Predators and Roleplaying Communities

[Pavel]

@Rinel said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

@Pavel said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

someone of such ill repute that they’re essentially persona non grata

This ranges from “Rinel in some places” to “SpiderVA” and you’re gonna need to be way more specific

I absolutely do not.

[Rinel]

@Pavel
I just wanted to know if we were friends

[Pavel]

@Rinel said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

@Pavel
I just wanted to know if we were friends

I don’t see any of you as friends.
I see you all as future clients.

[Cobalt]

@Pavel Don’t lie, bb. you know you crave my friendship

[Rinel]

@Pavel said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

@Rinel said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

@Pavel
I just wanted to know if we were friends

I don’t see any of you as friends.
I see you all as future clients.

Wait what do you do

[GF]

@Gashlycrumb said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

I don’t want to derail or dismiss the sexual abuse aspect of this thread, but it might be good to talk about this kind of thing in non-sexual friendships.

I had a friend in high school. She was very good at isolating me from others, with a combination of speaking to my interests and complaining about how everyone else was too dumb and pedestrian to be worthy of our attention. After a few years, I noticed I was lonely and miserable because she was all I had after having been convinced to abandon everyone else out of a cultivated sense of elitism.

I do not believe she was doing it deliberately. I think it was a defense mechanism; an unpopular person convincing herself she’s only unpopular because everyone was secretly jealous of her. Regardless of intent, though, it trained very bad habits in me that I still catch myself falling into even today.

This isn’t a MU story. I don’t feel like telling the MU story, even though it’s pretty much just like this except instead of high school, it was a MUD. I think the reason I’m telling the high school story instead of the MUD story is I worry the MUD “friend” might still be out there somewhere, looking for someone like me to isolate again.

[Pavel]

@Rinel said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

@Pavel said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

@Rinel said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

@Pavel
I just wanted to know if we were friends

I don’t see any of you as friends.
I see you all as future clients.

Wait what do you do

I’m a grief counsellor in training to be a big boy psychologist.

[Pavel]

@GF said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

I think it was a defense mechanism

One of my biggest personal battles is overcoming toxic behaviours that were originally sensible defence mechanisms from abusive relationships. It’s a hard road, because every fibre of your being is telling you that you need to do a thing or behave a way because it keeps you safe.

[somasatori]

@Pavel said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

@GF said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

I think it was a defense mechanism

One of my biggest personal battles is overcoming toxic behaviours that were originally sensible defence mechanisms from abusive relationships. It’s a hard road, because every fibre of your being is telling you that you need to do a thing or behave a way because it keeps you safe.

I am 99% sure you’ve heard this from a supervisor (as the idea comes from one of my own supervisors), but in the small chance you haven’t: an important part in overcoming your pathogenic defenses is acknowledging their importance in your life. As you said, every fiber of your being was telling you that your behavior was appropriate to keep you safe. An insidious part of trauma is how often we are changed – including in a biological way in terms of hippocampal volume, amygdala function, prefrontal cingulate reactivity, etc. – by the nature of what we endured. So, two things: your brain responds to a biological change as a result of abuse suffered over time, and your behavior becomes habit due to its necessity in keeping you safe. Not easy stuff to overcome, so good on you for working towards a healthier holistic state of mind.

As a side note, my therapeutic tendency is more towards psychodynamic (TLDP) and internal family systems work, but I was also taught cognitive processing therapy and prolonged exposure in my training rotation at Veterans Affairs here in the States. The way I usually phrased it to that population is that we have two obligations to our defense mechanisms: one is to honor the work they did for us in keeping us safe, and the other is to gently put them to rest by recognizing our negative (pathogenic) defenses as cognitive distortions. We needed them once, we don’t need them now, but we can learn a lesson from why they developed and be aware of situations that may cause that to happen again.

[Pavel]

@somasatori Absolutely. I’ve worked with my trauma therapist for many a year. The only reason I say that it is still a battle is because I think it always will be, at least somewhat. There’s always going to be that temptation into reaction, I just get better and better at refusing it.

[somasatori]

@Pavel Word, and same. I have a struggle that I’m working through related to some pathogenic coping behavior.

Or in the immortal words of Tim Robinson: “I’m not a piece of shit! I used to be. People can change.”

[GF]

@somasatori I’m glad someone who’s less of a tourist in psychology brought this up, because I started writing and eventually deleted a post that touched on this (ask myself “what’s the function” of any given response, then ask myself if I think my response is likely to actually serve that function or if it will have unhappy consequences) because I didn’t want to sound like your one Facebook-using aunt who’s pretty sure she can diagnose you and prescribe correct therapies.

[somasatori]

@GF I appreciate the care! And not to derail the thread, but psychology is one of the few disciplines that have lay people butting in to say that they’re “basically therapists because they’re good listeners” or they can diagnose people because they have a copy of the DSM. I’m all but dissertation in my PhD (not to say that makes me an expert, but probably more knowledgeable than the Facebook aunt) and still would be unlikely to accurately diagnose and prescribe correct therapies to people I don’t know since it always depends on the individual. Also, the purpose I usually see in diagnosis is appeasing our insurance overlords who will say whether a patient will be able to be treated or not. Some people really like getting their diagnosis as it presents a quick explanation of symptomatology (“ah, so that’s why I’ve felt that way”) or can bring them some sense of togetherness (e.g., support groups for people with certain personality disorder diagnoses), but I think it’s more helpful when therapists follow the patient’s lead rather than stick by a prescribed treatment method. Whew, rant over!

[Pavel]

@somasatori said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

I’m all but dissertation in my PhD

So you’re also seeing a trauma therapist, right?

[somasatori]

@Pavel said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

@somasatori said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

I’m all but dissertation in my PhD

So you’re also seeing a trauma therapist, right?

Seeing someone who specializes in trauma while still having to meet with my advisor, so not a ton of progress on that front.

[sao]

Not to derail but where the fuck does everyone even get therapists, I had one through my insurance but she was so overbooked she was only available every 6 weeks or so and then I kept having to reschedule due to work until finally I just fell off completely and I STILL don’t have a replacement. Mental health is HARD.

I had an experience with an emotionally abusive person in MU** rp who used to threaten to kill herself at me when I was high school age. It’s been so long, though, that I don’t even remember how I separated myself. I think I just eventually drifted off that game and stopped interacting with her but not in any concrete, on purpose way.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@sao Well, I was looking at a two years’ wait until I ended up finding one with only two months but in the other end of my country. Five hours of driving, thirty minutes of therapy, what’s not to love?

[Floof]

@sao said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:

Not to derail but where the fuck does everyone even get therapists,

Literally asked this question to my psychiatrist when he kept asking if I was in therapy yet during med checks, but also no one in his practice was taking patients. Like, I know I need therapy, dude, but HOW DO?!

The only reason I got to him was because they had a new psychologist willing to do my ADHD assessment. And now I’m not medicated because the adderall shortages made me realize it wasn’t quite right for me anyway, but he won’t try anything else, apparently, so I don’t even talk to him anymore, either.

Never mind that the whole system seems to be actively set up to be as inaccessible as possible. Don’t forget to make all these phone calls and set up more appointments and follow up with us because we will literally never follow up with you, person who has no short term memory and chronically dissociates rather than using the phone.

I’m fine.

[DrQuinn]

What bothers me is almost all therapists I can find are out of network. Like, they take no insurance at all. WHY?!

$200 for an initial consultation, $150 for every follow up appointment, probably just paying straight out of pocket with no hope of insurance covering anything because they’d like me to use someone “in network” who doesn’t do in-office hours and isn’t a good fit. Sigh.

[sao]

@Floof I relate hard. My psych billed $500 for a noshow and I was paying out of pocket, no insurance. They waived the fee one time but then I no-showed again because I was off my meds. It took me an entire year to actually try and make another appointment, and then it took me two months to fill out the forms and send them back in. I’m on my second day of meds right now after 14 months+ of no meds. TOTAL DERAIL BUT ARRRRR it is ludicrous that this condition that is literally the ‘bad at phone calls and calendaring’ condition requires so much phone calls and calendaring in order to even get treatment and STAY treatment.