No Praise Like Home

You know how trauma workbooks commonly offer a warning to stop, to practice self-care, and to return to a chapter at a future time if any material in it becomes too triggering? I have never paid much attention to those warnings, even during those years when my mistrust of the system was so intense that …

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Messages in a Bottle #12: Six Degrees of Kevin Broken

CW: descriptions of systemic abuse, abuse statistics, speaking out about past abuses This Message in a Bottle was literally previously a published blog post in March. But, the original version of the post was first password-protected, because, at the time, I worried that putting it out there simultaneously would somehow undermine the credibility of what …

Protected: Six Degrees of Kevin Broken

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Eek! Previews

Emotional flashbacks are tricky to recognize. You can become thoroughly caught up in the fight/flight/freeze responses of the past without even realizing you have shifted. And, even if you do realize you are in one, it can be tricky to recognize to what, exactly, you are flashing back. There are, after all, so many discreet …

Messages in a Bottle #9: The Archivist

This CW is so important it should be in neon flashing lights. This is a serious post. Serious like: mentions of 9th Circle of Hell current systemic abuse, mentions of the same kind of systemic abuse on another blog, and mentions of past suicidal feelings and coercive control. I really meant it when I said …

Tools of the Trade Show

CW: Panic attacks in progress and the reasons for them. So, this is not the type of post I normally write. I'm not even sure it qualifies as a true post. If this were Facebook, I'd be vaguebooking to the point of parody. However, I will explain more later, when I feel able to and …

Remote Control

If a bully-of-a-boss screams in an office, and there is no Lavender around to hear it, can he still control her amygdalar fear response? We're about to find out. I am now a 100% remote employee?! I've spent my not-FMLA completing a crash course in processing a lifetime of trauma alongside dealing with the concurrent 9th …

Where’s Whoopsie #14: Where’s it Hurt?

Traveling and being unwilling to bring anything I have actually invested time and effort in with me to Hell means I haven't posted a Where's Whoopsie since July! I suppose I could have posted some of my decidedly not-safe-for-work swear word drawings that I relied upon instead of geometric patterns to express my feelings during …

Déjà Voodoo

Update: I also posted this in the comments, but then I remembered that smarter folks than I often skip the comments. The author of the original blog post that inspired this one contacted me. She has taken it down and apologized. She also seemed like she was still beating herself up over it even after …

Absent without (Family Medical) Leave

I know the DSM-V no longer includes the term "nervous breakdown" anymore. I'm fairly confident even if it did include it, since the origins of my panic attacks, crying, dissociation, and depression are quite well known, I'd still just end up labeled with the "dissociative subtype" of PTSD (aka the compromise that is supposed to …