#…cptsd is a bitch. this whole situation is. a fucking bITCH.

[void-tiger]

…what does it say about me that I will literally walk myself through hell for someone I love so long as I can hold onto the assurance that they love me back, anyway.

[leaveherwildliketheflowers]

Summoned to jury duty for the first time today and I am bored out of my mind. Normally I would kill for this level of down time but, you know, in the comfort of my own home. Anyway, using this as an excuse to get some thoughts out here. Putting in a cut to save your feed. TW for suicidal thoughts and weight mention.

Last week in therapy I was finally able to verbalize how I experience certain feelings/situations. It only took 4 years 😅. T was very kind and gentle and said it is textbook CPTSD responses and that I'm in fact not "crazy". It was nice to have that validation since I have spent my whole life convinced I make these things up since I don't have a "why" behind the feeling. But idk where to go with this now. I suppose that's a question for T.

I'm very determined to be the break in my families generational trauma.

Grief is a fucking bitch.

I really miss my twins. I miss them every day but that ache is stronger lately. There was a rainbow on my drive downtown this morning and I know they sent it for me 🤍

M is the absolute best. She searches for me now and gives me the biggest belly laughs when we play. It melts me. She is everything my shattered heart needed.

M loves to play with my necklace that has the twins handprints on it and I really love that.

Mood is better since IUD removal. Not perfect, but I don't want to kill myself daily so that's progress.

I want another baby.

I'm within 3 pounds of my (healthy) pre pregnancy weight. I clarify healthy because I intentionally gained weight before getting pregnant and I have no desire to be at the weight I was in the thick of the eating disorder. I gained a lot of weight in pregnancy. Like double the recommended gain. It all came off without trying. Aside of lugging M around and taking a daily walk I really haven't been exercising. I absolutely have not watched what I eat. I'm not sure if this is good or concerning, but I'm trying to take it for what it is. Maybe my body can maintain itself at my healthy weight without my intervention? What a wild thought.

[aftonfamilyvalues]

My roommate was super passive aggressive to me in a way that really just sent me and I think she overheard me venting about her in the phone saying she was a malicious bitch (also not feminist opps.)

I feel bad about it but then at the same time Omg I spent a month feeling in crisis that I was going to be homeless. She agreed to give me more time, said she would write up a new lease for me.

(I asked for more time and she agreed basically, and took a little over a month to send a new one to me. But via email. She gave me the silent treatment the whole time. I asked for more time because I mean I don’t earn very much and I got injuried during my 6 month lease. I wanted to ask for 6 more months but I had a feeling she would say no so I asked for 3. She’s been mean to me since I moved in. Suggested I should be further asking in life, at one point she gave me a dirty look and repeated back to me “how was work?” As if I asked an invasive question, I was just trying to be friendly and make conversation. And I’m fed up and tired so I stopped initiating with her. Because when I did initiate she was rude and I haven’t done anything to warrant that kind of disrespect. I’m clean and stay in my room and lay my bills on time. If k ran behind I’d communicate. I was good about communicating and I’m just burned out. I’m sure she thinks I’m matching her energy but I’d prefer if she spoke to me respectfully. She has no empathy.)

Anyway, didn’t speak to me, had a guest stay for fixed days without telling me and over a month had gone by and she hadn’t written up a new lease. I was in distress that I might be homeless and scared that she was future faking me. And thinking she moved in a whole new roommate without saying anything. I was panicking.

It affect me and at one point I had a crisis and couldn’t come in to work. My supervisor got mad. I called a hotline and broke down about how I was anxious I was going to get fired, and said prior to that I was afraid I was going to be homeless, because “my roommate is a malicious bitch.”

I really am not a malicious person , that’s why I can’t fathom it. Like she has been cruel, and a part of me feels guilty but maybe more as a fawn response. If she heard me she was eavesdropping. But I’m not malicious I’m anxious and burned out. In my distress I engaged in impulsive behaviors. I’m someone who is in desperate need of therapy, like dbt and EMDR cause I do have CPTSD. I can’t regulate my distress well at all. Oppressive situations turn me into an addict too. I seek to numb myself when I’m scared of being homeless. I binge drank and spent way too much on weed when I should’ve been saving, because I couldn’t have saved in one month and she hadn’t said a word to me which made me panic.& I also have PMDD and honestly the level of distress it put me in, and her fucking lack of empathy (I broke my toe while on the lease, my bike was stolen, I had to correct a mistake with social security. It’s my first job and I’m going back to school and struggling . I have 0 family support. She knows this. ) so yea, I called her malicious because honestly the distress of being homeless does affect me as a worker. I work in child care and gosh I get fatigue when I’m dealing with my roommate and trying to hold space for other people’s emotions. I barely was sleeping and having bad panic attacks…

I think she heard me.

Am I in the wrong? Her assuming I’m being passive aggressive and accusing me of that via text because I forgot to close a door and talking a week to tell me and shit like that just has me burned out. My previous roommate snooped in my room and read my things.

I should’ve left out the bitch part , but when she talks in the phone, she’s so loud and not private it almost feels like she wants me to hear. I normally use a white noise machine in the hopes that she won’t… I didn’t this time… and ok no sleep and not fully aware of myself and kind of loud. And I didn’t want her to hear that.

can i be honest and say im really not the best person to answer these sorts of things? like i would love to be able to give good advice and help but im so far disconnected from situations like this and mental health crises that i really dont know what to say. perhaps someone who understands a little better can help and advise.

[sincelastsession]

Vent post. Take with grain of salt.

My articulation is not how I wanted it to come out and so idfk if it'll read right. Just understand I'm not trying to act like a bitch. I'm processing.

I was gonna get food but now I feel like I can't fucking eat. I feel once again completely misunderstood and it's really frustrating.

I feel like assumptions etc are constantly made. I'm not even known yet. Have the charts for all the work I have done been found?

Am I just bad at being a person.

Sure I'd love to have a magical fix it medication but I'm on xanax (nessesary not only for psych but for other issues) and I smoke weed for pain and ptsd. It's highly unlikely I'll ever get Adderall to function unless I stop the weed. The weed is primarily for servere chronic pain. I used to get punished for CRYING so I'm not really ever showing how much I hurt.

I understand a conversation is turn taking. I am worried about time. I'm worried about being misunderstood. I feel rejected. Idk perhaps it was the delivery. I'm triggered. It just feels like the same as everyone else tired of me and when they tell me I'm too much. There's people that don't who have no problem with me being myself just talking how I talk. I understand it's not conducive to every situation. I don't like how this lack of hunger and anger and irritation and frustration is the result of that. Because how do I know I've been understood. How do I trust that?

It's incredibly hard for me to even be open enough to process it via writing in this blog.

I get it and I don't get it.

I really wish I could get my charts to save a hell of a lot of time. Yeah there's urgency for me. I never feel like I have time.

I miss my old psychiatrist because this shit wouldn't be happening. I'd be able to take my med and he would be brave enough to speak to the medical board.

I think a lot of people think I'm trying to discount how hard I'm struggling just being a person doing normal things. My executive dysfunction is terrible.

As far as meds go I've been on EVERYTHING and it's quite possible some of those meds contributed to fucking me up. I see a geneticist. I've had medical testing done. I have genetic mutations that cause me issues with a whole mess of medications.

I'd have to stop taking certain thinks to do the ket treatments and with my cptsd I'm not sure that that is a good idea. I don't want to experience side effects or an adverse reaction. I've almost died enough. I'd LOVE to try a SGB or TMS but my insurance doesn't cover it.

The sheer amount of adrenaline rush I felt and what I was able to absorb is not great. Just being told that even though no harm was meant was super triggering because it's not something I've been able to easily fix. The sheer amount of energy I'm putting into managing other things while I'm trying to listen etc I wish I could get someone to understand.

Idk if there's a different way it can be looked at. I'm not trying to be ride or take the session over. I know it's best intentions but honestly it felt like criticism and a cognitive distortion like an assumption directed at me. I understand that I'm not easy. But understand I don't have control over it fully. I don't always feel like im driving this fuckin flesh prison.

It is frustrating to have a brain that goes incredibly fast.

It's frustrating to feel completely rejected even tho I was told that's not what it was it still feels that way because it's very hard for me to trust anyone fully.

It's frustrating to be at a loss for words.

I do feel like I need to defend myself. Because shit I'm so fucking tired of hearing how I'm difficult basically. No it's not easy for everyone to talk to me an no not everyone can wrap their brain around what I'm experiencing.

I just feel gross. I want to eat I went to get food but now I'm sitting in a fucking parking lot with a cop staring at me as I cry and vent and feel overwhelming feelings.

You know it's not just family that hasn't heard or seen me. It's been therapists and doctors etc...

So that is related to trauma.

This is a controversial opinion of mine but I truly feel sometimes that a therapist will think they have me figured out and they don't, I feel like this process happens way too fast. I didn't even notice a cue or get a chance to jot down a reminder. I'm trying to listen to listen. I was trying to save time. I was trying to communicate.

I needed to talk about other things. But I feel like I've just been told everything I'm doing and saying us wrong and that is generally what people do to me when I try to speak.

It feels so shitty.

It takes forever to regulate when people point shit out that I'm aware im doing but can't really control. Like yes I get it. It does make things hard.

I feel that ppl think I'm trying to shoot down everything but this isn't new to me. I'm not trying to be defensive or whatever it looks like. I'm just trying to communicate before the thought poofs from my brain or save ppl the trouble of telling me shit that I'm completely aware of. I don't really plan to fuck up and interrupt etc it just happens and I don't feel that I have full control over that.

I am pissed because I'd really like to get my damn files from the last therapist I'd made headway with.

I originally thought I'd be doing emdr which we've discussed you aren't certified in.

I don't want to quit therapy. I'm scared I'll get the talk and it feels like I'm already about to be discarded so quickly.

Do I have proof that any of this is true? No.

It's just currently how I feel.

I had plans the rest of the day and now I can't even think to figure out where I needed to go and what to do. I can't pick a food. I'm not wanting to go to the post office. I feel like I'm shutting down.

I do have a suggestion that may actually help because I'm not sure if you know how you came across visually when you spoke to me.

I notice patterns I see micro expressions. I can see anger in people even if it's more a frustration.

So idk maybe put a mirror up and look at how the body language etc may come across. Or better yet perhaps say it to yourself in the mirror.

Look I'm probably still coming across in a way that will be misinterpreted or would be by someone else.

I don't want to build resentment so I'm sharing my CURRENT feelings which are subject to change.

I wish you could understand what's going on in my brain and could just magically understand but it takes time with me.

And yeah I'm always worried about everything.

I'm worried you'll read this along with everything else and just be like OH GOD NOPE

A Tree can't describe the Forest.

I have trouble wording things so sometimes also when I've got it in my head worded well and I'm telling people and I get chided even gently even just someone pointing out that I've interrupted and that is so triggering because it took me so long to try to figure out how to word it and then it goes unheard everyone feels unheard there's this mess and it's my fault and the import thing is gone. I get tongue tied. I stutter. I have trouble articulating sometimes.

I'll try to continue to not fuck up but I already feel I have with this post with my reaction with the obvious frustration which is not invalid because I know you're trying to help.

This is similar to how I react to my mom and dad via text but honestly 1000x nicer.

I don't even feel like I've said anything right in this post.

I feel like I'm completely not understood.

I understand locus of control. I don't feel that I even have a full locus of control though.

When you have autonomy when you first develop it and it's suddenly under micromanage control and you grow up with passive neglectful controlling fucking insane people who do the same shit you get fussed at about it's really hard.

I don't feel like a whole person. I feel like I'm just the manager or the pilot. Idfk where my core is my inner child etc. I know that I age regress sometimes. I know I do a ton of things but I'm not always in the driver's seat.

I don't understand myself either. I feel like parts of me are in charge of various things.

I hate this entry.

I just feel shame. I just want to hide.

Maybe I should play the 13-15 or so minute long audio I have of a past abuse so you can understand how absolutely nasty I'm spoken to and why it's so triggering to even hear constructive criticism etc...

I'll make more entries later. I still need to let my emotions chill out.

I am worried that therapy is now a trigger. Not because of you. Because it has always been me trying to tell people what is happening. I had times where cps should have been called but because I was interrupting etc... that was more of a focus than my own safety. No adult in my life has stood up to any abuser and done anything about it.

Now I'm an adult who is profoundly fucked up and like idfk how to be understood or to trust that I'm being heard or understood or anything

I feel like the people that get it in my life are the ones that have had a very hard life not the same as me but on level with me.

I don't know if this shit is gonna help you understand me any or if I've just unintentionally confused you more or whatever.

I have to go ahead and go home. I don't have the bandwidth to do anything else today. I'm pissed about it. I had plans.

Is it your fault? No. You don't know me. You don't know everything. You weren't not being professional. I don't know how to explain how it triggered me. If I could play it back to you I'd point it out the moment so you could understand.

I don't want to delete parts of this that I could go write better. It's hot, I'm trying to wrestle my emotions, I'm embarrassed, I'm still various forms of upset. I need to eat but im just sitting in this wholefoods parkinglot crying like an idiot. I feel like I've wasted a session talking about the wrong things thus creating a stupid kerfuffle.

I guess I'll see you next week.

[lassieposting]

Bit late and random but it's the anon you leave food out for here to give away I am also bi and I think exactly the same as you about bi val pretty much, every time Derek offers me representation my reaction is to slowly, hesitantly take it and say "thaaaaaaaaanks..." while rolling my eyes, in much the same way one accepts their least favourite flavour of sweet from an annoyingly enthusiastic uncle-type-individual. Ironically I feel I had more in common with her before the bi shit started up.

What I find really amusing is that Landy actually did reasonably well at representation when (and only when) he wasn’t trying. 

Oh god, this got long, anon, my ass rambled.

tldr; I'm glad actual bi people dislike bi val (or how Laundry handled bi val) as much as me, this will probably offend at least one person but i don't really care, Dirty Laundry wrote better rep when he didn't mean to write rep at all, and if he ever starts trying to "represent" groups I'm part of I'll take him out back like a dying horse and shoot him.

Like, yes. He had stupid and potentially offensive shit - I say potentially because what offends one member of a group won’t necessarily offend all of them. His attitude to mentally ill people is, frankly, disgusting. We’ve had “Skulduggery can’t be abused, he doesn’t have feelings”. We’ve had “eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY”. We had Ping, who seemed to be pretty much universally offensive. And that's what's always going to happen when a straight, cis, white, wealthy, male author tries to write marginalised groups he doesn't know shit about, because inevitably he's going to fall back on stereotypes.

But we also had:

SEXUALITY REP: Phase One's nonstraight characters were treated like the straight ones, and like, isn't that the whole point? There was no need for a massive Coming Out Story TM to grab for those sweet sweet Woke Points, because sexuality isn't supposed to be important to mages. I never understood why Val needed that whole Coming Out Panic storyline. Like...Des and Melissa are ridiculously supportive, encouraging, loving parents. They accepted you dating a ~19 year old when you were ~16. They accepted you revealing you could do fucking magic and that you'd been lying to them for like seven years. They took your undead buddy in stride and the most pressing question your dad had was whether magic toilets exist. There is zero reason to think that "I'm bisexual" is gonna be the thing that makes them flip and throw you into the streets in disgrace, Valkyrie. Come on.

Tanith had girlfriends and it was just mentioned casually, because it's normal.

China had massive UST with Eliza. That was an opportunity right there to not only include a f/f relationship, but also to bring back one of the few precious surviving characters from Phase One, using characters and a relationship that already had several books' worth of setup and tension and interest from fans.

The Monster Hunters have a casual conversation about which one of the Dead Men they'd date.

Ghastly has a conversation with Fletcher about the pain he's been through being in love. He never uses any pronouns.

It was confirmed at one point re: the Dead Men that at this point, after 300-odd years, everyone's been with everyone else at some point.

Thrasher is gay, and while Scapegrace's...everything...is treated as a joke/comedic relief, Thrasher's love for him isn't. He's completely devoted to Scapegrace, and that in itself is not played for laughs, even though the rest of the scene usually is. Thrasher's description of their first meeting is essentially a love-at-first-sight situation for him.

"ABNORMAL" RELATIONSHIP REP: Age gap relationships are normal for mages. Off the top of my head, using only canon, canon-implied or almost-canon ships:

Ghastly/Tanith (~350 year age difference)

Tanith/Sanguine (~250+ year age difference)

Tanith/Saracen (~350 year age difference)

Caisson/Solace (~250 year age difference)

China/Gordon (~400 year age difference)

Kierre/Temper (~500+ year age difference)

If you include fan ships, there's also things like Mevolent/Serpine or my Mevolent/Vile, which are both ~600 year minimum age gaps based on the timeline, or Valdug (and its variations) which is ~400 years.

Now, whether you consider this kind of rep positive or negative is up to you, but it’s there.

MENTAL ILLNESS REP: more like "Which characters in this series don't have a mental illness or a personality disorder?" I have some of these issues, but not all of them, so this is just how I read it, but:

ADHD: Skulduggery

Dissociative Identity Disorder: Skulduggery & Vile

Dissociation: Skulduggery again, most notably in DD and DB

Schizophrenia (or similar): Valkyrie & Darquesse, Valkyrie "seeing" Darquesse's ghost thing in Phase Two

Impostor Syndrome: Reflectionie

Autism: Clarabelle

Trauma/PTSD/CPTSD: Skulduggery, Valkyrie, China, Ghastly, Erskine...pretty much everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. People struggling with trauma are spoilt for choice of characters to see themselves in.

TRAUMA REP: This series is a trauma conga line, but everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. I see little bits of myself in more than one Phase One character.

Childhood Abuse (of varying degrees & types): Skulduggery, Carol & Crystal, Omen, Fletcher, Ghastly, China, Bliss, Sanguine...

Estranged Family: Skulduggery abandoning his crest, Fergus & Gordon, China & Bliss

Bad Romantic Relationship: Skulduggery is also very clearly an abuse victim. He’s got a solid history of romantic attachments to women who manipulate, use and gaslight him for their own agendas.  There's a whole paragraph in SPX about how Abyssinia broke him down, isolated him from his friends and preyed on his desperate need to be loved, all classic abuse tactics.

And I’m personally a huge fan of this backstory for two reasons:

1) Society likes a plucky victim in media. The "My suffering made me stronger" type of victim. And it's not always like that in real life. Not all survivors come out of their abuse stronger or kinder or more understanding. Some of us come out cold and fucked up. Some of us end up as emotionally stunted, bloodied-nails-and-bared-teeth survivors, broken in ways that can't be fixed and sustained by enough rage to power a small sun. But society doesn't like to tell the story of that kind of survivor, because we're not usually a likeable protagonist. When we're shown in media, we're usually the sympathetic villain, or maybe the antihero. But Skug is someone who's done awful things and lost pretty much all his faith in humanity and been burned more times than he can count, and he still makes the conscious choice to try and be the good guy when he could so easily go Evil Supervillain on the world, and I don't know about any of y'all, but I've modelled myself on him in that. I've made the choice to do something good when all I really want to do is just become a horrible, shrivelled ball of nastiness and revenge. And that's because I saw him do it and realised that I could do that too.

Skug is an incredibly capable, strong, masculine Man's Man. He gets in fights all the time, and he usually wins. He's military, an industry that's Really Bad for stigmatizing weakness and mental illness, and he's right up at the top of the hierarchy. Almost everyone is afraid of him. He's a straight up cold-blooded killer. Skulduggery Pleasant is precisely the type of person who's not normally portrayed as a victim of anything. Nothing about him screams "victim" at all. But his abuse history is insidious. He's so conditioned to respond in a certain way to abuse from the women in his life, probably from a very young age, that despite all that strength and capability and stubbornness and ego, he just goes along with it. And it's an established pattern going back hundreds of years. He keeps going back to China, even though he knows she's bad for him and his friends keep telling him to stay away from her. Abyssinia latched onto him when he was traumatized and vulnerable and weaponized it against him to make him easier to control - and when she reappears, hundreds of years later, she jumps straight back into using, tmanipulating and gaslighting him and not only does he let her, he doesn't even seem to realise that behaviour is abusive. He thinks it's normal! That's how he's always been treated by his long-term girlfriends, with the notable exception of Wifey. Even when Val is being fucking nasty to him in the first couple books of Phase Two, sniping and lying and blaming him for everything under the sun, he just takes it. There's no attempt to tell her she's being unreasonable, no telling her to fuck right off and give her head a wobble, no defending himself even when she's bitching over something that isn't even his doing. And this is a man who has an absolutely gleaming steel spine the rest of the time; Skug has no problem saying no to anybody else, but he can't get past the way he's been taught to treat the important ladies in his life. Skug is a walking reminder that anyone can be a victim of abuse, even the ones who seem least likely to be susceptible.

GENDER REP: This one is the most iffy out of the bunch and definitely was not done very well in the eyes of the people who matter most, but I'll include it anyway because it mattered to some.

So there's Nye, who's...agender? Genderless? And uses "it" pronouns? Nye was generally considered horrible rep because it's also a war criminal and experiments on people and I've seen people say "Well I don't want to be seen like that" but? It's still possible to be a war criminal and also genderless. I never saw the two things as being related or relevant to each other.

There's also Mantis, who's in exactly the same gender/pronouns boat as Nye and always seems to be forgotten about, which sucks because Mantis is a war hero. It fought for the Sanctuary during the War and they never lost a battle when it was in command. It's called out of retirement to fight for the Supreme Council in LSODM, ends up fighting alongside Skulduggery during the Battle of Roarhaven, and ultimately dies attempting a very brave, very risky strategy. Mantis is, unreservedly, one of the good guys. It was also my introduction to sentient beings using "it" pronouns, and did it in a way that felt natural, so when I met my first person online who used "it" pronouns and hated to be referred to as he/she, it was...weird, but not as weird as it would otherwise have been, because I was like, "Oh yeah, like the Crenga. Okay."

And then there's the Scapegrace sex change plotline, which...I might have an unpopular opinion on this one. From what I’ve seen, trans people don’t seem to think was handled well or with any sensitivity at all. I’m not trans, so if the trans community says he was being offensive to them, I’m not going to claim otherwise. But...I first read the Scapegrace plotline as a young teenager in a tiny rural school with zero diversity, going through a period of being deeply confused about my own gender identity. He was more or less my first introduction to the idea that genitals =/= gender. I was relieved, at that point in my life, to read someone having a lot of the same thoughts I was having about being in the wrong body. So while it may have been badly done and yeah, the series would probably have been better without it, it did make at least one kid suspecting she might not be cis go “Huh! So there are other people who feel like this.”

Thrasher is also implied to be legitimately trans/gender-questioning, and that's not played for laughs either.

So? Phase One, while it absolutely had faults and issues and things that were just "Oh god why", was actually full of rep, at least compared to the other series that I read as a child/teen. But? As soon as Dirty Laundry started trying to be woke? He fucking sucks ass at it. Aside from confirming Phase One's hints that Skug has a background of abusive relationships, every single attempt at shoehorning rep into Phase Two is Bad.

The painfully OOC, forced, badly-written awkwardness of Val suddenly being rabidly horny for women out of fucking nowhere. The stilted, forced cringiness between her and any of the women she's flirted with - contrast that with Sorrowscorn's interactions, full of natural chemistry that had us all like 👀 I mean, I never shipped Val/Melancholia, but I could always see why people did - they had miles more chemistry than Val/anyone in Phase Two.

The fucking mess that is v*litsa, because if someone says "I'm really not interested in friendships/relationships right now", clearly the route to true love is to bulldoze their boundaries and forcibly insert yourself into their life and proceed to treat them like a delicate soft uwu flower, completely ignoring the horrible things they've done, while gleefully damning their best friend as an irredeemable monster for the exact same things, which is. You know. Gonna affect your so-called love's self-confidence and self-esteem because she knows she's no different to him. Y'all know I love an angsty ship, an unhealthy ship, a ship with fucked power dynamics, but I literally cannot roll my eyes any further back in my head at this shit. I never read Demon Road, but from what I've heard from friends who did, it does seem like every time Laundry tries to write an f/f ship, he comes up with a cringey abusive/manipulative caricature and tries to call it rep, and he needs to Stop.

Val's Mental IllnessTM arc. It's funny how he wrote Skulduggery as a wonderfully complex character with deep-rooted psychological damage and long-lasting trauma, but believes he wrote a character with "no feelings" - but when he tries to delve into the damage the world of magic has done to Val, he turned her into a weak, whiny drug addict who treats everyone around her like garbage and is so selfish and dislikeable that I? Honestly can't even reconcile Phase Two val with Phase One val. They're two completely different people. He's shown on Twitter that he doesn't have any respect for mentally ill people, and it shows. Other mentally ill people might see it differently, but the whole thing just makes me go "yikes".

Never, who has no personality outside of being genderfluid, and whose pronouns make no sense. I'm sorry, I have never met an nb person who insists that you change from male to female pronouns multiple times in a sentence, every time you refer to them. It's confusing as fuck. Now I have been told that Never has apparently received some character development in the last couple books, and if so, fair play, but I quit reading after Midnight, and Never and the rest of the personality-less new characters introduced in Phase Two who just seemed to be 2D Stereotypes to snag Woke Points were a big part of why, so. Development too late, I'm afraid.

(Now, if anyone is looking for a well-written genderfluid character, I recommend the Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb. I have a lot of issues with her as a writer, and unfortunately I hate her POV character which puts me off the series as a whole, but she wrote the Fool/Amber/Lord Golden and their gender identity/approach to sexuality with so much more respect and realism. That is the kind of rep nb people should be getting: 3D, complex, realistic characters whose gender is only a tiny fragment of their personality, not the be-all-and-end-all of their existence. You know. Like cis people get. Nobody wants to be represented by a 2D cardboard cutout stereotype.)

Anyway idk how much sense this makes it just really amuses me that Laundry would include all this rep completely unintentionally and then go on Twitter and remind us all that actually he's a massive asshole via insensitive/offensive tweets about the groups he'd actually done a fair job of including (i.e. Skulduggery has no feelings, mentally ill people should find another series to read, the bullshit about Val being "heteromantic bisexual" on Twitter and then spouting all the "the woman she loved uwu" shit in the books (proving he has no idea what he's talking about), eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY. He can only write half-decent rep when he's not trying and he inevitably outs himself as having a really shitty attitude towards those people anyway, proving that ultimately it's all either unintentional rep or performative wokeness.

[the-blind-assassin-12]

okay can we just fr a moment talk about how much Dumont sucks at her job like. okay I mean ofc we all know ethically she’s a disaster and not even one I care about but also just at her job in general. like billy Russo has cptsd and probably also ptsd and who knows what else. and she’s like “okay billy name five blue things in the room :)” like. I get that billy is a therapy beginner but she HAS to know that’s not gonna help for shit. like is she purposely bad to keep him dependent on her or what

Hello there anon, and thank you for calling with one of my favorite topics to rant about! D U M O N T. Yuck, gross. There are so many reasons why I despise her so, and I would like nothing more than to talk for a moment about them with you. (sorry in advance for my...expressive language.) 

Let’s start at the beginning, which as we learned in The Sound of Music, is a very good place to start. The first time we see Dumont, she comes into Billy’s room while Madani is paying him one of her sweet little visits (I could go into a whole different rant about that one and her many attempts to grab the title of “bat shit craziest asshole in season two”, but this is about Krista, so let’s get back on track.) So in walks Dumont, and while I am absolutely no fan of Dinah’s, Krista’s self-importance is really off putting from the get go. Did I want Dinah in there silently tormenting Billy while he was all wrapped up like a burrito? No, of course not. Did I want her to come in and be the one to “rescue” him from that? Fuckity fuck no. Not with that attitude, those motives, and those fucking blouses of hers like seriously her blouses are so fucking uptight...I feel myself getting off topic again... 

Anyway. First impressions aren’t everything, right? Right. So let’s see how she does professionally in these sessions with Billy... Hmm... So let’s be clear now: Aside from just being the guy in the psych ward who struggles to bang out 20 push-ups a day and can’t remember what continent he’s on, Billy Russo is like public enemy number one, a war veteran, a trained professional killer, the best liar known to man, a victim of sexual abuse, and someone who couldn’t define what a “stable home life” was if you gave him a dictionary and highlighted the pages that each of those words were on. In short, the damages in that brain are less like that peg game that they leave on the table in Cracker Barrel, and more like the Gordian Knot- not meant for school kids to solve. I’m not saying that the few methods we see her use with Billy don’t work. I’m not a doctor. My own brain freaks me out too much to try to start thinking about other people’s brains too much. But if I had to guess, I would say that someone with a file like Billy’s might need a better coping or calming mechanism than playing I Spy. 

(Also, this has always bothered me and I don’t think I’ve ever voiced this very specific problem that I have with Krista, but when she recites the quote “We are each our own devils...” I have to wonder if she actually knows where it comes from, or if she just heard it in that pop song that was a hit a few years back. Just the way that she speaks that line... the English Major in me cringes, HARD.) 

We don’t have to talk about how fucked up it is that she engages in a sexual relationship with her patient, right? We don’t have to talk about how Billy has already been in a fucked up sexual situation where one person had all the power, right? Cool, because I feel like I’ve beaten that horse to death already. But if anyone wants me to dig the old dead mustang up, we can saddle him up one more time. I will never ever ever ever ever support a relationship between Billy and Krista, so if that’s your jam find a different roll to spread it on cause I’m allergic to that. 

You bring up a GREAT point in your question!! Is she limiting the “treatment” that Billy gets to keep him dependent on her? We see her pull other moves to try to ensure she holds the power: removing paperwork from his folder, keeping his mask and journal, that whole cringey “it’s like touching god” thing, the timing of her first L bomb... everything she does seems calculated so it wouldn’t be too far from belief to think that she’s intentionally hindering Billy’s recovery. That bird in the shoebox she went on about? Cut me a break, lady. You just want something weaker than you to make you feel one rung higher on the food chain. I see you, bitch. 

Look, even before @something-tofightfor did the deep investigating and found the image of what was supposed to be professional medical notes, which turned out to be scribbled, misspelled and vague AS FUCK, I just couldn’t find it in my heart to give her the benefit of the doubt and say that there’s any part of her that is good at her job. (I mean, just look how well she did with Jake, right?) 

Thank you so much for cracking open this can of worms, anon. It is always a pleasure to discuss the depth of my hatred for Krista Dumont. 

[rangergirl3]

Oh wow, it’s really late my time. Or early - yeah, it’s 3am my time, so that makes it early, I think.

I put this post under a ‘read more’ line because this post is going to be a bit more...well, ‘brutally honest’ might be the best way to describe it. So it’s basically going to be really straight-forwards about the stuff that’s been on my mind lately.

Sleep-deprivation is part and parcel of being a parent to a newborn - and honestly, I don’t mind it at all. :-) But not getting regular hours of sleep (or not getting enough deep sleep) makes managing things like Complex PTSD very very very VERY difficult. 

I’m really fortunate in a lot of ways. Our beautiful baby girl is healthy, my husband loves to help take care of her, and we live in a nice, safe, warm place <3

But when it comes to managing my complex PTSD, I’d be lying if I said these last couple of weeks were easy. I’ve had some good days, but the last several have been incredibly difficult. 

I’ve gotten flashbacks to the events/times that gave me the CPTSD in the first place. Sometimes it’s a detailed memory that pops into my mind. Sometimes it’s “hearing” the words that were said, or feeling the physical effects again. 

Weirdly enough, that’s not what I find most distressing. Okay, sure, having fully immersive flashbacks/memories of repeated trauma isn’t a picnic either, but the stuff that just sticks in my mind and won’t shut up is the repeating, on-loop musings about my parents.

If you’re still reading this, you probably have read the prior posts I’ve made about how my parents weren’t the greatest. They were abusive in a number of ways, but the even that really crushed my hopes of reconciling with them was when both of them (my mom and my dad) said they didn’t believe that I was a survivor of CSA.

CSA stands for childhood sexual abuse. From what I’ve managed to piece together in therapy (and from nightmares, unwanted memories, and reactions to certain situations) I survived at least two rapes before I turned seven years old. But, my parents don’t believe me.

Yeah...so that’s been...painful. Somewhat exquitely so. A lot of the time I feel like there are shards of glass or poisoned metal or shrapnel inside my chest whenever the situation comes to mind. And even though I try to make jokes and  find the good in life and the small things, this is one of things I can’t really laugh off. 

I mean, I know my parents are jackasses, but it’s still incredibly hurtful to know that they chose not to believe me. And that, taken as a whole, they don’t love me. (Think Thanos and Gamorra, or the Dursley’s and Harry Potter. Yeah, sure, they technically raised me and all, and I had to go back there over school holidays, but it is certainly not the Burrow.)

And I know this is the depression and anxiety acting up, but a lot of the time I feel so worthless and unwanted, and when I try to think of a way to chuckle at it, I really...can’t. It’s like when in a book or a movie when the big bad villain tells the hero something really awful, but in the book or movie, the hero’s able to say “That’s not true,” and that’s that, but - for me - whenever the depression laughs at me and says  “Your parents never loved you” the best reply I can come up with is a very weak: ‘In other breaking news, the sky is blue...’ And more often than not, all I can manage is: “Yeah. I know. Just wish they’d stop lying about it.”

Because they do. They really do. It’s a lot of excuses that I’ve heard before. Stuff like: “Oh it wasn’t that bad,” “I SAID I was sorry already, just forgive me and get over it,” and “Well it could have been so much worse”

Hmmm, well, first off, Mother dearest (feel the sarcasm), let’s be honest, abuse is abuse. Taping your kid’s mouth shut and then trying to justify your action with “Well it wasn’t packing tape” is pretty fucking weak. Second, you can tell I forgave you for being an abusive bitch already, since you’re. Still. Walking. But ‘forgiveness’ doesn’t negate the effects of what you did. So, get used to me not trusting you. It ain’t gonna change. And third - ‘it could have been so much worse’ is complete bullshit. You treated your kids like shit, so don’t expect them to like you. Expecting them to look forward to seeing you or hearing from you after being an abusive, manipulative witch isn’t realistic. At best, it makes you deluded. In reality, you’re just pouting over having lost one of your many puppets.

...and there’s the anger, which is pretty near the surface whenever my parents or anything to do with them comes up. :/

I /hate/ that this much anger is so easily tapped. I hate it. I wish I could make it vanish, or have some way of channeling it and changing it into something else.

But right now, all I can do is keep control of it. I can’t deny that it’s there, and that to some degree it always will be there. And I certainly can’t delude myself into believing that the pain will vanish completely.

I’m hoping to God that the pain might fade at some point but I can’t lie to myself and say that someday I’ll be able to laugh merrily at the knowledge that neither of my parents gave enough of a damn to try and fix our relationship.

Nope. It’s just gonna keep hurting.

I just really hope that some day, even years down the line, it will fade to the point that whenever my parents attempt to manipulate my emotions, I’ll be able to genuinely give a grim smile, fly them the middle finger, and shout “There are no strings on me!” - ideally while doing something amazing and kickass. 

I don’t know what that something kickass and amazing might be. It might be writing a book. It might be finishing a 5k race. It might even be giving talks about being a survivor or CSA, or something like that.

I’m not sure. Right now, it just hurts a lot.

Thanks for reading <3 It helps to talk about it <3

Please message or PM me if you want. I’m on and off Tumblr a bit irregularly but I always love to hear from friends :)

[mynarcissticex]

Before my heinous relationship with my ex narcopath I had:

Been picked on made fun/of in school.

Been physically beaten as a child by my narc biological father.

I have been used as a financial meal ticket by my narc mother.

I have been fired from multiple jobs due to my CPTSD.

I have been in dangerous places & situations.

I have been mugged.

I have been hit by a car.

I have thought I was going to drown.

I have thought I was going to suffocate.

I have thought I was going to die.

I have felt alone/afraid.

I considered multiple times on killing myself

None of that kept me down to long. I bounced back. My ex narcopath almost killed me by driving me to suicide. Once I was so close that I actually did flatline. He was way worse then that entire list combined. You have heard many people say it probably but I will say it again. You will never understand if you have not personally experienced it.

Now to the question. What have I gained?

I gained a new perspective on some of the people inhabiting this world & they represent hell on this earth. For that perspective, I sacrificed my innocence, naivety, & ignorance.

I learned good boundaries are not enough. Being assertive is not enough. Special defenses are needed.

I learned my empathy & compassion are still what makes me good but there are individuals out there who deserve NONE of it. They are pure evil. Therefore I must be more selective with who gets it.

I learned everyone is not mostly like me to some degree (having empathy & conscience etc.)

I learned my trust is still a good trait just like all my altruistic traits. Once again the problem is not in having them but in being selective with who receives them.

I learned that trust is not earned once & kept by someone you love. It must continue to be earned or it should be revoked.

I have learned always trust my gut & intuition no matter the cost. I can't think of one time it's been wrong.

I learned the difference between intimacy & intensity.

I learned the brain is a fucked up thing & can put you in really bad positions without you even realizing it is happening at the time.

I learned there is nothing wrong with me. None of that is my fault any more than it is a victim's fault for getting robbed. Sure I have to do some work for my own protection against future exploitation but that doesn’t make me weak then or now. It makes me stronger.

I learned anyone can be exploited.

I learned the world doesn’t understand. The medical professionals largely don't understand. That is why we come here.

I learned that though I am an introvert not isolating is important for the quality of life.

I learned so much psychology I feel I am hemorrhaging it sometimes.

I learned I am stronger than I thought to have lived through this.

I learned PTSD/CPTSD are a bitch

I’ve learned 100’s of manipulation tactics, power tactics, persuasion principals, seduction tactics, resistance tactics, etc. I know I will never be controlled again.

I’ve gained a ton of insight into myself & who I am & how I work & see/experience the world.

I have gained a real insight into my strengths & weaknesses.

I learned that the saying “sticks & stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me” is the biggest crock of shit ever.

I learned you can find a lot of support from people you have never met.

I have gained all kinds of knowledge, confidence, power, & friendships. I am still working on the rest, but I am optimistic that everything is going to come together in the end in amazing ways when you survive what you thought was designed to kill you, life has a whole new meaning to it. Believe me 🙌🏻🤗

[disorganisedpilot]

captains log

this ones going under a cut for weight discussion including numbers pls be careful folks <3

got woken up by my dog lying on me at 7am im <333

i ate 3 whole croissants for breakfast lmaoooo. with orange juice and 2 cups of coffee and lots of raspberry jam <3

i weighed myself for the first time since september and ive dropped literally almost two whole stone. this is fucked. i didnt mean to lose weight at all, i was already severely underweight when i weighed myself in september. but my mental health has rlly done a number on me this past few months and i stopped eating for a while and even when i started again i didnt eat much or frequently n ive had some Issues around eating. mostly executive dysfunction stuff but also some weird like. paranoia ig or intrusive thought idk what to call it where i was convinced that what i was eating was actually smth else in disguise or that there was smth really fucked up about it . one time i tried to eat an egg but i was convinced there was like a dead chick in the yolk and there were some lil bits in it and i was convinced they were its mangled up bones. also dont @ me i know thats physically impossible on so many levels but my brain hasnt met a rational thought in weeks. i did end up eating the egg anyway tho i managed to talk myself down from it with Science(TM). but id cooked another egg then and i threw the other one out bc i convinced myself it wasnt fully cooked when it almost certainly was.

i love that i can eat mangled chick egg but not *slightly* raw egg god my brain is so funny. it turned out what i thought was mangled chick corpse was a bit of bread that had fallen into the egg. literally if i dont laugh at my stupid issues i die but genuinely this is so funny to me now. like . elwood... cool ur boots . its a bit of  fuckin toast. u put it there urself u stupid bitch

so yea anyway im now like. 2 stone past ‘severely underweight’. yikes. hopefully being home and having osmeone else cooking will help me get it up a bit more

it was nice sleepign at a normal time last night but once again its 02:51 i hate this why am i like this

had some issues w my fam today. im too tired to talk abt it . safe to say being home is exhausting and im really feeling the whole. ‘u cant recover from trauma until ur free of the situation’. most of the things therapists have told me to do to help my cptsd symptoms are things that in these kinds of situations would put me in More danger. realising that in these situations my cptsd symptoms arent symptoms. theyre self defense and they serve a valid person

reason? not person. ffs

had a BLT for lunch

went outside n exercised which was p good. tried to work and failed miserably

ate 2 crumpets w butter and a cup of tea

chicken curry w aubergine and red pepper and rice for tea n i had a square of chocolate w marzipan afterwards

watched a film w my fam

spiraled in the evening. i vented a bit to a friend and on twitter and my paranoia is acting up so badly as well as a lot of neurosis lol. im just sure everyone hates me and finds me so cringey and . i can feel the disappointment and dread they all must feel when they have a notification from me and i hate it.

the paranoia is slightly different and wayyyy scarier but rn its too bad for me to talk abt lol

im gona go n sleep an try to forget how much everyone must feel secondhand embarrassment every time i speak

[lyranwitch]

Trauma & Service Dog Rant

tw rape and trauma mention

My PTSD has been out of control all day. Had flashbacks for 2 hours at work--none of the usual mindfulness stuff, Xanax, or sensory counting was working. I had to keep snapping myself out of it and going back to try and fix the small amount of work I could get done while it was happening. It’s so frustrating I was on the verge of tears. Got home and realized I’ve been dissociating so much in the past few weeks that I’ve been putting things in weird places again...UGH. So a bunch of stuff is lost and I’m still avoiding paying my bills (huge trigger).

 I have to go to the store for dog food and I am so anxious I’m afraid to drive. The pet store is hard on bad days because it’s a pet-friendly store so everyone wants to approach and pet him and ask me 3844658346 questions about his breed (”IS THAT A WOLFFF?????” NO WTH who lives in the city and owns a wolf??? go away) I’m a walking panic attack today and seriously can’t engage with strangers and have them getting him all distracted right now. He’s doing very well with his training (did awesome in a restaurant the other day!) but he still struggles in the pet store because of all the exciting smells and toys and foods.

 I  also don’t have a vest for him at the moment which compounds the problem. His red backpack was so handy but it’s torn now so it doesn’t look very clean or professional anymore. :( 

I talked to my mom yesterday about some of the traumatic stuff that happened when I was a kid and got a surprising amount of supportive response from her. She is the only person in my family I still speak to because everyone else either verbally attacks me every time I see them or intentionally avoids me. It kind of freaked me out though because I thought that I was 12 when I was raped by my sister’s boyfriend but it turns out that I was only 6 when she lived in the house where it happened. Not that being 12 makes that monster’s actions any less revolting but I’m just...shocked that I’ve been holding this in for so long and literally just couldn’t remember. Like no wonder I’ve been so fucked up and ended up in so many horrible situations with abusers and rapists as an adult. I’ve had so little emotional support from my family/”friends” (few very huge exceptions) that it makes sense why I’m still a train wreck but I’m alternating between absolutely enraged and devastated so frequently now that it’s exhausting. I need to get Armin better trained for his tasks so I can take him with me to work because this really isn’t getting much better at the rate I was hoping it would with all the work I’ve been doing in therapy. The more I remember the worse I’m getting. I’m worlds better than last year though. I know I’m making progress but it’s hard not to get discouraged. Why can’t recovery be linear ?

To any other SD handler or person w/ CPTSD/PTSD  who happens to read this -- how did you deal with taking your dog to work? I’m scared to even ask! I know with a few more months of training Armin would be ready for going with me to work but frankly I’m scared to even have him do DPT or panic attack interruption for me at work or be there because of the amount of attention it would bring to me. He’s a very big dog (when I got him, I was having some dizziness issues and thought I’d need him to learn mobility. Thankfully this has passed but he’s a lorge boy and that has its own set of problems).

How do you even deal with symptoms at work?? My intestinal spasms, body pain, and nausea are starting back up from the panic attacks. I’m a temp right now so it’s really awkward. I’m using my whole lunch just to go to the bathroom, not much time to attempt to chill :( 

People keep coming up behind my cube and looming while I’m on the phone instead of coming into my field of view and scaring the shit out of me--I politely ask them to not come up behind me but it’s not working... I’m really scared because I left my last job due to how shitty they were about my disability. I was full time there but they did so fucking little to accommodate me even with so much paperwork from my dr. it was unbelievable (long story). Management was very harsh with me about my work quality as well after I got my accommodations worked out with HR (at the time, it was frequent bathroom breaks that was it). 

Someone in my family has a fake fucking service dog as well. I just keep thinking about it on days when I really need Armin and becoming so frustrated I could scream. She’s training her dog to do therapy work which is great but she’s wearing a fucking SD vest (not even “in training” -_-) on him and taking him in public when he knows no service tasks, she has no dr’s script for him, and she says she’s not disabled. Just doing it to “get him used to it so he does better as a therapy dog.” Her dog is also dog aggressive af at completely random times.  He has suddenly lunged, snarled, and bitten my dog’s face for no reason and tackled him when they were just hanging out and my dog was lying down not even bothering him. She’s literally posing a danger to people and other dogs by taking him with her and  if her dog did that random biting to another dog in public or god forbid a kid--that could bar people with actually service dogs from being able to go to that store or restaurant. It’s unbelievable. She is very aggro with me about the fact that I’m owner training and our dogs are pretty much at the same level when she dumped hundreds on training classes. I have no issue with training classes but I don’t understand why someone would care whether or not you take your dog to classes? It can be just as effective! They’re kind of mean to my dog (won’t let him outside when he needs out and in the bathroom or something, pushing him out of the way and bitching at him for no reason, etc.) Last straw was when her bf said Armin is just a “security blanket” for me and their dog is really doing a job. I can’t even bring it up with her because she’s such a weirdo about how perfect her dog is. It’d be blasphemous.

Dude I need to meditate. :’( I’m saving to leave this city because so many bad things have happened to me here and everyone knows me through my publicly calling out a guy who raped me. I’m so ready to go already to a place where I don’t know anybody and nobody knows me!!