#confirm it now that danny has chronic pain in his hands. and also that his arrhythmia does affect him more than just “slow heartbeat” | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

starry-bi-sky · 3 months

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Clone^2 danny headcanons and/or facts that i wanted to expand on but didn't have the motivation or inspiration to write a ficlet about. Ultimately most of these are ideas that already exist in canon clone^2 but are only now being expanded on/explored/stated specifically.

Because I'm procrasinating cfau and passively thinking about clone danny and damian again.

1 - As he's liminal, Danny generates his own ectoplasm. He generates it at a slower rate than the casual ghost but faster than the average liminal. It's what gives him an ecto-signature and results in him triggering his parents' weapons and ecto-sensors.

The ectoplasm he generates actually has a use, and he tends to burn through his supply while he's fighting because of all the physical energy he spends + the use of his scary eyes requires (albeit really minor amounts of) ectoplasm to use. It also has health benefits, as using his ectoplasm keeps his heartbeat steady and lessens the risk of his arrhythmia flaring up due to all of his physical activity and adrenaline.

It does happen occasionally that he uses up more ectoplasm than he can replace, and this has the expected negative effects on his health as all that adrenaline and stress catches up to his heart without a buffer to mitigate it. He carries a canteen full of diluted ectoplasm with him in order to give his system the boost it needs in order to stabilize itself, which he can usually tell when he needs due to excessive fatigue/chest pains/dizziness/other arrhythmia symptoms he gets that means he's low on ectoplasm.

2 - Danny's arrhythmia is a form of bradycardia (which is a slower heartbeat) -- what type? Unspecified / Unknown thanks to it being ectoplasmic in nature.

3 - In that same breath, Danny also has to burn that ectoplasm off in some form or another because if he doesn't it builds up and causes him the same issues as if he was too low. It also causes him to become more emotionally volatile, restless, irritable, overstimulated, etc, which the stress of that then makes his heart condition worsen. If too much ectoplasm builds up, it'll cause a physical electrical shock/shortage. This is rare however, and usually is the equivalent of giving someone a painful static shock. At best it makes the lights flicker or technology fritz out for a few seconds.

While it doesn't have much effect on the physical world, it does expend a good chunk of ectoplasm. Think like dumping out a heavy bucket of water that you've been carrying for a while, or getting into a hot shower after being outside in the cold for hours. It's emotionally draining but very relieving.

4 - Danny can replenish ectoplasm or generate ectoplasm faster by resting, eating, consuming other ectoplasm (fastest), fulfilling his interests / doing things that makes him happy, or by being exposed to high amounts of ectoplasm in the area. He can also rapidly generate it by being in a volatile emotional state, but that drains ectoplasm almost as quickly, and runs the risk of causing flare ups in his arrhythmia.

5 - this is actually canon to the au but I figured it wouldn't hurt to expand more on it / clarify / confirm, but Danny post-Damian has chronic pain in his hands from the nerve damage he sustained. He has daily physical therapy exercises he's supposed to do that he does in the mornings/evenings and whenever his hands hurt/feel stiff. He wears compression gloves in his day-to-day life and gets Sam and Tucker's help to brainstorm ideas about how to make compression gloves for Phantom that can include his knuckledusters. His grip and hand strength is weakened.

He has bad hand days where his hands hurt more than usual. This can happen at random, but is more common after he's overused/strained his hands either the day before or earlier in the day. His fingers stiffen up for similar reasons, and he gets tremors. It's happened before where (for example) he's braiding his hair and unbraiding it, only to need someone else to finish the braid because his fingers stiffened up and don't want to work like he wants them to.

Massages, heat, pressure, etc. helps soothe the pain, and since Danny's a fidgety person his friends and family can usually tell when he has a flare up because any hand movements he was doing prior ceased/slowed suddenly, or he starts massaging his hands / stretching out his fingers.

Damian very stubbornly insists on massaging his hands for him when this happens, he has a lot of intense guilt for being the reason for Danny's chronic pain so he wants to alleviate it in anyway he can.

6 - Danny has what I like to call "Bruce-isms", a word I came up with just now that means he has Bruce Wayne mannerisms that come from the fact that he's still Bruce's clone. A Nature vs. Nurture thing. His Bruce-isms include the Bruce Grunts Of Ambiguous Tonal Meaning ("hm", "hrm", "hn"), his workaholism, his paranoia (on a milder scale), etc. They're small, relatively non-defining things that are quirks but don't make up his personality.

He's got what Sam and Tucker like to call "Bruce Wayne Moments" which are essentially Bruce-isms but only ones that Danny and his friends are aware of considering they only know Bruce as Brucie Wayne and not Batman. "Bruce Wayne Moments" include Danny being clumsy, doing something air-headed, being oblivious, etc. It's not a common joke among the three of them since Tucker and Sam know that Danny's still pr sensitive to the whole clone thing. So they only bring it up when he's done something stupid but hilarious.

7 - while clone^2 focuses more on Danny and Damian's relationship and Danny helping Damian develop his identity beyond just "Damian Wayne's Clone", Danny still suffers from his own identity crises. He sometimes gets jealous of Ellie and Damian for being "lucky" that they always knew they were clones, rather than finding out later in life.

He's aware that this is not fair to think and that Damian and Ellie both have their own struggles as clones, but he can't help it sometimes.

He tries not to think about it too much, but when things get too quiet or when he's not busy, Danny can't help but wonder how much of himself is things he's learned on his own and come from him, and how much of it comes from being Bruce Wayne's clone. He has to stop and count how many things are unique about him specifically when he starts to emotionally spiral. It's not rational, but it's not supposed to be.

As a result Danny kinda, hm, clings to his identity as the Phantom, just a little bit? He thinks it's one of the few things that he has autonomous control over as "Danny Fenton", rather than it being a result of him being Bruce Wayne's clone. Because Bruce Wayne isn't a vigilante! Right? Right?

Consequently this becomes one of the reasons that Damian keeps mum about Bruce Wayne's identity. The original reasons were because Danny asked not to know much about the LoA beyond what Damian already told him, and Batman was technically "apart" of the LoA, and secondly because he just didn't want Danny to get involved with Batman and co and Danny knowing about Bruce Wayne's identity could potentially cause that.

But as time goes on Damian kinda notices like, just how being a clone is affecting Danny even if he hides it from Damian pretty well. He can't really comprehend what it was like for Danny to grow up thinking he was normal like everyone else only to find out he was a clone, but he does see the hurt it's causing his brother. And he does notice that Danny was holding onto being Phantom quite a bit, and figured that if he found out Bruce Wayne was also a vigilante, it would hurt him beyond belief.

8 - So Danny's creation has been kept relatively,,, mmm,,, vague? considering I've been struggling for a time how I could plausibly have his creation happen without Bruce finding out about it immediately. And my conclusion is that around the time Danny was created, Bruce met up with the Fenton parents again for some reason or another -- checking out their tech under the guise of wanting to catch up with them.

And I can imagine that, due to being close friends in college, the Fentons literally just outright told him, "Hey we wanna 'nother kid but don't want to go through the risk of pregnancy again, so we're gonna make a clone of one of us instead"

and in true Bruce fashion, he mentally went "wow i should learn Everything And Anything About This Thing Specifically. Just In Case." and outwardly went "woah cool! ahaha how does it work"

and since the Fentons consider Bruce a close friend and are also incapable of Not Talking About Science, turned and went "OH WE CAN SHOW YOU" and showed Bruce their entire cloning process up to and including how they (safely) extracted the DNA they were gonna use. of which they already had. they were gonna just extract Jack's DNA a second time as an example, but it was Bruce who said "hey you should try me instead" in order to gauge how exactly safe this was and if there were any symptoms he would need to recognize in cloning.

so with his consent they did, and then showed him how they were going to use the DNA to make a clone without actually going through the process. Without prompting from Bruce, the Fentons went "we're gonna throw your DNA away though since we don't want this lying around and because we have no use for it" and visibly showed him that they were disposing it.

Bruce came to the conclusion that the Fentons weren't planning anything nefarious, they just really wanted another kid, and (reluctantly) left afterwards. The mixup comes when Maddie, surprisingly, misplaces the cartridge with Jack's DNA in it and while they could have always gotten another sample, it was better and safer to just try and find the original before that.

Jack finds Bruce's in their disposable. In his excitement, he forgets that it was Bruce's DNA, and manages to get it out safely. Maddie wasn't looking when he found it, and in her excitement also forgot to ask where Jack found it. They used that cartridge instead.

When they found out they used the wrong DNA, Danny was already about year old and while Jack and Maddie are morally dubious, they're only morally dubious towards ghosts. Danny was their beloved human baby, they would never do anything to him.

That being said, they were still horrified when they found out, and really, they genuinely did consider reaching out to Bruce to tell him. They thought it was something he deserved to know since it was his DNA that got used instead, and they felt awfully guilty after he trusted them enough to let them draw DNA from him. The only reason they hadn't is because, at the time, Bruce had been really busy with something in his public life and they didn't want to bother him during such a stressful time.

So they were going to wait, and in Fenton-like fashion, forgot to tell him. When the subject came up again sometime later, they assumed they already told Bruce and went about their day.

#dpxdc #dp x dc #danny fenton is not the ghost king #dp x dc crossover #dpxdc crossover #dpdc #clone^2 #danny fenton is a clone #bruce you getting cloned by accident is technically your fault man. you knew the fentons in college you know what they're like /j #i kept kinda vague about danny's chronic pain prior since i don't have it myself so i didn't want to portray it incorrectly. but i want to #confirm it now that danny has chronic pain in his hands. and also that his arrhythmia does affect him more than just “slow heartbeat”#and the ectoplasm he makes acts more like a weird pacemaker than an actual cure for his arrhythmia.#clone^2 au might be more about danny and damian and damian's issues but by god does danny have his own too that he just. shoves to the side #danny canonically has only known he was a clone for a year before he got damian. thats not a long time for something that substantial tbh #and he was still in the process of coming to terms with it when damian ended up in his life.#danny started carrying his canteen of ghost juice with him after he passed out one too many times after a fight when he was low on ectoplas #danny hinges a little too much of his identity on being Phantom because he thinks it's the only really major thing about him that isn't #a result of him being a clone. so uh -aha - him finding out bruce is a vigilante too is gonna be pretty ugly.#arrhythmia isn't always permanent but it CAN be and in danny's case it is

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rationalsanskar · 4 years

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Can Mindfulness Meditation Really Reduce Pain and Suffering by 90 percent? This Three Week Course Shows You How To Begin. – Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World | Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World

Living with chronic pain and illness can be intolerable. Even after taking the maximum dose of painkillers, the aching soon returns with a vengeance. You want to do something, anything, to stop the pain, but whatever you try seems to fail. Moving hurts. Doing nothing hurts. Ignoring it hurts.

But it’s not just the pain that hurts; your mind can start to suffer as you desperately try to find a way of escaping. Pointed and bitter questions can begin nagging at your soul: What will happen if I don’t recover? What if it gets worse? I can’t cope with this . . . Please, I just want it to stop …

It’s only natural to want to fight back against pain and illness in times such as these, but what if this struggle actually made your suffering worse? What if it was more effective to explore the sensations of pain and illness as they rose and fell in your body? This may seem like the worst thing imaginable, but the latest medical advances show that it can be more powerful than the most commonly prescribed painkillers.

Such an approach forms the core of a new treatment for chronic pain and illness that is based on an ancient form of meditation known as ‘mindfulness’. Mindfulness meditation has been shown in clinical trials to reduce chronic pain by 57 percent. Accomplished meditators can reduce it by over 90 percent.

Imaging studies show that mindfulness soothes the brain patterns underlying pain and, over time, these changes take root and alter the structure of the brain itself, so that patients no longer feel pain with the same intensity. Many say that they barely notice it at all.

Hospital pain clinics now prescribe mindfulness meditation to help patients cope with the suffering arising from a wide range of diseases such as cancer (and the side effects of chemotherapy), heart disease, diabetes and arthritis. It is also used for back problems, migraine, fibromyalgia, coeliac disease, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome and even multiple sclerosis.

As I explain in our book ‘Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Relieving Pain, Reducing Stress and Restoring Wellbeing‘, meditation achieves these remarkable results because it turns down the ‘volume’ control on pain.

A typical meditation involves focusing on different parts of the body and simply observing with the mind’s eye what you find (see box below). This allows you to see your mind and body in action, to observe painful sensations as they arise, and to let go of struggling with them. When you do this, something remarkable happens: your suffering begins to melt away of its own accord.

After a while you come to the profound realisation that pain comes in two forms: Primary and Secondary. Each of these has very different causes – and understanding this gives you far greater control over your suffering.

Primary pain arises from illness, injury or damage to the body or nervous system. You could see it as the raw information sent by the body to the brain. Secondary pain is the mind’s reaction to Primary pain but is often far more intense and long lasting. Crucially, it is controlled by an ‘amplifier’ in the brain that governs the overall intensity of suffering.

In recent years, scientists have begun to work out how the mind’s pain amplifier is controlled, but more importantly they have discovered ways of turning down the ‘volume’ control on suffering.

It turns out, the human mind does not simply feel pain, it also processes the information that it contains. It teases apart all of the different sensations to try to find their underlying causes so that you can avoid further pain or damage to the body. In effect, the mind zooms in on your pain for a closer look as it tries to find a solution to your suffering. This ‘zooming-in’ amplifies pain.

As your mind analyses the pain, it also sifts through memories for occasions when you have suffered similarly in the past. It is searching for a pattern, some clues, that will lead to a solution. Trouble is, if you have suffered from pain or illness for months or years, then the mind will have a rich tapestry of painful memories on which to draw – but very few solutions.

So before you know it, your mind can become flooded with unsettling memories. You can become enmeshed in thoughts about your suffering. It can seem as if you’ve always been ill and in pain, that you’ve never found a solution and that you never will. You can end up being consumed by future anxieties, stresses and worries as well as physical pain: What will happen if I can’t stop this pain? Am I going to spend my life suffering like this? Is it going to keep on getting worse?

This process happens in an instant, before you’re consciously aware of it. Each thought builds on the last and quickly turns into a vicious cycle that ends up further amplifying your pain. And it can be worse than this because such stresses and fears feed back into the body to create even more tension and stress. This can aggravate illnesses and injuries, leading to even more pain. It also dampens down the immune system, so impairing healing. So you can all too easily become trapped in a vicious downward spiral that leads to ever greater suffering.

But even worse, such negative spirals can begin wearing tracks in the mind so that you become primed to suffer. Your brain begins fine-tuning itself to sense pain more quickly – and with greater intensity – in a futile bid to try to avoid the worst of it.

Over time, the brain actually becomes better at sensing pain. Brain scans confirm that people who suffer from chronic pain have more brain tissue dedicated to feeling the conscious sensations of pain. It’s almost as if the brain has turned up the volume to maximum and doesn’t know how to turn it down again.

It’s important to emphasise that Secondary pain is real. You do genuinely feel it. It’s only called Secondary pain because it is the mind’s reaction to Primary pain and has been heavily processed before you consciously feel it. But this same processing also offers a way out; it means you can learn to gain control over pain.

It is possible to learn to step aside from suffering and begin to handle pain very differently indeed. In effect, mindfulness hands back to you the volume control for your pain.

Brain scans confirm this. Mindfulness soothes the circuits that amplify Secondary pain and you can see this process happening in a brain scanner. In effect, mindfulness teaches you how to turn down the volume control on your pain. And as you do so, any anxiety, stress and depression that you may be feeling begins to melt away too. Your body can then relax and begin to heal.

On top of these benefits, hundreds of scientific trials have now shown that mindfulness meditation is extremely good at relieving anxiety, stress, depression, exhaustion and irritability. Memory improves, reaction times become faster and mental and physical stamina increase. In short, regular meditators are happier and more contented than average, while being far less likely to suffer from psychological distress.

Over the next three weeks I’ll lead you through three meditations from our book ‘Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Relieving Pain, Reducing Stress and Restoring Wellbeing‘. They are based on solid science as well as our own experience.

I used mindfulness to cope with the extreme pain of a paragliding accident. Seven years ago I fell 30 feet onto a rocky hillside. The resulting impact drove the lower half of my right leg several inches through the knee and into my thigh. The injury required three major operations and two years of physiotherapy to correct. I found mindfulness to be an extremely powerul painkiller and I’m convinced it also accelerated my healing.

The programme in the book was developed by my co-author Vidyamala Burch following two serious spinal injuries that left her in continuous pain. This programme has helped tens of thousands of people worldwide cope with pain, suffering and stress.

This week I will lead you through the ten minute Body Scan meditation. Carry it out twice each day. Follow the instructions below, or preferably download the free audio track from www.franticworld.com/huffington

Next week I will lead you through another pain reduction exercise. The following week I will teach you a meditation to dissolve stress and speed recovery.

Dr Danny Penman is the co-author of the bestselling Mindfulness. His latest book ‘Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Relieving Pain, Reducing Stress and Restoring Wellbeing‘ is published by Piatkus.

Body Scan Meditation This is best carried out in quiet surroundings. The idea is to hold each region of the body in the mind’s eye, observe – or ‘feel’ – what you find, and then move on to the next area.

You will realise that your mind repeatedly wanders. It’s what mind’s do, so try not to criticise yourself. When it happens, simply bring your awareness back to the region of the body from where it wandered. Try not to judge what you find. Simply observe. Or perhaps smile inwardly to yourself.

The Scan Lie on the floor and allow your legs to gently fall away from each other. Place your hands loosely on your stomach. Close your eyes. Sink into the floor. Focus on the natural breath as it flows in and out of the body. Is it deep or shallow? Smooth or ‘ragged’? Spend a few minutes feeling the rhythm of the breath in as much detail as you can.

Does the breath ‘echo’ in the groin? The lower back? What do you find in these regions? Are they warm or cold? Do they ache? Is it sharp or tingly pain? Gently probe the edges, then move closer. Spend a couple of minutes exploring the rhythm of the breath. Do you notice that discomfort is more ‘fluid’ than you thought? Does it feel more distant and less ‘personal’ than you expected?

Move your awareness to the middle back and observe what you find for a minute… Then the upper back…

Observe the whole back as one for a few minutes… And the shoulders… The neck… The face… The arms… hands.

Move your awareness through your legs and ‘feel’ what you find. Do your hips ache? Is it sharp or dull? Gently probe the edges and move inwards. If it begins to feel too intense, gently broaden the focus of your awareness so that you hold the discomfort in a wider space. Does that make it less intense?

And finally, spend a couple of minutes observing the whole body breathing as one.

Gently open your eyes and soak in the world around you. Can you carry this flavour awareness with you as you continue with your day?

You can download the free audio track of this meditation from www.franticworld.com/huffington

The post Can Mindfulness Meditation Really Reduce Pain and Suffering by 90 percent? This Three Week Course Shows You How To Begin. – Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World | Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World appeared first on METAMORPHOSIS.

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