#especially common with like. childhood emotional neglect

[kindacreepy-kindaugly]

I guess maybe cause we have a lot of the same issues & he was around recently before I started fronting, but I think about Loki a lot sometimes, n how drastically he changed during the time he was co-host.

How desperate for connection n approval he is, when like me he's also just. On a different wavelength than most people around us. Never could figure out the problem but he used to be so much more likely than the rest of us to try n take interest in other people's interests, to go out of his way to do things for em, but somehow just mostly got it wrong n was met with criticism instead. Or ignored, but that's also what happened when he (at least as far as we could tell) got it right. I'd get it if it caused more work for the people instead of being helpful, but it was always useless at worst?

Like idk maybe him pointing out the things came off as him...expecting praise for some very basic or low effort things he did or something? But it was never about that, he just wanted to be seen. He was just as if not more content seeing people even a little bit happy about it than he was being thanked. He just wanted the connection.

He burnt out n stopped trying pretty fast. He doesn't do things for others anymore. He might, if he's directly asked to n given enough info that he trusts he won't fuck it up somehow, but it goes to the absolute bottom of his priorities. He doesn't try to strike up conversation, definitely not about things he's not into but the other person at least was at some point. Just...doesn't try to connect. His life's on a parallel line to anyone else's n sometimes there might be a brief, coincidental overlap but it doesn't mean much anymore.

I more or less started out from that point. Maybe that's partially where this constant fucking feeling of isolation came from. I don't like being asked to do anything. I'm hyperaware of being ignored n what kinda topics that happens with. I face everything n everyone with the assumption they don't care about anythin I have to say unless it's in (the right kinda) response to what they're saying, though even then I need to learn to cut it off at one or two sentences. It's supposed to be a reply, not a conversation. That when people speak to me they want to talk to me, not with me. Acknowledge it to show you're listening n invested but don't take up time. Which...funnily enough is exactly what Val's always told me. I kinda hate how my ADHD tendency to ramble still gets out of hand all the damn time n I only catch it when it's too late, n how my natural way of processing things is by talkin about em.

I mean. I'm assuming there's gotta be somethin that I'm reading wrong in the situations. Somethin that makes what I say or do weird n I guess off-putting. It's not a new problem, it's (part of) why we never had that many friends n when we did they usually got sick of us after a couple of years. But no one will tell us what it is n after over 20 years of tryin to crack it we're just fucking tired. I know it's some kinda personality disorder + neurotype + trauma combo but it just doesn't feel worth it try anymore when it takes so fucking much energy to try n get it right just for the Russian roulette of havin either a genuine interaction or a new step in my downward spiral. I just got no way to know which one it's gonna be til it happens n a lot of the time I end up wishing I didn't take the risk. I'm too fucking fragile for it.

#with the exception of the partner system. in loki's case especially B in my case especially herald #like i know the feeling of disconnect n being somehow Inherently Different than everyone else is a trauma symptom #especially common with like. childhood emotional neglect #so it's probably not entirely reality based at this point #but for whatever reason it's like....sometime around the time cloud or loki started fronting it started gettin worse n worse #i know it's a schema or some shit but it's. constantly getting reaffirmed instead of us working through it #& i know it's somethin we should talk about in therapy more in depth but whenever we try we choke up so bad we can't make a sound #especially cause anytime we try to talk about it to anyone else than the bf we're pretty much told our perception must be wrong somehow #n it's not like i'm tryin to put blame on anyone or say it's some kinda intentional conspiracy against us? #the only common denominator is us so why would we try to pin it on someone else? #& if our perception is really that off then i mean that'd be the answer. there's something so severely wrong with our brain that we both #repeatedly don't see or hear it when we're being responded to and hallucinate people talkin when they actually don't #which i'm pretty sure would mean we need to be on antipsychotics like asap #this btw is an open invitation to let us know if we are legit reacting to interactions no one else can see or hear #cause the most i'm aware of is the way i sometimes ask people if they said somethin cause i thought i heard someone talk #n that's very much not it. but idk. it's kinda hellish to be an extrovert in a brain that's broken in this specific way. #spdrvent

[hundrkottr]

🌿 Trauma Based Identities 🌿

There are a number of causes for our non-human identities. The most common being spiritual, but also imprinting. So now, what is a trauma based identity? And how could it cause one to have a psychological theriotype?

A trauma based identity is basically an identity that was formed because of, or in relation to, trauma. Especially during childhood/adolescence. At a young age, we are still very much developing mentally and emotionally. Our minds are going through so many changes, and our environment has an incredibly big impact on that. Early life trauma is part of that environment, and therefore, can literally make changes to your beain chemistry and how it develops. So how does this have to do with therianthropy?

Well, if a child experiences trauma or abuse, their minds may unconsciously seek some kind of coping mechanism. And this coping mechanism CAN cause them to develop a non-human identity. Especially if they feel detached from other humans who are the source of said trauma. Often time, the animal they may imprint on will be in their environment. Perhaps a pet, or a wild animal they see on a regular basis. It can be an animal or being they've been exposed to through media, like; movies, tv shows, books, games, etc. It can also even be a toy they have of said animal. Regardless, the trauma can make such a development occur.

//Imprinting can also be in relation to the trauma based identity. As a child experiencing abuse and neglect may imprint on the animal around them, rather than the humans that cause them harm, or hurt them.//

Some may argue that "this isn't a theriotype, its a coping link!". But you are wrong. The definition of therianthropy, is to identify as an animal, or have an involuntary non-human identity. A copinglink is a CHOSEN identity you chose to CONSCIOUSLY cope. If the trauma based identity is NOT chosen, and develops without voluntarily chosing so, it IS a VALID therianthropic identity.

I think it's important for people to be aware that such identities exist and are incredibly valid. They can be tough, but it is part of our development.

🌿 My Trauma-based Identity 🌿

Ever since I was a baby I've gotten a lot of traumatic experiences. I was consistently abused and neglected. I won't go into detail, but it was really hard. And I deal heavily with the affects today.

I never felt loved, or safe. But we did have cats in our household all the time. And I learned love from them. The cats never hurt me, never scared me, never screamed at me. All they did was show me love. They made me feel seen. So, as a toddler, I imprinted heavily on them. I ate their food, bathed like them, crawled around like them, meowed, and even used the litter box on several occasions (i know it sounds extreme but as embarrassing as it is, i did..)

My parents regularly punished me for acting like a cat, but I never stopped. And I continued seeing them as my true family.

I imprinted on them and it became a permanent mental development that would follow me through all of my childhood, my adolescence and early adulthood.

Thinking of why this identity developed makes me sad. But it also makes me grateful, because i dont thing the young, autistic and traumatized lil child I was would have made it otherwise.

I go through periods of questioning and denial. Because this identity makes me feel a lot of repressed emotions. But maybe this time i can accept it again. Ill do it at my own pace though. ♡

Thats all! Hope this helps others with trauma based identities. Know that you are valid. And you are seen. If ever you need to talk about it, im here. My DMs are open. I may not be online all the time, but Ill respond.

#alterhuman #otherkin #therian #therians #therianthrope #therianthropy #coyote therian #bear therian #wolf therian #cat therian #psychological therian #non human

[theambitiouswoman]

How Abandonment Issues Appear In Your Adult Relationships & How To Heal

Abandonment issues can have a profound impact on our adult relationships. These issues can stem from early childhood experiences, such as parental neglect, divorce, or the loss of a caregiver. When these experiences are not properly addressed, they can leave lasting emotional scars that impact our ability to form healthy and fulfilling relationships.

At its core, abandonment issues involve a fear of being rejected, abandoned, or left alone. This fear can manifest in a variety of ways, such as clinginess, jealousy, or the need for constant reassurance. People with abandonment issues often struggle with feelings of unworthiness or inadequacy, which can lead to a constant need for validation from their partner.

In romantic relationships, abandonment issues can create a vicious cycle. A person with abandonment issues may cling tightly to their partner, fearing that they will be abandoned if they let go. This clinginess can be suffocating to their partner, who may feel trapped or unable to meet the other person's needs. This can lead to conflict and resentment, which can ultimately drive the couple apart.

Abandonment issues can also impact our ability to trust others. If we have been abandoned or betrayed in the past, we may struggle to trust our partners in the present. This can make it difficult to form deep connections with others, as we may always be looking for signs that they are going to leave us. If left unaddressed, these issues can lead to a cycle of dysfunctional relationships, where we constantly seek validation and reassurance from our partners, while pushing them away with our neediness and clinginess.

Abandonment issues can manifest in different ways in relationships, and the signs can vary from person to person. However, some common examples of signs of abandonment issues in relationships include:

Fear of rejection or abandonment: People with abandonment issues often have a deep-seated fear of rejection or abandonment. They may be hypersensitive to any perceived signs of rejection, such as their partner being unavailable or not responding to their messages promptly.

Neediness and clinginess: Individuals with abandonment issues may feel the need to constantly be in contact with their partner or may have a hard time being alone. They may struggle with boundaries and may become overly dependent on their partner for emotional support.

Jealousy and possessiveness: People with abandonment issues may become overly jealous and possessive of their partner. They may feel threatened by other people in their partner's life or may struggle with feelings of insecurity.

Difficulty with trust: Individuals with abandonment issues may have a hard time trusting others, especially in close relationships. They may feel that their partner will eventually leave them, which can lead to feelings of anxiety and uncertainty.

Sabotaging relationships: People with abandonment issues may sabotage their relationships by pushing their partner away or creating conflict. This behavior can be a way of testing their partner's commitment and may stem from a fear of being abandoned.

Co-dependency: Individuals with abandonment issues may become co-dependent on their partner, meaning that they rely heavily on their partner for emotional and psychological support. This can lead to an unhealthy dynamic where one partner feels responsible for the other's emotional well-being.

Healing from abandonment issues can be a challenging and ongoing process, but it is possible with time, effort, and the right support. Here are some steps you can take to start healing from abandonment issues:

Acknowledge and accept your feelings: The first step in healing from abandonment issues is to acknowledge and accept your feelings. This can be difficult, as it may involve confronting painful emotions like fear, anger, or sadness. However, by acknowledging these emotions, you can begin to process them and move forward.

Identify the root cause: Abandonment issues can stem from a variety of experiences, such as childhood neglect or the loss of a loved one. It can be helpful to identify the root cause of your abandonment issues so that you can begin to work through them.

Seek support: Healing from abandonment issues often requires the help of a mental health professional, such as a therapist or counselor. They can provide a safe and supportive environment for you to explore your feelings and develop coping strategies.

Practice self-care: It's essential to take care of yourself while you're healing from abandonment issues. This can include engaging in activities that make you feel good, such as exercise, hobbies, or spending time with friends and family. Self-care can also involve setting boundaries and practicing self-compassion.

Learn healthy relationship skills: As you heal from abandonment issues, it's essential to learn healthy relationship skills, such as communication, trust-building, and setting boundaries. A mental health professional can help you develop these skills and apply them in your relationships.

Give yourself time: Healing from abandonment issues is a process that takes time. It's essential to be patient with yourself and allow yourself to experience emotions as they come up. Remember that healing is not a linear process, and setbacks are a natural part of the journey.

Healing from abandonment issues requires acknowledging and accepting your feelings, identifying the root cause, seeking support, practicing self-care, learning healthy relationship skills, and giving yourself time. By taking these steps, you can begin to heal from abandonment issues and develop healthy and fulfilling relationships.

[aspd-culture]

hey, i've really enjoyed this blog so i want to make absolutely sure: your stance on endogenic systems is "they have trauma, they just don't know it"?

Yep. If someone is genuinely a system, that is incompatible with having no trauma. If someone genuinely did not have trauma, they by our current scientific understanding cannot be a system.

That said, unlike many other people with this take, I try not to push endos to realize that because if they were ready to, their system would have told them. I know *multiple* people who identified as "endo" before remembering their trauma when they were ready to and realizing they were very wrong.

I also know people who formerly identified as "endo" but realized that trauma to a child can be things as "simple" as a divorce or death of a very important person in their family etc. It's not always super intense abuse. Whilst that is much more likely to cause a system it is in no way impossible to see it from things that are not commonly thought of as traumatic. It's a great time to acknowledge this actually because it's true of every trauma disorder - childhood trauma is inherently going to be different than adult trauma because children are less resilient with less life experience and their brains are still in development so they are much less likely to "bounce back". It gets cemented in their development that pain like this is part of the world and they need to develop ways to cope.

The things that an adult believes they cannot manage to survive, and therefore need to change the way their brain functions to tolerate, has a *much* higher threshold than the same for a child because a child has not seen proof of what the human brain and body can survive. Further, a child hasn't developed the ability to emotionally support themselves, so emotional neglect can make it so what in no way even upsets a child with a support system may feel unsurvivable to a child without any. If you didn't know how much blood you could lose and still live, you would think the smallest scratch might kill you - that's what life is to a child.

All of that is to say, systems don't need to have lived through unspeakable horrors to be systems, but they *do* need to have some sort of trauma as far as we currently know. If you look into adverse child experiences (ACEs), you will probably be surprised as to what counts as traumatic in the mind of a child. I cannot stress enough that a kid may become traumatized enough to develop a system from almost *any* normal negative part of life if they have no emotional support to teach them how to adjust and handle pain. That is where, in that case, the system would come in - to be the ones helping them process and handle pain since no one else is.

If the psych community were to find in multiple repeatable studies that there is a reason for non-traumagenic systems to develop, I would change my stance because I know that psych knowledge especially has a very short half-life. We learn new things all the time. But for what we currently know about how systems develop, they cannot do so without some type of sustained trauma.

If that affects your enjoyment of this blog, I'm not sure what to say. It is not common that systems even get discussed here, though it does come up sometimes because both are trauma disorders (with ASPD being infrequently purely genetic I think?). When it does come up - because all of this blog besides the culture asks are based in current psych knowledge, the DSM/ICD, and my personal anecdotes - you will see my understanding in my discussions of it. It's not to alienate anyone, but it's no different than someone asking me to say something currently believed to be factually wrong about ASPD for their comfort; I can't and won't do that.

I don't mean to come off hostile, this is all /neutral, it's just that I hate the idea that an ASPD blog that is helpful or enjoyable to someone might in some way have that positive impact affected by a currently accepted truth about a completely unrelated disorder.

Is it right of me to take that out on you though my tone? No, because you're not the one causing that emotion bc I don't even particularly know your stance on this. Unfortunately though, despite rewriting this post like 3 times, I cannot seem to get the /neutral tone to come across properly. Just... please understand it is there because my autism is not letting me phrase it right.

#aspd-culture-is #tw endo #cw endo #system discourse #cw trauma

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

I have been diagnosed with borderline (I'm female) but I think I may be autistic. I did the raads-r teat and got 165, so I went to my therapist and told her and she said that autism and borderline can share some symptoms and that I can't be autistic because I make eye contact and I make/understand jokes. the thing is it's hard for me to look people I don't know in the eye for a long time, it becomes painful, and when someone is talking and looking at me I'm so concentrated on making eye contact that I don't even listen to what they're saying, and I've told her that. I also don't always get jokes, especially if they're a type of joke I'm not familiar with. I know these two alone don't mean anything, there are more stuff but I just wanted to ask you, what do you think about her answer?

Hi there,

I found an article talking about the differences and similarities:

Individuals diagnosed with BPD based on the DSM-5 (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) must exhibit at least 5 of the following 9 traits:

Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment

Unstable and intense interpersonal relationships

Identity disturbance, unstable self- image or sense of self

Chronically feeling “empty”

Impulsive behaviour across two areas in life (e.g. sex and substance use)

Difficulty regulating emotions (often due to heightened reactivity in situations)

Intense anger that is disproportionate to the situation

Recurrent suicidal/self-harm behaviour

Often feeling paranoid and dissociating in times of stress

In addition to the diagnostic traits, here are some common features of BPD:

Described as “manipulative”—using charm to influence the situation

Able to read social cues

Aware of the opinion of others

Able to ‘snap out’ of an outburst

Angry if their needs are not being met

Need for others to support their self-esteem

Switch from idealizing someone to despising them instantly and without provocation

Association with a childhood history of exposure to abuse, neglect, criticism and emotional invalidation

In contrast, here are some common features seen in autism:

Lack of social understanding from an early age

Greater difficulty reading social cues

Needing time away from others; solitude is enjoyable

Sensory sensitivity

History of special interests

Difficulty coping with change and transitions

Self-harm and suicide attempts are less likely to be related to trying to influence others behaviours or bring the focus of attention onto themselves

Why are women more commonly misdiagnosed with BPD?

Autistic women have higher rates of misdiagnosis in part due to our nonstereotypical presentations compared to men. The way we present to the world is often a product of our higher levels of masking and camouflaging. Women also have more social norms to adhere to in the neurotypical world, creating more opportunities for our social “missteps” to be attributed to BPD.

Generally, among women, there is a higher expectation to maintain interpersonal relationships. For example, in neurotypical social groups, women tend to have large superficial social networks. In contrast, autistics usually prefer having fewer closer relationships. Additionally, when we want to build a relationship, we often single out the person we are attracted to, engage in deep conversations on specialized topics, and invite the other person to adopt our routines and interests. Since this is against neurotypical social norms, this is often viewed as an “unhealthy attachment”—a BPD trait. Thus, an undiagnosed autistic woman who struggles to fit in with her peers can easily be “flagged” as having BPD if a clinician doesn’t look at the underlying cause. In comparison, men don’t have as many social expectations, so an autistic man’s non-neurotypical social patterns do not get “flagged” as readily.

Another common cause of misdiagnosis in women is based on our often high motivations to fit in with these social norms. When we work hard to camouflage by practicing social scripts, but inevitably still struggle in relationships with neurotypicals, clinicians may view this as the BPD trait of intensely fearing abandonment. This “fear of abandonment” can also be mischaracterized in instances where we experience distress if a friend cancels last-minute plans. For most autistics, our distress isn’t driven by a fear of abandonment but rather an executive functioning difference. We don’t cope well with sudden changes to our plans, irrespective of who they are with.

Moreover, our higher levels of camouflage often cause us to struggle with our sense of self because we are forced to act in inauthentic ways. However, our lack of self-identity is rooted in this forced inauthenticity, not based on an unstable identity personality trait which is often seen in BPD.

One important consideration in this discussion is that to date, research has done a poor job regarding autism and gender identity. Due to the lack of data collection on this topic, we still don’t know how BPD misdiagnosis affects gender-diverse individuals. This is particularly frustrating since we know that a large proportion of the autistic community is gender-diverse.[28] Since the diagnostic criteria for autism are biased towards a stereotypical presentation of autism—mainly seen in (white) cis-gendered boys—and gender-diverse individuals also mask and camouflage a lot, my assumption is that the rate of BPD misdiagnosis is likely also high in gender-diverse autistic populations.

I will leave the article below so you can read more:

Please keep in mind that you could possibly have both. Autism has a long list of co-occurring disorders.

I hope this helps answer your question. Thank you for the inbox. I hope you have a wonderful day/night. ♥️

#inbox #inbox reply #inbox is open

[avpdpossum]

Hi and thank you for making this blog! I have avpd and I have been wondering a lot about why. Why did I develop a personality disorder. So I wanted to ask you what your thoughts are? Is it genetics, the environment, trauma? My avpd is making it very hard for me to accept my diagnosis and not turn it into a critic of myself. “I’m born wrong/weak or I’m so weak that I went crazy and traumatized from nothing”. I’m trying to tell my negative thoughts that “I’m just a sensitive person, and the environment and people around me have affected me in a negative way so this is how my coping strategies and view of myself and the world have developed” but it’s hard to believe because I don’t know if I know enough about avpd to be sure of that. Also, not referring to the common misconception that avpd is avoidant attachment, do you think people with avpd also have some sort of unsafe attachment style? And if so, which one is most common? And are unsafe attachment styles an inherent part of avpd?

i’ll answer the easy part first — avpd is most commonly associated with a fearful-avoidant attachment style. if you read descriptions of it, you’ll definitely see the similarities to avpd. not all fearful-avoidantly attached people have avpd, but as far as i can tell it’s for sure the most common among avoidants.

and i would argue that yeah, people with personality disorders in general are pretty much guaranteed to have an insecure attachment style of some sort. of course, not being securely attached doesn’t automatically mean you have a personality disorder, but i think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone with a secure style and a PD, including avpd.

now, onto the question of how someone ends up with avpd. i’m actually working on a longer post related to this right now, so definitely look out for that! but i can summarize my thoughts on the subject here:

the short answer is, avpd seems to be a combination of genetics and outside influences.

as far as the genetics go, there are a lot of factors indicating that a predisposition to develop avpd can be inherited. avpd more common in first-degree relatives of people with social anxiety and people with schizophrenia, avpd traits are associated with personality traits which are believed to be particularly heritable as far as personality traits go, and avpd traits have been found to be somewhere between 30% and 65% heritable (depending on which study you look at). so it’s very very likely that some sort of genetic vulnerability is involved in developing avpd.

that being said, the research i’ve read pretty unanimously agrees that the genetic part can’t account for all of avpd on its own, and most conceptualizations will attribute that other piece to trauma. if we do think of it as being at least partly caused by trauma, there are two main reasons you might feel like you were “traumatized by nothing”.

the first is experiencing harder-to-notice forms of childhood trauma. the research i’ve read repeatedly identifies two kinds of traumatic parenting as being related to avpd: neglect and overcontrol. both of these are hard to spot — neglect (emotional or physical) because it’s very hard to see what’s not there, and overcontrol because it tends to be normalized as “just how parents are supposed to act” (think lack of privacy/boundaries, high expectations, general lack of freedom). both of these (and combinations of them) are super hard to spot, especially when you’re the one experiencing them, so it can feel like the trauma comes from nowhere even if you’ve experienced a recognized form of childhood trauma.

the second reason has to do with that genetic component of avpd. one theory about what the specific inherited aspect of avpd is (which i personally tend to agree with and base a lot of my own theories about avpd on) is that we naturally have a lower autonomic arousal threshold. put more plainly, that means it takes a lot less for us to go into fight-or-flight mode than the average person. in situations where the average person would be a healthy amount of stressed/concerned (or not at all), someone with this hypersensitivity might already feel like it’s life or death. and at least in my opinion, that sure as hell sounds like it could turn common situations which most people come out of fine into trauma, right? i’m sure plenty of people also have that sensitivity and don’t end up developing some sort of neurodivergency as a result, but some of us do and that’s through no fault of our own. it’s already widely recognized that literally any stressful situation can become traumatic if you don’t have the resources to manage that stress, so when you’re already at a disadvantage like we are, it’s not hard to believe some of us would end up traumatized by things most people see as normal, manageable stresses of life.

so my theory on how avpd develops is that we’re born with this natural hypersensitivity, and then over the course of our childhood and adolescence, we go through some sort of trauma — maybe super obvious trauma, maybe less commonly recognized trauma, maybe trauma that most people would never even think of as trauma, maybe some combination of the above — which causes us to retreat into ourselves to manage how the trauma heightens that hypersensitivity. our brains go from being very easily activated to being pretty much always activated. we want to avoid things that could overwhelm our nervous system just like anyone else does, but because our brains have reached a point where nearly anything can overwhelm us, we just end up avoiding almost everything.

i’m sure plenty of people have other explanations and will disagree with me on this, but this is what makes the most sense to me based on my own experiences and the research i’ve done.

and i can assure you that, at least from my perspective (and i’m sure from the others too), developing avpd doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you — the fact that that’s the conclusion your brain jumps to is, i would argue, literally just an avoidant trait in itself and not a reflection of reality at all. you’re absolutely right to tell yourself that you are just sensitive, not “weak” or “wrong”, because i believe that’s a very real part of it and a lot of work on avpd seems to agree. our brains just naturally work differently and given the wrong cocktail of early life experiences, we end up avoidant. your brain’s just doing the best it can to protect you from a world that it perceived as genuinely life-or-death dangerous.

#i’ll expand on a lot of these points in the posts about avpd and complex trauma that im working on #but this is the gist of it #poss.answers #discussion #theory #avpd #actually avpd #actually avoidant #avoidant pd #avoidant personality disorder #cluster c

[bitsandbobsofwriting]

A Harrowing Childhood

The King, his knights, and his Warlock, are gathered together like they usually are, and a normal, reminiscent conversation turns horrifying.

TW: Severe child abuse, child death/murder. Drowning, burning, animal cruelty, emotional/physical neglect and abuse. This is VERY graphic, especially in the animal cruelty and nightmare department, but also just in everything else. Bad Hunith :(

Merlin had joined in plenty when they, they being himself, The King, and Sirs Lancelot, Elyan, Leon, Gwaine, Percival, and Mordred, had settled around the campfire, but as the night had gone on and topics had changed, he’d retreated in on himself a little. He doesn’t seem sad, he’s still invested, chuckling along to silly anecdotes and gently laughing at embarrassing stories, but he doesn’t contribute, barely having said a word in the hour that they’d been speaking about their childhoods.

Instead, he absent-mindedly plays with his magic. It’s still a novelty to the Warlock, to not have to hide his golden eyes, to be able to wave his hand just above his lap and feel the ripples of magic rushing through his sedentary fingers, as if he’s dipping his hand in the water whilst riding a fast moving boat. The others, if they look, will probably assume he’s just messing with the colours occasionally swirling in the campfire, or the leaves rustling at their feet in the intermittent breeze; he is doing those things, though it’s more of an involuntary shiver as he gently encourages his magic to encompass his charges whilst they converse. He focuses on their heartbeats, the blood rushing through their veins, their pulses, the tapping of their feet, the ever so slight creaking of bones and stretching of skin, muscles, tendons, as they move.

Normally, Merlin does this in high stress situations: during a fight, during important meetings, during planning sessions before a dangerous excursion. He’s so very unused to hearing their heartbeats, one at the tip of almost every finger, so calm and slow and relaxed. He doesn’t wonder, at least not beyond the initial thought and almost immediate onslaught of rather unwelcome memories, why he’s decided now of all times to check in with them. It would seem that talk of childhoods and parents and trouble and punishments needles away at his skin until he knows for certain that each and every one of his friends is happy and serene.

He thought he’d been paying attention, but apparently not, because it takes Arthur—sat next to him with barely an inch of space between them—bumping their shoulders together for him to realise that Gwaine had asked him a question:

“...Merlin?”

The Warlock slams his hand back down to his lap as his mind is shot back into his skull, like the rope pulling his thoughts away had given way under the stress and, instead of slowly fraying, had snapped all in one go; his lips twitch upwards slightly when he hears Arthur huffing an amused laugh from besides him:

“Uh... what, sorry?”

Gwaine snorts and everyone else rolls their eyes and lets out gentle laughs as Merlin’s cheeks pinken. Gwaine repeats his question, his voice extra teasing:

“What about you? How was your childhood?”

Merlin blinks a couple of times as his blush deepens, but at yet another nudge from Arthur, he clears his throat and shakes his head, looking away:

“Oh, nothing worth reporting. I was a rural commoner, so it’s all a bit of... a bit of a downer, really.”

He knows he didn’t have it that bad, knows everything that happened was probably slightly rarer than normal, but Merlin himself is far rarer than is considered normal so... hmm. The way he behaved with his magic as a child... he should probably be grateful for the lessons and warnings he received, others would not have been so lucky. Still, he’s not entirely sure he wants to bring the mood down.

Elyan pipes in next:

“Come on, surely your mum told you what you were like as a toddler at least? Those are the most fun years!”

Merlin’s shoulders tense at the mention of his mother, but they’re... they’re doing good, recently. They write to each other regularly, she’s stopped hugging him so tight he can’t breath, she trusts him to take care of himself, for the most part. He forces himself to relax, and when he notices Arthur’s sudden, almost worried attentiveness at his hesitation, he counts his inhales and exhales in his head, to make sure they’re steady and regular:

“Uh... not really. I was kind of a naughty kid I guess, got punished a lot. Didn’t get out much when I was young because I was sick all the time.”

Merlin has ideas in his head, bumping about in the miniscule cracks and holes and gaps in his skull, about how kids, even hungry peasant kids, shouldn’t be so sick that often, that constantly. The more often those ideas escape their confines and settle in the forefront of his mind, the more he thinks about the fact that he was so sickly he couldn’t leave the house until he, coincidentally, could control his magic better. He thinks about how mum started cooking whatever meat they could get their hands on for longer, when he was that little bit older.

A part of him knows that he deserved all that he got, the food and worse, but he also knows that there’s no way of explaining that thoroughly without painting himself as a victim of his mother. His friends... they like his mum. He likes his mum! It wouldn’t be fair to accidentally trick them into thinking it was all way worse than it really was.

The Warlock keeps the cheeky grin on his face, coy enough that he hopes they get the hint and leave it be. Fat chance, especially with the paranoid natures of Arthur, and Gwaine, and Leon, and Lancelot, and... all of them, really. Gwaine, in the end, is the one to chime in. His tone is playful, but there’s a lining of worry hidden just below the surface; Merlin wonders what he’s so worried about when he pushes his question:

“Fine then, what.... what was the worst thing you did, and the worst punishment you got?”

Leon doesn’t scowl disapprovingly at the other knight, and Arthur doesn’t smirk in the hopes that he’s about to hear something potentially embarrassing that he can hold against Merlin later. The Warlock just rolls his eyes as memories once again flood his mind:

“Uh... I guess that would be when I was... nine? Maybe? I was a small kid so I might’ve been a bit older, I can’t really remember. I was using my magic too much, Will had already seen, and even though he promised not to tell it made my mum... panicky. She’d been trying for years to... discourage me, to get me to learn how to control it. I was finally getting there, the punishments she was giving me were pretty... persuasive, but instead of pushing it down, I used it more. She got real angry one evening, but I think she was more scared than angry, really. There had been sightings of Camelot knights coming further and further over the border, they were barely a mile away from the village the night before, and she saw me making colours in the hearth.-”

The group of knights around him are staring at him raptly, tensely, as if they're awaiting some sort of disaster to strike within the story. They are, Merlin supposes, but they asked for his worst punishment, so they’re going to get it; if it weirds them out then that’s on them for pushing. Merlin smirks a little internally, but only in a subconscious effort to forget how cold and on edge he feels:

“-She tied my hands together with rope, so I couldn’t wave them about anymore, and when it was darker she took me down to the river. It took us hours to get there, because she wanted to get further downstream. I thought it was just... I thought it was her way of apologising, for being so angry. We’d been stargazing before, so I thought... She started crying when I asked her if that was what we were doing, I guess I should’ve known it wasn’t that.-”

He chuckles a little and shakes his head, before shrugging his mouth and continuing, entirely unaware of the ice cold horror making its way through through his companions’ veins; they all hope to God they don’t know where this is going:

“-Anyway. Once we’d gotten far enough, she uh... she dropped the bag she’d been carrying. It was late Autumn, and I, like I said, I was a small kid, so I was freezing, and I asked her how long we were going to be, and she just... I don’t know. She cried more, and she couldn’t look at me. She told me to close my eyes, that we were going to play a a game and everything would be fine and finished soon enough. She... uh-”

Everyone’s focus is on what was in the bag, on why Hunith had wanted to go so far downstream, on the reason for her crying, her avoidance of eye contact, her promise of a coming end. Merlin’s voice is low and slow, and he knows he’s being a little silly, there’s no need to be all dramatic after all, this sort of thing happens all the time in Essetir. He’s the outlier here:

“-I could feel her tying my ankles, and, uh, I could hear her crying still, but then she picked me up with one arm. I thought it was part of the game, and she swung me around and I laughed and wriggled, she just... I don’t know, it felt like she was struggling to walk, like I was too heavy for her, but I know I was a small kid. She laughed too, but I could also feel her crying at the same time. She sang to me for a bit, and then she told me to... she told me to keep breathing no matter what, to not hold it in, to just keep breathing.-”

Merlin’s gaze is stuck solidly to the fire, and he doesn’t notice the sudden silence in the forest around him. No owls hoot, no foxes dig, no beetles rustle, no wind rushes through the trees; likely a reaction to the emotions swirling in his chest and leaking out through his fingertips, a painful mix of fear and love that anyone else would be horrified by. He also doesn’t notice the way Arthur mutters his name, rough and painful, as he gathers the Warlock’s cloak in his hands. It’s been a sort of comfort blanket, over the years, where Arthur hasn’t been able to hold Merlin’s hand or ask for a hug, he’s always been able to angle himself just right so he can run his hands through the soft fabric he’d gifted his servant after a year’s service:

“-Then she dropped me in. It was... there was an overhang, so I fell for a second or two before I hit the water, but it was deep, really deep. Or at least it felt deep to me, I... I was small. I... it hurt,-”

Arthur abandons his grip on the cloak in favour of just taking one of Merlin’s hands as the other absent-mindedly rubs at his chest. The King says his name again, and the contact and sound put together jolts the Warlock out of what was obviously a very deep memory:

“Merlin...-”

He looks up at his King with a raised eyebrow and a slight smile; Arthur’s face crumples even further at the thought that Merlin doesn’t... doesn’t see a problem with this. His own father had been... strict, distant, heavy handed even, on occasions, but Arthur was never hurt outside of training, and the previous King had always come running when his son had a nightmare, at least before he had hit his tenth year. Arthur clears his throat, and without a glance to his equally as distraught knights, he nods for Merlin to continue:

“-Go... go on. How did you... what happened next, Merlin?”

Merlin’s eyebrow raises further at the lack of insult or teasing, but shrugs his shoulder and carries on:

“I... don’t really know. I just remember waking up filthy. I’d... dug myself out, I didn’t know where I was, just that I was still wet and cold, but also covered in mud. I wondered home. Took me a few days, because I got hopelessly lost, but I made it eventually. The whole village celebrated, mum had had them all out looking for me apparently, except in the woods to the East, instead of the River to the South West, which is where she’d taken me. She... it was odd. It was like part of her was overjoyed to see me, she cried so much, she wouldn’t let me out of her sight for weeks, wouldn’t let me near the water for months, but at the same time... she could barely look at me, like she was scared, terrified. A few years later I fell out the roof of the barn and went... uh, well, I went splat. Scared the shit out of Will, I’ll tell you. But yeah, we figure out then that I was some sort of immortal, but that didn’t matter really, I... I never let on that I’d remembered what she’d done, told everyone I just woke up in the woods, that my chest hurt a bit and I was starving but was otherwise ok. No one ever asked again, and I guess mum was... eager, to accept it. We...-”

His previously focused gaze fades into the middle distance, not noticing the tears falling slowly down each and every one of his friends’ cheeks:

“-We’re on better terms now that I can control my magic, she... she doesn’t get as scared or angry as she used to. I’d... like her to not know I remember, we... she’s proud of me now, proud of my magic and the way I use it.”

Merlin’s voice quietens on those last few words until there’s no sound coming from him at all, and Arthur, in the scratchy voice he uses only when he wakes from nightmares or witnesses a massacre of innocents, quietly murmurs to the man pressed close to his side:

“Merlin... your mum, she... she killed you. She drowned you, and... and then she buried you.”

Merlin nods absent-mindedly and hums, so caught up in his own thoughts that he’s completely oblivious to how horrified his friends are. Leon’s father had been strict and unloving, Gwaine’s step-father had a whip-sharp tongue, always available to crack out some cruel judgement or other, but even then, they’d never... no one else’s parents had tried to kill them, and certainly none of them had succeeded:

“Hmm. Yeah, I know. I try not to think about it really,-”

He looks up with a slight chuckle; it’s weak, but genuine, and confusion over whether perhaps they’d... misunderstood, based on Merlin’s reactions, crosses everyone’s minds:

“-but I don’t blame her, not really. It’s not like she hated me, she was just scared.”

Leon can’t help himself here, speaking up angrily, furiously, but still with tears on his cheeks:

“Scared?! Merlin, you were a child, and you were her child, what the hell was there to be scared of?”

Merlin just rolls his eyes, unaware of Gwaine taking Leon’s wrist and squeezing—a normally sure fire way to get the First Knight to calm down— as he continues with a smile:

“She wasn’t scared of me, come on, I was tiny and young and my magic wasn’t really that powerful back then. No, she was scared for me. Like I said, Uther’s knights were creeping closer and closer, probably trying to suss out whether they could steal some of Cenred’s land out from under his nose, or still looking for my father maybe. But being caught by Camelot knights meant death by pyre, even as a child, and the alternative? People were starting to get... curious, about the kid that had randomly appeared about a year previously, if any of them reported me to the guard... I told you want happens to sorcerers in Essetir. My mum... she just wanted to spare me, I guess. However painful drowning was, however much it hurt to swallow dirt from my own grave, anything is better than the pyre, anything is better that what Cenred would have done to me. She did the best she could.”

The silence rings out, louder than anything anyone could’ve said; everyone mentally reminds themselves of the painful conversation that had been had when Arthur demanded to know why Merlin would move to Camelot of all places, when everyone had first found out about his magic: “I’d have been enslaved, Arthur. Enslaved and tortured and brainwashed and forced into becoming a weapon. I’d rather burn, I’d rather drown.”. His words make more sense now than they had back then, in a gut churning way. It’s Elyan who replies first, perhaps thirty seconds after Merlin’s heartbreakingly truthful admission:

“No, Merlin. The best thing she could’ve done for you is left. It may have been difficult but... there are other Kingdoms out there that accept magic. Nemeth even takes refugees from Essetir, and formally Camelot as well, it’s why they’ve butted heads in the past. She... there were other options Merlin. She didn’t have to... to do that.”

No one is surprised that it’s Elyan—who’d always had a greater understanding of the world outside of Camelot, who’d always understood the ease, and sometimes necessity, of travel, who makes the blindingly obvious connection. Merlin just shrugs his shoulder again and sighs:

“She’d spent her entire life in Ealdor, you can’t blame her for not knowing that. She was frightened and desperate, I... I really don’t blame her.”

Leon, ever the most protective, has another retort on his lips, Gwaine’s grip on his wrist and Percival’s hand on his back having stopped working almost seconds after they’d appeared, but Mordred, the youngest, the only other there with magic of his own, beats him to it, asking in a quiet, teary voice:

“What did you mean when you said... when you said that you’d only appeared a year previously. I thought you’d lived in Ealdor your whole life?”

The others appear impressed, no one else had noticed Merlin’s odd choice of words, but the Warlock just smiles and nods his head, answering before anyone else can interrupt:

“Hmm. I had, but my mum... I was a sick kid, so I didn’t really... go out. At all, until I was... eight? Maybe? I don’t know, she didn’t want me to get sick by going outside, but I know she really just didn’t want anyone to find out about my magic, back when it was random and uncontrollable.”

The explanation is... terrifying, frankly, no one around the circle can imagine what it would’ve been like to be confined to one room for their first eight summers, with a woman whose only solution when fearing for the safety of her child... was to murder said child, and cover it up. Hunith had always seemed so... bright, loving, optimistic, wonderful. Perhaps she still scolds Merlin like he was a child, sometimes, perhaps... perhaps she hugs too tight, and sends letters that occasionally have Merlin’s shoulders tensing, and watches him like a hawk whenever they’re together, and waves whatever is in her hand towards him whenever he uses magic. Perhaps she... she isn’t as wonderful as they’d all thought. Perhaps none of them had noticed how... on edge, Merlin always seems around her. He claims not to blame her, claims not to be frightened of her, but... some things are unavoidable.

Arthur clears his throat and shuffles in his seat, aware that Merlin would become horribly confused and maybe even aggressively defensive if he started raving on about how horrific everything he just said is:

“Merlin... will you... will you tell us what else your mother did? To protect you, or to stop you from using your magic?”

Merlin is confused regardless, and looks to Arthur without hiding it:

“Does it... matter? I got off pretty light, in the grand scheme of things, and... and I’m here now, so does it really matter what happened when I was younger?”

Arthur gives him a tight smile, stroking a thumb over the back of Merlin’s still held hand as he responds:

“You... you’re right, you’re here now, and you’ll always be safe and free to use your magic with us, within Camelot.-”

Merlin squeezes his hand, as if it’s The King that needs comforting:

“-But will you just... humour us? What else did Hu... did your mother do to you?”

Merlin still seems confused, especially about the way Arthur stumbles over his mum’s name, but he smiles and nods hesitatingly through it:

“Yeah, I... sure, I guess. As long as you lot don’t take a page out of her book.”

He bumps shoulders with Arthur as he says, it, smiling even as the nerves creep into his words. Arthur shakes his head, quickly and determinedly, as he clenches his jaw, but it’s Lancelot, normally so composed, that responds almost argumentatively:

“Never. Merlin, we would never.”

The Warlock still seems confused, but he nods once more:

“... Ok... I mean it really wasn’t that... ok. She, uh... she yelled a lot at first, when I was really young, but that never really worked. My magic was wonderful, you know? I could help the fire burn hotter in winter, I could help the livestock and harvests, I could grow flowers already in the vase on the table. And sometimes I just really couldn’t help it, you know? I just... didn’t understand. So she would... uh, she would burn me, when she saw me using magic.-”

He rolls up his sleeves, muttering under his breath as his eyes flash a muted gold; a faded white ripple flows over his skin, revealing a patchwork of small, raised scars. They’re rectangular in shape, ranging from silvery to dark pink, and they cover the entire expanse of his forearm, going even further up under his sleeve, and down, with a few small ones on the back of his hand and fingers. He flexes his hand, and the others realise he likely hasn’t undone that spell in front of anyone in years. 

Arthur, who’d had to release Merlin’s fingers when he’d reached for his own arm, extends a shaking but gentle hand to pull the scarred arm towards him. Merlin goes with him easily, tensing at first, but relaxing and slumping into Arthur’s side as The King runs soft fingertips over the marred skin; he sighs, long and slow, likely in an effort to stop himself from crying in his despair (or screaming in rage). He slowly pulls the sleeve down again, under the careful watch of the knights and Merlin himself, before tucking the Warlock’s hand back between his own as the other man continues:

“-It got to the point where the poker was permanently in the fire. She cried for the first couple of weeks, whenever I made her do it,-”

The flinch at Merlin’s words could be seen going around the group as if a gale force wind had struck them, but he continues despite their grimaces:

“-but it’s like... like she got used to it, after a while, like it didn’t seem to bother her. She’d just get annoyed, worried. Though I suppose I got used to it too, really. Uh... she also... hmm. Oh! She also made me watch her decapitate all the chickens. We were poor, so we only had a few a year, the rest were kept for eggs or breeding, but... well, she always made me watch, and said that’s what would happen if I was caught. She once... uh...-”

He shuffles in his seat, and other than his earlier quietness, it’s the first sign of discomfort or distress he’s displayed since the beginning of the conversation. Arthur, with Merlin’s sweaty hand trapped between his own two palms, wonders what on earth, after everything, could Merlin be nervous about sharing, and Merlin, oblivious still to everyone’s horror, wonders if he should tell this bit, wonders if this might give the wrong impression of his mum to his friends:

“-she burnt one alive, put the metal guard up in front of the hearth and lit it whilst the chicken was in there. She... that only happened once, and I... I got real sick after, because I tried to hold my magic in.-”

Arthur really hadn’t thought anything else would surprise him, but he has to fight the instinct to scream and yell and hurl his sword at the closest tree as Merlin continues:

“-It was meant to be the same sort of lesson, that that would happen to me if I couldn’t learn to control my magic. There were also the bedtime stories,-”

He moves on from the topic as if he were regaling people with Gaius’ shopping list, and the others wipe their face clean of tears and clench their jaws to stop themselves form interrupting. They get the distinct feeling that... the more they let on about how angry and upset and horrified they are, the less Merlin will speak; he’s always hated upsetting them, after all:

“-they were pretty tame compared to the other stuff, to be honest, but they terrified me almost more than the poker, I think. They were always about monsters coming to steal me away in the night, to take advantage of me and my magic. Sometimes they were about being beheaded or burnt, but she dealt with that easily enough with the chickens. The stories were always about Cenred, about being cuffed and cut, over and over, about having my eyes plucked out so I couldn’t see and my fingers burnt so I couldn’t feel and my nose broken so I couldn’t smell and my tongue cut out so I couldn’t taste. She’d say that they’d leave my ears alone, so I could hear them telling me what to do, and if I didn’t, they’d hurt me more, until there was nothing left of me but a monster, just like them. They... I still have nightmares about them, every once in a while, amongst the other nightmares. I know I could beat anyone in Essetir’s army with my eyes closed, maybe even all at once on one of my best days, but Essetir’s colours... they still make me feel a little sick.”

His story is punctuated by the occasional little chuckle, a smirk on his face as though he were telling stories of childhood troublemaking—sweets before dinner, staying out after dark, saying a bad word—and none of his friends can understand just how he can describe what his mother did to him with such a loving and fond expression. Especially considering they know how explosively he’d react if anyone else around the campfire, or anyone else period, had been treated with such unending cruelty.

Once again, the silence is cutting, and when Merlin finally looks up from the fire to see pale and teary faces, his smile falls away to a concerned frown:

“Sorry, I know my childhood is a bit of a mood killer; it’s why I don’t bring it up much. I don’t get why you’re all that upset though? Other kids definitely had it worse.”

Arthur lets out a deep breath at his words, but gulps his outburst down as he tugs on Merlin’s hand, ever so gently, until the Warlock turns to look at him. When he sees The King’s tears his back straightens and his eyes become worried but sharp, ready to pounce on whatever or whoever had caused Arthur so much distress. Arthur just gives him a small, pained smile; it’s part true, at the fact that Merlin is so affected by Arthur being upset, but it’s mostly just so Merlin calms down and listens. Arthur has a feeling that it will take a lot of effort to convince Merlin that what happened to him, what his mother did, is not ok, magic or no:

“Merlin... that... none of that was ok. That was... that was horrific. You... you understand that? Don’t you? Your mother... she tried to kill you, when there were other options, and she hurt you, instead of taught you. Merlin... she...”

His mouth hesitates on the words and then gives up on them entirely, only managing a small shake of the head as Merlin’s jaw clenches. He tries to pull his hand away, but Arthur won’t let him go, and that just serves to make him more... frustrated:

“My mother loves me, and she did her best, Arthur. Who are you to decide otherwise? You don’t know what it was like growing up with magic, Essetir on one side and Camelot on the other. None of you do.”

No one can help but flinch back at the harshness in his eyes when he turns to look over them all, but it doesn’t deter Arthur as he pulls Merlin’s attention back to him:

“I know, Merlin. We could never understand, not really, but... but I know what abuse is, when I hear it.-”

Merlin looks taken aback at the A word, he knows what it is, and as a Physician he’s seen his fair share of it, but its introduction within this conversation, within this context, his context, causes him more confusion than anger. Arthur interrupts him before he can even begin to think of a retort:

“-and I also know that, if any one of us had said our parents treated us even half as... severely-”

He obviously has to hold himself back from saying badly, or cruelly, or abusively; Arthur knows he has to toe the line here, between making Merlin understand, and angering him:

“-you’d be furious. Merlin... you have magic, and your mother was scared, but she didn’t... she didn’t have to hurt you. That was... a choice, that she made.”

At first, anger fills Merlin’s eyes again, but Arthur can tell that it’s at the thought of any of his friends being treated the way he was treated. But then... then his eyes crinkle—and not as though he were smiling—and his mouth hangs open as he tries to speak. It takes him a few moments, but everyone stays silent, waiting for him as his face twitches between emotions:

“I... she didn’t... she didn’t want to, you... she didn’t want to hurt me, Arthur. She didn’t. She didn’t.”

Arthur frowns but nods, delicate, he thinks, this is delicate:

“I know, Merlin, I know, but it’s like... you know when I try to train you? I’m not... trying to hurt you, and you know that, you know that I never hurt you deliberately, it is always a genuine accident, if you get a bruise or something. The training happens because... well, because I care about you, and I want you to be safe, and I want you to be able to protect yourself. But in the course of your training, you shouldn’t be hurt. Training would be pointless if I just... spent the morning beating you to a pulp and then called it a day. You wouldn’t have learnt anything, see? You’d have just come out the other end... confused, and in pain. But you’d feel indebted to me because I’d tell you I’m helping you, but really, I’m not. You see?”

Merlin takes a moment, but it’s then that the tears begin to fall, slowly at first, as his breath begins to hitch. His words coming out in a raspy whisper, and Arthur has to take yet another of many deep, calming breaths as the Warlock eventually replies:

“She... had other options,-”

Arthur nods, just once:

“-besides hurting me...-”

Arthur nods again, gulping and blinking tears away as he does so:

“-But she... she didn’t mean it. It... it wasn’t deliberate.”

Arthur takes another breath, and bites his lip almost bloody for a moment as he reaches, ever so slowly, for Merlin’s sleeve. He pulls it up, and nods for Merlin to look down at the still free-from-magic scars:

“Look at your arm. And that’s not even the worst thing she did to you. Look at your arm, Merlin.”

It takes Merlin another moment, but he does look down, as the rest of the knights stare on. The first tear heavy enough to fall from his chin lands on one of the biggest scars, a deep red, raised, roughly shaped square on his inner wrist, and he mutters, barely loud enough for Arthur to hear:

“I don’t understand.-”

Arthur pulls the sleeve down again before using his free hand to lift Merlin’s chin:

“-I... she’s my mum.”

The King nods solemnly, but gives a weak smile nonetheless as Merlin sags even further into his hold:

“I know, and you... you don’t have to understand, not right now. We’ll... we can understand for you, we can take care of you, gently.”

Merlin’s response, a mouthed “ok” with no sound, with barely a breath of air, is the last thing said before he slowly rests his forehead on Arthur shoulder and cries. It’s quiet, soundless in a way that says he’s desperate to not attract attention, but Arthur holds him through it anyway; the other knights understand their cue and silently prepare the campsite for sleeping, erecting tents, gathering extra firewood for the night watches, and checking on the horses. They get it finished quickly, despite the massive effort to stay quiet, but by the time bed rolls are being pulled out of bags and stuffed into tents, Merlin has finally nodded off. He sleeps fitfully against Arthur’s chest, a furrow in his brow as he wordlessly murmurs to himself. With only one more glance to the still distraught patrol, Arthur scoops Merlin up bridal style, giving a nod of thanks to Percival when he holds their normal tent’s flap open for them.

~

It’s several months later when Hunith’s door swings open unexpectedly in the evening. She turns around with a jump, not sure whether to expect an unwanted intruder or simply a neighbour, but what she finds, is neither. King Arthur doesn’t even look at her before he turns his back, shutting the door behind him quietly.

She lets out a gentle but confused laugh as she drops the chopping knife she’d been holding onto the counter:

“My, Arthur, you scared the daylights out of me. Is Merlin with you??-”

It’s been a year since Merlin has visited, two since he’s visited with Arthur, but the only answer The King gives is in the tightening of his shoulders when she says her son’s name. Her son, he thinks, as fucking if.

“-My Lord?”

Arthur lets out a deep breath and turns around, Hunith only becoming more concerned at his severe face:

“No, actually, it’s just me this time, I’d hoped we might... clear some things up.”

She seems confused, but less panicked when Arthur hadn’t mentioned Merlin being hurt in anyway. Arthur has to fight away the urge to rage at her for daring to be grateful that he isn’t here with bad news:

“Where is he, then?”

The smile he gives her is tight and menacing as he takes a step forward, and though she resists, Hunith feels the need to take her own step back:

“With Elyan and Gwen. They requested his company whilst they visit their parents’ graves, and I thought it was a wonderful idea, encouraged them to go sightseeing as well, to the North, so they’ll be away from the city for a few days.”

The words he says have an innocent enough meaning, but Hunith catches something more in his tone of voice, and simply furrows her brows in confusion as Arthur takes another step forward:

“Is... is everything alright, Arthur? What’s wrong?”

It’s the motherly tone, the way she genuinely cares so deeply about Arthur’s well-being, Merlin’s well-being, that makes his skin crawl. He thinks he could deal with it more easily if she weren’t so genuine about it all, if she were faking it. He wanders casually over to the lit hearth, moving an already hot poker further into the roaring flames as he quietly, accusingly speaks:

“Merlin told me what you did,-”

She goes to respond, the confused “what?” on the tip of her tongue, but Arthur turns around and continues before she can say anything:

“-when he was eight. When you tied him down and drowned him. When you dug his grave and buried him in it and had the whole village looking for him in the wrong place.-”

Hunith freezes, her eyes wide and manic and her hands shaking:

“-He told me about the chickens, and the nightmares, and the bedtime stories. He told me about you making him think he was going to become a monster, he showed me the scars on his arms from the poker, and a few weeks later, when he was more comfortable and ready to talk about it more, he showed me the bigger ones on his back, from the belt, from the rope, from the stones. He even showed me the scars along one side of his tongue, from the gravel in his grave that cut up the inside of his mouth. And I’m sure that he’s got plenty more to tell me, to show me, that he’s trying desperately not to remember.”

Hunith can’t resist this time, and takes a stumbled step back as her breathing becomes ragged and her fluttering eyes begin to leak tears:

“No... I... it was for his own good, he needed to learn, anything was better than... better than...”

Arthur turning his back on her interrupts her words, but he can hear her getting half way through the first word of plenty of different excuses as he nudges the poker once again:

“You should know that he still loves you, somehow, and that he didn’t want you to know that he... that he knows, that he remembers. But here I am, telling you that he does remember, in quite vivid detail, because I think you should know. And I also think you should know that you will never, ever, lay a hand on him again. You will never be alone with him again, you will never scold him again, you will never so much as even show displeasure on your face in his presence. That’s if I can’t persuade him to never want to see you again.-”

He turns around once more, quickly this time, the poker in his hand. The red hot end is waving dangerously close to Hunith’s face as she gasps and falls back again, bracing herself against the counter:

“-You should be grateful that I am a far better person than you, and you should be even more grateful that I’m not the revenge type, otherwise you would be in a world of pain right now. Even then, the only reason I’m not making an exception, the only reason I’m not breaking all my rules and landing even a fraction of the pain you caused Merlin upon you, is that it would break Merlin’s heart to know that you’d suffered.-”

He drops the poker onto the table with a clang, the hot end hanging off the edge precariously and sizzling loudly as a leak from the roof drips onto it. Hunith jumps at the noise, but Arthur stays stock still, his glare boring holes into the woman’s own eyes:

“-Despite everything you have done to him, he is still the kindest person I know, and he still loves you. But you will never touch him again, and I will be by his side every second he is even vaguely near you to make sure that he’s safe. Am I understood?”

Hunith takes another shaky breath, but doesn’t say anything, and Arthur darts forward, slamming his hand on to the table as he roars:

“Am I understood?!”

The poker bounces and balances even more precariously on the edge of the table, but just about manages to stop from toppling onto the hay covered floor as Hunith whimpers and nods. Arthur, satisfied, stands up and straightens his clothes before making his way to the door. His tone is jarringly friendly and jovial as he lets himself out:

“Well, now that we’ve got that cleared up, I really must be going. This is only a flying visit. And Hunith?-”

He turns back to her with a dark smile:

“-This stays between us, yes?”

She nods once more, and The King drops his smile, staring at her with dead eyes and a blank expression for barely a second more before walking out into the night and shutting the door behind him.

Sir Leon hands him the reins to his horse as Sir Gwaine whistles lowly, appreciatively:

“Sounded like quite the... conversation.”

There’s a question in there somewhere, but Arthur is too exhausted and angry to bother uncovering it. His only reply is a deep hum as he mounts his horse before leading the way from the village, back towards Camelot, back towards where Merlin should be three days from now, curled up in front of Arthur’s hearth with a blanket round his shoulders and a hot drink in his hands as he happily regales The King with his last week’s worth of adventures.

~

THE END!!!!

Phew, that was a heavy one, difficult to write, but I’m glad I did it!! I really hope you guys are as horrified as I want you to be, and I hope you enjoyed it. Up next should be some Happy Hunith Fluff in the form of Control Part 6, so keep an eye out for that!!!

Let me know what you think gang, I could really do with some feedback on this :D

#bbc merlin #merlin #arthur pendragon #merthur #child abuse #tw child abuse #severe child abuse #child murder #filicide #bad hunith #abusive hunith #protective arthur #hurt merlin #protective knights #knights of the round table #sir leon #leon #sir lancelot #lancelot #gwaine #percival #sir elyan #elyan #mordred #good mordred #tw drowning #drowning #animal cruelty #animal abuse #tw animal abuse

[limeade-l3sbian]

I think the socialization part shows itself a lot more since most romance manga(and in cases of manhua and manwha, the chinese and korean equivalents) are written by east asian women, whom obviously live in a place even more patriarchal than the west. not to say the things these women learn to accept from “love” makes them less or even unusual, i simply want to reiterate that it’s more pronounced there due to how even more constricted their societies are in regards to the treatment of their women.

anyway. now that the disclaimer is out of the way!

i’ve grown up reading a lot of manga of many different genres but i’ve especially used to have had some intense shoujo phases. shoujo is basically manga created for the demographic of girls and young women. not to say others can’t read it, but it’s simply where they tend to be marketed.

shoujo romance especially shows this issue a lot that i wanna talk about. the male leads will 9 times out of 10 be rich, extremely emotionally stunted(this can show in the form of intense rudeness, complete lack of emotional depth, no expressions, stoic to the extreme, downright abusive) and handsome. Those are the three traits they almost all have. Now obviously I get the want for a handsome or beautiful lead, whether it’s female or male, it is after all just fantasy fulfillment to an extent. The same with wealth. But i think the emotionally stunted side speaks of the women and girls’ who read the mangas socialization a lot. We have these male leads who often make the female leads go through hell, whether it’s due to his own actions or inactions. Sexual assaults have gotten less common in more modern manga, but it was only like ten years ago where sexual assaults in manga by the male lead towards the female MC would be a common place for him to show his desire for her and despite it often being portrayed as bad on the MC’s end, she always did end up forgiving him. The same with however else he treated her.

Made her to all the heavy lifting emotionally of the relationship? He’s forgiven, because suddenly he’s gotten a “tragic” backstory of a lonely, lonely boy being neglected in his massive mansion from childhood. He’s absolutely vile towards women? His mom was probably a horrid woman who either cheated on his poor dad and left or maybe she was simply so overbearing he now feel suffocated and dates new women every week like it’s some kind of game to dangle others feelings at his fingertips. Way into the romantic relationship having started with the MC he’s suddenly revealed to have a arranged fiancée or a very mean spirited but extremely beautiful childhood friend who the main character now how to basically fight off him with a stick while the male lead does not much else in most of these stories besides being useless. if we are lucky we get him talking the fiancée/childhood friend that he actually liked this new girl(MC), but extremely rarely will he actually go out of his way to truly set boundaries. he will passively essentially invite scorn towards his current gf. and these are just SOME of the examples of repeat patterns in behavior in the romantic male leads.

time and time again in shoujo romance male leads will make life much harder for the female main character. she will often be put down to her face for scoring such a rich hottie(even though we are at times 50+ chapters in and feelings on his end still seem finicky), she will have to bear the emotional heavy lifting and basically mother him/be a teacher to him on how to express himself, despite the fact that he usually changes very little. she will forgive any and all transgression he commits, even if it breaks her heart, because he is the main male lead and therefore he can do nothing truly wrong to not end up with her. and in the end of the mangas it’s usually somehow made clear in some way that SHES the lucky one. despite her carrying the relationship on her back. She should be grateful. And women and girls in east asia, and obviously also very much outside of it, eats it up. Yes! Give us a borderline abusive or at least emotionally neglectful man! We can forgive! We can forget! Let us be his doormat!

Not manga but it’s also so obviously in most romance kdramas i’ve seen. It’s such a common trope, these handsome, rich, utter asshole male leads and then these utter angel for a female lead who absolutely tolerates getting walked all over.

And while i’ve not read any of those books, it’s not like it’s not visible in the west. When authors like Coleen Hoover has basically built a career off of emotionally stunted but hot guys treated their gf/wife like utter garbage but it’s okay!!!! so romantic!!!!

women all over the world have such bottom of the barrel standards when it comes to emotional maturity in men. in some mediums it’s certainly more apparent than others, but it’s visible all over.

I do wanna be 100% clear that not all romance manga is obviously as I described. I’m simply talked about popular tropes, and i mean EXTREMELY popular, as in its more common to see at least one of them than it isn’t. That’s all.

!!!

#ask

[mehbzz]

How do you see Billy and Stu characters in your stories? Could they turn and ever kill reader?

My take on them is pretty similar to how I see them in the movies, just with a little more softness and added polyamory! A very quick ramble of an explanation under the cut.

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My fic interpretation is basically that both are narcissistic misogynists. I see Billy as able to feel guilt, empathy, remorse etc but has reached that stage where he doesn’t care anymore, he can ignore all those pesky emotions in favour of what he wants or feels. Struggles a lot with reacting appropriately to other people’s emotions, knows how he should feel, but just can’t anymore. Thinks he's acting and playing the part well but he's really not. His abandonment issues are obvious, I think he was probably a little too close to his mom, an unhealthy co-dependency that encouraged the way he has latched on to Stu first and then reader.

I see him as having panic attacks and anxiety, especially when he deems things as getting out of his control. Which includes reader. Very clingy when he deems someone as worthy of him and his time, doesn’t know how to love normally, and probably comes across as controlling and possessive. Needs to know where you are and what you’re up too, gets antsy if you’re late or not where you said you’d be.

Stu I see absolutely as a borderline psychopath. Really struggles with empathy, doesn’t feel guilt or remorse for his actions, but is very very good at mimicking it or faking it when he has too but really doesn’t care what other people think about him, or maybe genuinely forgets his act sometimes, which is why people see him as insensitive or stupid. I think Stu is a lot lot smarter than he pretends to be.

I see him with neglectful parents who turned a blind eye to his behaviour, although I can imagine him seeing a Child Psychologist for a while. Tortured animals growing up and more than likely killed at least one childhood pet. A bully at school, picking on girls and kids smaller than him in the playground, until he learnt how to “behave” and temper those more aggressive temperaments of his. Can’t have as much fun if people always have an eye on you. His parents were probably called to the school on more than one occasion when he went too far, but they probably paid them off in some way! Most likely to hurt you for fun.

I think they are on equal footing with regards to who’s in charge, it’s just not reader! Although I think I write Billy more as believing he's in control of the situation and of Stu. Whereas Stu doesn’t care either way! Been friends since they were very little and know each other inside and out.

(My favourite thoughts for their relationship in the movies flick between two ideas. They are definitely more than friends but don’t care enough to explore it, or have found common ground and are just selfishly using each other to get what they want, which is revenge on Sid for Billy, and purely the excitement of the chance to kill for Stu. Each believing they are using the other when in reality they're absolutely looped into a toxic co-dependency, fuelling each other’s worst traits.)

Both are selfish, entitled horny assholes with superiority complexes. They want, they deserve it, so they take it. Both have no qualms about pushing you way way past your boundaries. Masters of gaslighting and manipulation (fun for Stu but more from abandonment fears for Billy, useful for both.) but in my fics I think they do love reader in their own twisted ways! For Stu, I think it’s more ownership and an obsessive possession than all out genuine love, emotions are a struggle for him! Billy feels the same possessiveness but does love reader in the more conventional sense too but tries to hide it, (thanks to an emotionally stunted father, - men conceal they don’t feel)  

They wouldn’t ever kill reader. Unless maybe…. they get caught during the killing spree and its ends up a murder suicide type situation. You are theirs but they see themselves as yours as well.

I see them as needing each other to survive now; if they ever got forcefully separated it would end up in a bloodbath of self-destruction, Stu outwardly and Billy internally. They fuel each other, in the worst and the best ways. They wouldn’t survive without each other. They both see reader as worthy of them but still sort of a little below them, because you know, misogynistic asssholes!

#billy loomis #stu macher #scream 1996 #poly!ghostface #billy loomis x reader #stu macher x reader

[archivalofsins]

I'm rarely in the tag- So, Star or others basically tell me how it's going in there and like-

All of ya'll sound like you're struggling. What Star told me sounds so stupid. Like this is the weirdest back and forth about nothing I've ever heard. It's impressive how committed everyone seems to be to making the same mistakes. It'd be really nice if more understood Amane's trial happens so late in the game that there's literally no way to change the outcome that's been locked in. Something even made fun of in her voice drama. So, voting based on how one wishes the story will go isn't going to change how it's going.

This is Milgram, after all.

Beyond that, just because someone gives another person their input doesn't mean that person has to take it as we've seen several ways before this with numerous other prisoners. It's ultimately sad because this behavior only sends one message that the abuse and neglect of children is excusable, but how the victims react to that isn't. I don't go into the tag because I've personally seen people literally devolve into doing abuser apologia (going maybe her mom was having a hard time too because of religion and the father being away have you thought of that) and I'm not putting myself through that.

I don't know if people think it's comedic or more humane to make light of the suffering someone was put through by pondering the emotional state of their victimizer or the troubles they could have been going through. But- like I'm too old and too used to hearing this shit to care about this talking point. This may come off as me being stubborn to some, and I can see how others would conclude that. However, sadly, my experiences have taught me that regardless of how bad things get attacking others weaker than you to let out ones frustration is not okay. Just because the person who shot someone is crying doesn't negate the fact they shot someone.

At the same time, it's my personal opinion that if someone does some shit they should be prepared to have that happen to them. One-sidedly hurting others with no consequence to oneself is not okay and never justified in my opinion regardless of if the person doing it is someone's parent/guardian. I don't know; that may be a pretty simple way of thinking, but I feel it's better than going, "Oh, did you ever think her mom was having a hard time, too?"

Because yes, I've thought that of course I've thought that. I grew up in an abusive household, and that is the first thing abusive moms say when they are abusing their children. So, I am incredibly aware of how this fucking works and the statements I've seen on this particularly issue can be retraumatizing to people whom have had these lived experiences.

At times, the things I have been unlucky enough to see and the way they've been discussed have been that to me. So, i can only imagine how people who are younger than me who have gone through these sorts of things or are still going through them feel. This is why even if the discussion around this does not change, it is important to tag this stuff correctly from the start and especially when asked to.

People shouldn't have to reveal personal details about themselves, for this topic to be discussed in a safe and respectful manner. People shouldn't have to be reminded that childhood abuse victims aren't this mythical storytelling device to actually talk about these things with some level of consideration. It's not what people enjoy hearing but individuals who have had the fortune of having parents/guardians or people throughout their lives that don't behave in this manner don't really have the right to tell people who have how they should feel about abuse/abusers.

Simply because it is such a difficult thing for people who have not had it happen to them to wrap their head around. So, they do end up trying to find common ground or an emotional reason that the abuser would act that way towards the person who was abused. However, I can promise anyone reading this that any excuse one can think of has already been used by an abuser and said to the person abused. So, saying stuff like this can easily reinforce that the abuse was justified and the victim deserved it even if that is not the intent of looking into it from that point of view.

This is why most media that discuss abuse try their very best to illustrate how senseless and wrong it is. Something Milgram does. Amane's mom does all this because Amane helped a cat; that's it. Discussing the environmental factors that lead to her mother doing this is giving more benefit of the doubt to her than is being applied to the actual person we're meant to be judging, which is wild. It's difficult for me not to take it as anything other than abuser apologia because no one had to take it there. Literally no one and it shows a flawed understanding of abuse and how it occurs on a societal level.

I am begging read a book, look up information on this topic, and tag posts involving discussing this trial properly. That's all.

#milgram #amane momose #tw child abuse #tw animal death #tw cults

[informationsorter]

hello, i wanted to ask about polyfragmentation. i'm sorry if we sound uneducated about it.

can the system members be unaware of each other but aware of the system? for example, system members are (kind of) aware of each other but unaware of the switching, fragments.

can the fragements come off as nothing? no name, no personality, just holds a trauma and its forgotten afterwards?

can dissociative barriers be so bad that there can be barely any memories left of anything?

and lastly, is ramcoa the only way to cause fragmentation? can things like severe neglect/abandonment, physical/sexual incestous abuse, emotional abuse, lack of safety cause polyfragmentation?

Hello Anon, thanks for the ask! You never need to apologise for not knowing much when you're asking a question. :) First things first, I need to make it clear that I'm not trained in mental health in any way. I am not a researcher, scholar, or academic in any way. I also don't have personal experience with polyfragmentation. So unfortunately my response may be vague, and all I can really do is my best.

"can the system members be unaware of each other but aware of the system? for example, system members are (kind of) aware of each other but unaware of the switching, fragments."

If I understand you correctly, then yes. It is common for system members to know about the system but not know much about the other system members. And it is common to not be aware of switching - especially while still in a dangerous environment (I.e. when the trauma is still ongoing). This is due to dissociative barriers, which are a vital part of DID/OSDD as a coping mechanism. The barriers allow various parts to stay separate and helps keep traumatic events/memories compartmentalised. Dissociative barriers can be lessened through (correct) therapy, once you are in a safe living situation. This is called "integration" in professional terms - not to be confused with "fusion" or "full fusion". It is not recommended that a person/system does things to strengthen the dissociative barriers, as this can make it harder to integrate/"dissolve the barriers", and can worsen dissociative symptoms.

can the fragements come off as nothing? no name, no personality, just holds a trauma and its forgotten afterwards?

Yes, I believe so. The term "fragment" generally refers to an alter which is not fully formed - meaning it may be lacking things such as a name or personality, amoung other things. It is important to note that while you may forget about the alter/fragment and it's trauma memory/memories, the fragment and memories are still inside you. As you heal and the dissociative barriers lessen, you will begin to experience uncomfortable memories (but don't worry, the first step of therapy is to develop healthy coping mechanisms, so by the time that you start having to deal with bad memories, you will be much more ready than you may feel right now). Many polyfragmented systems have reported that fragments can dissolve/fuse quite easily during the healing process. This is, in theory, because they aren't fully formed alters, and often carry only a small number of memories or personality traits/trauma responses. Please note that fragments "fusing" is very different to fully formed alters fusing, according to polyfragmented systems' personal accounts. And there is no reason to be scared of fusing in any form - it is a valid healing goal, just as functional multiplicity is a valid healing goal. Each system gets to decide what their goal is.

can dissociative barriers be so bad that there can be barely any memories left of anything?

Yes, I assume so. However there may be other explanations for this, depending on the symptoms. If you mean "barely any memories of childhood" - then this is quite commonly reported by DID/OSDD systems, especially those with large numbers of alters, and those whose trauma started at a particularly young age. But if you mean "barely any memories of daily life" - then this may be a separate issue. With DID/OSDD losing time, blacking out, dissociating for long periods, etc, are common. But it is unusual to experience these so severely and frequently that you can't keep track of your daily life. If you are finding it impossible to recall your daily life, then you should definitely see a doctor. There are things which can cause this issue, but as far as I can tell DID/OSDD doesn't cause this problem to this extent as an ongoing thing. There may be a day or two here or there where this happens due to DID/OSDD, but if it is an ongoing state (especially if there is no extreme stress at the time), then it is definitely worth seeing a doctor about. There may be a simple solution such as changing meds or the dosage of meds, checking your living space for gas leaks, etc. Or it may be a symptom of a different condition (eg brain fog is very common in people with chronic pain conditions).

and lastly, is ramcoa the only way to cause fragmentation? can things like severe neglect/abandonment, physical/sexual incestous abuse, emotional abuse, lack of safety cause polyfragmentation?

No one knows. I'm assuming by "fragmentation" you mean polyfragmentation rather than "just" DID/OSDD. DID/OSDD can result from any severe ongoing trauma which begins at a young age. But as for what causes polyfragmentation, no one really knows. There is very little research on the matter, and obviously it is impossible to test which types of trauma can cause polyfragmentation (because to do that you would need to abuse hundreds of children and record the results). It was once thought that incest was what caused polyfragmentation, and some papers included this theory. Nowadays it is common for people to think that only RAMCOA can cause it. There are trends in the medical-research world, and these trends can make it hard for researchers to be objective in their studies. The only thing which seems to be agreed on by those studying polyfragmentation, is that the trauma must be "super duper bad". Some claim certain types of abuse cause it, others say it's the source of the abuse, or the frequency, or even that the abuse must come from multiple different people at multiple different times in order to account for the "need" for so many alters and fragments. They simply don't know what causes it. Which means that fake claiming people on the grounds of having "the wrong type" of trauma for polyfragmentation is particularly idiotic. ... To be honest I thought I barely had anything to say in response to your question, but it turns out that I've talked quite a lot. I hope that my responses were helpful to you! I don't know if you've seen this already, but here's a link to a series of posts I did about polyfragmentation a while ago: About Polyfragmentation. Again, thank you for the ask, and I hope I have been helpful to you. <3

#answered asks #polyfragmentation #polyfrag system #polyfragmented #did #dissociative identity disorder #osdd #actuallydid #actuallyosdd

[amyintherapy]

Big T Versus Little T Traumas

Thought I'd share what stuck out to me most from my therapy appointment a few days ago.

I continue to process childhood trauma, and at one point in this session I had brought up a time where I was blatantly emotionally abandoned when I was in very clear emotional crisis. I was around 14 at the time of this memory.

And my T asked if I remembered anything I thought or felt about this experience, if it was surprising or shocking, hurtful, if it made me angry, etc. I didn't really remember specifics like that, and told my therapist that. But then also elaborated by saying that I didn't think it could have been particularly shocking, as it was a pattern for my mom by that point. I then listed four or five other instances of very blatant neglect when I was in a crisis. Like, your kid is metaphorically on fire, and the parents say nothing and do nothing and just pretend it didn't happen, sort of situations. And a bit later in this conversation I said it's funny how just a couple months ago (maybe not even that far back..I Don't recall for sure) I was struggling with identifying as being emotionally neglected - because it was quite severe emotional neglect. I think emotional neglect of any "level" is valid, don't get me wrong. But it's weird that I was struggling with using the term when I was quite severely emotionally neglected. And part of that struggle is how society at large seems to not recognize 'small T' traumas as being traumatic, and also how the bubble I grew up in seems to see emotionally neglecting children, especially in more 'mild' ways, as just, normal.

For example, I know SO many people who are not authoritarian parents, and who very clearly mean well as parents, but who still feel like they can't validate their kids emotions and hold a boundary for their behavior at the same time. So many people who routinely minimize, dismiss, invalidate or avoid/distract their kids feelings rather than teaching them how to really sit with and process their feelings. Often because the parents themselves never learned how to manage their own feelings so they can't possibly teach the kid to. Emotional neglect isn't exclusive to bad parenting, it's super common with parenting from people doing their absolute best, but who just were traumatized themselves and never learned coping skills themselves. And when people really truly tried their best, they have a hard time even imagining that their kid could still have trauma from their childhoods. It feels unfair that doing your absolute best could still traumatize your kid. But I think that's the reality of how it often works. Kids are fragile, and most of us have a lot of generational trauma so even when doing our best we can't break ALL the cycles. I don't imagine I'll succeed at breaking all of mine. My absolute best won't be enough either, and I'm trying to come to terms with that now, while also balancing trying my best to heal for my future kid(s) too. But anyway...

The traumatized/mentally ill part of my brain likes to use that 'neglect is just normal' thing to invalidate me having cPTSD, basically. That part of my brain feels like I am just dramatic, and things 'weren't that bad' and so on. That part of my brain still looks at my childhood as having one type of big T trauma (sexual abuse) and that's it.

But after mentioning how it's funny that I so recently was struggling to even accept that I had experienced emotional neglect, my therapist said something about how I also have minimized how much Big T trauma I have. I was confused briefly. They pointed out that all the specific instances I had listed of blatant neglect in the face of crisis, count as big T traumas. That little t traumas are the day to day, mini 'cuts' that we don't really even remember because they were just normal tuesday things to us despite being hurtful. Things like coming home from school excited about something only to have your mom hush you rather than listen to you. Of course, this happening occasionally isn't traumatic but when kids live with dismissive or invalidating or overly critical parents regularly those mini cuts add up to cause accumulative trauma, and that's what cPTSD is about, mini cuts adding up to a wound, rather than traditional PTSD which leaves more acute injuries. They pointed out that Big T traumas are specific events that you do specifically remember, that left a specific wound. So just the fact that I was able to list these specific events means they are big t traumas, not little T.

Clearly, my therapist was right that I was minimizing them a bit because I had never considered that they are big t traumas.

#my posts #trauma #ptsd #cptsd #emotional neglect #big t trauma #little t trauma

[charmspectreinstitute]

Mirette Psychia

Philip's girlfriend from the other magic school, Olympia Wreath Academy.

She is the descendant of the Goddess of Soul.

➽──────────────❥

Mirette is a sweet and caring girl, as well as her beauty is the fairest, which many boys admire her a lot.

She has a motherly side to people.

Mirette is bashful about speaking her mind, which makes her rarely speak up.

Mirette has barely felt emotions that are rare to the land such as frustration and anger, that lives in the peace hometown, which make her reveal blind and naïve.

Despite of the innocence, she is brave and courageous and became protective towards her loved ones.

➽──────────────❥

Mirette loves pink, romance and music

She also likes to daydreaming about hangout with her dream prince.

She loves animals, especially butterflies, mentioning the unique colors on their wings.

Classical art around the old palace, is the dream house Mirette dream of since little.

Her talents are sewing, ballroom dancing, and singing.

She hates someone laughed at her and seeing her friends mistreated. Even she didn't want to let the discords appear at the world.

➽──────────────❥

Since childhood, Mirette has been neglected by the descendants of the gods, especially the descendants of Hera, and has become a marginalized person.

Soon after, she befriended with Darlene Cupid at first, after enroll to the Olympia Wreath Academy.

≿━━━━ ༺❀༻ ━━━━≾

Mirette have crush on Philip, currently in the relationship.

She initially fear of Philip at the first time. Slowly, she was no longer to be afraid if him and feel safe along with him. She also in love of him after staring at Philip's eyes.

They frequently hang out for date on holidays. She even gives him many handcrafted presents, like dolls, scarves and else.

She also make friends with Albert, Ella and Rose, after introduced by Philips.

≿━━━━ ༺❀༻ ━━━━≾

Rose initially very appreciative of Mirette's unique personalities, when they chatting.

Ella and Mirette shares commons for animal lovers. They sometimes strolling around the forest for picking berries.

Although Mirette was initially uncomfortable with Albert's loud voice, she greatly admired his courage and protection of the kingdom and his family.

➽──────────────❥

Mirette has a little fairy named Angel, who frequency come for give an advice or comfort when Mirette have an issue.

➽──────────────❥

"Mind of the Chrysalis" is Mirette's unique magic.

She can deepen the victim's mind and manipulate them. It is same ability to hypnotic or mind control.

#twisted wonderland #twst #mirette psychia

[biiedwin8]

How Does loneliness and being Isolated in childhood lead to addiction to Daydreaming?

Today, I'll be explaining how loneliness or being isolated in childhood can lead you to become addicted to daydreaming. When you experience isolation or loneliness as a child, it creates a feeling that no one cares about you, loves you, listens to you, or validates you. You may feel neglected by those who are supposed to be there for you. The emotional needs for being heard and cared for are crucial in our lives, especially during our formative years.

When you perceive that no one is listening to you, you seek ways to cope with the resulting negative emotions. One common coping mechanism is to fulfill these needs in an imaginary world. In this meticulously constructed world, you may have parents, friends, or siblings who listen to you, where you feel important and validated. The more you immerse yourself in this world, the more you become addicted to it or accustomed to relying on it.

Living in this imaginative world provides a sense of approval, importance, and fulfillment of emotional needs that may be lacking in the real world. As you grow, this habit can become so ingrained that the imaginary world becomes a safe haven for you. You may develop maladaptive Daydreaming, where you escape to this world because it has become familiar and comforting.

Overcoming this addiction to daydreaming is not merely about stopping the daydreaming itself. It involves addressing the underlying needs and issues that lead you to escape to the imaginary world. This means working on the beliefs ingrained during childhood, such as feeling undeserving of the real world or doubting that anyone in the real world will love or care for you. Breaking free from these subconscious beliefs requires acknowledging and working on the emotions that you have been carrying with you for a long time due to childhood neglect.

To overcome this addiction, it's essential to work on breaking free from these subconscious beliefs deeply ingrained in you. Seek help to address these underlying issues and work towards realizing that you deserve to live in the real world. This process involves confronting and healing the emotions that have been carried with you for a long time due to childhood neglect.

I hope this explanation sheds light on the connection between loneliness, isolation, and daydream addiction.

Note from the Author

If you’re ready and you’d like my help with overcoming and managing your maladaptive daydreaming without spending years in therapy, then you can book a FREE BREAKTHROUGH CALL with me HERE. Happy healing 💙💙. Feel free to share and comment! Use this information with caution, it comes from my own thoughts & bias, experiences and research😊.

#maladapting daydreaming disorder #actually madd #intrusive daydreaming #madd #imaginary friend #actually maladaptive #obsessive daydreaming #daydreaming #maladaptive daydreaming #immersive daydreaming

[sharpth1ng]

Love debaser, love that you’re a psych major. I am also so that’s awesome. I feel like tbh that’s probably why you’re good at characterization as well. I was wondering how you can tell in general if someone is autistic vs bpd? You’ve talked about Billy’s psych before, and I am just wondering if you can talk about it generally too.

Thanks so much! Essay incoming:

So I would say take all of this with a grain of salt, I'm not a clinician- I work with clinicians but this isn't my specialty and personality disorders should really be diagnosed by specialists.

But generally the best evidence we have about the development of BPD is genetic vulnerability (Things like emotional sensitivity and impulsivity can have a strong genetic component) in combination with an invalidating or unsupportive social environment. What counts as a trauma for someone depends heavily on what their level of sensitivity is, and also what resources they have to deal with it, so the idea is that bpd is essentially something that develops when someones emotions and needs are invalidated consistently from a young age.

It becomes hard to trust other people and also your own feelings, and you may learn that you have to do things like lying to get the help an support that you need, or that your emotions are so large and you have so little support for them that the only way to cope is to harm yourself. All this is to say that bpd, trauma, and invalidation are closely tied together.

Now moving on to the connection with autism, because theres a not insignificant number of autistic people who are also diagnosed with bpd. This may be a slightly sweeping statement, but at least for myself, being an autistic child was inherently traumatizing. I was constantly subjected to sensory hell in school, around other kids, and particularly at meal times, and my meltdowns were perceived as intentional tantrums. On top of this I would lose the ability to speak sometimes and this was also taken as an intentional behaviour.

Because there are so many things neurotypical people don't even notice that are traumatic to autistic folk (like fluorescent lights or an unexpected change of plans) we are constantly invalidated, especially when we are young. Basically here I'm just trying to explain why the overlap exists.

No on to differentiating the two, this is a useful diagram:

The real answer here is that we're still really trying to figure out exactly how these two disorders interact and how to differentiate them and in my opinion theres a lot of terrible research in personality disorders, and a lot of unqualified people giving out diagnosis (don't trust your family doctor to diagnose you with a mental disorder, they at most got like a month training and psychologists, psychiatrists and counsellors study this stuff for for 6-8 years).

There is also some evidence that autistic people who were assigned female at birth are more likely to be diagnosed with bpd than people who were assigned male at birth who have the same symptoms, so there might be a gender bias in the way that diagnosticians perceive people too.

There are some bigger differences to look at though, so things like sensory symptoms (sensitivities but also stimming), special interests, neurodivergent body language, literal interpretation and introversion are more common for autistics. In contrast, people with only bpd are more likely to have a history of childhood abuse or neglect, heightened sensitivity to perceived social threat (which some autistic folk may be oblivious to), drastic emotional up and down, and personality instability, where they frequently change values, hobbies, opinions, friendships, ect. (while in contrast most autistic people are pretty consistent on those things.)

One of the most important things is to figure out why behaviours are happening- for example, self harm and substance abuse are common for both groups, but for autistics these behaviours are often a way to compensate for sensory overload and anxiety, while for people with bpd they are a way to deal with feelings of emptiness or overwhelming emotion.

Another example would be difficulty in relationships- for autistic people this often comes from an inability to spontaneously produce neurotypical social behaviours, so a lot of us miss cues or copy and paste behaviours to try and blend. In contrast many people with BPD have an unstable sense of self, so their social behaviours can seem "disorganized" from the outside, and they may miss read situations because they constantly looking for threats so they can try and protect themselves.

Personal history is also important- if someone has a deep distrust of people because they were neglected as a child, this may point to bpd, but if they have a distrust of people because the weren't able to read their peers and got severely bullied for special interests in elementary school, then this may point to autism.

And again, some people do have both! But it's honestly really difficult to differentiate them without seeing a diagnostician over a long period of time. Its super important though, effective treatment for an autistic person is different than effective treatment for people with bpd, and for people with both its different as well.

I hope this is somewhat clear! I don't want to simplify any of this because it actually is really complex and I just want to be honest about that.

#again I'm not a diagnostician I'm just a researcher #take this with a grain of salt #autism and bpd #ask #cw sh mention

[brucewayneisabusive]

Our Tagging System

Welcome to @brucewayneisabusive, an archive dedicated to collecting Bruce's canon abuse in one place for easy reference.

All characters are tagged by "first name + last name" (in lowercase). If the moment involves all the batkids, the tag is "all batkids". If it involves Bruce's girlfriends and exes, the tag is "abuse towards girlfriends".

For all other tags, see below:

fandom apologia: Common excuses Batfandom likes to make for Bruce's abusive behavior.

misrepresented panels: Panels that Batfandom likes to pass off as cute or fluffy that are actually abusive in context.

physical abuse: Self-explanatory.

verbal abuse: These involve Bruce demeaning somebody.

emotional abuse: These involve emotional manipulation, gaslighting, guilt-tripping, etc.

emotional neglect: These involve withholding or withdrawing affection, comfort, etc; i.e., not meeting a child's basic emotional needs. Research shows that childhood emotional neglect (CEN) is capable of causing C-PTSD, personality disorders, and stunting growth in victims. Google is free.

parentification: A form of CEN in which the child is forced to take on an adult, parental role for an emotionally immature parent.

codependency and trauma bonding: Trauma bonding is the (often obsessive) emotional attachment an abuse victim may develop towards their abuser, especially when the abuser is capable of "lapses" in abusive behavior (i.e. occasional affection). Co-dependency is a similar trauma response by the victim towards the abuser, stemming from the "fawn" response in "flight/fight/freeze/fawn". The victim feels they cannot leave/live without the abuser.

classist abuse: Self-explanatory.

racist abuse: Self-explanatory.

controlling behavior: Bruce manipulating someone and violating their autonomy/consent for missions or otherwise.

projection: Bruce displaying emotional immaturity by projecting his own feelings onto others.

external evidence: Situations and analyses outside of direct one-to-one abuse that support the fact that Bruce has been, or is capable of being, abusive.

HOW WE DEFINE ABUSE: A long-term pattern of exploiting a power imbalance (emotionally, physically, financially, sexually, for labor, etc.) Abuse does not have to be intentional to qualify as abuse; intent does not negate impact. Just as someone being unintentionally bigoted is still being bigoted, Bruce believing he loves his children and romantic partners does not nullify his abuse. Neither do his own trauma and implied mental illnesses justify abusive behavior.

[FAQ]

#pinned