#and maybe.. sometimes i visualise stuff without actually processing whats written down... who knows

[hummise]

theseus' guide chapter 8 spoilers !!!

an overly dramatic visualization of the chapter finale that i got way too ambitious with enjoy

[not-poignant]

You won't disclose personal stuff but it's okay if we ask like, for advice and stuff right? Do you have any resource materials on trauma? The generic material I find just...miss the mark. Same but for overstimulation (from like gentleness, painless experiences make me uncomfortable af) and being touch starved. Is it, like a thing I can learn about? It is very distressing in my everyday life and before reading your stuff it was just plain awkward. I thought I was just being stupid. Thanks, Love.

Always fine with people asking for advice with the standard caveats that I’m just one noodle floating around in a world of a lot of other noodles and I definitely don’t have my personal life or anything sorted out and I’m no substitute for therapy / counsellors etc. :D And I am not a therapist whee.

As for resources, tbh, I haven’t found a great deal. I’ve read a lot of books on trauma over the years (and I own a lot) and there’s two I’d tentatively recommend to folks with trauma. They are:

The Body Remembers by Babette Rothschild, which is fantastic. Looks at a cross-section of trauma (i.e. war vets / rape victims / but also people who have been bitten by dogs and can’t handle dogs, so it’s not like idk... discriminating between types of trauma - because some books do this).

The reason I like this book is because it looks at body-trapped and body-centred trauma, and also looks at the ways in which bodies can process trauma and how we can even release it potentially through the body, and bypass cognitive thought. Potential downsides are that it’s not really written for clients, it’s written for practicioners, so you’ll be looking at a lot of therapist-centred advice, but there are also really helpful case studies and so on. Additionally, while it suggests exercises a client can try, most of those exercises are intended to be used in conjunction with a therapist in a trusted safe space. It’s pretty possible to extract some of those exercises into your personal life though, but I’d suggest being cautious with it, because a lot of trauma healing tends to come from developing a trusting relationship with someone else and knowing you won’t get hurt in the process.

The other is The Trauma Spectrum by Robert Scaer. This is an academic book by a neurologist turned psychologist, who became fascinated with untreatable or resistant pain disorders that seemed to develop after trauma, especially heart-related and joint-related disorders after car accidents, where - as a neurologist - he could find no tangible reason for the pain even though the pain was real. Through study, he became fascinated with body-based trauma. This book is essentially a long academic exploration of the physiological nature of trauma.

I love this personally, because I find nothing more validating than very long academic articles saying exactly why trauma fucks you up, and what chemicals are behind that, and what that does to the body etc. Downsides include that this is more aimed at therapists again, and not clients, and is pretty dense in its language. But upsides include exploration into new ways of looking at trauma (not just cognitive behavioural therapy) and is particularly useful for people who have body-based expressions of anxiety or trauma that resist treatment (like ongoing pain that can’t be diagnosed, fibromyalgia when it’s linked to trauma, digestion issues, vertigo etc.)

There’s no websites I’ve ever used for support that have actually been supportive, and there is almost nothing out there for touch-starved people. I have never seen a single thing about people who’ve had problems with gentleness (which I can too, btw, so I feel you there, it’s shitty as fuck). That’s partly because ‘touch-starved’ - while a physiological, real thing, is something where fandom tends to be ahead of the curve re: psychology. In that sense, you’re more likely to find transformative ideas for how to potentially heal from touch-starvation / touch-phobias etc. via fanfiction that deals specifically with those subjects.

I spent a while with a pretty severe touch phobia (while still needing and wanting touch), so I spent a long time craving and trying to track down resources to help me with this. Maybe some things have come out in the past four years, but I am sorry to tell you that there’s pretty much nothing out there specifically on this subject (or at least, there wasn’t). There’s probably individual case studies around, but there’s no like...there’s nothing really very satisfactory. I’ve done way more to heal my issues with this stuff via writing fanfiction than through resources (and that’s the same for trauma, tbh).

I mean you can find plenty of articles on why being touch-starved is bad for you, and you’ll hear those like...repeated stories of monkeys who die of starvation and malnutrition without touch and so on. Or babies who languish without touch. But in terms of ‘when you’re a touch-starved adult and what you can do about it’ resources, things are thin on the ground. You may wish to look into cuddle parties, which are generally non-sexual cuddle parties with a heavy emphasis on consent, designed to allow people access to hugs etc. in a safe environment.

I do think there’s more news articles about touch-starvation and its pervasiveness in contemporary culture, and how this links to sex practices and so on but they’re written as feature article pieces and not as useful things that can be done to help with the subject.

Basically there was no book or website that specifically helped me with touch-starvation, or even trauma. Most trauma writing tends to be aimed at war vets because that’s where the funding is. A lot of trauma writing is still pretty ‘oldschool’ in that it is cognitive behavioural therapy focused (talk focused) or alternatively is a psychologist trying to ‘brand’ a new type of therapy and so is super ‘use this amazing new!thing to Fix Your Trauma (TM)’ and then isn’t realistic about the fact that most people tend to need a multi-modality approach to helping themselves with trauma.

I’d suggest perhaps going to a local library or something and looking through their resources on trauma books, and getting yourself - if you don’t already have it - a good grounding in the different types of therapies used for helping with trauma, and also then a good idea of how diverse different case studies and techniques can be. From there, it’s sometimes necessary to develop different methods that work for you. But it’s a pretty intense process, not to mention the fact that a lot of these books will conveniently never mention issues to do with touch, except for perhaps: ‘X patient had problems with having sex but then after applying X amount of therapy sessions started having sex again satisfactorily.’ Or whatever.

It’s not really helpful for us, right?

I wish I had better news and better recommendations. There are probably trauma tumblrs which are more up-to-date with resources coming out, but I stopped actively looking a few years ago because I just got really exhausted with that sense of ‘oh yes I know about trauma and the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems but what can I do about it’ and tbh writing what I’ve written (and reading similar things) has been way more useful for me personally.

I guess as a final thing, I’d say it’s worth sitting down and asking yourself what you want to resolve, and what you want that to look like. I.e. whether it looks like friendships with non-sexual physical intimacy like hugging, and so on. You probably have some images in your head of things you crave but can’t have right now. Things you miss that you could have, or things you’ve never had that you come back to over and over again.

Breaking that down into ‘if I could get this thing, what form would it come in, and what is my ideal and what would be acceptable on the way to that ideal (knowing that ideals are generally not realistic etc. but a good thing to aim for)’ might help you narrow down what sort of research, books and communities you need to look into. It also might help you see what sort of steps you could take to achieve those things. Sometimes with touch and sensory issues, it starts with visualising getting the thing, imagining it being satisfying instead of triggery (and making notes of what that looks like so you know your boundaries and limits for real life), and just starting to role-model to yourself that it can be safe in your mind.

It may also be worth looking into books that explore touch issues with people who are on the autism spectrum and/or have sensory processing disorders, because more research has been done there with more techniques suggested, and sometimes trauma symptoms can parallel and therefore like, where trauma psychology hasn’t caught up yet, there can be places elsewhere that might help (for example, it was realising I had Asperger’s and learning that people with Asperger’s often prefer firm touch over very soft gentle touch, that I actually made a pretty big leap forward with my own touch phobia in terms of what I needed to ask from people - this might not be the same for you, obviously, but you might be more likely to find resources written by people with sensory processing disorders or issues, than within the trauma community itself. Trauma psychology is sometimes really like...hyperfocused on one thing (minimising flashbacks) over like...other things that are super necessary).

I apologise that this wasn’t more useful! A lack of resources is in part why I’ve had PTSD since 1997, and why I’m not on top of this stuff yet (also stubbornness, I’m very stubborn lol). So I know it can be distressing, and how much it can like...erode resources and just eat away at a capacity for personal contentment and so on. There’s a real disconnect between ‘usefulness of resources’ and ‘applications to actual people living actual lives’ and I think in part it is because trauma is Hard and Complicated and also that a lot of resources are super post-war focused again, because funding issues. :/