Anakin Skywalker and C-PTSD
C-PTSD is a variation of PTSD wherein the condition develops not in response to an isolated traumatic event, but from trauma that is so long-term it becomes expected, and even normal. Victims who have suffered such long-term trauma exhibit symptoms above, and beyond mere PTSD: Hence, the term Comlex PTSD. C-PTSD has been widely accepted in the field of mental health, although it is not due to be officially recognised until 2017/2018. Curiously enough, due to the added symptoms to PTSD that characterise C-PTSD, before the condition was widely understood, it was often misdiagnosed as Borderline Personality Disorder, which Anakin was once considered by psychologists (whom I presume had a lot of fun watching Star Wars to diagnose him), to have had. Personally, although I’m no expert, C-PTSD seems more likely.
Trauma That can Lead to C-PTSD
Long-term domestic violence
Long-term child physical abuse
Long-term child sexual abuse
Organized child exploitation rings
In the case of the case of the fictional Anakin Skywalker: Slavery
Ultimately, C-PTSD develops when an individual is placed under long-lasting trauma, involving either physical or emotional captivity, where the victim is unable to easily escape, and is under the control of another individual. (This is essentially slavery under Watto and Gardulla for Anakin.)
Emotional Regulation. May include persistent sadness, suicidal thoughts, explosive anger, or inhibited anger.
Consciousness. Includes forgetting traumatic events, reliving traumatic events, or having episodes in which one feels detached from one’s mental processes or body (dissociation).
Self-Perception. May include helplessness, shame, guilt, stigma, and a sense of being completely different from other human beings.
Distorted Perceptions of the Perpetrator. Examples include attributing total power to the perpetrator, becoming preoccupied with the relationship to the perpetrator, or preoccupied with revenge. (Obviously Anakin’s focus on slavers, and later on the Jedi.)
Relations with Others. Examples include isolation, distrust, or a repeated search for a rescuer.
One’s System of Meanings. May include a loss of sustaining faith or a sense of hopelessness and despair.
How This Affects Anakin Skywalker:
Anakin struggles to regulate his emotions. This is a widely observed fact. The problem with his emotional regulation stems from the fact that Anakin is unable to deal with his emotions as they come in the moment. When he was a child, he was forced to tamp down on his emotions, since he was not in a position to express them safely. As a result, they would manifest in ways disproportionate to the situation, often as a result of unrecognised triggers, long after the event that sparked his frustration. This lack of emotional regulation can also manifest in anxiety or depression. Anakin felt safe when he appeased his master. If Watto was happy, Anakin had less to fear. This mindset never changes as he grows up. It is never allowed to. Thusly, Anakin feels a lot of anxiety, as is observed in AoTC and in RoTS, because he doesn’t understand how to please the Council whom he perceives as having power over him. I believe it was @padawanlost who called him “a little nugget of self-doubt.” His self-perception is distorted as it is, due to the emotional abuse he’s suffered at the hands of slavers, and is only enhanced by his isolation by the Jedi Council for being “too old,” “shouldn’t have been trained,” or “lacks discipline.” Their dismissal of his problems enhances his problems, because he does not have a secure environment in which to heal. He is filled with self-doubt, and anger that he does not know how to regulate, because it has existed within him so long. The Jedi iteration of “letting it go” is not a feasible solution in his case, because he does not understand where the emotions are coming from. He needs to deal with that, before he can follow the Jedi way. Nevertheless, he never receives the opportunity, or support, to go back and deal with the root issues which stem way back in his childhood.
This lack of security and regulation is compounded by his own consciousnesses. Anakin is widely noted in fandom for not being self-aware. This is an understandable result of his traumatic childhood. Anakin is noted to dissociate. This is a phenomenon that occures when an individual can neither fight, nor flee, and therefore freezes. The victim shuts down just to function. The most obvious example of this occurs in Anakin when his mother dies. One can observe him pull back from an experience that is too traumatic for him to face. This compounds his ability to regulate his emotions, since he separates himself from them in a habitual effort to survive. As he is no longer aware of his own emotional state, having learned to detach from it for so long, he lashes out at things that trigger him, and he is unaware of why he even does. Moreover, he struggles to reaslise this truth, because he has repressed some of the traumatic events rather than face them. If the speculations in this post are true, then Anakin has even used the Force to deliberately hold back, or alter memories, because he feels he is not in a safe place to examine them. He needs to hold them back just to push forward, until he is safe. Unfortunately, he never reaches such a state. Also, it’s so traumatising to go back there, he just doesn’t want to, especially when he has never been encouraged to do so.
All of the above, not to mention how difficult it must have been for Anakin to leave slavery only to call people “master,” lead Anakin to isolate himself. His relations with others suffered. He didn’t know what they wanted from him. He didn’t know how to please them. He didn’t feel safe. He was insecure, confused, and unable to regulate his emotional state, and he felt he had to to please everybody. He couldn’t figure out how, everything was so different, so he just dissociated and avoided everyone. Naturally, by doing so, he compounded the original issue. Also, as noted above, this confusion and feeling of being lost, especially in abused children, can lead to a search for a rescuer, someone to cling to for support. To some extent Obi-Wan fills this role, but Palpatine does it better. Palpatine, whom Obi-Wan first introduces him to, is an adult who does not hold power over him, and is therefore easier to trust, and is someone whom he can confide in, and whom he does not have to struggle to please. For Anakin, in his vulnerable position, Palpatine is a god-send. Naturally, Palpatine took advantage of this. He uses it to continues to isolate Anakin, as abusers are wont to do. Moreover, he took Anakin’s increasing sense of despair, helplessness, and loss of faith in the system, (after all it had never helped him), to his advantage.
In conclusion, the Jedi Council, told Anakin that his childhood as a slave was a disadvantage, and that he should just forget about it. They were concerned about taking in a child with such trauma, but rather than address the root issues, and help him over come it, they chose to place the burden of becoming another Temple-raised cookie-cutter Jedi on him, and passive-aggressively lumped Obi-Wan in as well. In this manner, they offered the two little to no support. In doing so, they compounded Anakin’s C-PTSD, and this is what enabled Palpatine to take advantage of Anakin so easily. Ultimately, I don’t believe that this was because the Jedi didn’t believe in mental health issues, or didn’t know about trauma. There were Jedi who were trained to be healers; they even had a MediCorps, according to Legends, for crises. Moreover, all Jedi were trained to deal with the worst of emergency situations. They had to know how to handle civilians who had seen, and experienced devastating things. They should have known what PTSD was, and how it might have affected Anakin. However, as seen in TPM, by Mace’s apathetic “bring him before us then,” they wrote Anakin off. He was “too old.” They never intended to train him.They agreed to train him afterwards, because if the Sith were back, they had to keep an eye on this gifted child. They never really wanted him though. They were just keeping an eye on him to make sure he didn’t become a threat, and on the off-chance he fulfilled that prophecy. They also, I think, wanted to teach Obi-Wan a lesson for defying them, so he could be the one to “train the boy,” if he was so keen. Therefore, they just left Anakin and Obi-Wan to their own devices, and just swooped in occasionally to praise, but mostly to shake their heads in disapproval. They ignore Obi-Wan’s concerns about Anakin, and his indirect plea for help in AoTC, and just talk about how he might be the Chosen One. No support is offered. Unsurprisingly, this did nothing to create a safe environment for Anakin to thrive in. It just made everything worse.
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