BYF

Hi and welcome to our blog, where we're happy to create a space for anyone who experiences it to discuss and seek help from their exotrauma. This is a community space, not a clinical one, so we cannot offer any professional medical advice or therapy.We want as many people as possible to access this space but for the safety of our followers and ourselves please do not interact with us if

Notes on sending asks

What Is Exotrauma?

Exotrauma at its most basic definition is the existence of traumatic memories that for any reason did not actually happen to ones current brain and body.There's a lot of different personal interpretations and all of them are seen as valid and accepted here. For some these memories may not have literally happened to them but may be the result of delusions or just the context from which someone processes their identity. For others, these memories did happen to them but before they came to be in this current lifetime.Regardless of if these memories are real or not, they can deeply affect a person or system and cannot simply be gotten over or ignored because they didn't happen to one's body. In most cases it is best to treat exotrauma like lived trauma, to the extent that its appropriate to do so.There's a lot of nuance and having exotrauma of something is not a 1:1 ratio of experiencing it and that's because these memories are being processed by a new brain that has its own set of experiences and biases. For example, someone may remember facing descrimination in their exomemories that they no longer face, and although that trauma is real it is being processed from an outside perspective and thus is not equivalent to people who have experienced it in this lifetime in their current brain/body.Exotrauma is a lot more common than it seems due to there being very few spaces to really talk about it but if you experience it you are not alone and there are many who share your experiences and want to help support you.

How do I know if I have exotrauma?

Because exotrauma is an umbrella term that covers an incredibly broad experience, there is no need for you to diagnose yourself with it the same way you might with other traumas. There is no harm in nurturing yourself. If you think that you'll benefit from being in this community then you're a part of it for now, if you later find out that it's better described by something else, your time here does not become wrong or meaningless.For many of us the main struggle to accept whether or not we have exotrauma is because we are not sure if it is covering up lived trauma, the idea being that this makes the exotrauma fake and something that has to be waded through. So please hear this and try to internlize these points:

We cannot tell you if you do or don't have exotrauma but here are some questions to ask yourself the may help you determine for yourself

Meet The Mods

Audit: Hiiii I'm Audit, this systems host :3 Like the rest of the mods at the moment I'm a systeen and my pronouns are they/them and she/her. I'm a multifictive/kinnie with too many sources to delve into but I'm brain assigned exotrauma georg and it's made the past seven years as host pretty tough, especially before knowing exotrauma was a thing that existed, so this blog is super important to me!Verdict: Hi I'm Verdict, I'm Audit's QPR partner and Synth's girlfriend :3. I have a source but it's abysmal and barely represents my exomemories so I'm electing to pretend it doesn't exist/lh. My pronouns are she/her and they/them. My trauma's similar to Hunter's if that's a good reference and I'm the local low empathy enjoyer.Synth: Haiiiiii XD I'm Synth and I'm the president of the hate my source's fandom probably, so if you recognize me no you don't/silly. Usually I keep things pretty light hearted but if you need someone to get mad at fandom bullshit or offer a shoulder to lean on then I'm your guy! I go by any pronouns except it/its but I primarily use he/him and she/her.Kitty: Hiii ^_ I'm one of many OC fictives for the same OC we have in this system, and I'm sourcemates/doubles with Audit so we are besties. There's so many horrors in the world which sucks but there's also the sillies and cute animals so I think it balances out. My pronouns are she/her but if you wanna get creative I accept any and all cat themed pronouns too! :3Hunter: HIIIIIIIIIIIIII I'm Hunter Noceda Deamonne Clawthorne but you can call me Hunter since that's my given name/silly. I'm an Owl House fictive and fairly canon compliant so I feel like a lot of people are familiar with my exotrauma already but I am your local abuse survivor who's staying silly! Something about my source being a lot of people's comfort character makes me feel like a trauma mascot a little bit/lh so I'm more than happy to be here to hype up anyone who needs it and offer support! My pronouns are He/him and It/ItsFox: Hewwo I'm Fox, he/him, and I'm the resident Kano Shuuya fictive and Liz's coolest older brother (<- lying/silly). My exotrauma includes being in some specific ass situations also getting stuck in timeloops so that's funsies! Always here to try and cheer everyone up and offer comfort.Liz: I'm the resident Kido Tsubomi fictive and Fox's sister, we're besties in the horrors and he's my emotional support idiot. I'm also low/possibly no empathy like Verdict is and I can be an edgy bitch sometimes but I also like baking so that balances out the vibe into whatever the hell mine is. She/her pronouns for me please!

(Trigger Warning: This page contains discussion of racism, pedophilia, and rape. Please take care.)Proship is a term that refers to the belief that fiction has no influence on reality and thus no one needs to be critical about the content they create and consume. Many proshippers try to claim it just is what anyone who enjoys fictional characters in relationships is called but that's blatantly untrue the term is incredibly specific.As to why this is a harmful group, there's several reasons and I cannot list all of them but here are some important points:Fiction objectively does affect reality and suggesting otherwise is not just ignorant it's incredibly harmful. There are a lot of studies into this, especially documenting the way that media directly influences racism in society. Here are some resources on this (1) (2, heavy tw for antiblack racism) (3, specifically about fandom racism) (4)While I cannot speak on fandom racism myself, I can talk about my negative experiences in proship circles as a CSA and abuse survivor, and in general the way that portrayals of abuse in the media affect me personally.Many proshippers argue that people criticizing them do so because they wish to censor people, because they do not want to see heavy topics in fiction and want everything to be kid friendly. This is far from the truth, in fact I would love to see more portrayals of CSA and abuse but those portrayals must be accurate otherwise they don't do anything other than harm me. Reading a fanfiction in which a teenager is sexually abused and there is no condemning of this behavior, there is no healing, and the realistic consequences of these actions are never shown is not an artistic exploration of anything, it's fetish material.Seeing pedophilia treated lightly and dismissed as being a serious issue, seeing it treated as desirable in any way, is extremely harmful to its victims/survivors. When Six the musical came out I was excited by the premise and the songs sounded great, I was really looking forward into enjoying this comedy... instead I was bombarded with jokes about child grooming and sexual assault in the popular song, "All you wanna do". I nearly vomited from the stress, the memories that it forced me to relive, and then I had to just swallow it back and accept that my friends didn't care and would not become uncomfortable about it if I explained the issue. I watch repeatedly as media carelessly subjects me to my worst nightmares for other people's benefit but rather than showing me that healing is possible or that I have inherent worth I'm just shown them being greusomely murdered or otherwise discarded.Even the portrayals I've grown attached to of people like me are heavily sexualized, fit a pristine aesthetic notion of what my trauma must look like, and very truthfully were not made for me but for nonsurvivors who do not care about people who struggle with these things in real life. This affects me signifigantly, to this day I am still ashamed to even mention my identity as a CSA survivor and I am deeply afraid if I tell people about it or seek help that they will see me as these characters, that I will lose what humanity I have and will become nothing but their entertainment. These fears are also not unfounded, I've been bullied for my trauma, lashed out at for criticizing media for the way it harms me, and I have had my triggers mocked in fandom spaces repeatedly. Even people I have and even sometimes do call friends have dismissed my triggers or made me feel deeply unsafe and that has had a huge negative impact on me.When I was a teenager, between 2016 and 2018 specifically, DNIs hadn't gained traction yet so it was a lot harder to curate your space. I made a lot of older friends who were proshippers and I had just left my groomer/abuser so I really hadn't learned very much about what pedophilia was and I hadn't processed my own trauma at all. All of my friends who were my age were being groomed by someone or another, to this day I still feel horrible knowing that my younger friend was coerced into sexually roleplaying with an adult right in front of me and I did nothing about it because I didn't even know that was bad. More times than one there would be some kind of drama and I wouldn't hear from someone in a while until a mutual friend would message me in a lot of concern finding out that said person turned out to be forcing a minor to date them.Friends in their 20s who would often condescend to me but who just as often claimed that they were trying to look after me, that I should feel safe around them, people who repeatedly recognized that I was a child and I was not on their level of maturity would still tell me the details of their sex lives. Nothing was too inappropriate for me, because it would be inconvenient if I were actually treated with the consideration you should with a child.I'd tell people that I was traumatized, that these characters and worlds were my comfort and then they'd proudly turn around and make content of those people being raped, tortured, etc. When I expressed that being an abuse survivor affected the way I perceived media, I would be yelled at because "EVERYTHINGS ABOUT ABUSE WITH YOU >:[", whole adults would stalk my blog to get mad whenever I posted or tell me that I didn't deserve to be on the internet if I was going to annoy everyone with my "issues."All of this affected me and it only added to all of the trauma I already had. Nowadays I don't really use fandom as an escape, I don't post my writing or my art anywhere, and I don't feel safe talking about my interests in most places because I am afraid of reliving these horrible experiences again.The proship community claims to be anti-harassment but they're founded on attacking any survivor that disagrees with them, you will very regularly see them deliberately triggering people, actively grooming minors in real life (and encouraging them to drag other minors into it) and have done nothing at all to address the rampent racism, ableism, and queerphobia in their spaces. They hurt literally everyone including themselves and that is the reason I do not want them to interact with me.If you're a minor who identifies as proship or neutral and you're reading this, please know that I went through this and please believe me when I tell you that you are being groomed by the adults in your community. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you need help, protection, etc. I know it can be really hard to hear bad things about the people you care about but you are %100 being abused a community founded on defending pedophilia is inherently hurtful. Please think on this and stay safe.