#ONE of these was a permanent and incredibly life changing event that left me traumatized in its abruptness!

[orcelito]

God, what even is my "reasons this hasn't been updated in 4 and a half months" list anymore hfkshdj

I think we're at: wrote a smut fic, got a new girlfriend, got into bg3, quit my job I had for 8 years, my dad fucking died, got Throat Bleeding Disease, got into crochet, started watching way too much anime, got into Stardew Valley again...

🤔🤔🤔🤔 things sure have been busy, huh?

[mamawasatesttube]

I heard you love Tim Drake being unhinged so I thought I would share some propaganda a headcanon that I think you will enjoy and could go well with the Mentor AU.

So everyone knows that Tim has a habit of not hiding things actively, but if it isn't currently a problem than he's not gunna bring it up, or if it's already been "fixed" then there's no reason to tell anyone about it. Including things that have to do with his health, for example the missing spleen he didn't tell anyone about.

So one time he goes on a long space mission with the Young Justice crew and even if they wanted to, they don't have a way to call the JL when it happens. They just have to watch in horror as Tim looses his left arm before going Truly Feral on whatever caused him to loose his arm. They get Tim to a Space Hospital with no problem and he gets mixed up with an incredibly realistic looking prosthetic arm! He takes the next week and a half to recover and work on how to use his new arm, thankful that he writes with his right hand.

By the time he gets back to Earth, Tim is like "I have very good control over my arm. The issue was fixed. I don't want them to treat me like I'm made of glass or worse, try to permanently bench me! So time to never actively tell anyone." Meaning the YJ crew has another Secret Not Secret to "forget to tell people".

Many years later during training with the group of kids, one of them somehow accidentally destroyed the prosthetic arm and Tim just sighs, "that's not very Pog Champ of you" as all his children freak the fuck out.

hmmm. i mean, i can enjoy the idea of tim having a really traumatic injury that leaves him with a permanent disability (a la babs), but i'd want it handled with a lot more gravitas. like, alien scifi tech or whatever would not change that losing a limb in a violent fashion is a massively traumatic event that the human body takes a long time to heal from (not to mention the mental trauma)! i'm personally not that into stories that do the whole luke-skywalker-esque magic bandaid prosthetic that conveniently emulates the lost limb so perfectly you can ignore that the character has a disability now. i much prefer the fmab-style "sure you can get a really high tech fantasy prosthetic, but it will take years of physical therapy and there will be issues and phantom pains and need for upkeep for the rest of your life" route, when dealing with that sort of thing.

[shadowfae]

Harmony, Chaos, RuneScape and Quoilunetary Nonhumanity

[Crossposted to National Nonhuman Park, and requested by @dzamie.]

I forgot to do this for like three days, but. I wanted to do a post on understanding past experiences and the differing perspectives people can have on the same experiences and how that can lead to radically different understandings and why there will never be a clear-cut border between alterhuman terminology, and I think I finally found a way to articulate that point. Commentary and responses welcome.

The very simplest way of explaining this concept is the following sentence: "I never said that I owed her money." Seems a simple statement, yeah? Place emphasis on one word, read it again, and then place emphasis on a different word and read it. "I never said that I owed her money," implies a flat-out denial of the concept. However, "I never said that I owed her money," is a clear 'I implied it but never said it, and you can't hold me to that'. And emphasis on other words brings the exact meaning of those emphasized words into question, and so forth.

But while that concept is universal, it's difficult to see as it stands how that applies to alterhuman experiences. So we're going to delve into the source of one of my current linktypes, RuneScape, and we're going to explain things the way a warpriest does, using the setting's available godly philosophies to explain a past experience.

The two we'll be looking at today are Serenist and Zamorakian philosophies, particularly the Elven questline, and we're choosing this because Seren's ingame dialogue includes her explaining why Zamorakianism doesn't fit the questline. I, however, say it does, so let's compare and contrast how they both fit, and why they're both valid, and why if you're determined enough you can be absolutely convinced that the other's an idiot.

Seren is the crystal goddess of light; associated heavily with integrity, harmony, prudence, wisdom, and tranquility. Simply put, she is a pacifist who believes that if two parties can meet in the middle and find harmony, the best possible result can be achieved.

This is contrasted heavily with Zamorakian philosophy. Zamorak is known best as the god of chaos, although his philosophy heavily centres strength through personal strife. He believes that almost all obstacles and challenges in life can be beaten if one just never gives up, and that through surviving those obstacles, one is made a better person. He also believes that order brings stagnation: with no reason or need to do something different, people will do what they have always done, thus, chaos is necessary for improvement and achievement.

When Seren left the elves, her main followers, scrambled to put together a leadership that might replace her. Modelling the humans, they chose a monarchy, which was undercut in short order by Clan Iorwerth. (Iorwerth is one of the two military elven clans.) Iorwerth, following a dark power, overthrew the monarchy and shut down the elven kingdom entirely, forcing every elf that wasn't trapped to flee or swear allegiance to them. They were later overthrown by the remains of the other seven clans and the player character, the kingdom was restored as a republic, and eventually Seren came back.

When asked about Zamorak's philosophy, Seren references this: ["Order only brings stagnation."] "Perhaps, but there is also imagination and community. When sharing with others, we can learn to see the world differently. Look at all my elves accomplished. It was undone for a time because of chaos. It was harmony that restored them." [Post- The Light Within dialogue.]

Note the emphasis on harmony, and how she looks down upon this. However, she does agree that the elves are stronger without her, evidenced by her refusal to lead them again after her return: "I will not leave you, not again, but I will not lead you. Let me, here and now, recognise this council as the true leadership of the elven people." [The Light Within quest dialogue.]

Zamorak ingame has never spoken about this event, it's on the other side of the continent and he doesn't much care about what Seren does so long as she stays away from him. However, speaking as my linktype, a son of Zamorak, and a warpriest of Zamorakian philosophy and religion, I feel qualified to explain what his philosophy does say about this event, and how it differs.

Zamorakian philosophy places emphasis on the chaos, and how through it, one becomes stronger. Seren says that she recognizes the clan council of the elven republic to be its true leadership. This council did not exist until after she left and left her followers to deal with the aftermath. Even so, their first attempt at fixing the situation was to create a monarchy, which was overthrown almost immediately.

Arguably, their first attempt via wisdom and harmony – modelling their new government after a human form of government that evidently worked, and by choosing their monarchs to represent them best – failed miserably. However, Iorwerth's assault forced the remaining elves to think of another solution that there was no historic precedence for. The clan leaders chose to go into hiding until someone else had overthrown Iorwerth, which didn't happen until the player character did so, over two thousand years later. Those elves who did not go fully into hiding instead created a resistance, aiming first to stop Clan Iorwerth from obtaining death magic that would have cemented its rule perhaps permanently, and then by taking it down once it was properly destabilized.

Their second attempt at a form of government, truly equal across all eight clans, is evidently better than their first attempt: it withstood the next upheaval of Seren's return and refusal to govern them again, and she gave the council her blessing. The solution they found through harmony and tranquility failed. The solution they found through chaos succeeded.

Seren places her emphasis on the fact that through the Iorwerth domination, the remaining elves worked together to find a solution. Zamorakian philosophy states that they never would have found that solution or learned to work together had their lives not been thrown into utter chaos.

Seren focuses on the harmony that is the method of survival, Zamorak focuses on the chaos that caused invention of an improved method of survival. Seren disavows chaos, disregarding that it is anything but an obstacle that needs to be overcome, refusing to see it as something worth seeking out. Zamorak disavows order, arguably incredibly similar to the Serenist ideal of harmony, and states that it only brings stagnation and is incredibly fragile and meaningless. Through this, the two philosophies are radically opposed, both disavowing what the other praises.

Compare this scenario to one more personal and recognizable to those who may read this: any scenario in which someone is put to their limits, any scenario potentially traumatizing. Serenist philosophy asks for integrity, that one stays true to oneself throughout it all, and harmony, to seek a peaceful solution. This is easily taken down by any situation in which one needs to change in order to survive, however, it also is best represented by the growth of the aftermath when it is time to rebuild. Zamorakian philosophy asks for strength, to find a way through no matter the cost, and celebration of strife, to recognize that there is a point to the pain. This is easily taken down by any sort of emotional trauma that leaves scars, however, it also is best represented by the ability to take any punches thrown and to recognize the good of recovery and what that means for the future.

Thus, in a situation of aftermath, both celebrate the growth and the strength necessary to survive, and meet up perfectly in the middle in any situation in which one is honest with themself, survives the ordeal, and recognizes that they are better than they were before.

Radically opposed, and when you tilt your head and squint, they lead to the same conclusion of a better tomorrow than yesterday was.

As my last point, the question of 'and what exactly does this have to do with gray areas of the alterhuman community?' requires an answer. Not all cases will fall under this, but here's a couple scenarios to think on. Someone who has a parallel life in another world: are they otherkin, or are they otherhearted? Someone who places emphasis on the differences between themself and their parallel life may recognize the other as their counterpart, but not quite them, too similar to be anything but family but too different to be the same person, like twins separated at birth. But someone who places emphasis on the similarities, recognizing the other as a reflection of themself, may say that they're otherkin, not so separate as to be family but too similar to be anything but the same person, if in two different situations.

Take further something psychological. Someone with executive dysfunction, an uncontrollable focus mechanism, emotional dysregulation, ostracization from their peers, and a lack of understanding of metaphors or half-truths may go to a pediatrician and be diagnosed as autistic. If they never go to that hypothetical pediatrician, but instead find themself online and hunting for answers, they may discover the otherkin community and come to the conclusion that they are Fair. Where one reads the apparent difference between themself and others as recognizing that they do not psychologically think the way others do, and thus being othered; one recognizes it as others having a gut feeling that they are simply not human, akin to an uncanny valley effect.

Lastly, consider someone who takes up believing themself to be a unicorn as a child, to deal with ostracization from their peers. Something along the lines of the last scenario. Years later, after growing up and discovering a friend group and no longer facing any ostracization, they determine that they still identify as a unicorn. They do research and understand that if they put in the effort over several decades and ego alteration, they may be capable of releasing that coping mechanism turned integral part of them, and letting it go.

Are they otherkin, or a copinglinker?

If they consider themself otherkin, then one can assume they would be disinterested in using ego alteration over a course of decades to let go. If they consider themself a copinglinker, then they may be interested, or they may not, but it would be more likely that they would at least consider the option before deciding either way. And if they do decide against it, does that make it otherkin? As the difference between the two is defined and largely accepted that otherkin is involuntary and copinglinking is, one might argue that they would still be a 'linker, as one cannot choose to be otherkin.

But are they keeping a linktype that they chose and are still choosing, or are they choosing to embrace a kintype that already exists?

I suppose which one it is depends on how you want to look at it, and where you want to place your emphasis of the experience. And no matter how someone else may look at it, the only one with final say is the one who experiences it in the first place.

Both conclusions lead to the same place, in the end: an alterhuman identity, and an experience worth exploring and talking about. No matter how one understands it, or what they ultimately decide to call it.

[alrightzuko]

Literally can't stop thinking about "You have indeed felt a great loss. But love is a form of energy, and it swirls all around us. The Air Nomads' love for you has not left this world. It is still inside of your heart, and is reborn in the form of new love" and how much the concept of this quote pretty much applies to the main characters within atla, especially in regards to their development and central arcs throughout the series and how it plays a big role in their journey, either on a large scale or a more subtle one.

Aang's is the most obvious and is the original context of this quote. His love for the Air Nomads and their love for him is reborn in his love for Katara and vice versa. These two develop an instinctual bond as soon as they meet and get along very well, providing each other with support in overcoming the trauma, a listening ear when things are rough or standing up for the other when they encounter obstacles, especially ones related to their bending. They supply each other with the home and understanding that has been lost as a result of the war. Aang's love for Sokka can be interpreted in the same way, who forms one of the first bases for Aang's second family after the loss of his entire culture. It's not just that though, there's also the gradual trust in each other's leadership skills, reaching its zenith in their preparations for the invasion of the Fire Nation capital.

Katara's reborn love is likewise Aang's as well, and I think the best way to demonstrate this example is paralleling Aang's actions in the second episode of book one when Zuko and his crew attacked the South Pole and Kya's in the flashbacks of the Southern Raiders. Both are people who meant a lot for Katara and who at that point helped in shaping her view of the world, since Kya raised her and Aang even in the short span they interacted reminded her of the joy of enjoying her adolescence and having fun. Both did not hesitate to offer themselves up for the Fire Nation when it became clear that Katara and the village was in danger and both made a conscious effort to reassure Katara during those sequence of events. Of course, Aang and Kya didn't have the same outcome but that's not the point.

Zuko's is Ursa's and Iroh's. It's not a reborn love in the literal sense but for all intents and purposes, the result is largely similar. While we know from flashbacks that Zuko was very close to his uncle even prior to Iroh losing his son and events leading up to Zuko's banishment, the fact of the matter is that Ursa is shown to be his primary caregiver, the person who works to do whatever they can to shield him from Ozai's abuse and someone who inspires a lot of his conceptions about his self image, particularly his persistence in the face of adversity and failure. Once Ursa is no longer in a position to continue doing so, that role is then taken up by Iroh who continuously makes every effort he can to support Zuko through the worst period of his life, providing the love and care he needs in order to heal, standing against the harm Azula and Ozai attempt to inflict against him (often literally) as well as teaching him the tools he needs in order to continue building his separate identity outside of the toxic ideals of his family. Whether that is in relation to Zuko's bending and the way he's been branded as the less talented and therefore a disappointment or in relation to the imperialist mindset of their country and the royal family by passing on the ideals that Iroh himself learned through his journey of self-reflection.

Sokka actually has two forms of reborn loves, which I realised upon some extensive thinking. The first is by far the more obvious, which is Yue and Suki. Yes, Sokka met Suki first but the order of events lend my argument some weight. It's not just that both are his primary love interests (which they are) but they are ones who influenced Sokka's relationship to his role as a protector and to another extent they were people who he could enjoy himself around on more equal terms since he more often than not is the 'plan guy' within the gaang. Yue's death and his inability to do anything that prevents it enhances his overprotective tendencies and it's no coincidence that he faces this particular issue with Suki on the serpent's pass by his own admission. He's later able to overcome it and start a relationship with Suki without the shadow of that incident hanging down on them (pardon the pun). The other one, which is more subtler and might puzzle some, is Hakoda and Piandao. Hakoda as Sokka's father is his role model, the ideal of the warrior that he strives to live up to and who reassures him of his worth and his pride in him. This guidance is also, to a degree, the part that Piandao plays as his mentor; he helps Sokka gain the confidence needed in himself and imparts lessons that tie in to skills as a warrior. In each of the episodes "Sokka's Master" and "The Guru", Sokka experiences low faith in his abilities and is reassured by Piandao and Hakoda respectively (although Piandao's was much more... confrontational). In the end, the purpose is served. Hakoda cannot be present with the amount that Sokka needs but the love he has for him is found in a new shape in Piandao's mentorship.

Toph experiences her first unconditional love during her childhood with the badger-moles, they are the creatures who accept her and her blindness and they're the ones with whom she gains faith in her earthbending. That love is carried over when she meets Team Avatar, Aang challenges the double identity she built in her life that is in conflict of the image her parents have of her, "the obedient little helpless blind girl", and she decides later to leave her home behind and take a leap of faith so to speak. This decision leads her to be able to build healthy relationships where she's comfortable and secure. Katara teaches her that expressions of femininity and her tough persona don't have to be at odds with each other, and that she can enjoy being pampered and still at the end of the day resume acting herself. And we have many instances where Sokka leads Toph around in places where she needs someone to help her to and Toph is comfortable doing so. It's a development from the Toph we first meet, who rejects aid because she needs to establish her own personhood. She grows to be okay with relying on others in a way that doesn't lessen her own independence.

Suki admittedly gave me a bit of a brain scratcher until I drew upon her biggest relationships, the Kyoshi Warriors and Sokka. Suki is the leader of the group, she's someone who believes in herself and knows her capabilities very well and it's not hard to understand that it's because of her position as Kyoshi Warrior. But more importantly, her fellow comrades offer her a support net. She can rely on them to have her back, just as they did during the attack on Kyoshi Island and in the Earth Kingdom. And after the run in with Azula, Mai and Ty Lee and getting separated in imprisonment, she lost that. Her confinement was isolated from any familiar faces and probably very traumatic. Until Sokka finds her in the Boiling Rock, and she regains the lost sense of partnership. From there until the finale, Sokka and Suki are shown to interact romantically, socially and on the battlefield. They joke and have ridiculous fun together while enjoying the Boy in the Iceberg play and they fight together seamlessly on the gondola, during training on Ember Island and in the Airship battle. This is a testament to the incredible trust they built and the camaraderie they share.

Note that when I say reborn, I don't necessarily mean in strict terms of life and death, which can be applied to more than one character anyway, or in the literal sense of reincarnation. I mean it more as a metaphor, it's a love that has been lost or can not present right now, either temporarily or in a more permanent sense. And I think that is one of the most profound messages the show can impart to such a wide audience. That love is a form of energy around us and even though the person who provided us with that specific kind of love isn't or can't be around anymore to give it to us, their love is so strong that it changes and comes back in a new love. It's not gone, not forever, it's just... different.

[madamhatter]

act 0. observer’s notes your name is….. finding place in exile, the ramifications of war, and the scars it makes (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder)

Discussion on PTSD and its play in writing Sophie in the Topaxi verse. A general (mental) profile of the Sorceress in this setting would be included.  Includes connecting recurring imagery and rifts spotted in-character writing in the Topaxi verse. (Kind of spoilers!)

READ AT YOUR OWN CAUTION.

The story of displacement is a common tale for many of the Roles in Topaxi. Be it if you’re of those surviving past the war, having escaped the clutches of social prejudice of your home country, or even in rift from self-persecution, the belongingness that was once felt is adrift and lost to the ever-revolving and never-stopping world we live in.  As of the latest conquest conducted by the Topaxi Advancement Forces (TAF), the continent of Gaea has had several of its countries turned territories or effaced within the past seven to eight years. It has been over two years since the invasion and TAF is on standby as the last emperor had suddenly and mysteriously passed away. 

One of the last countries to be taken by the Empire was a smaller region towards the north of the continent with one coast belonging to the open sea. Such a place, which was incredibly small and considered nameless by then, was the home of the Sorceress.

In the wake of post-war life, most have found their living in making a living, while a rare few live to make a change. So ends up Sophie Hatter, the confirmed one of eight survivors from her hometown, to Topaxi with no remnants of family with her as they are located elsewhere in the Topaxi empire. (A complicated situation. It is connected to Sophie’s mother and it is the reason why Sophie is the last Hatter to leave her home country). She is holding herself together with only the clothes on her body and whatever items survived the destruction in a small messenger bag she found in the debris of her late childhood home.  So, where does Sophie find herself...? What is she like now? 

Similar to discussed cases in Topaxi with certain roles being exposed to and/or participating in the war, Sophie Hatter is one of those cases. She developed Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that is comorbid with general anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and major depressive disorder. NOTE: Major depressive disorder would be a differential diagnosis. However, the symptoms exhibited by Sophie by the time she is 19, and after the course for acute stress disorder to be diagnosed (~3 days to a month), does reflects does include symptoms for “PTSD Criterion B or C symptoms” and  “PTSD Criterion D or E” (p 279, DSM-5). Meaning that comorbidity is possible diagnosis or this disorder soon developed because of the traumatic event in place. 

Sophie struggles with creating herself as she was before; there is an intrusion that exists within her and she is acutely aware of it and believes that she must do something about it. This nuisance she classifies, however, cannot be as easily undone as she realizes and her understanding of it is very limited, given the fact that the world of Topaxi has limited resources and research committed to psychology.

While the city-state of Topaxi can be considered modern and ahead of its time with the presence of UCAT, their progression and developments are not concurrent (yet) with the going-ons of today. While its history may not have been dedicated to vulnerable populations and certain experiences they might have faced, changes are being made with new projects, but there is still a way’s to go. 

Sophie Hatter, externally, is a persistently active figure, working with the newly made community in her apartment and living day-to-day with newly found relationships. However, she remains within arms’ distance with others while providing help, working to her best to keep stability around her as much as she can. Her schedule, during the day, is extremely limited and refined by her to avoid as many external variables that may affect her and she does not want to even imagine or experience how she’ll respond. 

Internally, however, Sophie Hatter is still a young woman who is grasping with the reality of what has happened to her during the invasion. Preceding the conquest, she already exhibited behaviors of a childhood that left her perception of the world altered and her self-perception low (to the point of being uncaring to her own safety). However, the inclusion of adversity from events during the war and the continuous exposure from her curse to her escape has heightened and created characteristics, responses, and coping mechanisms to handle what the mind is still attempting to fully comprehend/accept has happened.

Be note, that there are two events in the war that affected her: (1) discovering her decimated town/facing the its destruction and (2) her time before her “escape.” 

Following DSM-5 and the Diagnostic Criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (figure 43.10), Sophie has the following symptoms and tendencies underneath these particular categories:  (Numbers denote which event is tied to what.)

A  “Exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violation in one (or more) of the following ways” [EVENT] 

Directly experiencing the traumatic event - (1) The travel through the desolated country and seeing first-hand accounts of dead bodies, murder, and other atrocities ; (2) Detainment and what happened during then.

Witnessing, in person, the event(s) as it occurred to others - (1) The final bombings and scourge that swept over the valley ; (2) Was forced to watch mutilation and unethical experiments

B  “Presence of one (or more) of the following intrusion symptoms associated with the traumatic event(s), beginning after the traumatic event(s) occurred” [INTRUSION]

Recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive distressing memories of the traumatic event(s) - (1) & (2) happens a lot but does not come out through direct and perfect images of what has happened. Usually plays out that she sees the dead bodies and imagines fire around her if moving too quickly or in areas that she avoids because of stimuli that can trigger her.  

Intense or prolonged psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event(s) - Will enter a state of intrusive thoughts that will repeatedly tell her to leave and push her to go away. Would end up apologizing repeatedly and would begin her move as soon as possible. 

Marked physiological reactions to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event(s) - Turns blank in the face and stares out whenever stimuli (or a combination) is in contact with her ; memories will begin resurfacing mainly through smell, but she has routinely removed herself ASAP. Flight or fight response will be immensely present and it DOES depend on her hypervigilance and whether she is moonlighting as Simeon as not. if moonlighting, the “fight” reaction WILL be used and will devolve into violence. If not, Sophie’s immediate response will be to leave and leave as soon as possible, no matter what it is she is doing. Would end up shallowly breathing like there’s smoke in the air, holding herself, and bowing her head as if avoiding seeing something before her. 

C “Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the traumatic event(s), beginning after the traumatic event(s) occurred, as evidenced by one or both of the following” [AVOIDANCE]

Avoidance of or efforts to avoid distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic event(s) - (1) Continued rejection and avoidance of topics relating to latest conquests and usually avoids districts that are heavy with TAF occupation (bases, ports, air fields, etc.) ; 

Avoidance of or efforts to avoid external reminders (people, places, conversations, activities, objects, situations) that arouse distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic event(s) - (2) Adamant refusal to enter or get close to medical facilities and certain smells like ammonia will make her hostile and intense (first mentioned in Headcanon Dump #1)

D “Negative alterations in cognitions and mood associated with the traumatic event(s), beginning or worsening after the traumatic event(s) occurred, as evidenced by two (or more) of the following” [NEGATIVE ALTERNATIONS IN COGNITIONS AND MOOD ASSOCIATED WITH THE EVENT]

Inability to remember an important aspect of the traumatic event(s) (typically due to dissociative amnesia and not to other factors such as head injury, alcohol, or drugs) - Confirmed for dissociative amnesia where the events of (1) and (2) meld together and the timeline is mixed together ; there are very specific images that do not reflect the real scene or are reduced from the original signifier (I.E., the specific image of draping/pouring red)  

Persistent and exaggerated negative beliefs or expectations about oneself, others, or the world (e.g., “I am bad,” “No one can be trusted,” “The world is completely dangerous,” “My whole nervous system is permanently ruined”) - Consistent and returning thoughts of worthlessness for self (’Why am I still here versus....?” ; others are seen to be temporary in her life and cannot be held onto for long ( “they need something from me, that’s why they’re here..”)

Persistent, distorted cognitions about the cause or consequences of the traumatic event(s) that lead the individual to blame himself/herself or others - Consistent blame on herself for (2) but (1) is vehemently targeted towards both herself when it comes to the deaths of her community -AND- people she distinguishes as responsible for the outcome (Topaxi officials and, at times, associates of TAF ) and authority figures from her country 

Persistent negative emotional state (e.g., fear, horror, anger, guilt, or shame) - Amplified when Simeon and the persona is seen as an outlet to let out these emotions she believe she needs to keep in line ; usually guilt, anger, and shame meshed together, which leads to fueling reckless behavior and decisions that may hurt herself (which she dubs as necessary)

E “Marked alterations in arousal and reactivity associated with the traumatic event(s), beginning or worsening after the traumatic event(s) occurred, as evidenced by two (or more) of the following”  [MARKED ALTERNATION IN AROUSAL AND REACTIVITY] 

Irritable behavior (with little to no provocation) towards objects and people - Most visible when moonlighting as Simeon. 

Reckless or self-destructive behavior - Refer to purpose of Simeon persona and her views on her livelihood and how she actively “punishes” herself. 

Hypervigilance. - Already present in Sophie, worsened from war. Contributing to this would be her consistency to keep her and her night persona separated; add on need to keep herself on a low-profile and not recognizable in certain locations with medical personnel and researchers. 

Sleep disturbance (e.g., difficulty falling or staying asleep or restless sleep) - Already present in Sophie, worsened from war. 

F “Duration of the disturbance (Criteria B, C, D, and E) is more than 1 month.”

Has been persistent throughout the ~2 years she has been living in Topaxi.

G “The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.”

Confirmed. 

H “The disturbance is not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance (e.g., medication, alcohol) or another medical condition.”

Not able to be found in context of the comorbidity exhibited by Sophie. Many new symptoms took form after the experiences she had in war. To note, she has been showing signs of a new comorbidity (substance reliance, alcohol). 

SPECIFICATION: Depersonalization with delayed expression (taken a year for these symptoms to begin). 

 - - - 

Sophie Hatter, as previously described, is someone who is coping with trauma through the best way she knows and has done before with her other trauma: ignoring it and shunning herself. However, she has particular outlets that may come of casual consumption of alcohol which happens concerningly frequent throughout certain days if stimuli are present. 

Additionally, while Simeon is throughout the criteria, they were not originally made as a result of what occurred. The original creation of Simeon was meant to be a persona she could use to live a “double life” as she needed to make more money and dangerous work paid well.  Having them as separate lives, in her eyes, keeps her safe from anyone targeting or her family (but, it is clear that her sisters and stepmother are not on the island).

Instead, they have became a violent outlet for her internalized dread, anguish, and anger. Having the “informant” as an extension of herself, excusing bad decisions and feeling out of her body while the world around her happens, has proven detrimental to the process of the awareness, acknowledgement, assistance, and acceptance of her condition. 

Here are several examples of Sophie’s PTSD appearing:

Self-harm/demanding herself to be hurt/trying to mark herself and punish herself

Haggardly, Simeon grimaces while their vest was shed off and resting on the tower hanger, alongside their binder beside it. Their dress shirt was half-way unbuttoned. Over their exposed shoulders and underneath their breasts were imprints.

Scarred fingertip digs into their collarbone. A sharp jab into their clavicle, feeling a minor ache as they push further.  Bruise, damn it. Make some mark. Make color, be red.

-- EXCERPT FROM THIS DRABBLE (SOPHIE’S DISPOSITION).

Association with red and the bleeding of traumatic events (1) and (2) joining together, causing her to respond blankly to the situation before being distracted by Yunuen speaking

Red skies, red sparks, red flow, red blossoms in the sky, red stained on metal, red dyeing gowns, red fringes framing a scratched off face that hovers over your pinned body, red hot pain searing into your body, red, red, red red-

-- EXCEPT FROM THIS THREAD (FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH YUNUEN). 

Survivor’s guilt and persistent negativity directed at herself because of her survival (The marks are related to (2) and the thought is related to (1)): 

On her right hip, roughly the same size as the other, but longer as it had dragged along said hip, the scar was horizontal and deeper than its neighbor, visible from its crinkled appearance. Reminders of life’s misplaced luck, she concludes, not used wisely by Fate this time around. How silly of them to pick me.

-- EXCERPT FROM SILVER STIGMATA (PHYSICAL SURVEY)

Hypervigilance and abundance of stimuli that make her extremely uncomfortable/distrusting of situation: 

A heaviness swells in their chest, an unshakable pressure tightening their rib cage, and yet, this was only normal symptoms of living a life like this. Industrial foulness mixed with fresh market fragrances from the decadent and wealthy market by the mouth of the alley; all the more gag-inducing for the young informant.

However, they clutch onto the empty box in their hands, making out the plastic ridges against the faintest callouses on the tip of their fingers They weren’t ignorant to the truth; how these sounds that place them on edge, instead soothed others. After all, this was home for many. But, for Simeon – rather, the one beneath the mask, it was not. And it never would be.

-- EXCERPT FROM THREAD (discontinued as person is inactive in verse)

One of the first instances of Sophie’s PTSD affecting her and being active in a thread would be her firstt, but short-lived, interaction with Tatyana. The avoidance nature and immediate removal from the situation happens in this case when Tatyana revs up the engine on her motorcycle, shouting from a stranger from the apartments joins in, and the heavy and direct smell and vision of smog. 

Here’s the break down: 

Physiological numbness in the moment; mind is still active, but taking a backseat and removing herself from situation (recognizing self as powerless in moment):

The shouting began as Sophie turns her face away, feeling her skin crawl to a coldness. The words that left his mouth were no less understandable but the ferocity and indignation in his tone was far too recognizable. If she considered it, she could’ve spoken back and defused the situation. The gift of tongues came with the ability to grant passage for others who can’t be brought together by difference of languages.

Physiological response and addition of stimuli that directly relate back to the image of hometown [INTRUSION]: 

Sophie Hatter’s eyes are now but a distant gaze over towards the taller blonde, only wishing like she did when she was younger. To disappear, to toil and fade away, to crawl back to whence she came from. Roaring engines, the smell of smoke, it was sickening. It was inespacable in the floating island, but it smelled too much like what remained of home. Add onto the shouting and it was already enough to make her head ache.

(Unknowingly) reenacting particular body language used during trauma; feeling of helplessness in situation that is out of her control: 

Some of her body was already numbing at the fingertips and she was pulling the black collar of her turtleneck over her mouth and nose. It wouldn’t work to cushion and black the sounds, their volume growing louder and louder like the pain in her head.

Active avoidance, mind begins flight-or-fight situation with altered perceptive of reality: 

“I need somewhere quiet.” She feebly comments, glancing back to the apartment buildings, and believing that there were more people creeping by the windows. The silver-haired woman promptly steps aside. Now, she was ready to shuffle away and avoid the incoming shouts on the block if it continued.

She wasn’t a fan of the memories it brought.

Sudden and abrupt removal from situation, signal of struggling to keep body language together as she wants to avoid an episode: 

“Good luck,” she waves a hand, glancing back to the stranger, before balling her hands into  the pockets of her sweater. She began her quiet leave.

- - - 

More is to be written about Sophie in how she is greatly affected by this. Some drabbles have been scrapped and were planned to express how deep the trauma works. Though, it can be already seen in how Sophie views death, treats her body, a persistently negative view on certain parties and the outcome of life, etc. 

Drabbles that were scrapped but would be considered “canon” that relay back to Sophie’s trauma would include:

As Simeon at Lunazul, she ends up getting to a brawl with someone after the table next to hers is repeatedly mentioning the conquests and graphic detail of what has happened to unnamed people (unnamed nationalistic person). Ends up intensely cold, getting up from her seat, and nearly beating the man unconscious with far too much wrath in her body; she rushes out of the bar and has a sobbing breakdown several blocks away.

A confrontation of “Red” that she remembers time and time again; a consistent night terror that follows her nd makes her unable to sleep some nights; actively ‘speaks’ to it while in sleep paralysis and it acknowledges her well. Scene usually ends up with “Red” above her, face reveals to be face heavily mutilated and gouged, screaming loudly and repeatedly at Sophie.

A shutdown in public when there are large amounts of traffic near her because a detour led her to the highway; leading her to hide somewhere and refusing to come out until “they drive away,” which makes her miss the day she’s meant to be working at Miya’s detective office. 

A short meeting with one of her neighbor’s children, a young 26-year-old working at a hospital in Central and professor at UCAT, still wearing their scrubs and the heavy smell of ammonia on them. The image itself leaves Sophie cutting conversation short and retreating to her apartment. 

- - -

Sophie Hatter is a 20-year-old facing the aftermath of exile from her own country and self and the trauma coming with displacement and surviving the horrors of the world. She is by no means a hopeless case or a lost cause. 

But, she is someone who is going to go through development as someone who struggles constantly: as someone who is unsure of what to do with her life, as much as she wants to live normally, her stability and infrastructure has been destroyed her very eyes. She attempts to reconstruct herself but fails to realize how that’d harm her because she is actively avoiding what has happened to her and denies herself that all of this happened. 

She believes she can “make up” for something she calls an inadequacy and blames herself for. She “makes up” for it by being a community figure in a place that she would never feel right in or safe in; she "makes up” for it by being a reputable person who would never turn down anyone and offers help whenever she can; she “makes up” by continuously lying to herself and hurting herself. 

Part of her screams, another part weeps; one part wants to take vengeance, tear apart everything, and the other wants to curl up and lose herself to the numbness. But, she persists in her hurt with a solution that even worsens these parts that want comfort and healing. 

It is a difficult reality she must navigate, which is difficult because she is alone.

No matter how anyone looks at it, the path of exile is a lonesome one when you do not recognize there are someone else’s footprints on the dirt road. Her feet are long tired, dirtied, and bloodied by how far she dragged herself across this time to figure herself out.... But, with each passing day, it seems she’s getting further and further out from anyone’s reach, and before she knows it, she’ll be going down a path of destruction that’d engulf those around her in ash, fire, and death. 

[almightanna]

cisfemale — ever hear people say ANNABEL DE LA ROSA looks a lot like ADRIA ARJONA? I think SHE is about 30, so it doesn’t really work. The AUTHOR / BALLET INSTRUCTOR has lived in Livingstone for SIX MONTHS. They can be DILIGENT, but they can also be CYNICAL. I think ANNA might be A TIER 1 SHEPHERD. ( snot goblin. 20. est. she/they. )

i’m sry this took ... so long to put out ... ive been rly lazy these past few days but !! she is Here and she is Ready. i haven’t played her in a few months and last time she was a junior in high school so !! forgive me. but she’s a very old muse and has gone thru ... several fc changes. anyways !! please give this a LIKE if you’d like for me to slide into ur ims. 

TW: POVERTY, DIVORCE SORT OF, CAR ACCIDENT, TRAUMATIC INJURIES, MENTIONS OF DEATH, GRIEF.

a e s t h e t i c s

falling feathers darkened at the tips, leather jackets and pinstripes, red trenchcoats and plaid skirts, worn ballet shoes covered in dust, smudged eyeliner and unruly hair, boxing gloves, ornate canes and pain medication, bandaged hands, classical music floating throughout an empty ballroom, bomber jackets and cropped tees, spilled ink and stained hands, glasses skewed, sneers and jabs, constant fighting, smog in a city, spotlights and encores, piles of books and a long line, backless dresses and sitting alone at a bar, wariness.

general info !!

full name: annabel maritza de la rosa

nickname(s): anna, annie (hates), anna banana (father, exclusively)

b.o.d. - october 31st. scorpio child.

label(s): the catalyst, the charlatan, the crepehanger, the minefield

height: 5′7″

hometown: nyc, ny

sexuality: bisexual

pinterest

stats

biography !!

born to two high schoolers who never married, mathías de la rosa and leonora nieves. they were head over heels for each other - when mathías graduated he took up two jobs alongside community college to support their family, until leonora graduated and took on the arts.

growing up was tough - living in the city wasn’t cheap, leonora’s art rarely sold and the two often went without eating in order to provide for annabel. as a child she’d often wear hand-me-downs from extended family.

was taught to be a hard worker and it was reflected in her schoolwork - anna excelled in all her classes but especially english. her love for writing grew at a young age, and as a child she saved up enough money to buy herself proper journals. 

the only thing that she grew more passionate towards than writing was ballet - she caught the image of girls flying through the air and landing on their toes in the window of a dance studio on a walk home from school one day and that was it - something clicked inside of her.

that same day she would spend hours prancing about their tiny apartment, trying to mimic what she’d seen. it was easy to spot the passion anna had for the dance - and within a few months they had saved up enough money for a month’s worth of lessons.

anna was ecstatic - her slippers were old and found in the back of a thrift store by an odd miracle, but she put her all into the lessons regardless. she was quick to pick up on each move, and by the end of the month it was clear that anna had a natural talent.

leonora picked up a job in order for them to keep affording the lessons, month after month - they weighed down on their pockets, but it kept anna happy.

flash forward a few years - life was good. money was still a struggle but they were tight knit.

or rather, anna thought they were tight knit.

mathías and leonora split up when anna was twelve - an event that rocked the young girl’s world, something that she couldn’t understand. they had kept up a front of love when anna was home from school or ballet - but behind doors, they had been growing apart.

anna viewed their separation as leonora running off with another man - an art collector who had a fascination with leonora’s paintings. she viewed this as the end of the world. she viewed this as the death of love.

when anna was twelve, she swore she would never fall in love - refused to believe in its existence. she couldn’t wrap her mind around the simple separation.

her father got a third job in order to keep up with payments, and anna pushed herself in both ballet and school - not being able to handle an empty apartment. she decided to get a job - to help ease her father, but was too young.

so anna decided to do what any average 12 year old would do. she started scamming people.

she’d sell store-bought lemonade as if it were homemade, stole ceramics from art class and sold them to neighbors. she found an old girl scouts uniform in the back of a goodwill and for the next month, she sold knock-off girl scout cookies from the dollar store - going door to door.

her personality had changed drastically - anna went from a sweet, optimistic girl with warm brown eyes and an infectious laugh to cold, calculated, and downright cruel. she knew what she wanted and how to get it.

she got an invitation to a prestigious private school, full scholarship, before she hit high school - originally wanted to reject it as the thought of being surrounded by new york’s richest teens was appalling, but their ballet program was a one-way ticket into the american ballet theatre. anna ultimately accepted the scholarship.

high school was immediately hell for her - pretentious rich kids who all shared a collective brain cell and her secondhand uniform being a prime target for them.

ballet got extremely competitive - anna was a threat to every dancer in their program, bullying and sabotage became standard - but anna retaliated when possible.

this all, however, suddenly stopped when anna picked up her latest scam: faking psychic. through a small network of ‘bees’ she’d pay to gather information (gossip, rumors, etc. etc.) she was able to accurately ~see~ into students’ past, present, and potentially future affairs. the money was very worth it.

from that point forward, people were intimidated by her.

when anna was 16 she was handpicked to join the american ballet theatre’s studio company, alongside 11 other lucky individuals. her dream from that point forward was to become the youngest principal ballerina for abt - and she was going to start by winning over the role of clara in their production of the nutcracker.

she was 17 when she was chosen, much to the dismay of the other girls. she had momentarily quit her ‘psychic’ business in order to dedicate the entirety of her time towards rehearsals & practice.

the final week before her first performance as clara, anna got into a car accident heading home after another tiresome rehearsal. knocked unconscious, anna woke up three days later with no recollection of the accident - and her leg freshly operated on.

it was a devastating event that should had killed her - maybe she would had been better off if it had - but instead, it had effectively destroyed any chances of her dancing professionally.

it took two months of extensive physical therapy for anna to walk again - now relying heavily on a cane.

with ptsd and depression weighing heavily on her shoulders, anna turned back to writing - mostly as a coping mechanism, but it soon became the fierce passion it once was when she was younger.

for the remainder of her high school life, anna dedicated the majority of her time towards recovery, her writing, and directing her school’s theatre productions. oh - and claiming that almost dying had given her the gift of mediumship. it wasn’t too far off from her psychic claims - her peers believed it well enough to either stay away, or pay her for a small amount of comfort.

went to columbia after graduation on a full scholarship - it’s one of her few sources of pride - where she earned her dual degree in english & investigative journalism ( mostly because she didn’t know what she wanted to do )

wrote and published a book based heavily on her experiences as a scholarship student at a private school - YA fiction, essentially - mostly just to dip her toes in the water and become established as an author. surprisingly - the book was a hit, and has written three more in the form of a small series. she also wrote a small book on what it’s like being a ‘psychic medium’.

annabel only came to livingstone after the apner family had left her a hefty email - pleading with her to connect to their dead son. it was in livingstone that annabel heard of the watershed app - and it was from there that her interest was peaked. she immediately found herself involved as a tier 1 shepherd.

she’s partially there to take notes - to learn as much about the app as she can - and partially to strengthen and build her side-business, though she had thought she was retired. the con, however, is too great to resist. essentially - she wants to become a high enough tier to learn the dirt on everybody, and then use that for her psychic business. 

decided to become a dance instructor due to her experience as a ballerina, but because she can’t really ... dance, has assistants that help her.

personality !!

lives in a semi-decent apartment downtown where the elevator would break every other week until she threatened her landlord and it was magically fixed permanently  :^)

that being said - she’s not the friendliest person. knows what she wants and how to get it, and will not hesitate to use people or push them out of her way in order to achieve her goals.

her cutthroat nature was the reason for her success in academics and dance - her students are all terrified of her, and rightfully so. she teaches dancers between the ages of 16-24. while incredibly hard on them - she’d rip someone a new one if they tried to hurt any of her students.

horribly stubborn - if she’s got an idea of you already in her mind, then it’s hard to convince her otherwise.

still uses a cane - in fact, she can’t really walk without it - unless she wants to be in pain.

it’s sturdy, ornate, and pretty fucking solid. doubles as a weapon if need be - has definitely ... hit people with it before, though she’s calmed down now that she’s older.

used to be very angry, very defensive as a teenager and young adult - is still the same, just ... less intense. will not hesitate to speak her mind and let her opinions known - especially in the face of injustice.

doesn’t really have the best ... relationship with authority, mainly because of where she was raised and her con-artist businesses. tends to be snarky and sarcastic to anybody in charge - or really, anybody in general. 

pretty distrusting, pretty emotionless on the outside, doesn’t like to be seen as weak or somebody to be pitied. keeps herself closely guarded and doesn’t really let others ‘inside’ due to her own comfort levels.

swore off love when she was 12 and during a fluke mid-twenties, wound up engaged. called off the engagement when she found her groom-to-be and her bridesmaid-slash-cousin together. very classic - very re-enforcing of a few of her greatest fears.

she’ll sleep around but dating is out of the question, for the most part - she’s been on a few blind dates, a few casual get-togethers - but she’s always the one to break things off. is more of a careful hook-up kind of gal.

still does her psychic medium business !! sometimes she wonders if she’s a bad person because of it - but ultimately, it’s on her customers for believing in all that nonsense anyway. anna herself is a skeptic - doesn’t believe in anything unless she can see it and feel it.

her apartment is still half-packed, half-unpacked, because she honestly cannot be bothered. got out the essentials and that was it. still has her ballet shoes, still has all of her awards for competitions she’s won - they’re just in a box tucked away somewhere labeled ‘do not open’.

is actually ... a pretty sentimental person, doesn’t take anything she’s got for granted, and is hugely appreciative of her father. sends him money when she can. hasn’t spoken to her mother in years - pretty sure she’s got a step / half-sibling or two but she’s never met them. 

a lone wolf and likes it that way, but she isn’t super opposed to friendship - even if she won’t necessarily call anybody a friend. appreciates others who are similar to her - got their head on right, and knows what they want in life.

has a pretty bad fear of driving - will uber if she needs to go anywhere - even then, being in cars makes her pretty anxious. still has ptsd-induced panic attacks, though she’s managed them pretty well.

doesn’t really do drugs! will smoke weed to ease the ache and her nerves, but otherwise she only takes what is prescribed for her. doesn’t drink anything hard, either. big fan of beer and wine. probably gets wine drunk home alone late at night ... like ... two times a week.

goes between being high strung and uncaring - she’s not especially moody ( rather, is just consistently angry for whatever reasons ) but she definitely tries to bottle everything up.

probably keeps pepper spray on her at all times, even though she’s got her cane. has a gun in her apartment, cat ear brass knuckles on her keychain. she’s not paranoid, she just likes being prepared.

kind of wants to write a novel based off of watershed so! she takes a lot of notes - tends to be very observant.

has a soft spot for children, animals, and soft women. kind of person who will put herself in the line of danger in order to protect others - even if she doesn’t necessarily know them too well.

also the kind of person who’ll set something on fire - or do something because you’ve told her not to. incredibly spiteful when wronged. will raise hell if need be.

morally ambiguous tbh.

wanted connections !!

maybe ... a roommate? i imagine her living alone but i also like the idea of having roommate so :^)

she’s sort of new in town so ! acquaintances. people who’ve seen her in town and are curious. people who’ve seen her like ... kick someone’s tire in a small fit of rage or spend 20 minutes trying to coax a cat into coming near her so she could pet it.

fans of her books !!

someone from new york who recognizes her from whatever !! whether it’s from newspaper details of her incident, her legacy at her private school, someone who went to the same college as her, her legacy as a ballerina before her incident, etc. etc.

has taken up boxing recently - so somebody whose helping her at the gym?

someone who tried to like. help her cross the road or something because they saw her with her cane and she yelled at them so now they’re in this weird spot.

students !! if somebody does ballet - she might be teaching them.

alternately, one of her assistants !!

someone she’s soft for for whatever reason :/

hookups !! preferably mid-20s to like. late-30s. she’s not a cougar, i’m sorry :(

somebody who wants her to be a cougar. and she just has to keep rejecting them.

customers who come to her for psychic readings and like. comfort in the form of talking to the dead.

people skeptical of her !! maybe trying to ruin her in some way.

other shepherds. someone higher up that she’s trying to manipulate in some way for her own benefits.

a drunk one night stand that neither wants to talk about.

a pregnancy scare with another, separate one night stand! it turned out to be nothing, but there was some. weirdness. between them afterwards.

a blind date or two dnfjgkmh

someone she ghosted :/

someone she’s like, protected from a creep at a bar or a club ! and now they feel indebted towards her and she’s just like uuuh no. stop.

annoyances !!

like ... maybe a pal or two, or three. mainly just people she gets along with !!

on the other end - something where they just. despise each other for whatever reason. pure hatred.

hatred but make it sexy.

a dealer because even though she can get medical marijuana ... it’s good to have a lil extra on ya :)

people She’s suspicious of for whatever reason - someone she caught doing something. suspicious. untrustworthy.

someone where their mail keeps getting mixed up.

uuh really im down for anything !!

[crimsonrevolt]

Congratulations Paige you’ve been accepted to Crimson Revolt as Augustus Rookwood.

↳ please refer to our character checklist

Welcome back Paige! To hear from you was such a pleasant surprise and to have you back is even better! We never know what Augustus is going to do and that’s what makes him so great! He’s complex and interesting and we’re ready to have him back on the dash!

application beneath the cut 

OUT OF CHARACTER

INTRODUCTION

Paige, 25, she/her, EST. I’m from Tennessee in the United States!

ACTIVITY

I’m currently having to share a laptop with my mom, and Chronic Fatigue keeps me pretty dead for most of the day, but I plan to get online at least once daily to reply to anything I owe. So 5/10 maybe? I mean, I’m ALWAYS available via chat though, to plot or just talk.

HOW DID YOU FIND US?

Originally, Alexis, your former (original?) Rabastan. Then I was here for months, left, returned for a year, left, and I’m baaaaaaaaack! Lol You know I can’t stay away from my trash son.

WHAT HARRY POTTER CHARACTER DO YOU IDENTIFY WITH MOST?

In the past, I said Hermione without hesitation. I was always the one who felt a bit left out when new to a school, the one who lived to make teachers happy, and was a little too weird to make friends on my own without an intervening force. However, now I would say Minerva. In my friend group, I tend to be “mom”. I use logic and my mediating skills to make sure everyone stays out of too much trouble, work on guiding them through tough situations, and I always offer snacks when someone is upset. Also, cats are my life, and if I could become one, I would. Though even with the benefit of magic, the process would be incredibly complicated and I’m super lazy.

ANYTHING ELSE?

Nope!

IN CHARACTER

DESIRED CHARACTER

Augustus Rookwood.

Middle name: Xavier.

Name’s full meaning: Majestic, splendid, bird/forest

FACE CLAIM

Daniel Sharman

REASON FOR CHOSEN CHARACTER

What I put in my first apps: I’ve always been drawn to the darker characters. Especially the ones who appear very controlled when in the public eye, and then “let loose” when they’re behind closed doors. Then there was mention of his family basically putting him on a pedestal. I’ve always loved (and had a muse for) characters that have a little too much responsibility put on their shoulders by their parents, and then begin to crack under the pressure in highly destructive ways.

Augustus seems like the type of person who originally started out trying to be the best son he could be. Who nodded and smiled at his parents’ plans for his future, worked his hardest in school, and then one day realized there was someone out there (The Dark Lord) to whom he could devote himself, and not have to be so perfect and “good”.

Which is why he will last in this war. No one suspects the “good little quiet boy” who kept his nose in his books, and his potentially deadly spells to himself. Not even the Dark Lord wanted him at first. Not until Augustus showed him exactly what he was capable of, behind a locked door, when everyone else was out trying to make as much noise for their cause as possible.

Now that he has an excuse to use the dark skills he’s kept to himself for years, Augustus kills when asked to and tortures just for the fun of it. However, he draws the line at children, and will convince another member of the group to kill/torture them when sent to “take care of” an entire family. He can’t exactly explain why he’s protective of children, or why that mindset changes as soon as they’ve reached an age when they can defend themselves. Perhaps it’s just too easy, and he likes a challenge.

Now that I’ve actually played him: He evolved over time and his ability to suppress his emotions slipped drastically depending on who he was with. There were far more bad influences than good ones, and soon, a few too many people knew his secrets and he was caught. Since then, he has retreated back into himself as much, if not more than before, and mainly focuses on his job and making the Dark Lord proud. And God, he feels like screaming every minute of every day. As the climax of the war draws nearer, situations become more and more tense. The whispers behind his back make his skin crawl, and although he knows he will be protected if he lashes out, he swallows his curses like acid. He was betrayed once, and won’t let it happen again.

PREFERRED SHIPS // CHARACTER SEXUALITY // GENDER & PRONOUNS

Preferred ships? Augustus/everyone, to be honest. Augustus will have sex with anyone. Long time friends, people he wants to manipulate, strangers, whatever. Sex isn’t tied to emotion for him. It is purely the pursuit of pleasure. Hell, he would probably have sex with the Dark Lord without even being commanded to do so. Because yolo? But romance is an entirely different animal. It requires trust and emotional connection and way too much of oneself. Therefore, Augustus has only felt such a connection once, and he’s not sure he wants to repeat it. However, he could easily be in a relationship or marriage with someone out of convenience or friendship. Though no monogamy or cute stuff unless pretending for the public. He thinks it would be selfish to tie someone down like that if he can’t offer them what they need emotionally.

Overall, Augustus identifies as an aromantic pansexual (though those labels aren’t exactly a thing in the 70s/80s), as a cis male (he/him/his). There has been some gender experimentation with polyjuice potion, but that was purely for fun.

CREATE ONE (OR MORE!) OF THE FOLLOWING FOR YOUR CHARACTER:

Patronus: Lynx. (Lore states that the secretive lynx represents controlled power, individualism, and sharp-sightedness. Lynx people are generally exceedingly observant, quiet, intelligent, and curious. Though their independent nature can strike some as aloof, they are often excellent guides and steadfast friends.) Boggart: Someone outing him for what he’s done. Such as, a member of the Wizengamot reading a list of his crimes. Wand: Hazel (Wandlore states that “A sensitive wand, hazel often reflects its owner’s emotional state, and works best for a master who understands and can manage their own feelings.”), 10 inches, Dragon heartstring core, Unyielding.

Blog: http://avgvstvs.tumblr.com

LINK TO VISUAL AESTHETIC

Brief playlist: “Choke” - I Don’t Know How But They Found Me, “Strangers” - Halsey (ft. Lauren Jauregui), “Run” - AWOLNATION, “The Last One” - Black Veil Brides

Aesthetic: On one hand, he’s a smoking gun, hands dripping with blood, wet leather after a surprise storm, teeth on pale skin, the way a bottle of alcohol holds the scent when empty, skin rubbed against a rough brick wall, and sins in hallowed places. But then he’s also the smell of old books, chalk covered hands from solving impossible problems, secrets whispered to empty rooms, lies screamed into crowded places, nails digging into palms, tantrums behind locked doors, cold chains, hot coffee, lightning and hurricanes. But then as an Unspeakable, there’s all this mystery surrounding his job, and the strict rules he must follow.  So order and perfection. But as a Death Eater, there’s all this chaos and mess. Augustus in school was far different. Sweaters with sleeves a little too long, glasses to read that kept slipping off, smudged parchment, top marks hidden from fellow students, praise from teachers sounding too much like the praise from his parents, the death of a sibling and the expectation to immediately get over it, sitting in windows and watching the world move too fast. Everything was perfectly imperfect, and he did everything he could to grasp and absorb the chaos around him, and hold it tight.

IN CHARACTER QUESTIONNAIRE

The following section should be looked at like a survey for your character. Answer them in character and feel free to use gifs. Or, if you’d rather, answer them in third person or OOC without gifs. Answers do not have to be extremely lengthy.

♔ If you were able to invent one spell, potion, or charm, what would it do, what would you use it for or how would you use it? Feel free to name it: “I would not invent my own. I would simply rework the pre-existing Obliviate and make it much more permanent and impossible to reverse. The incantation would be obliviscaris in perpetuum (forget forever) and it would be invaluable for those who wish to use it on victims, or for those who have something traumatic or highly sensitive in their past that they’d rather forget..”

♔ You have to venture deep into the Forbidden Forest one night. Pick one other character and one object (muggle or magical), besides your wand, that you’d want with you: “I would choose to take the Dark Lord with me, obviously, despite him never being one to follow someone else. His powers surpass anything the forest could throw at us. Also, I would bring a time-turner with me, due to its ability to help me return to any moment before I run into trouble, and allow me to take a different path.”

♔ What kinds of decisions are the most difficult for you to make? “Those that require me to go against my deceitful nature and be completely honest with people. Like, a decision that if I am being truthful, would end my carefully constructed public image.”

♔ What is one thing you would never want said about you? “I would never want someone accusing me of something, whether I did the deed or not. How I spend my time is an entirely private matter, and I would rather not have others prying into my life, no matter what they believe I have done.”

REACTION TO LAST EVENT DROP

While Augustus is glad that the Ministry is fully within the clutches of the Dark Lord’s side, he disagrees with the eradication of non-purebloods. He has never been a blood purest due to his childhood as an outcast and the discovery that those with colorful family trees tend to be the kindest. And after his time spent in America surrounded by Muggles, Augustus doesn’t really give a shit who your parents are. He plans to do almost everything he can to avoid a total genocide. Sure, murder and mayhem are fun, but one must draw a line at the slaughter of friends. Perhaps. While he has no plans to actively work against his fellow Death Eaters, he will not turn down direct orders. And for now, his orders are to stay focused on his work in the Department Of Mysteries. He has a plan for The Dark Lord that only someone who works in the Love Chamber can properly research.

WRITING SAMPLE

Augustus hadn’t been in this to make friends. Since childhood he’d fully accepted that he was born to be a loner. Besides, everyone else just got in his way. But as he sat, with cold metal chains wrapped around his wrists and ankles, clinking every time he tried (and failed) to find a more comfortable position, he felt truly and utterly alone. For the first time in his life, he began wishing there was someone by his side. Anyone, really. Just another warm body to deflect some of the angry, betrayed looks coming from the seats in which sat the Wizengamot and others. At that point, he would have even accepted a few of his least favorite acquaintances.

Unfortunately, everyone he knew was either dead, in Azkaban, or in the audience, watching with bated breath. This trial was one that had brought out spectators from every department of the Ministry. NO ONE had suspected the quiet wizard who went directly to and from the Department Of Mysteries every day, never making enemies or even standing out very much. He’d played his role perfectly. Even now, he kept his true self behind a facade, acting the part of the wrongly accused. Because he truly intended to leave the trial a free man. What good was the word of Karkaroff against his? The headmaster of a foreign school known to breed dark wizards, against a ‘friend’ of many at the Ministry? He’d spent countless hours cultivating false relationships with these people, earning their trust, and then gathering secrets. And until his name was spat by Karkaroff, it hadn’t so much as flashed through people’s minds. Not since he was pardoned all those years ago after his interrogation at the hands of Aversio.

The questions were easily answered with lies, and he even asked some of his own. “Where were you on the night of (…)?” “Where was I? Where were your Aurors? How could you let this happen?” “Who else answers to He Who Must Not Be Named?” “Clearly you’re bringing anyone in these days. If I pointed at any of you, would you put them on trial too?” Until the lies weren’t enough to get him released, and a vial of Veritaserum was brought out.

Rookwood started to sweat in that moment. His breath became ragged and his hands began to violently shake. If he was being honest with himself, he would have realized that it was sheer terror he was experiencing. As the potion was carried across the room and uncorked, he’d half expected someone to burst into the room and save him. The other part of him knew his entire life was about to change for the worse. Even as the liquid was forced into his mouth, possible scenarios of escape danced through his mind. If only the chains were slightly loose. Maybe one of his fellow Death Eaters sat amongst the crowd. Yaxley? Cassius? Dolores? Perhaps someone would have a sudden change of heart and remember how impossible it seemed for him to be a part of this. But alas, the chains were magic, all of his comrades had already been captured or killed, and after the trial of Barty Crouch Jr., no one trusted even the least suspicious person.

And then words were spilling past his lips, almost too fast, with the sting of Veritaserum still on his tongue. When asked about his dealings with the Death Eaters, he held nothing back, despite the deep ache within his very soul that got stronger with each new thing he revealed. Both the Wizengamot and the audience gasped as he told details of the lives he’d destroyed. How he’d stalked several entire families before torturing and killing them. The bodies he’d left in alleyways. The memories he’d stolen from those he’d left bloody and beaten. The way it made him feel when people begged. He told them it was an almost sexual satisfaction, and the Veritaserum-induced smirk that went along with his words must have been the final nail in his coffin, because the trial ended swiftly after that.

Augustus was forced to watch as his beloved wand was snapped in half in front of him, and he was immediately taken to a cold, damp room where an elderly wizard stripped him of his fine, embroidered robes and a pair of striped, dirty ones were shoved into his hands. He would be taking a portkey to Azkaban directly from that room, without a chance to say goodbye to anyone. Not that he cared very much for anyone in his life, especially those not currently residing in the prison he was destined for, but it was all very sudden. Like a flower being plucked from a vast garden and shoved into a dusty old vase, just waiting to die.

And in this little vase of his, he was alone.

[sporadicfangurl]

Michael x Alex x Maria

So, after tonight's episode of Rosewell, I have some thoughts and feelings about the relationship between Michael, Alex, and Maria. Since the episode's airing, a lot of people (i.e. Malex stans) have been complaining about the threesome that took place between the three of them tonight. I read that the threesome and Miluca being together by the end of the episode is somehow an example of "queerbaiting" and a "disservice to the queer community".  I've also read that Maria apparently manipulated and coerced Alex into the threesome and how Alex participating makes him weak or whatever because he's gay and not attracted to Maria sexually and what not. 

First and foremost speaking for myself personally, I don't see how Michael and Maria getting into a relationship is queerbaiting. Going off of the definition of what queerbaiting is; a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but then do not actually depict, same-sex romance or other forms of LGBTQ representation. Michael and Alex are canon highschool sweethearts who we've seen multiple sex scenes and other forms intimacy from and who unquestionably still love each other. Whether or not Michael and Alex every get back together it doesn't change their history or the shared love between them. Now to me, queerbaiting is the ship of destiel (Dean Winchester & Castiel from the show Supernatural) or the character of Stiles from Teen Wolf who although there were scenes of him sprinkled throughout the series that implied he could be bisexual he was never canonically made bisexual.

Speaking of bisexual, for those who haven't been paying attention, Michael Guerin is canonically an open and proud bisexual man and in the event that the series doesn't end with him being with a man it won't somehow invalidate his sexuality. Michael being in a relationship with Maria doesn't suddenly make him straight no more than him being in a relationship with Alex made him gay. He isn't either. Michael is bi and thus he is attracted to and can fall in love with people of both genders as he clearly has. Trying to make it seem like Michael being with a woman somehow takes away his place in the LGBTQ to me is a prime example of bi-erasure and incredibly biphobia. 

I've also seen a few people say that Michael falling for two people at the same time plays into the trope that bisexuals are unable to commit and lust after everyone is wrong as I see Michael's love life to have more to do with his abandonment issues and longing for connection than it does to his sexuality. Max and Isabel being adopted and raised together as siblings while Michael was bounced around multiple abusive homes as a child was certainly a traumatic experience for Michael that left him with all kinds of damage that have affected his personal relationships. He attempts to keep people at arm's length but he always craves love and human connection. According to Alex ( in 1x09), although they've loved each other they've never known each other that well. Personally, I feel like both Alex and Michael were so deprived of love during their childhood that when they found each other they latched onto each other so easily because they just both needed and craved connection and affection. Michael fell for Alex because (outside of Max and Isabel) he was the first person to show him genuine kindness (allowing him to stay in his family's shed because of him being homeless) and them having a commonality and their shitty home lives. I feel like Michael grew to love Maria out of a friendship that evolved into caring that really cemented when Maria's mom was missing. He met two people that he cared for and tried to push away (Alex with the angst, Maria by making out with that random chick at her bar) but deep down Michael does truly want to love/be loved by someone which is why it's so hard for him to push either one of them away permanently. 

Getting to the threesome that took place in the episode; Alex was not manipulated into the threesome. Or at this very least I didn't interpret the scene that way. From my point of view; Alex, Michael, and Maria went through a terribly horrifying experience together that left them all feeling shaken and in need of comfort. Alex had been stabbed (could have died) and in the time it took him to get to his feet probably had a dozen bad scenarios take place in his head about what could have happened to Maria. Maria went through being attacked by an ax-wielding crazy man who she thought possibly killed Alex and watched assault, Michael. And Michael went through believing that he had possibly lost two people that he very much loves (which on the cusp of everything that just went down with him thinking he could have lost Max and very recently watching his mother die in a terrible explosion couldn't have been great on his psyche) and he was hit an ax (fortunately not the sharp-end of it but am sure the shit still hurt). Three people, who are all intertwined in this complex (and really beautiful) relationship filled with connection, history, and love went through this shared ordeal and after everything, they shared a profound moment of intimacy. 

Now some want to say that Maria coerced Alex into it but I didn't read the scene that way. To me, when Alex was uncomfortable about being involved in the threesome because if he felt that way he would have left. When the scene first starts I feel Alex is in this process of shock still kind of reeling over everything that happened with those weird-ass twins. When Michael tells the two of them that he almost lost them and then he and Maria kissed; I feel like Alex was thrown by their intimacy as hearing about two people that love loving each other and actually witnessing it with your own eyes are two completely different things. He initially says that he should go as Michael and Maria are clearly in the midst of sharing a very intimate moment but when Maria extends that moment to Alex and gives him an open invitation to stay and be with them he does.

Now we have no idea what the hell transpired once things went to black. People saying that because Alex is gay this is fucked up and what not and him sleeping with a woman is a disservice to his character and a whole bunch of other things to which I again don't agree with. For one, Alex dick probably went nowhere near Maria's vagina that whole interaction. More than likely there was at most a lot of heavy petting on their parts and all the actual intercourse was involved Michael living his greatest bisexual wet dream out. I don't know. No one knows. The point is that while Alex has stated he is gay, he has also said in this episode that kissing Maria was the first time he ever enjoyed touching another person. He is comfortable with Maria and however a person chooses to interpret their love you cannot deny that there is love there. Even if that love doesn't translate to a mutual sexual attraction they do both love each other deeply. Hell, if Alex was straight they've both made it clear that they'd be married and living happily ever after. It was a complicated situation mixed with high emotions and three consenting adults made a choice. That is what happened. It was all that happened. Alex was raped or forced to do anything that he didn't want to do. Maria clearly didn't want any of them to be alone but if Alex had been adamant about wanting to go she wouldn't have forced him to stay. More than likely she would have probably ended up leaving with him because dammit they started that trip together and her being the kind of person that she is she would have chosen her relationship with Alex over boning Michael.  

The fact that they had Alex (according to himself) say that he had never been in a relationship before during the car ride with him and Maria earlier on says a lot about why he chose to end things with Michael the morning after. While he isn't ashamed of who he is, his relationship with Michael is messy at best and for all the good memories he has with him there are just as many bad if not more so. The night the three of them shared together was probably the most loved any of them have ever felt. It was special but it doesn't change all the messiness between Alex and Michael and I think Alex just needs time to find himself and discover what he likes and wants. In his 20+ years of life, Alex would say that he's dated no one, been in love with one guy, and the only other sexual/romantic moment he's ever felt is with his best friend he kissed once during seven minutes in heaven. Between his father being a dick and all the years spent in the military, Alex hasn't really had an opportunity to figure out what he wants and likes in a romantic partner. Which coming back home and immediately falling back into things with Michael probably hasn't helped. 

This is where I think the new guy with the green-hair comes in. A fresh clean slate that I think will help him discover things about himself when it comes to those aspects of his life. While I definitely don't see this relationship being endgame, I do think it may play an integral part in Alex's character growth and development. Personally, my dream scenario by the series end would be a blissful throuple between Alex, Michael, and Maria. I've never seen the original Rosewell so whether or not my alien babies are meant to one day go back to their home planet is a mystery to me but if not am down with this show taking a page out of Siren's playbook and bringing on the polygamy. Now I know a lot of people will be like that ain't gonna work because Alex is gay but who's to say Alex can't be a biromantic homosexual. He could be sexually attracted and getting his back blown out by Michael while still feeling a deep love and connection to Maria that allows my throuple ship to sail. Don't come for my dreams!

Anyways, I ship Malex, Miluca and whatever the ship name between the three of them would be because quite frankly am down for Michael getting as much love as he can get and the relationship between the three of them is just amazing and wonderful and all my babies deserve nice things. So, that is my stance on it all. Am hoping that this threesome doesn't lead to ship wars or people acting the actors because it's always instances like this that bring out the ugly side of fandoms that I hate so much. No matter what you think of the current storylines going on I hope everyone remembers that everything going on right now is fiction. None of these people exist and with a very real global pandemic going on right now the last thing these actors need is people forgetting the fact that they are not they're characters and spewing hate at them for acting out someone else's vision. They are just characters in another person's story and even if you don't agree with the story being told it's no reason to be a dick. So please don't be a dick to real people over fictional characters. 

(Fair warning and apologizes to anyone who makes it to the end of my rambles. It was incredibly earlier (and or late depending on how you see it) when I wrote this all out thus there is likely a crazy amount of grammatical errors throughout this post. I had just seen so much negativity surrounding my three most favorite characters in this show and the fact that so many people hated something that I loved seeing so much just made it hard for me to shut off my brain and go to sleep. Sorry again for the long post, I would have put it under a Read More tab thing but I don't typically post on Tumblr (as I usually just like and reblog stuff I like/agree with) and don't really know how to operate the site.) 

[oovitus]

Veteran Voices: Dr. Allan Philp

Dr. Allan Philp says he was born into a “solidly middle class” family in Knoxville, Tennessee. He didn’t always envision a career in the military, but the importance of serving others was instilled in him from a young age.

“There was something ingrained in us to give back,” Dr. Philp says. “For my family that meant the military, but it could have easily been some other public service.”

Dr. Allan Philp, chief trauma surgeon at Allegheny General Hospital, and a veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now chief trauma surgeon at Allegheny General Hospital in the Allegheny Health Network (AHN), Dr. Philp served in the military as a combat surgeon. He led critical care teams in Afghanistan and Iraq during operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, and held numerous positions, including critical care aeromedical evacuation team leader, surgical ICU director of Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, and chief physician of AI Dhafra Air Force Base.

However, before attending medical school at Vanderbilt on a military scholarship, Dr. Philp earned his undergraduate degree in engineering.

“I always assumed that I was going to work in engineering because I enjoyed pressures and flows, movements and devices — stuff like that,” he says. “There was a cerebral component, but also a physical one.”

Surgery, he discovered, shared similarities with engineering — the body itself being a feat of engineering.

“I found that I liked the immediacy of surgery,” he says. “If you look at lives saved per provider, a family practice physician is probably your number one person, but much of what they do is preventive and longer term. A surgeon, on the other hand, might be saving lives today.”

Military Medicine

In a sense, the medical branch of the military is freestanding; there are some large hospitals and permanent facilities of course, but much of military medicine is practiced in more mobile environments, including on the front lines of combat.

“You take out a spleen at Allegheny General, or you take out a spleen in Afghanistan — it’s kind of the same procedure,” Dr. Philp explains. “But what’s different are the resources you have and environment you’re in.”

Surgical equipment and other tools, available medication, personnel, and shelter — all of that can vary when it comes to military medicine. “If you go far enough forward, you don’t even have medical records anymore. We would have to leave written notes on tape and stick it to the patient,” Dr. Philp says.

He adds that the longer the military is involved in a conflict or region, the more developed the resources become. “What initially starts out as ‘nothing but tents’ evolves into rough buildings and temporary hospitals,” he says. “And eventually you have something that looks more like a stateside hospital.”

He describes modern military medicine as involving interlocking, standardized pieces that can be configured according to location and needed services — as an analogy, he says you can think about how a wide variety of Lego® blocks can be fit together in many different configurations.

“War is still terrible, but some things have changed,” he says. “What used to be trench warfare is now largely urban. This evolution calls for smaller and more mobile medical teams — we want to use the smaller Lego® blocks. The idea is to push everything as far forward as possible. In the military, we train a lot of our non-medical personnel to perform basic medical care. Then we scatter Forward Surgical Teams (FST) that can perform life-saving operations and resuscitation.”

Countless lives have been saved due to this approach, which also led to a similar nationwide civilian initiative: Stop the Bleed. The goal is to teach more civilians how to perform basic first-aid during emergency situations. AHN participates in the program, including having trauma specialists host free community classes at multiple AHN hospitals during the nation’s first National Stop the Bleed Day in 2018.

“Think about the Orlando nightclub shootings,” Dr. Philp says. “There were people live-texting their own deaths — it was horrific. The problem, especially in an active shooter event, is that EMS can’t go in right away. What you really need is the person sitting next to you to be able to take basic actions that could save your life, like applying pressure to a wound.”

“the dedication to take care of one person at a time”

Adaptability with regard to resources and stressful environments is vital for those practicing military medicine. Dr. Philp says that another factor involves erratic schedules and levels of activity. While deployed, he says you may need to cope with a “99 percent boredom and 1 percent panic” reality. He explains that the majority of his time deployed was spent on predictable tasks — a steady treatment of non-critically injured patients. Then, without warning, an alarm would go off that signaled the start of the “1 percent panic.”

“A mass casualty is defined as anything that overwhelms your system — depending on the resources, one critically ill patient could be considered a mass casualty,” he explains. “The problem is that you don’t know if it’s going to be six hours or six days until the next one occurs.”

These situations can create incredibly difficult decisions.

“One day, we were dealing with a mass casualty and burning through our blood bank,” Dr. Philp says. “My orthopedic guy was working on this kid’s leg — but it was a horrible injury. He had been in there for a long time. I asked how much longer would it take and how much more blood was the kid going to lose, because we were down to only a couple of units of blood. Based on what he told me, I had to tell him to amputate the leg, because those last two units of blood could save another person’s life.”

Reflecting on another aspect of military medicine, Dr. Philp shares a conversation he had with a military chaplain.

“I told him, ‘You’re supposed to be the antithesis of war, and yet here you are. How do you square that?’” Dr. Philp recalls. “And the chaplain said to me, ‘I’m one person. I can’t fix the whole thing. What I can do is take care of people.’”

That mindset is part of a dedication that Dr. Philp sees throughout the military — “not to any political ethos, but to the people you work with,” he says. “That’s the important part about military medicine — it’s the dedication to take care of one person at a time. Men and women with their boots on the ground aren’t in the military because they have anything against anyone. They have kids to feed and families to support. Being the person to get them home is powerful.”

The Transition from Military to Civilian Life

After Philp left the military, he continued his career as a surgeon and teacher, including roles as trauma surgeon and surgical intensivist at the R.A. Cowly Shock/Trauma Center, and clinical assistant professor at the University of Maryland Medical School. In 2011, he took the position of chief trauma surgeon with a health system that eventually became part of AHN.

Dr. Philp now splits his time between emergency surgery, trauma, and critical care. He and his team also develop and coordinate consistent protocol to be followed throughout the network. He describes his role as three-fold: clinical excellence, education, and research to push the field forward.

Although he describes his own transition from military to civilian life as relatively painless (“I was able to drop right back in”), he says there is a lot we can do to improve the transition from military to civilian life for others. In particular, he points to the limited mental health resources available for veterans.

“We need to get better at serially planning for, identifying, and following up about mental health support,” he says. “When it comes to mental health help, I think we’re at 15 percent of where we need to be.”

Although post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) receives a lot of attention, Dr. Philp points out that many veterans may not have PTSD, but still need help dealing with Secondary Traumatic Stress Syndrome or Compassion Fatigue.

“PTSD is something that happens directly to you. Secondary Traumatic Stress is when the traumatic event happened to someone else, but you had to deal with it,” he explains. “You see this a lot not only with veterans, but with nurses, doctors, and EMS workers.”

Prioritizing mental health resources for veterans doesn’t just improve their individual lives and families, Dr. Philp points out, it also allows them to fully contribute in the workplace and in their communities. In explaining the positive impact veterans can have in the medical field specifically, he notes that “previously deployed veterans are extremely comfortable working in teams, which is critical in medicine. And they display an adaptability and dedication that is hard to find elsewhere. A typical resume or CV tells you, ‘This is the pigeonhole in which I live.’ That’s not the case with veterans — they tend to have had broader experience, and that can add value in many different situations.”

Veteran Voices: Dr. Allan Philp published first on

[ajeckaea]

Short version: today, with the help of God, I've made a resolution to put a particularly traumatic and life-wrecking event behind me permanently and not let it affect my life anymore, and I wanted to say that somewhere in public. Please pray for me.

Long version:

Let me tell you a story.

*indicates a changed name

Once there was a little girl who loved to sing. The local high school had an elite choir called Chamber Singers, whose women wore long black dresses, and one day after a concert her parents had taken her to, the little kindergartener said to herself:

"Someday, I want to be one of those girls in black."

The little girl grew older and continued to sing. She sang in her grade school musicals. She sang in her church children's choir. She sang at Mass and at home and anywhere she felt like it. At her eighth grade recorder recital, the choir director told her "If you sing as well as you play, I can't wait to have you in choir next year." She held on to her dream.

When she was in tenth grade, as an experiment Chamber Singers was opened to sophomores as well as juniors and seniors, and she auditioned. Four sophomore girls were accepted.

She was not one of them.

The little girl was devastated. For several weeks, she burst into tears every time she imagined one of those four girls wearing that long black dress. She prayed that somehow she would miraculously be accepted late. She even tried that super-sketchy totally-legit definitely-not-a-superstitious-chain-letter St. Jude novena. She joined the Concert Chorale instead. Somehow she survived.

But she never stopped wishing.

In the second semester of her sophomore year, as fate would have it, one of the Chamber Singers sopranos was placed on academic probation and forbidden to participate in extracurricular activities for its duration. By this time the little girl had developed a somewhat unusual platonic relationship with the choir director—something between friend and daughter and peer and protégé. Auditions were held to fill that empty soprano spot, and the little girl auditioned once more.

She was chosen. She was ecstatic.

It had been a bumpy ride, but her childhood dream had come true. She was finally one of those girls in black! As the 25th singer of a 24-member chorus, she could not sing with them in State competition, but it hardly mattered. She was in.

In eleventh grade, Chamber Singers was restricted to seniors only. The five junior girls who had been it as sophomores—the four originals and the little girl—were grandfathered in.

In twelfth grade, it was once more opened to juniors and sophomores. One of the four originals was not accepted back into the choir, for no good reason any of them could discover. She reported the director had said something about her attitude being wrong. This made no sense to anyone, and they didn't understand why he was acting so oddly, but there was nothing they could do. The little girl thought it was quite unfair.

Now we come to the bad part.

In twelfth grade, the relationship the little girl had with the director came back to bite her. She had long since ceased to think of him solely as a teacher, perceiving him more as a friend—this was not helped by the fact that he treated her objectively differently than the others—and consequently said things that she should not have. She was, several times, incredibly rude to him and others without realizing it. She very nearly got in trouble once—in that instance it was agreed that she would not have to sing in that specific production, and she would not need to come to rehearsals where it was the primary focus.

In February of her senior year, the camel's back broke.

Auditions were held, and as the little girl's younger sister Rhea* was eligible to join, she was hopeful that they could be in it together. When the little girl heard something about how a girl named Jessie* was "defending her spot" in Chamber Singers—a girl who was definitely not in Chamber Singers, yet seemed to be jeopardizing Rhea's chances—the little girl marched in and jokingly demanded to know what was up with that.

He said something she doesn't remember. It brought her up short. Now confused, she pointed out that Jessie wasn't in Chamber Singers. He angrily said something else she doesn't remember, and indicated she should leave. She did.

The next day, before rehearsal, he told her it was going to be one for the production she wasn't part of, so she didn't need to come. That was fine. She suspected nothing.

That night, her parents got a call. They sat down next to her. She looked at them, and she knew.

"I'm out of Chamber Singers, aren't I?"

She went to school the next day. Everything was fuzzy. She barely interacted. She felt disconnected from the world. She was in shock. Friends sympathized. One offered to help her make a case to the headmaster to let her back in. She was too frightened to try.

And yet...it wasn't the abrupt destruction of the dream she'd fought for that hurt, so much as the betrayal.

He'd told her it was a production rehearsal. He'd acted like nothing was wrong. He hadn't respected her enough to tell her himself. He'd dropped the bomb safely via a parental phone call.

He'd deliberately lied to her face.

She saw him a few times. She couldn't avoid it. She cried every time. He repeatedly called it "water under the bridge."

"You know I'm not crying to manipulate you, right?" "I'm not sure."

The whole mess fucked the little girl up hard. She didn't bother getting up for carpool. Her father drove her on his way to work. Her mother excused all her tardies. Most days she slept through chunks of her first class, the two-hour class that just happened to be taught by the headmaster who had facilitated her expulsion. She ended up auditing that class. She wrote angsty poetry. She rewrote song lyrics to fit her situation. She had nightmares.

She didn't care about anything.

It was never, ever water under the bridge. Three months later, she had her mother sign her out of school during the Honors Concert, during which the Chamber Singers were performing—with Jessie as their newest member. When the choir director said she could sing Ubi Caritas with the Chamber Singers and alumni who had been Chamber Singers during graduation, she fell on it like a starving man.

There is a part in every graduation ceremony where the graduates move the tassel on their hat from the right side to the left side, signifying their graduation.

The little girl did not move her tassel. She left it on the right. She was not done with Selborn* High.

She blamed the choir director. She blamed the headmaster. She blamed herself. And she subconsciously blamed her sister, which helped ruin that relationship.

She went off to college. She didn't get into their Chamber Singers. Failure.

That December, she was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome (high-functioning autism), depression, and anxiety. It had taken nine years of therapy, eight different therapists, seven years of pills, and two misdiagnoses to get there.

The next spring, she failed a history class and was told she couldn't major in music because her voice "had not progressed enough after a year of college study." Failure.

She went to the Selborn graduation ceremony solely to sing Ubi Caritas. She wore a black shirt and her Chamber Singers pearls to imitate their gowns as much as possible and rub it in his face.

The next fall, she took an incomplete on an English course and never finished. Failure.

The next January, her parents pulled her out of the dorm and back home to live. Failure.

She took an online music course. Also an incomplete. Also never finished. Failure.

Her sister graduated from Selborn. She sang Ubi Caritas.

She didn't go back to college the next fall. Failure.

She didn't care about much. She threw herself into online things. Her parents got her a social worker. The social worker got her a job. She went to the Selborn ceremony to sing Ubi Caritas. She resigned from the job after eight months because she couldn't handle the aggravation the customers caused her and was afraid of getting fired.

She was scarred. In her younger years, she had lied frequently. Now she had such a pathological hatred for any lying and deception that she struggled to write a resumé, because trying to make herself sound better than she was felt like lying. Fear of rejection and failure kept her from doing many things, and yet she couldn't seem to shut up. She would say something and thirty seconds later realize she shouldn't have and then beat herself up about it for months.

A couple years ago, her parents got her a tenth therapist, a Catholic therapist. She's still going to that one. Kayla* is the only one she's ever thought has actually made a difference. She's grown up a bit. She's still terrified of rejection, but she's working on it. She still sings. She still has dreams about Selborn and Chamber Singers and leaving college. She didn't go to the Selborn ceremony to sing this year. She still hopes to finish her incompletes, though she's pretty sure they've long since turned to F’s, because she feels it's her duty to the teachers who were far kinder than she feels she deserved. She runs a RPG clan. She has hopes to get her own place. She wants to go back to school or get a job, for herself this time and not because someone else says she should. She's patched her relationship with her sister to some extent. She still hates lying. She still says things and kicks herself for them. But she's trying.

And today, over seven and a half years later, she put on her Selborn graduation hat and moved the tassel to the left.

So go ahead, put the past in the past Box it up like an old photograph You don’t have to go back cause that was then And this is now

[oovitus]

Veteran Voices: Dr. Allan Philp

Dr. Allan Philp says he was born into a “solidly middle class” family in Knoxville, Tennessee. He didn’t always envision a career in the military, but the importance of serving others was instilled in him from a young age.

“There was something ingrained in us to give back,” Dr. Philp says. “For my family that meant the military, but it could have easily been some other public service.”

Dr. Allan Philp, chief trauma surgeon at Allegheny General Hospital, and a veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now chief trauma surgeon at Allegheny General Hospital in the Allegheny Health Network (AHN), Dr. Philp served in the military as a combat surgeon. He led critical care teams in Afghanistan and Iraq during operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, and held numerous positions, including critical care aeromedical evacuation team leader, surgical ICU director of Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, and chief physician of AI Dhafra Air Force Base.

However, before attending medical school at Vanderbilt on a military scholarship, Dr. Philp earned his undergraduate degree in engineering.

“I always assumed that I was going to work in engineering because I enjoyed pressures and flows, movements and devices — stuff like that,” he says. “There was a cerebral component, but also a physical one.”

Surgery, he discovered, shared similarities with engineering — the body itself being a feat of engineering.

“I found that I liked the immediacy of surgery,” he says. “If you look at lives saved per provider, a family practice physician is probably your number one person, but much of what they do is preventive and longer term. A surgeon, on the other hand, might be saving lives today.”

Military Medicine

In a sense, the medical branch of the military is freestanding; there are some large hospitals and permanent facilities of course, but much of military medicine is practiced in more mobile environments, including on the front lines of combat.

“You take out a spleen at Allegheny General, or you take out a spleen in Afghanistan — it’s kind of the same procedure,” Dr. Philp explains. “But what’s different are the resources you have and environment you’re in.”

Surgical equipment and other tools, available medication, personnel, and shelter — all of that can vary when it comes to military medicine. “If you go far enough forward, you don’t even have medical records anymore. We would have to leave written notes on tape and stick it to the patient,” Dr. Philp says.

He adds that the longer the military is involved in a conflict or region, the more developed the resources become. “What initially starts out as ‘nothing but tents’ evolves into rough buildings and temporary hospitals,” he says. “And eventually you have something that looks more like a stateside hospital.”

He describes modern military medicine as involving interlocking, standardized pieces that can be configured according to location and needed services — as an analogy, he says you can think about how a wide variety of Lego® blocks can be fit together in many different configurations.

“War is still terrible, but some things have changed,” he says. “What used to be trench warfare is now largely urban. This evolution calls for smaller and more mobile medical teams — we want to use the smaller Lego® blocks. The idea is to push everything as far forward as possible. In the military, we train a lot of our non-medical personnel to perform basic medical care. Then we scatter Forward Surgical Teams (FST) that can perform life-saving operations and resuscitation.”

Countless lives have been saved due to this approach, which also led to a similar nationwide civilian initiative: Stop the Bleed. The goal is to teach more civilians how to perform basic first-aid during emergency situations. AHN participates in the program, including having trauma specialists host free community classes at multiple AHN hospitals during the nation’s first National Stop the Bleed Day in 2018.

“Think about the Orlando nightclub shootings,” Dr. Philp says. “There were people live-texting their own deaths — it was horrific. The problem, especially in an active shooter event, is that EMS can’t go in right away. What you really need is the person sitting next to you to be able to take basic actions that could save your life, like applying pressure to a wound.”

“the dedication to take care of one person at a time”

Adaptability with regard to resources and stressful environments is vital for those practicing military medicine. Dr. Philp says that another factor involves erratic schedules and levels of activity. While deployed, he says you may need to cope with a “99 percent boredom and 1 percent panic” reality. He explains that the majority of his time deployed was spent on predictable tasks — a steady treatment of non-critically injured patients. Then, without warning, an alarm would go off that signaled the start of the “1 percent panic.”

“A mass casualty is defined as anything that overwhelms your system — depending on the resources, one critically ill patient could be considered a mass casualty,” he explains. “The problem is that you don’t know if it’s going to be six hours or six days until the next one occurs.”

These situations can create incredibly difficult decisions.

“One day, we were dealing with a mass casualty and burning through our blood bank,” Dr. Philp says. “My orthopedic guy was working on this kid’s leg — but it was a horrible injury. He had been in there for a long time. I asked how much longer would it take and how much more blood was the kid going to lose, because we were down to only a couple of units of blood. Based on what he told me, I had to tell him to amputate the leg, because those last two units of blood could save another person’s life.”

Reflecting on another aspect of military medicine, Dr. Philp shares a conversation he had with a military chaplain.

“I told him, ‘You’re supposed to be the antithesis of war, and yet here you are. How do you square that?’” Dr. Philp recalls. “And the chaplain said to me, ‘I’m one person. I can’t fix the whole thing. What I can do is take care of people.’”

That mindset is part of a dedication that Dr. Philp sees throughout the military — “not to any political ethos, but to the people you work with,” he says. “That’s the important part about military medicine — it’s the dedication to take care of one person at a time. Men and women with their boots on the ground aren’t in the military because they have anything against anyone. They have kids to feed and families to support. Being the person to get them home is powerful.”

The Transition from Military to Civilian Life

After Philp left the military, he continued his career as a surgeon and teacher, including roles as trauma surgeon and surgical intensivist at the R.A. Cowly Shock/Trauma Center, and clinical assistant professor at the University of Maryland Medical School. In 2011, he took the position of chief trauma surgeon with a health system that eventually became part of AHN.

Dr. Philp now splits his time between emergency surgery, trauma, and critical care. He and his team also develop and coordinate consistent protocol to be followed throughout the network. He describes his role as three-fold: clinical excellence, education, and research to push the field forward.

Although he describes his own transition from military to civilian life as relatively painless (“I was able to drop right back in”), he says there is a lot we can do to improve the transition from military to civilian life for others. In particular, he points to the limited mental health resources available for veterans.

“We need to get better at serially planning for, identifying, and following up about mental health support,” he says. “When it comes to mental health help, I think we’re at 15 percent of where we need to be.”

Although post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) receives a lot of attention, Dr. Philp points out that many veterans may not have PTSD, but still need help dealing with Secondary Traumatic Stress Syndrome or Compassion Fatigue.

“PTSD is something that happens directly to you. Secondary Traumatic Stress is when the traumatic event happened to someone else, but you had to deal with it,” he explains. “You see this a lot not only with veterans, but with nurses, doctors, and EMS workers.”

Prioritizing mental health resources for veterans doesn’t just improve their individual lives and families, Dr. Philp points out, it also allows them to fully contribute in the workplace and in their communities. In explaining the positive impact veterans can have in the medical field specifically, he notes that “previously deployed veterans are extremely comfortable working in teams, which is critical in medicine. And they display an adaptability and dedication that is hard to find elsewhere. A typical resume or CV tells you, ‘This is the pigeonhole in which I live.’ That’s not the case with veterans — they tend to have had broader experience, and that can add value in many different situations.”

Veteran Voices: Dr. Allan Philp published first on https://storeseapharmacy.tumblr.com

[oovitus]

Veteran Voices: Dr. Allan Philp

Dr. Allan Philp says he was born into a “solidly middle class” family in Knoxville, Tennessee. He didn’t always envision a career in the military, but the importance of serving others was instilled in him from a young age.

“There was something ingrained in us to give back,” Dr. Philp says. “For my family that meant the military, but it could have easily been some other public service.”

Dr. Allan Philp, chief trauma surgeon at Allegheny General Hospital, and a veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now chief trauma surgeon at Allegheny General Hospital in the Allegheny Health Network (AHN), Dr. Philp served in the military as a combat surgeon. He led critical care teams in Afghanistan and Iraq during operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, and held numerous positions, including critical care aeromedical evacuation team leader, surgical ICU director of Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, and chief physician of AI Dhafra Air Force Base.

However, before attending medical school at Vanderbilt on a military scholarship, Dr. Philp earned his undergraduate degree in engineering.

“I always assumed that I was going to work in engineering because I enjoyed pressures and flows, movements and devices — stuff like that,” he says. “There was a cerebral component, but also a physical one.”

Surgery, he discovered, shared similarities with engineering — the body itself being a feat of engineering.

“I found that I liked the immediacy of surgery,” he says. “If you look at lives saved per provider, a family practice physician is probably your number one person, but much of what they do is preventive and longer term. A surgeon, on the other hand, might be saving lives today.”

Military Medicine

In a sense, the medical branch of the military is freestanding; there are some large hospitals and permanent facilities of course, but much of military medicine is practiced in more mobile environments, including on the front lines of combat.

“You take out a spleen at Allegheny General, or you take out a spleen in Afghanistan — it’s kind of the same procedure,” Dr. Philp explains. “But what’s different are the resources you have and environment you’re in.”

Surgical equipment and other tools, available medication, personnel, and shelter — all of that can vary when it comes to military medicine. “If you go far enough forward, you don’t even have medical records anymore. We would have to leave written notes on tape and stick it to the patient,” Dr. Philp says.

He adds that the longer the military is involved in a conflict or region, the more developed the resources become. “What initially starts out as ‘nothing but tents’ evolves into rough buildings and temporary hospitals,” he says. “And eventually you have something that looks more like a stateside hospital.”

He describes modern military medicine as involving interlocking, standardized pieces that can be configured according to location and needed services — as an analogy, he says you can think about how a wide variety of Lego® blocks can be fit together in many different configurations.

“War is still terrible, but some things have changed,” he says. “What used to be trench warfare is now largely urban. This evolution calls for smaller and more mobile medical teams — we want to use the smaller Lego® blocks. The idea is to push everything as far forward as possible. In the military, we train a lot of our non-medical personnel to perform basic medical care. Then we scatter Forward Surgical Teams (FST) that can perform life-saving operations and resuscitation.”

Countless lives have been saved due to this approach, which also led to a similar nationwide civilian initiative: Stop the Bleed. The goal is to teach more civilians how to perform basic first-aid during emergency situations. AHN participates in the program, including having trauma specialists host free community classes at multiple AHN hospitals during the nation’s first National Stop the Bleed Day in 2018.

“Think about the Orlando nightclub shootings,” Dr. Philp says. “There were people live-texting their own deaths — it was horrific. The problem, especially in an active shooter event, is that EMS can’t go in right away. What you really need is the person sitting next to you to be able to take basic actions that could save your life, like applying pressure to a wound.”

“the dedication to take care of one person at a time”

Adaptability with regard to resources and stressful environments is vital for those practicing military medicine. Dr. Philp says that another factor involves erratic schedules and levels of activity. While deployed, he says you may need to cope with a “99 percent boredom and 1 percent panic” reality. He explains that the majority of his time deployed was spent on predictable tasks — a steady treatment of non-critically injured patients. Then, without warning, an alarm would go off that signaled the start of the “1 percent panic.”

“A mass casualty is defined as anything that overwhelms your system — depending on the resources, one critically ill patient could be considered a mass casualty,” he explains. “The problem is that you don’t know if it’s going to be six hours or six days until the next one occurs.”

These situations can create incredibly difficult decisions.

“One day, we were dealing with a mass casualty and burning through our blood bank,” Dr. Philp says. “My orthopedic guy was working on this kid’s leg — but it was a horrible injury. He had been in there for a long time. I asked how much longer would it take and how much more blood was the kid going to lose, because we were down to only a couple of units of blood. Based on what he told me, I had to tell him to amputate the leg, because those last two units of blood could save another person’s life.”

Reflecting on another aspect of military medicine, Dr. Philp shares a conversation he had with a military chaplain.

“I told him, ‘You’re supposed to be the antithesis of war, and yet here you are. How do you square that?’” Dr. Philp recalls. “And the chaplain said to me, ‘I’m one person. I can’t fix the whole thing. What I can do is take care of people.’”

That mindset is part of a dedication that Dr. Philp sees throughout the military — “not to any political ethos, but to the people you work with,” he says. “That’s the important part about military medicine — it’s the dedication to take care of one person at a time. Men and women with their boots on the ground aren’t in the military because they have anything against anyone. They have kids to feed and families to support. Being the person to get them home is powerful.”

The Transition from Military to Civilian Life

After Philp left the military, he continued his career as a surgeon and teacher, including roles as trauma surgeon and surgical intensivist at the R.A. Cowly Shock/Trauma Center, and clinical assistant professor at the University of Maryland Medical School. In 2011, he took the position of chief trauma surgeon with a health system that eventually became part of AHN.

Dr. Philp now splits his time between emergency surgery, trauma, and critical care. He and his team also develop and coordinate consistent protocol to be followed throughout the network. He describes his role as three-fold: clinical excellence, education, and research to push the field forward.

Although he describes his own transition from military to civilian life as relatively painless (“I was able to drop right back in”), he says there is a lot we can do to improve the transition from military to civilian life for others. In particular, he points to the limited mental health resources available for veterans.

“We need to get better at serially planning for, identifying, and following up about mental health support,” he says. “When it comes to mental health help, I think we’re at 15 percent of where we need to be.”

Although post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) receives a lot of attention, Dr. Philp points out that many veterans may not have PTSD, but still need help dealing with Secondary Traumatic Stress Syndrome or Compassion Fatigue.

“PTSD is something that happens directly to you. Secondary Traumatic Stress is when the traumatic event happened to someone else, but you had to deal with it,” he explains. “You see this a lot not only with veterans, but with nurses, doctors, and EMS workers.”

Prioritizing mental health resources for veterans doesn’t just improve their individual lives and families, Dr. Philp points out, it also allows them to fully contribute in the workplace and in their communities. In explaining the positive impact veterans can have in the medical field specifically, he notes that “previously deployed veterans are extremely comfortable working in teams, which is critical in medicine. And they display an adaptability and dedication that is hard to find elsewhere. A typical resume or CV tells you, ‘This is the pigeonhole in which I live.’ That’s not the case with veterans — they tend to have had broader experience, and that can add value in many different situations.”

Veteran Voices: Dr. Allan Philp published first on

[oovitus]

Veteran Voices: Dr. Allan Philp

Dr. Allan Philp says he was born into a “solidly middle class” family in Knoxville, Tennessee. He didn’t always envision a career in the military, but the importance of serving others was instilled in him from a young age.

“There was something ingrained in us to give back,” Dr. Philp says. “For my family that meant the military, but it could have easily been some other public service.”

Dr. Allan Philp, chief trauma surgeon at Allegheny General Hospital, and a veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now chief trauma surgeon at Allegheny General Hospital in the Allegheny Health Network (AHN), Dr. Philp served in the military as a combat surgeon. He led critical care teams in Afghanistan and Iraq during operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, and held numerous positions, including critical care aeromedical evacuation team leader, surgical ICU director of Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, and chief physician of AI Dhafra Air Force Base.

However, before attending medical school at Vanderbilt on a military scholarship, Dr. Philp earned his undergraduate degree in engineering.

“I always assumed that I was going to work in engineering because I enjoyed pressures and flows, movements and devices — stuff like that,” he says. “There was a cerebral component, but also a physical one.”

Surgery, he discovered, shared similarities with engineering — the body itself being a feat of engineering.

“I found that I liked the immediacy of surgery,” he says. “If you look at lives saved per provider, a family practice physician is probably your number one person, but much of what they do is preventive and longer term. A surgeon, on the other hand, might be saving lives today.”

Military Medicine

In a sense, the medical branch of the military is freestanding; there are some large hospitals and permanent facilities of course, but much of military medicine is practiced in more mobile environments, including on the front lines of combat.

“You take out a spleen at Allegheny General, or you take out a spleen in Afghanistan — it’s kind of the same procedure,” Dr. Philp explains. “But what’s different are the resources you have and environment you’re in.”

Surgical equipment and other tools, available medication, personnel, and shelter — all of that can vary when it comes to military medicine. “If you go far enough forward, you don’t even have medical records anymore. We would have to leave written notes on tape and stick it to the patient,” Dr. Philp says.

He adds that the longer the military is involved in a conflict or region, the more developed the resources become. “What initially starts out as ‘nothing but tents’ evolves into rough buildings and temporary hospitals,” he says. “And eventually you have something that looks more like a stateside hospital.”

He describes modern military medicine as involving interlocking, standardized pieces that can be configured according to location and needed services — as an analogy, he says you can think about how a wide variety of Lego® blocks can be fit together in many different configurations.

“War is still terrible, but some things have changed,” he says. “What used to be trench warfare is now largely urban. This evolution calls for smaller and more mobile medical teams — we want to use the smaller Lego® blocks. The idea is to push everything as far forward as possible. In the military, we train a lot of our non-medical personnel to perform basic medical care. Then we scatter Forward Surgical Teams (FST) that can perform life-saving operations and resuscitation.”

Countless lives have been saved due to this approach, which also led to a similar nationwide civilian initiative: Stop the Bleed. The goal is to teach more civilians how to perform basic first-aid during emergency situations. AHN participates in the program, including having trauma specialists host free community classes at multiple AHN hospitals during the nation’s first National Stop the Bleed Day in 2018.

“Think about the Orlando nightclub shootings,” Dr. Philp says. “There were people live-texting their own deaths — it was horrific. The problem, especially in an active shooter event, is that EMS can’t go in right away. What you really need is the person sitting next to you to be able to take basic actions that could save your life, like applying pressure to a wound.”

“the dedication to take care of one person at a time”

Adaptability with regard to resources and stressful environments is vital for those practicing military medicine. Dr. Philp says that another factor involves erratic schedules and levels of activity. While deployed, he says you may need to cope with a “99 percent boredom and 1 percent panic” reality. He explains that the majority of his time deployed was spent on predictable tasks — a steady treatment of non-critically injured patients. Then, without warning, an alarm would go off that signaled the start of the “1 percent panic.”

“A mass casualty is defined as anything that overwhelms your system — depending on the resources, one critically ill patient could be considered a mass casualty,” he explains. “The problem is that you don’t know if it’s going to be six hours or six days until the next one occurs.”

These situations can create incredibly difficult decisions.

“One day, we were dealing with a mass casualty and burning through our blood bank,” Dr. Philp says. “My orthopedic guy was working on this kid’s leg — but it was a horrible injury. He had been in there for a long time. I asked how much longer would it take and how much more blood was the kid going to lose, because we were down to only a couple of units of blood. Based on what he told me, I had to tell him to amputate the leg, because those last two units of blood could save another person’s life.”

Reflecting on another aspect of military medicine, Dr. Philp shares a conversation he had with a military chaplain.

“I told him, ‘You’re supposed to be the antithesis of war, and yet here you are. How do you square that?’” Dr. Philp recalls. “And the chaplain said to me, ‘I’m one person. I can’t fix the whole thing. What I can do is take care of people.’”

That mindset is part of a dedication that Dr. Philp sees throughout the military — “not to any political ethos, but to the people you work with,” he says. “That’s the important part about military medicine — it’s the dedication to take care of one person at a time. Men and women with their boots on the ground aren’t in the military because they have anything against anyone. They have kids to feed and families to support. Being the person to get them home is powerful.”

The Transition from Military to Civilian Life

After Philp left the military, he continued his career as a surgeon and teacher, including roles as trauma surgeon and surgical intensivist at the R.A. Cowly Shock/Trauma Center, and clinical assistant professor at the University of Maryland Medical School. In 2011, he took the position of chief trauma surgeon with a health system that eventually became part of AHN.

Dr. Philp now splits his time between emergency surgery, trauma, and critical care. He and his team also develop and coordinate consistent protocol to be followed throughout the network. He describes his role as three-fold: clinical excellence, education, and research to push the field forward.

Although he describes his own transition from military to civilian life as relatively painless (“I was able to drop right back in”), he says there is a lot we can do to improve the transition from military to civilian life for others. In particular, he points to the limited mental health resources available for veterans.

“We need to get better at serially planning for, identifying, and following up about mental health support,” he says. “When it comes to mental health help, I think we’re at 15 percent of where we need to be.”

Although post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) receives a lot of attention, Dr. Philp points out that many veterans may not have PTSD, but still need help dealing with Secondary Traumatic Stress Syndrome or Compassion Fatigue.

“PTSD is something that happens directly to you. Secondary Traumatic Stress is when the traumatic event happened to someone else, but you had to deal with it,” he explains. “You see this a lot not only with veterans, but with nurses, doctors, and EMS workers.”

Prioritizing mental health resources for veterans doesn’t just improve their individual lives and families, Dr. Philp points out, it also allows them to fully contribute in the workplace and in their communities. In explaining the positive impact veterans can have in the medical field specifically, he notes that “previously deployed veterans are extremely comfortable working in teams, which is critical in medicine. And they display an adaptability and dedication that is hard to find elsewhere. A typical resume or CV tells you, ‘This is the pigeonhole in which I live.’ That’s not the case with veterans — they tend to have had broader experience, and that can add value in many different situations.”

Veteran Voices: Dr. Allan Philp published first on

[oovitus]

Veteran Voices: Dr. Allan Philp

Dr. Allan Philp says he was born into a “solidly middle class” family in Knoxville, Tennessee. He didn’t always envision a career in the military, but the importance of serving others was instilled in him from a young age.

“There was something ingrained in us to give back,” Dr. Philp says. “For my family that meant the military, but it could have easily been some other public service.”

Dr. Allan Philp, chief trauma surgeon at Allegheny General Hospital, and a veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now chief trauma surgeon at Allegheny General Hospital in the Allegheny Health Network (AHN), Dr. Philp served in the military as a combat surgeon. He led critical care teams in Afghanistan and Iraq during operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, and held numerous positions, including critical care aeromedical evacuation team leader, surgical ICU director of Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, and chief physician of AI Dhafra Air Force Base.

However, before attending medical school at Vanderbilt on a military scholarship, Dr. Philp earned his undergraduate degree in engineering.

“I always assumed that I was going to work in engineering because I enjoyed pressures and flows, movements and devices — stuff like that,” he says. “There was a cerebral component, but also a physical one.”

Surgery, he discovered, shared similarities with engineering — the body itself being a feat of engineering.

“I found that I liked the immediacy of surgery,” he says. “If you look at lives saved per provider, a family practice physician is probably your number one person, but much of what they do is preventive and longer term. A surgeon, on the other hand, might be saving lives today.”

Military Medicine

In a sense, the medical branch of the military is freestanding; there are some large hospitals and permanent facilities of course, but much of military medicine is practiced in more mobile environments, including on the front lines of combat.

“You take out a spleen at Allegheny General, or you take out a spleen in Afghanistan — it’s kind of the same procedure,” Dr. Philp explains. “But what’s different are the resources you have and environment you’re in.”

Surgical equipment and other tools, available medication, personnel, and shelter — all of that can vary when it comes to military medicine. “If you go far enough forward, you don’t even have medical records anymore. We would have to leave written notes on tape and stick it to the patient,” Dr. Philp says.

He adds that the longer the military is involved in a conflict or region, the more developed the resources become. “What initially starts out as ‘nothing but tents’ evolves into rough buildings and temporary hospitals,” he says. “And eventually you have something that looks more like a stateside hospital.”

He describes modern military medicine as involving interlocking, standardized pieces that can be configured according to location and needed services — as an analogy, he says you can think about how a wide variety of Lego® blocks can be fit together in many different configurations.

“War is still terrible, but some things have changed,” he says. “What used to be trench warfare is now largely urban. This evolution calls for smaller and more mobile medical teams — we want to use the smaller Lego® blocks. The idea is to push everything as far forward as possible. In the military, we train a lot of our non-medical personnel to perform basic medical care. Then we scatter Forward Surgical Teams (FST) that can perform life-saving operations and resuscitation.”

Countless lives have been saved due to this approach, which also led to a similar nationwide civilian initiative: Stop the Bleed. The goal is to teach more civilians how to perform basic first-aid during emergency situations. AHN participates in the program, including having trauma specialists host free community classes at multiple AHN hospitals during the nation’s first National Stop the Bleed Day in 2018.

“Think about the Orlando nightclub shootings,” Dr. Philp says. “There were people live-texting their own deaths — it was horrific. The problem, especially in an active shooter event, is that EMS can’t go in right away. What you really need is the person sitting next to you to be able to take basic actions that could save your life, like applying pressure to a wound.”

“the dedication to take care of one person at a time”

Adaptability with regard to resources and stressful environments is vital for those practicing military medicine. Dr. Philp says that another factor involves erratic schedules and levels of activity. While deployed, he says you may need to cope with a “99 percent boredom and 1 percent panic” reality. He explains that the majority of his time deployed was spent on predictable tasks — a steady treatment of non-critically injured patients. Then, without warning, an alarm would go off that signaled the start of the “1 percent panic.”

“A mass casualty is defined as anything that overwhelms your system — depending on the resources, one critically ill patient could be considered a mass casualty,” he explains. “The problem is that you don’t know if it’s going to be six hours or six days until the next one occurs.”

These situations can create incredibly difficult decisions.

“One day, we were dealing with a mass casualty and burning through our blood bank,” Dr. Philp says. “My orthopedic guy was working on this kid’s leg — but it was a horrible injury. He had been in there for a long time. I asked how much longer would it take and how much more blood was the kid going to lose, because we were down to only a couple of units of blood. Based on what he told me, I had to tell him to amputate the leg, because those last two units of blood could save another person’s life.”

Reflecting on another aspect of military medicine, Dr. Philp shares a conversation he had with a military chaplain.

“I told him, ‘You’re supposed to be the antithesis of war, and yet here you are. How do you square that?’” Dr. Philp recalls. “And the chaplain said to me, ‘I’m one person. I can’t fix the whole thing. What I can do is take care of people.’”

That mindset is part of a dedication that Dr. Philp sees throughout the military — “not to any political ethos, but to the people you work with,” he says. “That’s the important part about military medicine — it’s the dedication to take care of one person at a time. Men and women with their boots on the ground aren’t in the military because they have anything against anyone. They have kids to feed and families to support. Being the person to get them home is powerful.”

The Transition from Military to Civilian Life

After Philp left the military, he continued his career as a surgeon and teacher, including roles as trauma surgeon and surgical intensivist at the R.A. Cowly Shock/Trauma Center, and clinical assistant professor at the University of Maryland Medical School. In 2011, he took the position of chief trauma surgeon with a health system that eventually became part of AHN.

Dr. Philp now splits his time between emergency surgery, trauma, and critical care. He and his team also develop and coordinate consistent protocol to be followed throughout the network. He describes his role as three-fold: clinical excellence, education, and research to push the field forward.

Although he describes his own transition from military to civilian life as relatively painless (“I was able to drop right back in”), he says there is a lot we can do to improve the transition from military to civilian life for others. In particular, he points to the limited mental health resources available for veterans.

“We need to get better at serially planning for, identifying, and following up about mental health support,” he says. “When it comes to mental health help, I think we’re at 15 percent of where we need to be.”

Although post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) receives a lot of attention, Dr. Philp points out that many veterans may not have PTSD, but still need help dealing with Secondary Traumatic Stress Syndrome or Compassion Fatigue.

“PTSD is something that happens directly to you. Secondary Traumatic Stress is when the traumatic event happened to someone else, but you had to deal with it,” he explains. “You see this a lot not only with veterans, but with nurses, doctors, and EMS workers.”

Prioritizing mental health resources for veterans doesn’t just improve their individual lives and families, Dr. Philp points out, it also allows them to fully contribute in the workplace and in their communities. In explaining the positive impact veterans can have in the medical field specifically, he notes that “previously deployed veterans are extremely comfortable working in teams, which is critical in medicine. And they display an adaptability and dedication that is hard to find elsewhere. A typical resume or CV tells you, ‘This is the pigeonhole in which I live.’ That’s not the case with veterans — they tend to have had broader experience, and that can add value in many different situations.”

Veteran Voices: Dr. Allan Philp published first on https://storeseapharmacy.tumblr.com

[oovitus]

Veteran Voices: Dr. Allan Philp

Dr. Allan Philp says he was born into a “solidly middle class” family in Knoxville, Tennessee. He didn’t always envision a career in the military, but the importance of serving others was instilled in him from a young age.

“There was something ingrained in us to give back,” Dr. Philp says. “For my family that meant the military, but it could have easily been some other public service.”

Dr. Allan Philp, chief trauma surgeon at Allegheny General Hospital, and a veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now chief trauma surgeon at Allegheny General Hospital in the Allegheny Health Network (AHN), Dr. Philp served in the military as a combat surgeon. He led critical care teams in Afghanistan and Iraq during operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, and held numerous positions, including critical care aeromedical evacuation team leader, surgical ICU director of Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, and chief physician of AI Dhafra Air Force Base.

However, before attending medical school at Vanderbilt on a military scholarship, Dr. Philp earned his undergraduate degree in engineering.

“I always assumed that I was going to work in engineering because I enjoyed pressures and flows, movements and devices — stuff like that,” he says. “There was a cerebral component, but also a physical one.”

Surgery, he discovered, shared similarities with engineering — the body itself being a feat of engineering.

“I found that I liked the immediacy of surgery,” he says. “If you look at lives saved per provider, a family practice physician is probably your number one person, but much of what they do is preventive and longer term. A surgeon, on the other hand, might be saving lives today.”

Military Medicine

In a sense, the medical branch of the military is freestanding; there are some large hospitals and permanent facilities of course, but much of military medicine is practiced in more mobile environments, including on the front lines of combat.

“You take out a spleen at Allegheny General, or you take out a spleen in Afghanistan — it’s kind of the same procedure,” Dr. Philp explains. “But what’s different are the resources you have and environment you’re in.”

Surgical equipment and other tools, available medication, personnel, and shelter — all of that can vary when it comes to military medicine. “If you go far enough forward, you don’t even have medical records anymore. We would have to leave written notes on tape and stick it to the patient,” Dr. Philp says.

He adds that the longer the military is involved in a conflict or region, the more developed the resources become. “What initially starts out as ‘nothing but tents’ evolves into rough buildings and temporary hospitals,” he says. “And eventually you have something that looks more like a stateside hospital.”

He describes modern military medicine as involving interlocking, standardized pieces that can be configured according to location and needed services — as an analogy, he says you can think about how a wide variety of Lego® blocks can be fit together in many different configurations.

“War is still terrible, but some things have changed,” he says. “What used to be trench warfare is now largely urban. This evolution calls for smaller and more mobile medical teams — we want to use the smaller Lego® blocks. The idea is to push everything as far forward as possible. In the military, we train a lot of our non-medical personnel to perform basic medical care. Then we scatter Forward Surgical Teams (FST) that can perform life-saving operations and resuscitation.”

Countless lives have been saved due to this approach, which also led to a similar nationwide civilian initiative: Stop the Bleed. The goal is to teach more civilians how to perform basic first-aid during emergency situations. AHN participates in the program, including having trauma specialists host free community classes at multiple AHN hospitals during the nation’s first National Stop the Bleed Day in 2018.

“Think about the Orlando nightclub shootings,” Dr. Philp says. “There were people live-texting their own deaths — it was horrific. The problem, especially in an active shooter event, is that EMS can’t go in right away. What you really need is the person sitting next to you to be able to take basic actions that could save your life, like applying pressure to a wound.”

“the dedication to take care of one person at a time”

Adaptability with regard to resources and stressful environments is vital for those practicing military medicine. Dr. Philp says that another factor involves erratic schedules and levels of activity. While deployed, he says you may need to cope with a “99 percent boredom and 1 percent panic” reality. He explains that the majority of his time deployed was spent on predictable tasks — a steady treatment of non-critically injured patients. Then, without warning, an alarm would go off that signaled the start of the “1 percent panic.”

“A mass casualty is defined as anything that overwhelms your system — depending on the resources, one critically ill patient could be considered a mass casualty,” he explains. “The problem is that you don’t know if it’s going to be six hours or six days until the next one occurs.”

These situations can create incredibly difficult decisions.

“One day, we were dealing with a mass casualty and burning through our blood bank,” Dr. Philp says. “My orthopedic guy was working on this kid’s leg — but it was a horrible injury. He had been in there for a long time. I asked how much longer would it take and how much more blood was the kid going to lose, because we were down to only a couple of units of blood. Based on what he told me, I had to tell him to amputate the leg, because those last two units of blood could save another person’s life.”

Reflecting on another aspect of military medicine, Dr. Philp shares a conversation he had with a military chaplain.

“I told him, ‘You’re supposed to be the antithesis of war, and yet here you are. How do you square that?’” Dr. Philp recalls. “And the chaplain said to me, ‘I’m one person. I can’t fix the whole thing. What I can do is take care of people.’”

That mindset is part of a dedication that Dr. Philp sees throughout the military — “not to any political ethos, but to the people you work with,” he says. “That’s the important part about military medicine — it’s the dedication to take care of one person at a time. Men and women with their boots on the ground aren’t in the military because they have anything against anyone. They have kids to feed and families to support. Being the person to get them home is powerful.”

The Transition from Military to Civilian Life

After Philp left the military, he continued his career as a surgeon and teacher, including roles as trauma surgeon and surgical intensivist at the R.A. Cowly Shock/Trauma Center, and clinical assistant professor at the University of Maryland Medical School. In 2011, he took the position of chief trauma surgeon with a health system that eventually became part of AHN.

Dr. Philp now splits his time between emergency surgery, trauma, and critical care. He and his team also develop and coordinate consistent protocol to be followed throughout the network. He describes his role as three-fold: clinical excellence, education, and research to push the field forward.

Although he describes his own transition from military to civilian life as relatively painless (“I was able to drop right back in”), he says there is a lot we can do to improve the transition from military to civilian life for others. In particular, he points to the limited mental health resources available for veterans.

“We need to get better at serially planning for, identifying, and following up about mental health support,” he says. “When it comes to mental health help, I think we’re at 15 percent of where we need to be.”

Although post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) receives a lot of attention, Dr. Philp points out that many veterans may not have PTSD, but still need help dealing with Secondary Traumatic Stress Syndrome or Compassion Fatigue.

“PTSD is something that happens directly to you. Secondary Traumatic Stress is when the traumatic event happened to someone else, but you had to deal with it,” he explains. “You see this a lot not only with veterans, but with nurses, doctors, and EMS workers.”

Prioritizing mental health resources for veterans doesn’t just improve their individual lives and families, Dr. Philp points out, it also allows them to fully contribute in the workplace and in their communities. In explaining the positive impact veterans can have in the medical field specifically, he notes that “previously deployed veterans are extremely comfortable working in teams, which is critical in medicine. And they display an adaptability and dedication that is hard to find elsewhere. A typical resume or CV tells you, ‘This is the pigeonhole in which I live.’ That’s not the case with veterans — they tend to have had broader experience, and that can add value in many different situations.”

Veteran Voices: Dr. Allan Philp published first on https://storeseapharmacy.tumblr.com

[oovitus]

Veteran Voices: Dr. Allan Philp

Dr. Allan Philp says he was born into a “solidly middle class” family in Knoxville, Tennessee. He didn’t always envision a career in the military, but the importance of serving others was instilled in him from a young age.

“There was something ingrained in us to give back,” Dr. Philp says. “For my family that meant the military, but it could have easily been some other public service.”

Dr. Allan Philp, chief trauma surgeon at Allegheny General Hospital, and a veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now chief trauma surgeon at Allegheny General Hospital in the Allegheny Health Network (AHN), Dr. Philp served in the military as a combat surgeon. He led critical care teams in Afghanistan and Iraq during operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, and held numerous positions, including critical care aeromedical evacuation team leader, surgical ICU director of Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, and chief physician of AI Dhafra Air Force Base.

However, before attending medical school at Vanderbilt on a military scholarship, Dr. Philp earned his undergraduate degree in engineering.

“I always assumed that I was going to work in engineering because I enjoyed pressures and flows, movements and devices — stuff like that,” he says. “There was a cerebral component, but also a physical one.”

Surgery, he discovered, shared similarities with engineering — the body itself being a feat of engineering.

“I found that I liked the immediacy of surgery,” he says. “If you look at lives saved per provider, a family practice physician is probably your number one person, but much of what they do is preventive and longer term. A surgeon, on the other hand, might be saving lives today.”

Military Medicine

In a sense, the medical branch of the military is freestanding; there are some large hospitals and permanent facilities of course, but much of military medicine is practiced in more mobile environments, including on the front lines of combat.

“You take out a spleen at Allegheny General, or you take out a spleen in Afghanistan — it’s kind of the same procedure,” Dr. Philp explains. “But what’s different are the resources you have and environment you’re in.”

Surgical equipment and other tools, available medication, personnel, and shelter — all of that can vary when it comes to military medicine. “If you go far enough forward, you don’t even have medical records anymore. We would have to leave written notes on tape and stick it to the patient,” Dr. Philp says.

He adds that the longer the military is involved in a conflict or region, the more developed the resources become. “What initially starts out as ‘nothing but tents’ evolves into rough buildings and temporary hospitals,” he says. “And eventually you have something that looks more like a stateside hospital.”

He describes modern military medicine as involving interlocking, standardized pieces that can be configured according to location and needed services — as an analogy, he says you can think about how a wide variety of Lego® blocks can be fit together in many different configurations.

“War is still terrible, but some things have changed,” he says. “What used to be trench warfare is now largely urban. This evolution calls for smaller and more mobile medical teams — we want to use the smaller Lego® blocks. The idea is to push everything as far forward as possible. In the military, we train a lot of our non-medical personnel to perform basic medical care. Then we scatter Forward Surgical Teams (FST) that can perform life-saving operations and resuscitation.”

Countless lives have been saved due to this approach, which also led to a similar nationwide civilian initiative: Stop the Bleed. The goal is to teach more civilians how to perform basic first-aid during emergency situations. AHN participates in the program, including having trauma specialists host free community classes at multiple AHN hospitals during the nation’s first National Stop the Bleed Day in 2018.

“Think about the Orlando nightclub shootings,” Dr. Philp says. “There were people live-texting their own deaths — it was horrific. The problem, especially in an active shooter event, is that EMS can’t go in right away. What you really need is the person sitting next to you to be able to take basic actions that could save your life, like applying pressure to a wound.”

“the dedication to take care of one person at a time”

Adaptability with regard to resources and stressful environments is vital for those practicing military medicine. Dr. Philp says that another factor involves erratic schedules and levels of activity. While deployed, he says you may need to cope with a “99 percent boredom and 1 percent panic” reality. He explains that the majority of his time deployed was spent on predictable tasks — a steady treatment of non-critically injured patients. Then, without warning, an alarm would go off that signaled the start of the “1 percent panic.”

“A mass casualty is defined as anything that overwhelms your system — depending on the resources, one critically ill patient could be considered a mass casualty,” he explains. “The problem is that you don’t know if it’s going to be six hours or six days until the next one occurs.”

These situations can create incredibly difficult decisions.

“One day, we were dealing with a mass casualty and burning through our blood bank,” Dr. Philp says. “My orthopedic guy was working on this kid’s leg — but it was a horrible injury. He had been in there for a long time. I asked how much longer would it take and how much more blood was the kid going to lose, because we were down to only a couple of units of blood. Based on what he told me, I had to tell him to amputate the leg, because those last two units of blood could save another person’s life.”

Reflecting on another aspect of military medicine, Dr. Philp shares a conversation he had with a military chaplain.

“I told him, ‘You’re supposed to be the antithesis of war, and yet here you are. How do you square that?’” Dr. Philp recalls. “And the chaplain said to me, ‘I’m one person. I can’t fix the whole thing. What I can do is take care of people.’”

That mindset is part of a dedication that Dr. Philp sees throughout the military — “not to any political ethos, but to the people you work with,” he says. “That’s the important part about military medicine — it’s the dedication to take care of one person at a time. Men and women with their boots on the ground aren’t in the military because they have anything against anyone. They have kids to feed and families to support. Being the person to get them home is powerful.”

The Transition from Military to Civilian Life

After Philp left the military, he continued his career as a surgeon and teacher, including roles as trauma surgeon and surgical intensivist at the R.A. Cowly Shock/Trauma Center, and clinical assistant professor at the University of Maryland Medical School. In 2011, he took the position of chief trauma surgeon with a health system that eventually became part of AHN.

Dr. Philp now splits his time between emergency surgery, trauma, and critical care. He and his team also develop and coordinate consistent protocol to be followed throughout the network. He describes his role as three-fold: clinical excellence, education, and research to push the field forward.

Although he describes his own transition from military to civilian life as relatively painless (“I was able to drop right back in”), he says there is a lot we can do to improve the transition from military to civilian life for others. In particular, he points to the limited mental health resources available for veterans.

“We need to get better at serially planning for, identifying, and following up about mental health support,” he says. “When it comes to mental health help, I think we’re at 15 percent of where we need to be.”

Although post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) receives a lot of attention, Dr. Philp points out that many veterans may not have PTSD, but still need help dealing with Secondary Traumatic Stress Syndrome or Compassion Fatigue.

“PTSD is something that happens directly to you. Secondary Traumatic Stress is when the traumatic event happened to someone else, but you had to deal with it,” he explains. “You see this a lot not only with veterans, but with nurses, doctors, and EMS workers.”

Prioritizing mental health resources for veterans doesn’t just improve their individual lives and families, Dr. Philp points out, it also allows them to fully contribute in the workplace and in their communities. In explaining the positive impact veterans can have in the medical field specifically, he notes that “previously deployed veterans are extremely comfortable working in teams, which is critical in medicine. And they display an adaptability and dedication that is hard to find elsewhere. A typical resume or CV tells you, ‘This is the pigeonhole in which I live.’ That’s not the case with veterans — they tend to have had broader experience, and that can add value in many different situations.”

Veteran Voices: Dr. Allan Philp published first on