparably messed up even more but he does look like a person who was loved as a kid.

[the-badger-mole]

So we all know that that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, and to a certain extent, we have to acknowledge that our way of life is dependent on the suffering of others. Fortunately, it seems there are people who are pushing against that. If you're in the market for a new phone, I urge you to check out the Fairphone 4. It's made using ethically sourced materials and designed to be modular, so you can make repairs at home- which means if you crack your screen, or the battery stops working, you don't have to buy a whole new phone. I know the world is becoming more and more aware of the horrific conditions being suffered by people in places like DRC to make our smart devices. You can use your buying power to make a change.

I am personally not in the market for a new phone just yet, but if you are looking to get a new phone, I encourage you to look into ethically sourced phones and other tech. If you already have a Fairphone, please reblog this and talk about your experience. Be honest. Give the pros and cons so people can make informed decisions. We can't immediately stop all of the horrors that capitalism has brought on the world, but we have the power to make smaller choices where we can to mitigate the harm done.

Fairphone's main company seems to operate in Europe (website here), but if you are looking to buy in the US and Canada, check out their partner site, Murena (website here).

[tearlessrain]

turns out literally everything has nuance and widespread moral panic is never the optimal way to deal with even legitimate issues

[jadedgenasi]

So you're telling me the Aeorians died not knowing the robots they created had true sentience and wills of their own. That's actually really damn funny.

Like. Who do you think the aeormatons with the chain link lips were for? Because I'm willing to bet it wasn't for other aeormatons. Robots serve functions and serve the mages that made them - for as many tasks, chores, and daily comveniences as you can imagine.

The nature of totalitarian rule is that no matter how minute and specific their rules or how brutally they are enforced, the more they seek and convince themselves they have total control the easier it is to hide where they don't.

Devexian's awakening of FCG seemed at first more of a mental thing. That D freed them and the other bots he found from whatever protocol was running them and that was the point at which they gained sentience. And to an extent maybe freeing his kin from some kind of programming was part of unlocking the true freedom to leave and have their own lives. But through Downfall, we got to see that the aeormatons had entire secret societies and life partners (with mortals! Who also found ways to live on the fringes!) and concepts of pleasure that existed very far outside their purpose within the panopticon that was their city - a city which went so far as to record essences and memories of its inhabitants on a scale even its creators couldn't have foreseen... Not really known for their foresight, those totalitarians.

It's the same mistake the gods made, except that when the gods were forced to reckon with the damage they were causing their world, regardless of the intent and the good they also brought, they removed themselves from the equation so as to prevent more damage. Even though they didn't want to leave. Even though they made this place.

Take a good look at Aeor, the kids beat up for the graffiti and the people hanged for making it all the way to a godless place only to get caught with their faith. If they realized their creations had more to them than they had intended - if they had realized they were capable of following those gods - do you think they would have made the same choice?

Me either.

And that right there is the difference between the gods and the mortals running Aeor. Ludinus sees all of these parallels that prove his point about how the gods had no right to their dominion except through power they abused when it became clear that mortals could challenge them. He's going to draw those comparisons and he is absolutely going to omit or miss entirely the part where the gods heard their people - not just the ones worshipping them, maybe for the first time - and stopped hurting them.

[separatist-apologist]

Gatekeeping therapeutic clinical language from the internet actually, none of you all know what any of this means and it shows

[spacedadsupport]

25/03/2025 Jean-Luc Picard @SpaceDadSupport Incoming Transmission…

Any political system that values the economy over lives is an insidious, toxic, inhumane dogma.

[sisterrmorphine]

We have got to get harm reduction in schools. We have got to get parenting classes that teach how to interact with your child/their friends' substance use. Like how many kids are exposed to chaotic drug use every day? Maybe I just grew up outgroup in a big urban area but my peers were ODing by middle school. More of them were punished, carcerally or otherwise for seeking help for that or far less medically serious reactions to drugs. Like idk. Your children are doing drugs and your children are guessing how to do drugs from media and word of mouth which is where we get people doing whippits straight from the can or calling 911 and having the cops come to a bad edible trip or thinking their dad's ODing when he's just nodding out. Like auuugh we need intergenerational harm reduction NOW

[hippo-pot]

meanwhile, Texas

"[Attorney General Ken Paxton] said a gift clause in the state constitution does not allow public funds to be sent to private citizens without a clear use."

Counterpoint: money has many clear uses

[jyndor]

fucking christ we are going to war with fucking iran, the world cannot allow this country, the united states, and its attack dog israel, to bring us all to the brink of hell.

[comingtoyoursenses]

In my contemporary psych course I was talking about how imperative it is that the future of psychology leans into challenging and changing systematic and systemic inequity and this guy goes "what if we made AI sentient and did psych experiments on it to bypass human rights violations" ????????? Like how about you eat shit

[yellowraincoat]

People will be like: “we need to acknowledge that the democrats and republicans are not a black and white good and evil dichotomy.” And like, sure they’re not, but they’re sure as hell a gray and black, bad/ineffectual and comically evil dichotomy. And call me crazy but rn I’d take bad and ineffectual over comically evil. In a heartbeat even.

[boof-chamber]

from a leftist perspective - which requires us to consider these types of issues within their proper social context - cluster b disorders can be understood as a hyper-adaptation to capitalist alienation - which would then mean that their behavior is a rational response to extremely effed up conditions.

people do not “behave” in a vacuum. when we think “crazy,” we think of wildly irrational, unpredictable behaviors that have no connection to the reality that “sane” people inhabit. but all behavior has context. mental illnesses, including cluster b disorders, are rational responses to the conditions of this anti-human society we are all immersed in, the reality we are all living in. some of us adapt to these conditions better than others, and some of us over adapt - as is the case with cluster b disorders. truth is that the “problematic” behaviors associated with cluster b disorders are actually pretty heavily rewarded in our society under circumstances that are deemed acceptable.

as leftists, we’re supposed to be all about “community” - building community, connection, interdependence, collective well-being. but the truth is that most of us haven’t spent much time thinking on this much deeper than meetings, actions, political work - all guided by our own internalized alienation under neoliberal competitive individualism - that anti-human system that starts hammering away at our humanness from the day we are born. we learn to tolerate it by dehumanizing ourselves and one another - we blunt our own humanity so we can keep plugging along, fulfilling the obligations imposed on us by this anti-human system.

and so we take on the role of oppressor, using the oppressors’ tactics, when someone is seen as disruptive of our shallow efforts to perform “community.” understand that banishment is violence. to deprive a human being of social connection and belonging is to inflict psychic pain and lifelong torment - that’s trauma. and trauma is where cluster b and other mental health diagnoses got their start.

as leftists, we need to broaden our ideas around what constitutes a “leftist space.” if we are serious about transforming society, we need to take ourselves seriously by incorporating counter-alienation practice into our day to day lives.

if we want to raise collective consciousness, we need to recognize the ways our own character has been shaped by social forces, and we need to learn how to recognize the ways those same social forces have shaped others, most especially those who are most severely impacted.

if we hope to decommodify social relations, we must make a conscious and deliberate effort to keep our spaces free from transactional dynamics that replicate market relations

if we are serious about building solidarity, we need to take ourselves seriously by developing community support structures that counter the isolating tendencies that neoliberal society has so deeply instilled in us.

to further isolate the people who have been hit the hardest by capitalist alienation is basically what we have been trained to do by the system. the entire point is to resist.

i am in no way minimizing or dismissing the harm that some people with cluster b disorders can be capable of - i am in the thick of it right now, my life has been a nightmare for the past year and a half and it’s not even close to over. i am hurt, i am afraid, and most of all, i am angry - because it didn’t have to get this bad. none of this shit had to happen and the fact that it’s STILL GOING—-

when we say that people need to be held responsible for the harm they cause, what are we even talking about? punishment? retribution? vengeance? banishment? what is it that you think propels the destructive behaviors we’ve come to associate with BPD? it’s carceral logic. the logic passed down to us by the hegemonic neoliberal order, that tells us to harm one another under the guise of “safety” - is pathologized when it’s turned onto us by those we have left behind.

what i’m saying is that we are them, they are us. and we need to start taking responsibility for the harm done to them as well as the harm we allow them to do to us. they do not have the power that the ruling class has. they could not cause such devastating harm if we were at all serious about building and practicing solidarity.

networks of genuine solidarity, community care, and interdependence mitigate that harm. but for as much as we like to talk about it, few if us have the faintest clue as to what that actually looks like, or how to turn it into action when it matters most.

[karokawwo]

i should. really start writing down those lore relevant ocs... for ages i've been searching for what to do with victoria and now i finally got it

[macden]

THANK GOD THERE MIGHT STILL BE HOPE

[musical-chick-13]

What if I told you. That the most violent option. Is not automatically the correct or most helpful one.

[hairbrush9]

Anytime Tumblr thinks it's being funny with a post or an ad I purposely ignore it and never reference it. It always feels so forced?? Like literally every change besides badges is so try hard and fail. Nobody is going to pay for blog access lmao nobody is used Tumblr live can you people just do what users have been asking forever and always?