I recognize a lottttt of my trauma responses in Armand. Granted, I have been through years of therapy and I am doing a lot better, but the ways he moves through the world are painfully, saddeningly familiar.
(OOF THIS GOT LONG putting the rest of this essay under a cut)
Being a people-pleaser (as in the learned "fawning" trauma response, in 'fight/flight/freeze/fawn") is like being an addict. You never stop being an addict, it is ALWAYS something you have to watch for in yourself and consciously choose to avoid.
Armand IS trying to manipulate circumstances with his letters, but I don't mean that in an accusatory way, and I ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEE YOU that he is not doing it consciously. He has one tool in his toolbox and he is trying valiantly to fix his life, but he genuinely just is not equipped to do it. He's gone to therapy for five minutes and he has dutifully and eagerly learned the language. He's been told, "If you do these 12 steps, you will fix your life" -- and he wants to. He desperately, desperately wants to. He doesn't want to be alone (relatable), he doesn't want the people he loves to be mad at him (who does?), he wants belonging and safety and comfort and solace (don't we all?).
But he is so, so, so, SO DEEPLY TRAUMATIZED that there's a disconnect at the last step. He is able to intellectually understand What He Needs To Do To Fix This Shit -- of course he's able to understand it intellectually, he's very smart! -- but he has been so disconnected for so long from his own fucking soul that he's not engaging with it on that level. He's deeply alienated from genuine emotion, especially when it is his own emotion, especially when it is an ugly emotion, ESPECIALLY when it is directed at someone he loves.
The fact that he outright snapped at Daniel ("I'm your maker, I can't get into your head any longer!") is such a huge green flag. No one else would see it that way (including him), but having been through almost this exact same therapeutic journey... That was huge for him. He expressed Perceivable Frustration toward someone he loved. That's HUGE. For someone so deeply scarred and convinced that they have to be perfect and blameless and inoffensive and small in order to deserve love, Getting Slightly Testy with a loved one is a truly fucking monumental achievement and we should all be gasping in amazement and clapping and sincerely cheering for that single inch of forward progress he won in that moment. That was a flicker of his soul coming back online, like the first time someone manages one singular shaky effortful almost-there pull-up on an exercise bar. (Welcome back to life, Armand!!! Keep going!!!)
So he's not sincere with the letters yet, but he doesn't know that he's not sincere. When I was in that mindset, if I had written those letters, I would have absolutely believed with every fiber of my being that I was being sincere, and I would have been deeply deeply hurt and insulted if someone had told me that I wasn't. But it's not sincere. Not yet.
It's not because of malice. It's not because he's a bad person or soulless. It's just because sometimes you have to learn do right by yourself before you can do right by other people. He's not doing right by himself. He's just self-harming in a new way, he's performing his penance because he thinks that's what other people want him to do, and he thinks that if he rolls over and shows his tummy like this, then they will have mercy on him and allow him to be around them (note that everyone keeps telling him variations on "go away"). He has not discovered what his own boundaries are, he has not discovered a sense of self-respect or self-esteem. He is wielding the language of therapy against himself. He is cutting himself down, beating himself up, hurting himself because he's convinced that it hurts so much less that way than when other people do it, and that this kind of pain is just the cost of admission to receive love... or the bare minimum of tolerance.
I am 36 years old, and I've been doing therapy for going on 7 years now. I am just now starting to feel like I've unpacked 15-20 years of my worst baggage. Armand, on the other hand, has been to 5 minutes of therapy. He is 500+ years old with 500+ years of trauma pretty much every goddamn day of his life. He simply has not had enough time. He hasn't had enough time. He has not had enough TIME. He is not GIVING HIMSELF enough time. He is trying to speedrun the journey so he can get to the destination, and that's not the point of therapy. He's rushing himself through it in a way that is not loving and kind to himself, he is being ungentle with himself, he is forcing himself through it because all he knows is how to force himself through things.
And that's the thing he has to unlearn. He has to treat Armand better. He has to learn that. Until he learns how to treat Armand better, he will be trapped in the same loop. Just like all of us. Just like every goddamn one of us. Healing STARTS with how you treat yourself, not how you treat other people. For someone who has Armand's particular set of traumas, prioritizing his relationship with himself is crucial -- he cannot heal his other relationships until he's made some progress healing that one.
But (I say, breathless with wonder and dawning hope) he snapped at Daniel for saying something stupid and annoying. He snapped. He was a reasonable and appropriate level of irritated, and he expressed it in a reasonable and appropriate way. That is: He did not call Daniel names, he did not physically assault Daniel, he did not threaten Daniel. All he did was Slightly Raise His Voice.
Last year, I Slightly Raised My Voice at one of my roommates, and when I told my therapist about it later, she fucking CHEERED. And I was PROUD of myself for that -- I expressed a frustration! Out loud in the moment without overthinking it!!! GLORY GLORY HALLELUJAH!!!!!!!!!!! (That doesn't mean that Slightly Raising Our Voices is something that we want to aim for as a long term strategy, because it really isn't nice to yell at people, but! In CONTEXT, it was an important growth moment, and once you've achieved that landmark, it makes it easier to refine and adjust to "having the feeling and expressing it courteously" versus the previous alternative which was "repressing the feeling entirely").
So. No, Armand wasn't sincere with his letters. But that's okay. He's fighting, he's trying, he's experimenting, he's pushing at the walls. There's life in that shell of a gremlin and it is trying so so so hard to break out! He was not sincere, but that's FINE, because it is part of the process. Let him cook! Healing is not linear, and progress doesn't always start in the exact right direction! Sometimes you have to have some wild emotional swings and make some mistakes and throw spaghetti at the walls! Sometimes you have to go down the checklist and mutter, "Well THAT didn't work, what do I try next?" And sometimes (FREQUENTLY) the big wins are not always clear and evident: Progress usually doesn't look like a trophy and a round of applause and "I did it perfectly and for once, no one was mad at me!" -- sometimes Progress looks like "Well, I pissed someone off again, as per usual, BUT!!!!! I didn't melt down and lose my shit and cry for the rest of the day this time! Actually, this time I almost didn't even care that they were mad! Almost! I did still care a little, but only about 40% of how much I would have cared last year! WOW!!!!"
He snapped at Daniel for a frustrating comment. <3 He snapped. He's growing. That was the first shaky pull-up on the exercise bar, and I don't think even he realized how huge that was. He snapped. We should be proud of him for snapping. Only my fellow clinical people-pleasers know what a hero moment that was for him. Imagine... Imagine snapping at someone, and then they continue the conversation with you instead of cutting you down into tiny little pieces because your tone was unacceptable. A fairy tale. A storybook moment we people-pleasers breathlessly whisper to each other under the blankets at sleepovers. He snapped and it was okay. He snapped and the world didn't end.
Go Armand. Go, baby, keep going, you're doing it. You're also going to backslide and chop someone up with a machete but that's ok too!!! Happens to the best of us! Healing is not linear! Sometimes we relapse! You'll have another chance to try again, you have an eternity of chances to try again! And for once, FOR ONCE, you managed to snap at your boyfriend. You have that win in your pocket. You have this one precious little win in your pocket. You snapped at him when he was annoying, baby boy, good job.
