ϡ 〰 ➳

You've broken your chains—
—but are you really f r e e ?

🐦

Indie | Selective | Private
Clint Barton
aka Hawkeye

MCU-based w/ minor 616
Canon-divergent

EST. Oct 22 2014
Written by Skyler




antimana:

Role playing and mutual writing and such can be wonderful stress relievers. They can be (an important) part of cognitive behaviour therapy. They can help you practice and hone writing and even language.  They can be an escape from physical and/or mental pain.

However, when you are role playing and mutual writing with someone else, it’s important to remember the following; that person is not your therapist.  Even if you use the writing as part of a kind of therapy, unless you are writing with your actual therapist/psychologist/etc., you are not writing with someone who is responsible for your personal mental well-being. 

A couple of years ago, a person became so fixated on my character and the (admittedly) intense emotional role playing we did that they started a transference on to me, personally. She started requesting, then demanding that I take on an ‘in real life’ role like the one my character had for hers. Subsequently, I stopped playing the character. 

Another person, who used role playing as ‘an escape’  blamed me for her mental breakdown, because I chose to stop playing my character.  It haunts me, remembering the message ‘this is what I use to get over the death of my father and you’re taking it away from me!’.  Even when I explained my personal well-being and safety were at stake, this person made me feel responsible that i was ‘setting back’ her ‘therapy’. I was the ‘bad guy’. 

It’s a frightening and impossible position to be put into. At best, it’s unfair. At worst, it’s emotionally abusive. I’ve been role playing online for nearly 20 years, 4 of those years on Tumblr.  This is not a new problem, as I’ve seen it all the time, and I’m just talking about one instance this has occurred to me personally. It’s not the first, last, or only time it’s happened.  

And what strikes me s it being even worse is that some grown adults role play like this and make these demands on their writing partners when said writing partners may be teenagers or young adults. Putting that kind of pressure on someone who has yet to figure out their own lives is both a horrible idea and a horrible thing to do.

The bottom-line is this: It’s the writing that supposed to be cathartic, not the person you’re writing with.  If you can’t separate the two, then what you’re doing is creating a co-dependency, and that takes something that can be a good ‘stress relief’ and turns it into something not safe or healthy at all. 

【 ✕ 】 ● 【 ✕ 】● 【 ✕ 】●【 ✕ 】 ●【 ✕ 】