The good thing about my research on CPTSD is that it's helping me come to terms with another thing I've been struggling with. A common symptom is hypervigilance: constantly being on guard for potential dangers, physically and mentally, even emotionally, to such an extent that one takes a situation that's anywhere from vanilla to grey and can't feel anything but an intense sense of threat. Another issue is lack of emotional regulation. Something quite tame can trigger intense emotional reactions. Both are things I struggle with on the daily.
Which brings me to my recent struggles with Quadimension and the Medium5 girls. It came in the wake of a blatantly pornographic depiction of an underage character, and triggered comparisons to ATDan, who's been doing less graphic but equally morally questionable and gross things with his girls. In my mind, the fact that I love his art and had it hanging on my walls was a sign of hypocrisy. So what did I do? Took his art off my walls (good!), uninstalled all of my Quadimension vocals and hid their boxes in the deep recesses of my apartment (probably a little dramatic, but understandable), and went into a series of suicidally depressive episodes out of shame and guilt and sadness, believing myself to be a p*dophilia apologist and an overall bad person for not only ever supporting the company, but for still missing my VBs after I'd deactivated them (definitely not healthy).
Ah, and that intense feeling of shame, and my preoccupation with being a bad person who needs to be kept in check? CPTSD. God I'm so happy to finally have a name to put to all of this!
But! Recognizing and accounting for these issues and my mindset, I've been able to come to a more rational mindset. What ATDan does with underage characters is, without any shadow of a doubt, disgusting. But I'm not a bad person for liking his art style. I won't support it any longer, but I won't beat myself over the head for so much as looking at it. And I'm not a bad person for liking Quadimension's VBs. Haiyi's official artist is a creep. He's also one of many, many people behind her development, and hardly deserves to be the only one associated with her, much less every last one of Quadimension's vocals.
TL;DR: Haiyi, Cangqiong, and Xingchen are back on my dresser with the rest of my synth boxes, and I'm re-installing and activating them plus Minus and Muxin.
i used to have those issues a lot tbh in art and writing. and above when i say i relate to the whole.. writing 'meh' sentences and it gets me going, i also dont think "wow these sentences suck" ive grown to think "i just needed a slow start and thats ok". radical acceptence of whatever youre capable of in the moment is important.... no one does a 100% of their best every time they open up a project. its not possible. whatever youre doing, maybe its 70% or even 20% one day. and thats okay too because no one is asking you to do 100%, no one but a mean voice in your head really. the "100%" that exists in your head is the impossibly hard standard your mind has made up to make you anxious youre not doing better.
ive accepted that even some days i do nothing, because i just cannot. its not to say i dont feel a bit down about it- i cant stop that feeling. but i can stop beating myself up over it, and accept that even if i get one sentence out thats ok. if i get none and step away from it, thats also ok... and when that mean voice telling me its bad to not do better, i counter it hard. not a "well im depressed so i cant :( oh well" kinda way. in a "it is not the end of the world because i cannot do this right now. its ok that i need to just stop for this moment, or just write one sentence. i accept that whatever im doing right now is what feels like my best, and tomorrow maybe that "best" will be different. but this is the present moment and i need to accept what im capable of right now- not what future or past me is capable of."
admittedly this is all shit i learned in therapy. therapy helps, and works, imo. tho these are "mindfulness" techniques, and you can likely research about them too. the one i mention about is literally just called "radical acceptance". i hate to be all Therapist in this last sentence but ive been in recovery for 1+ year so i can definitely say that therapy has helped lol.