Hey, you! You who suspect you might have PTSD, DID or another trauma disorder, but you think you didn't experience trauma "bad enough" to have developed a mental disorder from it? Let me suggest looking at it differently:

"If there's smoke, there's fire"

Do you experience symptoms of PTSD, such as hypervigilance, trouble sleeping, flashbacks, memory problems, dissociation, ect? Then yes, it was "bad enough". Maybe you don't remember anything "really bad" happening or you don't "feel like" it affects you, but listen to your body. The body remembers and the body doesn't care if you think it is "stupid" or "weak" to have a panic attack when someone touches you or that you still have nightmares about that thing you saw when you were 4 years old

Trauma isn't what happened. Trauma is the reaction to what happened. So what I'm trying to say is that if the reason you think you can't have PTSD/DID/OSDD/ect is because you didn't go through anything horrific enough for that, then maybe forget about what happened to you for a moment and just look at the evidence your body and mind are showing. And then, most importantly, be compassionate with yourself. You're going through a lot and it's gonna be okay in the end. Take it easy, okay? <3

Tags by @themusesthrall:

#and maybe it's not a bad fire but it's gettin' real smoky and most fire deaths are actually from smoke #so get it looked after

Actually, my therapist has told me this is a healthy way of processing things. Because you can get the trauma out of your head And you can write the ending you wish it had. The trusted person rescue, the catharsis of getting to kill the one who hurt you.

It's good for your brain. It's healthier than bottling it up. Fiction is where we go for emotional release. That can be true with trauma too.

so what you're saying is

character: NO

therapist: YES

This is super simplified, but something my PE (treatment for PTSD) therapist said over and over again is that the way trauma becomes PTSD is by you not interacting with it. There are a lot of very natural coping mechanisms to trauma that are more or less, "That was horrible; let's just put it away." Denial, avoidance, etc. The entire basis for PE, EMDR, and other modern PTSD therapies is basically, "We're going to take the worst memory you have of your trauma and we're going to re-experience it over and over and over again in excruciating detail." And fuck me if it doesn't actually work.

Engaging with and exploring your trauma is actually the healthy way to deal with it. If you feel safer doing it with a character, that's fine. That's great! You have to be in a safe space if any of those PTSD therapies are going to work, or you're just going to double down on your NOPE coping mechanisms.

You're doing amazing.

every time i see a post talking about how alfred pennyworth failed bruce for not getting him into therapy as a kid i want to scream.

it did not exist. the idea that children could have PTSD was just starting to be discussed in the late 80s/early 90s at the FRINGE of child psychology, and then trauma therapy even for adults spent an unhelpful 2ish decades dominated by forced-conversation talk therapy. that's a thing that is detrimental to trauma recovery, because if someone doesn't feel safe or in control of the dialogue about their trauma and is repeatedly asked to describe their trauma when they're uneasy, it COMPOUNDS TRAUMA AND FEELINGS OF DANGER.

when bruce was a kid, even the best psychs available would have had training that taught them kids bounce back, that kids don't respond to or handle trauma the way adults do, and that any behaviors post-trauma were almost certainly unrelated mental illness.

i see this esp in fandom circles but a gentle reminder that therapy even when it's good doesn't fix everything. even if bruce had HAD access to good childhood PTSD therapy, he would still have grief, he would still potentially be socially awkward or withdrawn, he might have still decided to be Batman because it's a comic book where being a vigilante isn't as wild as it is irl.

therapy requires honesty, readiness, safety, sound application of theory, an accurate picture of life outside the therapy room (self-reporting is often flawed!), consistency, and more! it can help but it doesn't erase trauma or grief. it's dismissive of the history of trauma therapy to say an adult "should have" had a kid in a therapy approach that didn't exist, and it's dismissive of the actual work of therapy to act like therapy would have made everything ideal. bruce isn't going to be a normal, well-adjusted adult because his parents were murdered in front of him. he could be happy! he could have coping skills! but honestly it would be weirder if he didn't wrestle with residual trauma and grief throughout his life.

and maybe this is just because i love Batman, and love specifically Batman as a symbol/figure of hope and sacrifice and the belief that every life matters, but I don't think the worst ending here is Bruce deciding to give up a lot of his time, energy, and health to work in Gotham AND then choose to parent a traumatized child and actively meet his needs. like you think the alternative is that Alfred is a better parent by getting him into non-existent therapy and then he stays comfortably wealthy at home and is just another rich dude? that's the ideal version? the one who can't help Dick Grayson because Dick Grayson wants to run away and murder a man?

anyway tl;dr alfred should have flaws, yes, but there's a big gap between "flawed human parental figure" and "man who massively failed Bruce in multiple ways, one of which was not putting him in therapy."

just fyi bc i don't think i made it clear: even in the initial decade of acceptance of childhood PTSD, the approach would have been a therapist asking bruce to describe the night his parents died. over. and over. and over. and over.

because of the belief that discussing it would process the trauma.

there were kids in foster care in this era that flat-out refused to go to therapy or speak at all while there because therapy was them being asked to describe, in detail, exactly what the abuse was, on repeat. it hurt a LOT of people even while we were struggling to get better at treating them.

Y’all. PTSD wasn’t even an official diagnosis in the DSM until 1980 (DSM-III). And even then, it was *controversial* in the field, because it was due to an external stressor. (Never mind that ‘refrigerator mothers’ had been blamed for psychotic symptoms for decades at that point because misogyny.)

Plus, you have to think about the fact that, initially, a stressor that met criteria for a diagnosis included things like combat, natural disaster/situation in which your life was in danger, or sexual assault. Although, this wasn’t explicitly stated. The criteria just said ‘Existence of a recognizable stressor that would evoke significant symptoms of distress in almost everyone.’ This was updated in the revised version to specify that a traumatic event included ‘serious threat to one's life or physical integrity; serious threat or harm to one's children, spouse, or other close relatives and friends; sudden destruction of one’s home or community; or seeing another person who has recently been, or is being, seriously injured or killed as the result of an accident or physical violence.’

How old is Bruce Wayne currently? If he’s roughly 30 or older, it’s unlikely he would have had access to treatment with someone who specialized in effective treatment of PTSD in kids. And if he’s younger? What do you think the odds are that a dude two generations older would shatter the stigma norms and take a kid to therapy?

As my elderly father would say: slim to none.

Plus, Bruce was originated in 1915. Talk therapy wasn’t even a thing in the US then. Although there’s evidence that Rhazes, a Persian physician, used a form of psychotherapy based on theory, it wasn’t a thing in the modern ‘west’ until Sigmund Freud in the late 1800’s. And he brought it to the US in 1909, but it wasn’t really popular until the ‘30s/‘40s. And psychoanalysis is not really a peer-reviewed, empirically-supported treatment for PTSD. Even though that standard is not without critique, it’s the one most treatment in the US is currently based on.

And Prolonged Exposure, an empirically supported treatment (that doesn’t mean that it works for everyone, just that it’s better than supportive therapy for the majority of participants in a randomized controlled trial) is based on reversing avoidance. Avoidance is like the lighter fluid of the fire that is PTSD symptoms—while it may help escape pain in the short term, it doesn’t resolve symptoms in the long term.

Being able to revisit traumatic events in a space *where there is objective safety* can help a person reprocess those events in an effective way that wasn’t available to them at the time of the event, when survival was the primary goal. And it’s not the only treatment out there; a person can recover without it (though some studies show that, when added to other emotion regulation skills, it leads to longer-lasting recovery from PTSD than those skills alone).

Anywho. I got started and couldn’t stop talking about two of my favorite things: human psychology and the history of psychotherapy.

shameless // Desireé Dallagiacomo // Jamaica Kincaid // euphoria // jobless monday, mitski // Haddon Sandblom // ? // the end of the f world //Smoke Signals // Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

yes i am full of love but also? insurmountable rage

George Seferis,

- the killing grounds

Credit: @Pet_Foolery

Plot twist Pixie isn’t scared of thunder but knew Brutus was. He didn’t want Brutus to be embarrassed so he lied so he can comfort his friend.

Always protect others.

WarriorMale

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