#trauma reenactment

[unwelcome-ozian]

Is it normal to seek out “abusive” sexual encounters for people who went through sexual assault? In person and in form of brutal pornography (like consensual non consent)? Because I feel absolutely rotten about it and I don’t want to do that anymore and I just don’t know why I keep on doing it. It makes me feel terrible. I know there’s people who genuinely enjoy things like cnc but I don’t. It triggers me very badly.

Reenactment is an expression of unresolved trauma, It is the tendency a person can have to reenact some aspect of their original trauma.

“Reenactment can be defined as an unsuccessful attempt to resolve the intense survival energy mobilised for defence against a perceived life-threatening experience.”

Here’s some more information:

Compulsion to repeat the trauma Re-enactment, revictimization, masochism A Helpful Way to Conceptualize and Understand Reenactments Traumatic Reenactment

Oz

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

More insights regarding my physiological responses to sugar and foods that break down readily to sugar

I've never understood before that my physiological responses ARE the trauma showing itself. I've previously thought about it along the lines of... My system has a lot of stored trauma and somehow that trauma influences my reactions to and relationship with certain foods… Now I'm recognizing that my body's reactions to the foods ARE expressions of the trauma/intensity in the survival physiology of my body.

I can't change my physiological responses in the moment/short-term; I can only witness those with compassion and nonjudgment. Eating a particular way, like avoiding certain foods and consuming others also can't change my physiological reactions. That would be the equivalent of avoiding any kind of trigger. Avoiding triggers to an extent can be a fine thing to do for self-care, but that avoidance does not integrate the trauma.

I've always thought there was something wrong with me, like a personal failing that I can't be healthy eating like other people who are healthy. Now I'm understanding more about that. It would be as if I felt that it is a personal failing to flinch when someone raises a hand to my face, or if I felt that it is a personal failing to have an exaggerated startle response. I can't control that I flinch and have an exaggerated startle response, and I can't control the way my body reacts to certain foods. I also can't control my environment to eliminate the triggers. That would be impossible.

I can just witness my responses with compassion and draw boundaries against judgement, including judgement from my inner critic and judgement from the well-meaning people who only tell me I look good when I'm living a life of severe food restriction so that I don’t feel like death.

And I can send signals of safety to my body in the now, which is not the exact same body that I had after my spinal injuries, nor is it the exact same body that I had in my childhood, nor is it the bodies of my ancestors.

And I can stay curious about my system’s capacity for integration.

[carrotkicks]

Your Cupid!Chuuya makes me think of the song that goes “I Want to know what love is / I Want you to show me” for some reason with the angst you’re introducing.

That fits for both of them. here's their deal:

I always introduce angst! That's given.

[sappho-favourite-pupil]

Fun fact: i'll do everything and more for the one i love, but the very moment i'll feel like they are not appreciating it, i will just get sad. Like, really sad, and - no matter what they say - convince myself they don't love me anymore.

[cedarbranch]

something that i find interesting re: murder family dynamics is that i think abigail is the only one who would actually prefer using ranged weapons. will's pretty well established his distaste for guns lmao and hannibal is hannibal but i don't think abigail has their desires for intimacy or creativity... what she wants is agency. power. she told will that it felt good to kill nick boyle because she was ending it all. she told him she wanted to kill her father for what he did to those girls, and what he did to her - vengeance, essentially, for his violence and how he tainted her with it. helplessness is an integral part of abigail's character: we see it play out in her interactions with freddie, with hannibal, even with will to an extent. she feels helpless and she will do anything not to be.

the only other thing she wants so badly is to not be like her father - so i think she'd want her kills to be invisible. anonymous, neat. like lightning striking someone down. she will no longer play the lure for her dad: she will be the killer instead, and she will never be seen coming. but she won't kill like him either- she'll fire from a distance and avoid getting her hands dirty, avoid feeling love for a victim the way he did. it's easier to be detached when you can't feel the heat of a body. so where will finds power in proximity to death, in literally taking it into his hands, abigail finds power in distance from it. she can take a life without warning or acknowledgement of their humanity. it's an intense, heady sort of power, the ultimate form of control over herself and others - her way of playing god.

imo this is only reinforced by how we only ever see her using knives under duress in canon. three instances come to mind... 1) gutting the deer (at which point she is clearly thinking about her father doing the same to girls like her, in horror and disgust). 2) nick boyle (an unintentional, messy death, another moment of helplessness in violence rather than power). and 3) her father's corpse. (that one is about reclaiming agency, but i feel like it's even more about releasing her father's influence - it'd be the final time she'd use a knife, not one she'd want to repeat).

in conclusion: abigail's a distance killer. Give Her A Rifle. and introduce her to chiyoh, please.

[chthonic-cassandra]

Just watched "Armageddon Now" for the first time and while Hercules: The Legendary Journeys remains pretty firmly unwatchable, I do understand why everyone lost their mind about Xena the Conqueror, and I now need to find all the old fic about it.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

there are a lot of reasons i think pericles is really slept on as one of the most tragic characters in sdmi, and they start with how easy it is to connect the dots that he took a mind-destroying curse full to the face as an infant. one that breaks adult humans and renders them unrecognizable, when pericles was not only a baby but is from a species that is explicitly much more vulnerable to it. right from the beginning of his life the entity obliterated his sense of self so thoroughly that there's not even a version of him who shows up in the Sitting Room.

fuck, man.

[remuslupinbutcooler]

Constantly intrigued by how much art there is in war , all types of armour depicted with christ and art will forever link war with art .

[normalbrothers]

daddy, i have had to kill you. you died before i had time --

[fleet-off]

This week in parallels I hate:

[cardiac-arresting-sweetheart]

i want to be manipulated and abused sooooo bad

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

More personal reflections on the entity 🌪 that shows up as the sugar roller coaster

I was talking with a friend about baking cookies, and I said, “I tend to not bake desserts because when I do, I eat them all within days. It’s like when I used to have a glass of wine, I used to think about that wine until the bottle was gone. Then I’d ruminate about when could buy another bottle. When I just don’t buy/drink the wine or bake/eat the cookies, then I have much more peace because I don’t think about the wine or the cookies.”

Alcohol was not a roller coaster for me until my mid 40s. Before that I had no interest in it and rarely touched it because I grew up in a dry home, knowing that my mom’s dad was an alcoholic. And because my husband doesn’t like the taste of alcohol so it was literally just never around our home. That said, my mom always baked cookies in a way that I can look back on as compulsive. There were ALWAYS her homemade cookies around throughout my early life. She baked those for the entire neighborhood. She lobbied her political representatives with cookies in hand and she took those to her doctors. She still does this, just on a smaller scale because the sphere of her world is smaller.

I have a ton of *charge* around foods that break down readily and quickly to sugar. For many years I’ve felt a sadness that “I can’t eat like everyone else AND stay well.” When I eat sugars, flours, grains, and so on, I do not have *normal* brain health or gut health. The 🌪 starts immediately, and my health turns south within months. It has become more dramatic over time.

Last December I felt it when I baked my mother-in-law a birthday cake using pumpkin and cocoa plus maple syrup and butter and cocoa for the frosting. There were no refined sugars or grains in that cake, and to some folks it might not even have tasted sweet, but to my palate it broke a long fast from baked goods, and I felt the *charge* of “I want more cake.”

The only time when I didn’t feel that *charge* was January-November 2021 when my diet was super strict AIP + practical keto and tons of fasting. I spent most of 2021 with a 6 hour eating window or less and many days with no food at all. I felt like I was in a *do-or-die* situation to heal my gut and my brain, and that was actually kind of true. I had started into 2021 in a very bad place reacting to all foods and drinks including filtered water with heartburn, headaches, and wheezing plus I had CRPS symptoms and still had a lot of spasticity from my spinal injuries and I had PTSD symptoms so bad that I could hardly leave my house, and was afraid even when my husband left our house. That’s what it took for me to choose that extreme diet to try to heal my gut-brain axis and hpa-axis. And the diet helped so much.

BUT when I wanted more of that cocoa cake, I started to ask is there another way? Meaning, is there a way to eat the foods that hold a *charge* for me and somehow make the *charge* go/allow that old intensity to go. And in the past 8 months of this curiosity I have not yet found a way.

I’m so tired of feeling the *charge* and experiencing the roller coaster, but it seems to be either deal with that and the metabolic nightmare OR eat similar to how I did in 2021 in order to feel some degree of ease. This month I just want to lean into KB’s protocol as is, but I already feel a *charge* around honey and maple syrup, so those might need to go. And I already feel a call to not be eating dinner or squeeze it closer to lunch to allow a longer nightly fast. I know my inner wisdom never communicates with a *charge* and it’s hard to hear my inner wisdom in the presence of a *charge*. So I’m just going to keep going with KB’s protocol mostly as is and see how that *charge* might dissipate. I am already feeling like the other pieces of movement and meditation are things that I need much more than the food, but the dietary protocol I feel is already offering me some spaciousness to attend to the other pieces and start some other routines instead of just bringing those other things in here and there whenever I might remember to do so.

I know that, underneath, the way my body responds to sugars is because of the dysregulation in my system/the trauma stored in the physiology of my body. My body’s response actually IS the trauma showing itself. That’s largely all that it is… something very old, reenacting again and again, calling to be seen-heard-known. I see you, old intensity, even though I don’t know the full stories of your origins in my lineage.

Someday when the old trauma is integrated, I can theoretically have a non-charged relationship with all foods, the way my husband does and my dad does. But I’m not there at this point. So in the meantime I have an opportunity to receive, witness with compassion, and embrace exactly what’s here for me.

[aeide-thea]

the eternal, humiliating cycle of like. coming out of the gate too aggressive. talking yrself down. coming out of the gate too aggressive. talking yrself down. etc.

though frankly it's hard because i do actually think we normalize a lot of fucked up shit that is actually reasonable to get angry about! but like. what's the right balance with aggression. it's basically always more dignified not to get into things but is dignity always the most important thing. one suspects not but like. equally is one achieving anything with one's aggression that's worth the sacrifice of dignity. one also suspects not.

easy 2 conclude i should just never stick my oar in but like. if i don't participate in the world i might as well be dead so. idk idk! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[sappho-favourite-pupil]

If you aren't holding my hand in yours while we sleep next to each other, i will just assume you don't love me anymore.

[oscill4te]

ngl osdd makes me wish i could be cloned so i can hold all of me in our arms but idk. it probably wouldn't end up that wholesome.

[coffincoitus]

I'm obsessed with kendall campaigning to jump back into the game with logan, after finally getting out, instead of taking the chance to learn how to be a father to his children or start his own business and have a life outside the Role of his Father's Son, bc essentially he's addicted to that feeling