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let-it-rip-bear · 1 year

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It's not that he never learns. It's the opposite, actually. He knows the trap is there and he chooses to step in it.

This post will be exploring the possible relationship that Carmy has with self-harm/self-harming behaviors. If this is a difficult topic, please take care of yourself and skip this post.

Let’s begin with Carmy’s negative self-image. It’s confirmed and stated pretty clearly in “Braciole” during Carmy’s monologue at Al-Anon:

I'm not built like that, man. I, um… I didn't have a lot of friends growing up. I had a- a stutter when I was a kid. I was scared to speak half the time. And, uh, I got shitty grades 'cause I couldn't pay attention in school. I didn't get into college. I didn't have any girlfriends. I don't think I'm funny.

This is basically the opposite of how he describes Mikey:

He was loud. And he was hilarious. And he had this amazing ability. He could just, he could walk into a room, and he could take the temperature of it instantly. You know, he could just, he could dial it.

Where Mikey was loud, Carmy was quiet; Mikey was funny, Carmy thinks he isn’t. Clearly, Carmy doesn’t have a high opinion of himself. The only thing he feels is a redeeming quality is his skill as a chef. This can be seen in his monologue:

[…] for the first time in my life I-I started to find this, uh, this station for myself. And I was fast. I wasn't afraid. And it was clear, and I-I felt… I felt okay, you know. […] I felt like I could speak through the food, like I could communicate through creativity. And that kind of confidence, you know, like I was finally… I wa… I was good at something, that was so new, and that was so exciting.

The wording gives away a lot. Carmy specifically says that he's finally good at something and that it's so new to him. It shows that he felt like he wasn’t good at anything before he developed his skill as a chef. Being a world-class chef is perhaps the only solid part of his self-identity. It’s the one thing that allows him to feel validation. It's the only part of him that he feels is valuable.

People with a highly negative self-image are found to be willing or able to endure pain for longer amounts of time than people with a positive self-image. A study published in 2015 found that the participants that endured pain longer were also the ones who more often "spontaneously described themselves as being 'bad', 'defective' or 'deserving of punishment'". It seems pretty clear that Carmy would fall under that category as well.

I believe that Carmy stayed in the NYC job with the abusive chef because it felt so similar to when he lived at home and was around his mother. I think that Carmy purposefully puts himself in those situations as a form of self-injury, which is his subconscious coping mechanism.

Now, in my headcanon, Mrs. Berzatto is verbally abusive to Carmy. I don’t have a lot to go off of her being specifically abusive, but there are multiple times throughout the show that lead me to that end. The most obvious being in “Sheridan” when he’s talking to Tina and asks if his mother went “full psycho”, to which she responds “She wasn’t calm, but the food was great.” Throughout the show, Carmy also occasionally compares Sugar’s behavior to their mother in a negative context. It’s all pulled together by the moment in “System” when Sugar asks if Carmy has spoken to their mother and he says he hasn’t. It seems like he wants to say something else and that Sugar is waiting for his justification, but the topic drops off quickly. Altogether it gives me the impression that Mrs. Berzatto is a highly emotional person who might experience mood swings or otherwise very volatile states.

I see Carmy as someone with undiagnosed ADHD. The symptoms seen in the show include emotional dysregulation, attention deficit, and Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD). RSD causes people to be more sensitive to perceived rejection and criticism. Mrs. Berzatto likely criticized Carmy a lot when he was younger or at the very least compared him to Mikey and Sugar a lot, resulting in Carmy’s view of himself as inferior and opposite to Mikey. One factor that is theorized to worsen a child’s stutter, or verbal fluency disorder, is a parent’s negative reaction to the stutter. It’s not considered a cause or major factor, but is considered to have some effect on the child’s fluency. Carmy would then become afraid to speak because he was afraid of making his mother angry. There's also Mikey's decision to not let Carmy work or even enter the restaurant, which I believe affected Carmy far more than Mikey had intended due to RSD.

I believe that Mrs. Berzatto's negative influence on Carmy would contribute to him being “scared to speak half the time” and possibly kickstarted his negative self-image. I think that Carmy didn’t come home directly after Mikey’s death and hasn’t spoken to his mother because he’s afraid to face her.

So, why would he want to recreate that environment? Part of it is because he believes he deserves it. It’s a form of punishment or even discipline. Now, why would Carmy seek out punishment? I think Carmy has engaged in self-harm (known clinically as non-suicidal self-injury or NSSI) for most of his life, though most of it is indirect. Through conditioning, self-injury can become a form of pain relief for people with very low self-esteem. This is known as "pain offset relief conditioning". From the same study I cited before:

People who self-injure may unwittingly be tapping into this mechanism...The first time they hurt themselves, they experience unpleasant pain. But when they keep doing it and experience pain relief, they begin to associate...other forms of self-injury with relief, and they return for more. [...] 'The natural and adaptive response is to say, ‘I'm done with this.' But people who engage in self-injury don't necessarily see pain as something to escape from,' Hooley explains. Instead, experiencing pain validates their sense of being a bad or damaged person.

This, to me, explains why Carmy continuously puts himself in environments that actively harm his mental health. This includes NYC and The Beef. For both places, outside perspectives have described the conditions as something negative (Sugar in regards to NYC and Cicero in regards to The Beef) and both times, Carmy admits that he still "enjoyed" it, in a way. Vomiting from stress and anxiety every day before work was a form of self-injury to him, but Carmy felt that he deserved it, and whenever it happened he would get a rush of relief due to offset relief conditioning.

Another side to this coping mechanism is that Carmy subconsciously wants to put himself in that situation so that he can prove to (the proxy of) his mother that he isn’t worthless, that he can pay attention, that he’s capable of speaking clearly, and that he can and will be successful. At the same time, the dynamic is simply too familiar to him—Carmy learned how to avoid his mother’s wrath and fitting himself into a similar situation brings a form of comfort. He knows how to stay out of trouble, so to speak. To quote his monologue yet again, he "wasn't afraid...and it was clear". He knows how to handle people like NYChef (people like his mother) and it's comforting to have that knowledge instead of being uncertain. It's a form of safety for him.

That's also why Carmy is very good at taking a verbal lashing with little to no complaint. He learned that just letting it happen was the way to get through the bad stuff at home. In the opening scene of “Hands”, he’s being intensely berated by NYChef and takes it in stride. Even when the chef says “you should be dead”, his face doesn’t change and he continues working just as before. Similarly, in “Dogs” when Richie and Uncle Jimmy are screaming at each other, he’s completely zoned out. His eyes are distant and he’s seemingly removing himself from the situation. I think he learned that at home.

This is the headcanon that I'm working with to explain Carmy's awful self-worth issues, strained relationship with his mother, and paradoxical enjoyment of harmful environments such as NYC. It acknowledges Carmy's possible ADHD as well as his childhood stutter.

I hope this was coherent! It was somewhat difficult to untangle the connections that I didn't fully realize I had made and lay it all out in a way that isn't just word vomit. Please feel free to ask to tag relevant triggers.

Here's the 2015 study on NSSI: "A New Look At Self-Injury"

#the bear #the bear hulu #the bear fx #tw abuse mention #tw sh #carmen berzatto #carmy berzatto #mrs berzatto #the bear meta #meta #the bear headcanons #i proofread this like. once. and my eyes are going crosseyed so #sry if there are mistakes i am doing my best #jj.post #do i seem insane??#is this like balls to the wall insane

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bluravenite · 1 year

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Wonderful @cirrus-ghoulette made this post about chronically ill Dew headcanons so I COME BEARING MY OWN/MORE!!

headcanons about post-(fire element)transition Dewdrop as well as some bonus ghouls with chronic pain and disabilities!!

you'd think his hands would run warm because he's a fire-ghoul... but it's quite the opposite!! because all the heat and blood rests at his core, Dew usually has temperature dysregulation which gives him cold fingers and he has to wear fluffy or thick socks on his feet :> (however he can easily channel his magic through his hands if needed, it's just not constantly emanating warmth)

DEW HAS several breathing problems, seasonal asthma outbursts, and shortness of breath. During the colder months, his asthma gets really bad and the ghouls just have a stash of inhalers, mountain, and Aeth usually carry some with them, as well as mountain growing and making eucalyptus and peppermint coffee (hot)(also yeah its a thing, and surprisingly helps with asthma) to help him breathe. All around the year though he tends to have shortness of breath any time he does anything mildly energy-consuming (picture that one mommy dust gif where he's heavy breathing)

this one is also about breathing but it's entirely psychological, cw: mild angst <3. Dewdrop's breathing problems give him panic attacks. If he starts breathing too heavily or his throat starts closing up he begins panicking and freaking out, gets dizzy and clammy, and will likely start crying if its too bad, the ghouls usually try to keep him grounded and calm if he's having an asthma attack while he uses the inhaler or settles down, but all-year-round he wakes up at night sweating cold, coughing and choking on air, usually also crying from PTSD and nightmares.

continuing that ^ think about it like standing in a room that's lit on fire, the black smoke hurting your airways from the inside out, it burns. That's how Dew feels. His lungs were clearly made for working with water, and with his gills closed up the muscles around them practically become useless, they only react to being touched or triggered occasionally by muscle spasms. His body is not used to the fire magic and breathing air burns his throat.

which on a lighter note, is why I think he sucks at smoking, lmao... at least smoking too much without something to drink, if he hits too fast or too slow he WILL cough, and he demands that swiss give him cherry-flavored drinks to wash out the taste, because apparently, swiss' rolls taste like shit (mountain's don't, mountain's usually have a sort of bittery pomegranate berry kind of herbal taste, swiss' just taste... like swiss...??/don't quote me on that)

Cumulus has endometriosis, mountain, and dew are usually the ones who help her most, aether and Popia also look into rituals and magick to help her and how to safely do it (cries a little)

Mountain has really bad knees... yet really strong leg muscles, he can usually be seen wearing his knee braces and compression sleeves, however, if it gets too bad he will occasionally use crutches.

He also has back pain pretty often both from carrying heavy equipment and working hunched over the greenhouse or at his kit when they tour, he doesn't need a brace or a lot of support because his pain is mainly from soreness and exertion but he usually gets dewdrop to both lay on his back and also walk on it, Zephyr will also give him lower back massages when he's been in the greenhouse for a while, and in return, mountain helps zephyr CRACK his bones like a glowstick LMAO

mountain often gets wrist pain :) it's not quite carpal, but he also uses wrist braces and compression gloves as well as ice and heats his wrists from time to time, he mainly gets tendinitis though if he's been doing too much work.

RAIN has pots, or pots adjacent water ghoul shit... here's my reasoning: pressure underwater is different than above the surface, so underwater rain's blood pressure regulates, but out on earth for extended periods of time it just does NOT flow properly. Imagine kind of like that feeling of HEAVINESS you get after you've been swimming in the pool for several hours? Yeah kinda like that but less perceptible, sitting up or laying down without moving for too long will make him dizzy and nauseous, but standing up for too long will also make him clammy, dizzy, and very weak. He doesn't faint too often, usually because the ghouls tend to have his back and watch out for him, but he might faint a couple times a month from fatigue or a sudden drop in blood pressure.

Rain, as we know, also has hypermobile joints, there are already a lot of headcanons about that but I still wanted to make sure I mentioned it. He mainly uses a cane for support but otherwise, he also uses braces, compression sleeves and socks, and other such aids that I'm sure others have mentioned!

I really loved what @cirrus-ghoulette mentioned in their post about the ghoulettes sunshine and cirrus so I'm not really going to repeat much aside from!!!! I absolutely think Sunny is a little ball of autism and adhd, you cannot tell me you LOOK INTO HER BIG AUTISTIC EYEs and tell me she doesn't have a slight touch of le tism, also? auditory processing disorder, because I do not believe she understands a fucking thing you say. people just think she's silly and clueless, but little do they fucking know (laughs IN PAIN) that in her little pea brain, she's overthinking the mechanics of the SIMPLEST task, just because she needs to figure out the exact conditions in which to solve the task, like its a puzzle. (she just like me fr /lhj)

Swiss and sunny are also not allowed to drive, mainly bc sunny just CANNOT understand behavioral cues so driving with her is like a rollercoaster ride where every curve is a step closer towards totaling the car... and swiss... because he understands the behavioral cues BUT CHOOSES TO DELIBERATELY IGNORE THEM, red light? that's just a suggestion... car has its blinkers on to turn right? not if HE TURNS FIRST... it's danger out there with swiss...

Also I believe swiss IS in fact AND OLD MAN, and he hates to agree that he constantly also has joint and muscle pain until its literally impairing, and the ghoulettes force him to LAY DOWN.

aether... babyboy aefer... heavy booby... give back pain... someone please hold them /lhj... no but, aether has tummy issues :(

He has mild hyperglycemia which causes his blood sugar to be a little higher than it should be if he doesn't keep it regulated, one wrong food and it's trouble.

he's also a VERY light drinker because he is prone to seizures due to the alcohol spiking his blood sugar, if he does drink it's usually low-alcohol beer and he prepares his diet a day in advance to make sure he doesn't eat anything that will spike it, as well as only having a couple drinks. (I don't see him having diabetes, but certainly struggles with food and blood sugar levels from time to time, especially if while on tour for too long and such)

and that is the end of a VERY LONG FUCKING POST.... these are some of my headcanons I've gathered both from personal experiences and people close to me, so they may not be entirely correct!!

PLEASE!!! and I beg!! If you see any misinformation or misrepresentation (outside of the ghoul elemental anatomy differences headcanons) DO shoot me a direct message or comment correcting me or explaining what you think should be discussed, changed, edited, etc!!

As I said, this is based mostly on my personal knowledge and experiences of those close to me, so it may not be 100% correct or accurate!!

that being said, I hope you enjoyed <3 MWAH!!

#nameless ghouls headcanons #nameless ghoul headcanons #ghost band headcanons #the band ghost #ghost band #raven writes #raven rants #raven rambles

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lvbcrne · 3 years

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HEADCANON - CORTEXIPHAN TRIALS I.

Olivia Dunham had been subjected to trials of the non-FDA approved drug Cortexiphan created by Walter Bishop and William Bell. It started when she was 4 years old, and she had been signed up by her mother, much to the chagrin of her abusive step-father. Of course, there were reasons for this. Her mother, who died some time after, wanted to provide Olivia some sort of reprieve from the chaos of her home life, from the things which would happen behind that closed red door. It became very apparent very early on that young Olivia would be special, but not even the scientists would realize just how special she would be. It was not long after the trial started that SUBJECT 13, as they would call her, would be seen as an anomaly. The doses started small of course at first, easing these young minds into what was to come. Later that same year, she had crossed over for the first time --- crossed over into the other side. What she saw terrified her to such a degree that she set the room on fire. To this day, the walls still are scorched by her fearful flames. The trials would continue for years, and as time would go on, the young Olivia Dunham would prove to exhibit abilities far beyond the men’s imaginations. The others, sure, they would display profound abilities but none quite like her. She had immense power, power forged from extreme emotion and as she got older it would only continue to persist. As she would enter pubescence,the doses would increase. The more of the drug that would be introduced, the more vehement her ability and the more unpredictable she would become. It would be intense, volatile. The facility would succumb to several repairs for them to realize this. Her fear would transform into anger. Her sorrow would become guilt. It would become apparent that she could not continue on in her double life; so to speak. Her home life was not safe. Not just for herself, but for her step-father, who would eventually find himself dead ( to be elaborated later ). Her school life would not be able to continue, for her disruptive behavior and unspeakable incidents would follow her there, leading to several expulsions and suspensions ( to be elaborated later as well ). So the JACKSONVILLE FAMILY DAYCARE CENTER would become her entire existence, and she would consistently prove herself to be more than what Walter and William could have imagined her to be. Although it would not come without a price. Young Olivia would not know what it was like to have a normal childhood or adolescence, she would succumb to migraines in extremus after utilizing her abilities for extended periods of time. High doses of Cortexiphan would induce seizure activity. She would have extreme emotional dysregulation. She would have severe PTSD, just from the tests ( her childhood trauma experienced from her step-father a whole other can of worms ). She would have the gift / curse of extraordinary recall. Trust would be exceedingly hard for our young Olivia to come by. And when trying valiantly to contain her power, she would become severely hot --- reaching temperatures unsustainable by any typical human. She would also succumb to fainting spells, and bouts of dizziness. However, she would not be affected by crossing into other universes as those not treated with Cortexiphan would.

MORE WILL BE REVEALED.

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