Eruvadhril

The main reason they think they don't have PTSD usually has to do with flashbacks and nightmares, either they have one but not the other or have neither. But here's the thing, those are only two symptoms out of the 23-odd recognized symptoms. Flashbacks and nightmares are two of the five symptoms under Criterion B (Intrusion), which you only need one of for a diagnosis. The other three symptoms are unwanted upsetting memories, emotional distress after being reminded of trauma and physical reactivity after being reminded of trauma (i.e. shaking, sweating, heart racing, feeling sick, nauseous or faint, etc). Therefore you can have both flashbacks and nightmares, one but not the other, or neither and still have PTSD.

In fact, a lot of the reasons people give me for why they don't think they have PTSD are literally a part of the diagnostic criteria.

"Oh, I can barely remember most parts of my trauma anyway." Criterion D (Negative Alterations in Cognition and Mood) includes inability to recall key features of the trauma.

"Oh but I don't get upset about my trauma that often because I avoid thinking of it or being around things that remind me of it most of the time." Criterion C (Avoidance) includes avoiding trauma-related thoughts or feelings and avoiding trauma-related external reminders, and you literally cannot get diagnosed if you don't have at least one of those two symptoms.

"Oh I just have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, but I don't have nightmares." Criterion E (Alterations in Arousal and Reactivity) includes difficulting sleeping outside of nightmares.

"But I didn't have many/any trauma symptoms until a long time after the trauma happened." There's literally an entire specification for that.

Really it just shows how despite being one of the most well-known mental illnesses, people really don't know much about PTSD. If you have trauma, I ask you to at least look at the criteria before you decide you don't have PTSD. Hell, even if you don't have trauma, look at the criteria anyway because there are so many symptoms in there that just are not talked about.

She talks about how, as a kid, you learn to finish work before you can play and that you take this with you into adulthood. So you keep the mindset of having to finish 'have to' tasks/chores before being allowed to 'play'.

Sex is not essential. You can live without it. Full stop.

Not having sex isn't shameful or a sign of failure. It also doesn't make anyone boring.

You are not entitled to having sex with anybody and nobody is entitled to having sex with you.

Sex is not what makes someone an adult.

Nobody's worth is defined by how much sex they have or don't have.

Sex is not equally important to everyone.

You can have fulfilling and happy relationships without sex.

You should only have sex on your own terms, not because you feel like you owe it to someone, or because you feel like you'd be incomplete without it.

Know your boundaries around sex and be firm about them. Know how to respect other people's boundaries.

The previous point also applies when it comes to discussing sex. If someone doesn't wanna talk about it or hear about it you have to back down.

Part of socializing and having friends is being a good listener even when you don't actually give a shit about the subject.

Your are hurting other people's feelings when you bluntly respond with "Anyway..." and then change the topic.

It can not always be about your preferred topic.

Uma Musume style horsegirls introduced to the Forgotten Realms; setting's lore revised so that they've always been there.

Advancement rules now stipulate per-session XP bonus based on lifetime D&D Beyond purchase history.

Compendium of exclusive feat trees for specific gender and sexual identities. Bisexuality receives no feats of its own, being mechanically implemented as "half gay"; the resulting synergies are disgusting.

Editorial error in revised Dungeon Master's Guide accidentally refers to Dungeon Masters as Hasbro's employees.

"Noble savage" coding of barbarian class walked back, refocused on European folkloric touchstones such as the Ulster Cycle; all barbarian characters become Irish stereotypes.

AI-based DM service trained exclusively on work of Ed Greenwood launched; withdrawn a week later citing "guiderail issues".

Expanded discussion of navigating player expectations frames "not showing up at all" as a valid playstyle.

"Proiritising roleplaying" doesn't mean anything – it's a piece of vacuous marketing text targeted at people who've constructed their identity politics upon arguing about the correct way to pretend to be an elf.

The basic problem is that the term "roleplaying" is, itself, not well defined; in practice, it means whatever the person trying to sell you something wants it to mean. Here, for example, by invoking the presence or absence of "mechanical social encounter support" as the distinguishing feature of self-styled "RP forward" systems, you seem to be implicitly defining "roleplaying" to mean "set-piece encounters in which a player character attempts to persuade an NPC to do something for them without resorting to violence". Is this justified? Is playing out the process of hitting each other with sticks not "roleplaying"? Why not?

What most people mean when they toss the term "roleplaying" around in the context of tabletop games is something in the vicinity of "roleplaying is when we do things I'm interested in doing, and not-roleplaying is when we do things I'm not interested in doing". As all game rules are unavoidably opinionated about what player characters ought to spend their time doing – indeed, arguably this is the only thing that rules can meaningfully express opinions about! – the question of "does this system 'prioritise roleplaying'?" is typically reducible to "does this system agree with me about what kind of game I'm playing?". Games are then sorted into "priorities roleplaying" and "does not prioritise roleplaying" based on which side of the answer to that question they fall on for the person doing the sorting.

This is the ultimate root of a lot of this "the best sessions I ever had never touched the rules at all" stuff. For a variety of reasons, many people have genuinely never experienced playing a tabletop RPG whose rules agree with them about what sort of experience of play they ought to be having, and in some cases they can't even imagine what that would look like. If you and the system you're using disagree so badly about what kind of game you're playing that "engaging with the rules" and "engaging with my desired experience of play" are mutually exclusive activities, it's not surprising that ignoring the rules entirely would be your best play.