One Wank After Another

[coalcube]

A blank assignment is a funny thing, isn't it? When you have it, you don't appreciate it, and when you miss it, it's gone.

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Comments

Re: PTSD

[(Anonymous)]

If they're in a canon where therapy is unlikely - especially if it's fantasy/horror/SF - you could come up with some kind of magical/religious ritual. Not necessarily even the "poof magical fairy heals you" kind either, but like a trip to a sacred spring where you do some special singing or dancing and then stay up all night bathing in the spring, or an exorcism to speak to the spirits of the restless dead who are haunting you and put them at peace, or a shaman guiding them on some kind of dream voyage, or something like that. It doesn't have to mean a perfect cure either, but something like that can in rl help a lot to move someone to the next step in their recovery - there's evidence that in cultures where it's built in, that kind of thing can help as much as talk therapy in some ways. And if you do want a perfect cure just for wish fulfillment, it's not unrealistic that the sacred spring cured their PTSD when it can also instacure people's broken femurs.

Even in a modern US setting, you can sometimes work that sort of thing in somehow if it fits the feel of canon. Maybe they go on a long backcountry trip alone, or talk to a priest of the religion they were born into and do something meaningful together, or stay up for three days straight in the hospital with a sick loved one and have a spiritual experience from sleep deprivation, or take shrooms for the first time (or, you know, meet someone witchy who offers to exorcise their ghosts, whether either of them really believe it or not.)

And it can make a satisfying climax in a story at least, even if you leave open the option they're not magically all better. (To people who buy into the idea that part of trauma is that a person's concept of how the world works has been fundamentally broken, it can make a very helpful story in the character's POV as well, redirect them to give them a reason things went wrong and an explanation of how it fits into the world and how it can be okay.)