Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 215: Trauma in the Aftermath
156 Plays9 months ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to the Goblin Lore Podcast!
TW: trauma, PTSD, sexual violence, rape, combat violence, death, social anxiety, depression.
Way back in Episode 2 of the show we discussed what trauma is and how it differs from – but relates to – post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD), and describes the resilience people find to work through a traumatic experience. While we have revisited elements of the topic we are doing so today explicitly in discussing the recent fall out of the War of the Machines and the various trauma responses we have seen. This episode focuses a lot on the topic of avoidance and while definitely a heavier topic, one we find important to discuss.
We also finally have a Linktree with all of our discounts/resources
____________________________________________
As promised, we keep Mental Health Links available every episode. But For general Mental Health the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has great resources for people struggling with mental health concerns as well as their families. We also want to draw attention to this article on stigma from NAMI's site.
If you’re thinking about suicide or just need someone to talk to right now, you can get support from any of the resources below.
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
- Veteran's can Press 1 at anytime to be taken to the Veteran's Line
- Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741-741
- International suicide hotlines: A comprehensive resource list for people outside the US.
- IMAlive: Click Chat Now to access a live online network of volunteers through instant messaging.
- TrevorLifeline, TrevorChat, and TrevorText (LGBTQ+ crisis support): 1-866-488-7386, or text “Trevor” to 1-202-304-1200
- Trans Lifeline (US): (877) 565-8860
____________________________________________
Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle)
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast, and a part of their growing Vorthos content – as well as Magic content of all kinds. Check them out at hipstersofthecoast.com
Recommended
Transcript
Personal Updates and Interests
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello, Podwalkers. And if you're questioning, if you're on the right show, yes, this is HobSkew. I am actually on the recording today, so that's kind of a nice surprise, I guess, for people. So just making light of the fact that I've had to miss a lot lately, which has put a lot of heavy load onto Alex and Taya, which I am very thankful to have co-hosts that can do that for me.
00:00:53
Speaker
So anyway, we are all three here today to return to kind of a heavy topic that we discussed. Well, it's informed a lot of our discussions. We have not discussed it kind of directly, intentionally, since towards the very beginning of the show. But before we jump into some of that heaviness, we're going to introduce ourselves. As I said, I'm Hobbs Q. We can be found wherever I guess you want to look up, Twitter, Blue Sky, those places still at Hobbs Q, still there, hanging on.
00:01:22
Speaker
playing, what is it, the instruments on the deck of the Titanic waiting for the ship to go down. My pronouns are he, him. And our question today is, what are you something that you are looking forward to in the next week, the next month, just something that you have that you're kind of looking forward to? So for me,
00:01:42
Speaker
I, one of the things I've been doing while I've been gone is doing a lot of Lego. And I actually had my first experience of washing Lego. So, Taya and Alex, have you ever done this? I've never had to wash Lego before. So.
00:01:59
Speaker
Yeah, people had joked about it when I started saying I was getting into it. They're like, Oh, yeah, wait until you start doing stuff like that and organizing and sorting. I'm like, whatever. Well, my uncle went and did a bulk buy off of Facebook marketplace. And the person basically was like, Oh, hey, by the way, I have this giant treehouse that's half put together that I'm never gonna finish and just gave it to him. And this treehouse is like, it is massive. It's like 3000 piece treehouse set.
00:02:24
Speaker
The roofs of each of the tree tops of each of the like little areas of it lift up and there's rooms inside. So it has like that modular component where it's kind of like you can see like tiled rooms and like make up a room that you can play in. And then it's also 3000 pieces. It comes with different colored leaves so you can swap them out for the year.
00:02:44
Speaker
So it has like green leaves that has like yellow brown leaves. And then you could actually like we've talked about you could put like the little pink flowers and do like blossoms for spring. So it's really cool, except wherever it had been kept was dusty. And I mean it like layer of dust and grime. So I, like I said, it was like a little over half put together already. I had to completely dismantle it.
00:03:07
Speaker
wash it and then dry all those pieces. But I did that and sorted it today. And I'm really looking forward to this set.
00:03:15
Speaker
I mean, it's really hard to like, like think it's just funny to be like, well, it's free. I'm never going to complain about free. Like, I find myself washing Legos. And people online were giving me tips and tricks for it and everything, which is just amazing. Just not something I ever would have considered. So I'm really looking forward to building that set. I'm working on the DeLorean from Back to the Future right now.
00:03:41
Speaker
which is also really fun. I have not done like a full on car and it's cool to see just like the different things like cars and ships and just how those builds go.
00:03:52
Speaker
But the coolest thing, the Back of the Future car, you can build it in all three configurations from each movie. Oh, very cool. Oh, that's sweet. Like the final, yeah, the final bag has like pieces so that you can choose which, basically which configuration you go with. But one of the things that I just did, it was really cool is the wheels pop out to make the flat wheels. So you can either pop them down and use it as a car or pop them up and fly when he has like, you know, when the car, the wheels go like sideways. Right. Yeah. When you get the hover configuration. Yeah.
00:04:21
Speaker
So that's what I did last night. It has rubber bands and pistons. The cars move. It's wild. So I'm looking forward to doing some more Lego. I've really been enjoying it lately. That's cool. The biggest set I've done, I think, was only around a thousand pieces.
00:04:38
Speaker
which was the pyramids. And that one is that also is the closest to what you're talking about the sort of the modular different loadouts. This one just has two different like nameplates you can put in front of it because there's a little border around it that's kind of like the display. Yeah. And you can either put the great in English the great pyramids of Giza or it has it in hieroglyphics. Oh, you can put that instead. And
Mindfulness and Positivity
00:05:02
Speaker
so I just put both by pulling out some of the just matte black pieces that are there. So it just has both.
00:05:09
Speaker
But that's, yeah, I liked it. You know, a lot of the sets have some kind of modular component to them and it's really cool when you have those options to set it up how you want. Yeah.
00:05:22
Speaker
Suppose I'm Alex found on Twitter for now. I still check in occasionally though. Not very often at Mel underscore chronicler. My pronouns are, are he him? I guess I'll, I'll answer the question for me. Something that I'm looking forward to that is coming up in a couple of weeks is a convention I'm going to for the first time.
00:05:46
Speaker
It is a convention in Washington, D.C. called Awesome Con that a couple friends of mine who live out in the northeast area, northeast of the U.S., because I'm in Minnesota, but they've gone there a few times and really like the con, but it's usually in June. So it's up against sometimes literally the same weekend as the writing convention I go to locally here. But this year they pushed it up to March for some reason, which is really cool for me because I get to go.
00:06:15
Speaker
but also it's way earlier in the season than it used to for cons. So it's been fun the last few weeks just budgeting and like trying to eat cheaper and just save money so that I could go do this con without putting stuff on credit cards and letting it just sit there, which is a habit that I have in years past that I'm trying to break to just
00:06:40
Speaker
get the hotel on a card, pay, and then pay it off after we get the charge on there, so. But that's, I'm looking forward to. It's, from my understanding, a friend of mine, my friend who lives in New York City and goes to Comic-Con there every year, he calls it, he likens it to New York Comic-Con, but says it's much smaller, so I'm looking forward to it. And by much smaller, I think it's like,
00:07:04
Speaker
30, 40, 50,000 or something? I don't know what the actual number is. I know Oticon, which is an anime con I go to. It's about 30 to 35,000 people. Those are really big cons. Which are big cons, but there are no six-digit comic cons. New York Comic Con, I want to say, is over 100. San Diego. San Diego is several hundred, maybe. Oh, yeah. San Diego.
00:07:30
Speaker
Yeah,
Understanding Trauma Through Magic: The Gathering
00:07:31
Speaker
and so I'm looking forward to this, and it'll be really fun to see the same, it's in the same convention center even as Otacon, which is, Otacon's an anime con I go to, usually in August. August, July, it's kind of, it bounces back and forth.
00:07:47
Speaker
that's been in DC for a number of years now and I really like that convention center and it's it's also really close to the mall it's like a mile a couple miles from the national mall so there's just museums and things everywhere so I'm I'm really looking forward to a getting to see those friends of mine who I don't see very often be going down to this convention I've never been to that they really like
00:08:10
Speaker
But also see this is the first time i'm traveling out to dc by myself. For otacon i usually travel with a friend of mine here and we meet up and have a big group. But i usually then fly out thursday right before the con friday so i don't have as much time to just go do stuff. But this year because i'm flying out by myself i'm actually flying out wednesday before the con so i'm going to have some extra time to just
00:08:32
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know what. If I'm looking things up on Google Maps and looking at museums and trying to figure out what I want to kind of how to fill that day, but I'm looking forward to figuring that out, doing some other just cool stuff in DC. I've been there three or four times and done basically none of it.
00:08:49
Speaker
And there's a lot of cool stuff to do there. I lived there almost a decade and I don't like living there, but there's a lot of cool stuff to do while visiting there. Yeah, I don't know if I'd like to live there either, but it is a cool place to visit. At least the times I've been there for some of the stuff that we've gotten. So hi, I'm Taya. Taya transcends on blue sky, pronouns are she, her, they, them.
00:09:13
Speaker
You know, I just mentioned in cons, I'll mention I'm looking forward to I'm going to Emerald City Comic Con for one day. That's in two weekends. I'm looking forward to that. Going with a couple of friends, not doing the all weekend thing. That's just way too much for me. I'm not that big of a comics nerd. So to me, it's more I'm going to go hang with some friends and maybe see a fan panel or something.
00:09:43
Speaker
But the big one I want to highlight is I just booked travel for my little sister to come visit for a week. I haven't seen her since my mom's memorial service a couple of years ago, and she's going to come stay with us for a week. And she hasn't had a vacation in years, so it'll be nice for her to get away from her life for a bit and come visit. So I'm looking forward to that. And that's not for a few months, but it'll be nice for her to get out here for a while and come visit. That's awesome. Yeah, that's really cool.
00:10:14
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So we have, we have some stuff to look forward to. I think it's good to remember that, right? Like that is really important. Yeah. And started on kind of a high note because our topic is a bit of a downer today.
00:10:30
Speaker
Yeah, and I do want to, well, that's sort of fresh to point out that I think we mentioned it last week, but like last week, we opened up with some good things that had happened recently, like this is part of a mindfulness thing that I know you've talked about Hobbs, and I just I want to have that context there for folks. Do you kind of want to explain how you do at Hobbs? Yeah, because I've actually been this has been something that we've been I've been doing a little bit more.
00:10:54
Speaker
with even people online. I've been actually having this conversation and kind of talking about this with people online is that
00:11:04
Speaker
It's an exercise that's called three good things. And it basically is looking at the habits of healthy people or happy people. It's from a project that was called the happiness project. And there's research on this idea that we spend so much time focusing on kind of the negative. And the idea behind this is not to focus on just act like everything's okay. It's just to give some weight to it and to recognize it and accept that there are things that are good that are going on. And so I think that that is something that is really important to
00:11:34
Speaker
highlight. And I think that that's one of the things that I really enjoy about kind of doing this is doing three good things. Doing things that just looking to see if it's been better or just at least giving some weight to those things that we don't always. And Alex, you mentioned kind of like the second half of it. The second half of it is to do something that you are looking forward to. It's to also kind of give yourself something that you can
00:12:01
Speaker
look forward to. And for me, some days, that's as simple as a cup of coffee. It's not always these things like a new Lego set or like you said, a con or something like that. But it is something that it is that you're looking forward to the next day to just kind of give yourself that, that ability to
00:12:18
Speaker
to just look forward to something, so. Yeah. And I know for a while, this is something I've done on and off. I used to do it, try to do it every day. I would do it, usually at work, I'd grab breakfast and then do it, kind of write that down in the morning while I was doing breakfast, write it down in my planner, in a notes thing on my phone.
00:12:37
Speaker
But so it just and I'm sorry to take like you had a great transition going on, but I wanted to stop it all over it because I just think it's important to kind of highlight that this is a nice thing that people can take and use in their lives if this is something you feel like would be helpful for you.
00:12:54
Speaker
and provide a little context as to why this is a nice bookend to last week's opening question where we kind of hit these two questions. We have some kind of mental health topics this week in particular and just kind of nice to highlight that mindfulness technique.
00:13:16
Speaker
So as Tay was saying, we wanted to start with something where we're talking about these kind of positive things. And nice because we have a heavier topic for today's main topic. And this is kind of a little dovetail that will relate to a couple of our more recent episodes. We want to talk about trauma.
00:13:37
Speaker
And right now in magic, that has always been a part of our part of the magic story. You go back like this podcast, our very two, two of our first three episodes were about trauma. We decided to come out of the gate swinging, which is wild. But maybe that I think it showed what we were hoping to do it set up well. And the fact of the matter is that
00:14:01
Speaker
We did. We came out and we talked right away about Gideon and the concept of actual trauma. And so I also wanted to highlight something that I did when we did that episode. When we're talking about trauma in this episode, I may be referring to what I call little trauma, like trauma with a little lowercase t versus trauma with a capital T.
00:14:22
Speaker
When people talk about PTSD, because I think that is really what we're talking about wanting to kind of highlight, you know, what actually that stress disorder, that post-traumatic stress disorder is, it is referring to what we call trauma with a capital T. It's really referring to a specific incident or event in which you thought that your life was either in danger or that you could die.
00:14:44
Speaker
You know, like the common things you'd think of would be something like, you know, everything from a car accident to rape to military combat service. You know, these are the things that kind of jump out, but they're usually trauma is referring to a, like a actual specific event. And it's not to say that things that happen to you that are bad or scary aren't traumatic, but that is really what we're referring to when we're talking about kind of PTSD.
00:15:11
Speaker
There is also complex PTSD, which is really referring to a lot of things like patterns of abuse and talking about things like racism and those societal things that it's not a specific one event, but taken collectively kind of add up.
00:15:28
Speaker
So I just want to highlight that because I do want us to be thinking a little bit about, right? Like if we're talking about PTSD, what that kind of means, I would highly recommend going back to episode two and three, if you haven't and you're interested, we do a lot deeper of a dive into kind of that clinical definition there.
00:15:45
Speaker
Yeah, and it's a topic that comes up a lot, unfortunately. Magic is a game, the game itself, a lot of the story within the cards is about combat. That's something we talk about a lot too. And so that is going to happen. But we have kind of a unique, maybe, situation within that sort of canon, that storyline, very recently with the March of the Machines. And now, everywhere,
00:16:14
Speaker
is suffering trauma at the same time from the same inciting event. Yeah, it's not just isolated to one area or one event. It's everywhere, you know, everything all at once is a way to put it. It's nowhere in the multiverse to escape this unless you're in, you know, sheep country I'll drain like
00:16:39
Speaker
Kellen's family was where somehow they managed to completely avoid the invasion. Yeah. Or the meditation room. Yeah. That's where the complex trauma comes in with the abuse that Nicol Bolas has suffered for years.
00:17:11
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, magic is kind of stories resolve around trauma. We talked about this with, you know, Alex mentioning in our first two episodes, we did one that was just more on like a PTSD, PTSD kind of element. We also did the second one talked a lot about the fact that trauma is a common trope within fantasy and sci-fi writing. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it is because, you know, they tend to resolve, revolve around conflict or
00:17:21
Speaker
Too far, too far.
00:17:42
Speaker
fighting or some kind of event that causes conflict or could cause trauma, but it's different when it's kind of on this interplaner scale where it's not just the participants in the story that are exposed to this, but it's every living being within the setting itself.
00:18:09
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And that sets this up as kind of a unique situation to kind of get to examine some. And I think that is, okay. I think it's really cool that we have this opportunity to do this too. This is a thing Tae and I talked about recently with Seanan when she was on the show, Seanan McGuire, who wrote all of the stories for
00:18:38
Speaker
this recent Ravnica set. So this was an opportunity to get to examine that, at least on one plane with a relative handful of people in this cast, how this trauma affected them and is having aftershocks down the line.
00:19:05
Speaker
That's really cool that we got to do that. That's a thing that the story wouldn't always have had time to examine. You look at far less traumatic like this, but you look at equally, maybe equally large events like the mending, and we didn't really see a whole lot there. We get to see a few, you know, there's a few threads like Nicole Bolus's storyline sort of running on from that, where he had started to create his whole plots because of the consequences of that.
00:19:33
Speaker
But we didn't really examine what happened around the mending in the same way we got to examine what happened to these people on Ravnica because of the Phyrexian invasion. Right. And this is carried on through the stories we've seen so far since the end of the invasion. We saw in Wilds of Eldraine where, you know, the
00:20:00
Speaker
Sleeping sickness and the way that everybody, you know, was going towards resolving that were all steeped in trauma response as well. You know, especially how, you know, how people went to her face. Trying to fix it and. And not doing it in the healthiest of mass and not. And, you know, and we saw that and that is.
00:20:30
Speaker
Not the ideal way to go about it, but also just the fact that, you know, the idea of like, well, maybe this is just better off is, you know, steeped in trauma. And, you know, going into this whole plot and murders at Karloff Manor, the whole idea is that, you know, murdering all these people is justified.
00:20:53
Speaker
is a trauma response itself and murdering people in response to trauma is not a healthy trauma response. It is a trauma response. It's not a healthy one. No, but it is, like you said, it is a method to deal with, right? You take that anger outward if you have the ability to do something about it. Most of us just don't have the ability to start killing people that did bad to us.
00:21:22
Speaker
Yeah. Or, or at least within what we thought they did based on here say through plant, through a plant network. Yeah. Do you want to get into more specifics about this story? I'm just debating how deep do we want to get? I don't know that we want to go too far. Cause we did talk about the story a lot with Sean, but maybe get some high notes. Does that make sense?
00:21:49
Speaker
Yeah, we can talk a little bit about it, or we can also just talk at kind of a high level as... Well, I think this is how it's affected across the multiverse. It is. To me, it's been very interesting. And even the stripping of Planeswalker's sparks is in and of itself kind of like a traumatic event.
00:22:12
Speaker
And we can go look at the aftermath story and just see how that affected Nissa and besides going through the trauma of being fractionized and de-frexinized and then also losing her spark. Yes. Yeah. She is, you know. Not had a good goal of it? No, she has it. And then she started to have some abandonment issues when Chandra went looking for help.
00:22:40
Speaker
And then even though Chandra said, she was like, I'll be right back. And this is like, well, I'm being abandoned here on this plane and I can't do anything about it. And how dare Chandra leave me here. That's true. And that, the de-sparking too, not only, I mean, that is also traumatic, but that is a, in a sense, that is a very, even though it's happened to a bunch of people, it's a very personal trauma.
00:23:07
Speaker
that is happening alongside or happened sort of alongside the much larger one that a lot of other people are suffering. And I don't know if any characters kind of have talked about this specifically, but I could see that being a very lonely thing. I mean, trauma can be anyway and very lonely and isolating, but to have that big thing happen right next to the other big thing that everyone else experienced
00:23:32
Speaker
I mean, I suppose, especially with planeswalkers, you're losing something that most people don't even understand. I think we got a little
Avoidance and Coping Strategies
00:23:39
Speaker
bit of it with Watley and Sahili, where they do talk a little bit about being cut off from everything. And we didn't get enough time in that story to really feel their impact from it.
00:23:55
Speaker
There is a little talk about how they, you know, they're cut off from the hole now. Yeah. And now that I say that, I think with, with, um, murders at, at Karlov Manor and the first, uh, story or two, uh, did Kaya kind of think about that or maybe touch on that a little bit? It wouldn't have been examined a lot, but I want to say she kind of thought about, when she thought about the friends that she lost and things, and that might've touched on, and the friends who are stuck where they're at now.
00:24:25
Speaker
a little bit too. Yeah. It wasn't a huge part of it. No. And even though she can only think about it in the terms of how other people might feel, she can't actually feel it herself. Didn't we get some in Eldraine? I mean, with like one sibling still sparked and one not. Well, or neither of them are sparked. Oh, neither of them. Yeah. But it definitely, um,
00:24:54
Speaker
There's definitely a lot of feeling on Eldraine because why am I just, why are their names just slipping my tongue right now? Rowan just wants to leave and she can't. And it really hits her hard because she can't just up and leave and she wants to. Yeah.
00:25:20
Speaker
She used to be able to, right? And I think, I mean, it's kind of an interesting thing to me. This is a very interesting parallel for avoidance, right? That's what she wants. She wants to lean into the avoidance strategy, which is where most people go kind of after trauma. It's the one in the Hallmark symptoms.
00:25:37
Speaker
Yeah, you know, is is that avoidance piece? And she she had a way to do that. And that's actually what she's mourning is the loss of that. But she also then can't do anything about it. She doesn't know that she goes inside with her evil aunt, which doesn't make good decisions because she doesn't know how. I do love my red, my red impulsive. Girls, but she does not make good choices. Well,
00:26:08
Speaker
I mean, that's the thing that's interesting to me. I think the lack of a spark has been, you know, we wondered what they were going to do with it, right? Like they said, you know, it was really to mix things up. We're still not fully sure because we have the Omen Path. So some people are still traveling, even though they're not. Yeah. I mean, we're going to see Callan in every story, at least for the foreseeable future. Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:35
Speaker
And there's some other movement there too, if you all read the very sort of brief, but fun, like 11th episode or. Oh yeah. That was, if you, that's a cool follow up. We get a little bit more of prof being propped. He.
00:26:57
Speaker
He still shows his gotta be right in front of the most powerful being on Ravnica. I love Atrata kind of just being like, I'm not with him. Atrata's like, you know, my job to keep you alive does not extend to supreme beings, essentially. Right, to be fair. Substantially better survivalistic to him. I'm just glad somebody called Nivel, but. Yeah.
00:27:26
Speaker
But yeah, it may or may not have been the smartest way slash place to do it. Speaking of supreme beings. Supreme beings. But I think that we've seen, right, it is trying to figure out what is
00:27:51
Speaker
What does trauma kind of look like now that more people are maybe experiencing it across the multiverse or at the same time in a similar big event, right? You know, you think of something. Yeah. And you got to look at it like it's not just an individual. It's a society level issue now where if you look at the start of the story, they were having this big party is kind of a way of.
00:28:15
Speaker
you know, moving past, they're trying to get over some societal level trauma. They were trying to say, things are all right. We were, we're good. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, think about like the whole party was basically their Trump response. Well, Oma had a very different version of a Trump response. Right. Yeah. The party was supposed to be like, we're doing okay. Yeah. Everything's okay. Everything's fine. It's like,
00:28:44
Speaker
the dog comic. You know, it's all fine.
00:28:48
Speaker
the world's on fire around us, but we're still going to have parties. I mean, to me, though, this is kind of like society as we've been, you know, we've been in a collective trauma. And I mean, there's a lot of good discussion about, you know, like, you know, with pandemics and everything else, you know, there's the joke about, you know, especially the younger generation being like, I'm fine with my generation not having another once in a generation thing happen to them because they're all happened in the last, like, you know, 12 years.
00:29:18
Speaker
We are kind of living in a society where we are collectively having trauma responses to things. We don't know what's the appropriate way to act. Yeah. And you're seeing a lot of avoidance in that too. Just in general, because there's a level of just survival, if that makes sense. I don't know if I...
00:29:43
Speaker
that totally makes sense. But sometimes you do need to just find something else. Like we kind of opened up with that, that mindfulness. Sometimes you just need to find that balance for yourself. Where you're like, where you disengage from the thing.
00:29:58
Speaker
And it doesn't resolve those issues. It doesn't make them go away, but you need that break for yourself. So this is where I really want to connect. It's good that you brought this up, Alex, because this was something that I was just thinking about when we're talking about like, how do we, you know, what, how do we find enjoyment in society the way that it is right now?
00:30:18
Speaker
I feel like there's times when people… I'm in favor of that. But I mean there is kind of that element that it almost feels like you get shamed at times for doing things that you enjoy doing, right? Like it's almost like, well, how could you do that when X is going on in the world?
00:30:39
Speaker
You mentioned like everybody needs to be able to unplug or disconnect in some ways. And I think that this is where the highlight comes into me between coping strategies and avoidance. So avoidance is almost like there isn't an intentionality to it. Avoidance is just something where we've talked about where you start staying away from one thing because that thing reminds you of the trauma. And then pretty soon you have to start avoiding something that
00:31:08
Speaker
would remind you of what was going to remind you and your world starts narrowing and narrowing. And the idea with avoidance is you become unable to really like leave, right? I mean, that's the idea is like people get trapped in their houses or they're not able to go into social situations or they're not able to grocery shop or do whatever they can because they've been avoiding. And so they're never having to feel uncomfortable. So when they put themselves in those situations, it's unbearable, right? It's such a high degree of anxiety.
00:31:35
Speaker
Not like choosing to do something different with an intentionality is different than avoidance.
00:31:44
Speaker
You're still not dealing with the consequences. You're not dealing with the thing head on, but there is an awareness of what you are doing and choosing to do something else instead. And you're not saying, I'm never going to do X, Y, and Z, or I'm not going to, you know, like it's, there isn't that like silent killer part of it where it just is creeping up on you and you all of a sudden realize all the things you are no longer doing.
00:32:08
Speaker
I mean, talking about avoidance, that is what happened with me with my social anxiety. Before I even really knew that was a thing, before I had talked, I hit a point where I had been avoiding more and more and my world was narrowing and narrowing.
00:32:28
Speaker
And then I had an anxiety attack one morning. And after that, go into the hospital, realize I'm fine. I thought I was struggling to breathe. And after going through all those sort of steps, I realized like, no, I need to talk to someone to find a therapist, somebody to talk to from that angle. And that's what got my diagnosis.
00:32:56
Speaker
uh, helped me to, to learn about that and about myself and kind of move forward from there. But that was that, so this is, this is the difference between sort of avoidance and, and, um, sorry, what was the other word you were using for that? Well, like a coping strategy where you're actually doing something purposely different, right? And that, that difference is something that I've, I've had to be, or tried to be very mindful of in my own life because I tried.
00:33:24
Speaker
Do or do not. There is no try. Your degree of success with it may not be. Yes. Well, it is a thing that I intend to do, but the problem with intention and the problem with wanting to do a thing doesn't mean you're always going to do it. No, it doesn't. But yeah, I want to be mindful of when am I avoiding something versus when am I intentionally
00:33:54
Speaker
not engaging with it as a coping mechanism. I'm not always going to catch myself, but because I'm trying to watch for this, because it is a thing I'm watching for, maybe I miss it sometimes, but because it's a thing I'm watching for, I will catch it much more often and much more quickly than I would if I wasn't paying attention to it. Yeah. Then you did previously. I mean, that ended up... Yeah, it usually takes enough.
00:34:22
Speaker
Well, I don't know about 27. It's definitely, you know, like, if you think about if you had a timeline for it, I'm sure that at some point you started noticing a pullback, like once you retrospectively did it. Yes, still years, but still years of life at that point. But it was, it was years and years. But yes, that that's, that's a good point. But so yeah, this is
00:34:49
Speaker
I don't know, sorry, I thought I had a thought there, but I think we covered that sort of difference. That was something that I definitely wanted to point out, but you have the experience and knowledge, you have the language more precise than kind of the concepts that I have in my head. I mean, I think that's, as you're saying, Alex, you may have the idea in your head. I'm doing my best to put it into words because this is, avoidance is one of the hallmark symptoms of almost all mental health that I work on with people. And it is,
00:35:16
Speaker
it's really like not living a life worth living. It's not having that purpose and meaning or that intentionality because you start you start once you start avoiding you pretty soon you're avoiding things that are valued. I am so good at avoiding stuff. Is it because it doesn't take a ton of effort to avoid? Yeah, it's it's so habitual for me.
00:35:41
Speaker
It is a thing that I did for so long for so many various things. I will find myself avoiding things by habit that I don't, when I think about it, like, why am I even avoiding this? But I just do it because your brain, it does the thing enough times it goes along that same pathway. And that's part of why I have to have so much intentionality around it. Because if I'm not paying attention, I will just start avoiding things for no real reason.
00:36:10
Speaker
Totea, you were saying you're really good at avoidance. I am. Yeah, I have to intentionally not avoid things if I really don't want to because it's so easy for me to kind of to shell up and just cut everything out and not want to engage and not want to do things. And, you know, it's like
00:36:37
Speaker
For me, it's easier to just say, no, I don't need to do that. I don't wanna do that. And instead I have to, if I do wanna do something, I need to be intentional about putting myself out there and doing it because otherwise I am gonna default to avoiding it. And it's easy for me to just,
00:37:05
Speaker
sit by myself and stare at my phone and not do anything. If our goal is to not feel, which a lot of times is what ends up happening, I'd say, you know, it's to stay away from feeling unhealthy, unhelpful things. It's to avoid, it's to stay away from, it's to not feel or think about traumatic experiences. Avoidance is a very, very good coping strategy.
00:37:33
Speaker
And by that, I mean that it's very effective at making us not feel horrible. The reason that avoidance...
00:37:41
Speaker
is so common is because it is very effective. If something makes me feel anxious, if I don't do it, I won't feel anxious or I start to feel anxious. So I leave it. My anxiety goes back down to zero, right? Like we're maybe not down to zero, but it lessens considerably. If I start thinking about going out and doing something and I think about, okay, well, you know, what if this triggers
00:38:06
Speaker
X, Y, and Z. You remember last time you went and did this, this happened. And pretty soon you're just anticipating what's going to not go well or how it's going to be horrible. Avoidance works. You just, you decide not to go out and do the thing. Your anxiety will naturally kind of come down. It is. It works in this short term. Avoidance works. I mean, that's the hard part about all of this.
00:38:36
Speaker
But as the point you made earlier, one of the downsides, if you will, to it is that if it's unintentional, if it's just sort of habitual for myself, then you're avoiding thing A, but then you start to avoid thing B because it's kind of like thing A, and then you avoid thing C because it's kind of like thing B, which is kind of like thing A, which is what really makes you anxious.
00:39:05
Speaker
It's not really addressing the root cause. I mean, depending on what you were talking about trauma, you're not necessarily going to address societal level traumas, but there could be more healthy ways to cope with those issues or to cope with the circumstances. Then avoiding everything all the time and then you're not having any fun and everything's just kind of miserable.
00:39:35
Speaker
I mean, so we end up, right? Like that's, that's where we end up. We, we end up in the long term, right? And that's the problem is by the time we've done that, the damages is usually pretty intense and severe. It can be relationships that we've damaged in those things. The hard part is crawling out of avoidance is also an incredible amount of work because the effects of it are much longer term and longer lasting.
00:40:04
Speaker
I mean, think about this with substances. I mean, this is one
Societal Trauma and Recovery
00:40:06
Speaker
of the things we talk about because there's a lot that is a void that, you know, one of the predominant reasons that people overuse or use to degrees that they probably don't want to is because they don't want to feel things or they don't want to think about things. And the substance can oftentimes help with that. The hard part is the negative consequences of overuse of a substance usually takes quite a long time to happen.
00:40:29
Speaker
You could use for a very long time without ending up in a point where you've kind of quote unquote hit rock bottom. No, it's, I think, and it's especially true when you use socially as, you know, um, because a lot of times that is, that is your social hookup to until that falls apart. Yeah. And kind of, you know, when you look at this broader scope, it's.
00:40:59
Speaker
You know, and you got to look at the scope of, we've talked about how kind of how we deal or how individuals deal with this kind of like level of trauma. And a lot of it is in negative terms and a lot of avoidance and, you know, I'm surprised. And I know they're not going to illustrate this in a game, but.
00:41:24
Speaker
You think, you know, after a trauma like this, is that there, there wouldn't be more of almost like a societal shutdown in some cases or.
00:41:36
Speaker
some real backlash on how, you know, and just in society operating and you can see it, you know, I think even just with the pandemic and how it's reorganized a lot of ways and like how people work and stuff like that. And that, that isn't even a, anything on the magnet, you know, it was a white scale
00:41:57
Speaker
you know, low tier traumatic experience, nothing on the scale of like the Frexian invasion, but it did change a lot about how people work. And, you know, a lot of people did die and it changed a lot of things about how we interact with each other. Um, we're still living with it and we're still dealing with it every day. And it's.
00:42:21
Speaker
And even that level of change has significantly changed society in four years. And you'd have to think of what level something like the phyrexian invasion would have on a society like Ravnica.
00:42:38
Speaker
Given, you know, especially that we have two guilds that are essentially AWOL at this point, although, you know, the Demir, the Demir is still there. Lazov got his card, you know, no matter, no matter what they say.
00:43:03
Speaker
It's retired. He wanted a retirement. Yeah. The Demir being AWOL was like part of the plot of the original draft to get novels. People didn't really know they were there to begin with. And now it's like, oh, I guess we're here right now. It's like, traumatic thing. Let's just use this to say we're, we don't exist anymore.
00:43:21
Speaker
But yeah, you just think about the change to our language and how we talk about things and events and stuff. Even in circumstances where people are quote unquote, back to normal and not really doing anything different now than they would have four years ago, it still has changed the context of all of those conversations. It has changed the context and the language of all of that stuff, let alone the people who are continuing to follow some practices to try to keep themselves and others safe.
00:43:50
Speaker
And that is, like you say, is relatively small compared to an interplanner invasion the way that the Phyrexian invasion was.
00:44:03
Speaker
and how that would just warp and we get to see that in a good amount of detail actually for this story in at least this one world. We have this plane that is built around the guilds and now some of them are missing. They all fill very significant niches within the society and 20% of that is sort of missing.
00:44:26
Speaker
then you have within a different one of those guilds, this trauma response and someone who has a position of influence and the ability to act in a way that most people do not, or an ability to act with impact in a way most people do not,
00:44:44
Speaker
what they did with it and how that is going to have implications and ramifications for the whole of the society. In the beginning, I want to say there was conversation about how the faith and the guilds is at a pretty low point now. What's this going to do to that?
00:45:04
Speaker
Sorry, I'm still just struck by the fact that this is what it took for our lack of faith in the guilds. From the point of view of an average Ravnican, you're doing your thing and is it making coffee and all these people are delivering water?
00:45:24
Speaker
We never saw the aftermath of that. We get a little bit of that in here, honestly. The War of the Spark and the Phyrexian invasion being led by planeswalkers makes a lot of people who didn't know that they exist suddenly know that these things... To be fair, I mean, as much as they beat up, you know, kind of...
00:45:54
Speaker
call it, you know, made the war of the sparks on all this big thing though. It was like 12 hours on one night. That's the joke. A large kerfuffle of the spark. Yeah. Yeah. Is that what Spice said when they were on the show? It was on the show. That's what it said when it was on the show. It was like not a battle or the war. It was only 12 hours.
00:46:16
Speaker
Yeah. Didn't say like 12 hours was the most generous reading of like, yeah, the timeline or something. Yeah. There was a lot of there was a lot of decimation in those 12 hours that the average in one district in one district on Ravnica most of Ravnica did not know anything happened at all. Yes. This is good to know that I did not I did not realize that.
00:46:44
Speaker
And a lot of that destruction was in the guild plaza stuff too, wasn't it? Yeah, it was all around the guild plaza. The African citizen is actually excited because the guilds got taken down a notch.
00:46:59
Speaker
I'm just saying, I already had shaken faith in the guilt. Yeah. Well, we know you have it because you're a crinkly sim. I just want open revolution in our only like, like Western European world. Like I just want open revolution. Yeah. And one thing that maybe because just the way that I'm a nerd for stories that
00:47:23
Speaker
The players, I want to point out, but the players had a vastly different perspective of Ravnican society than the average Ravnican would. Something to keep in context. The way I could see it, if you're an average Ravnican, the whole War of the Spark thing could have been basically played off as like one bad Izzet experiment gone wrong.
00:47:47
Speaker
Well, it's Ravnica is a planet wide city. If it only if it took place during 12 hours, many of those people would have slept through the entire river. Oh, man, I wish 12 hours. That sounds amazing. The vast majority of it. Maybe you know, you're waking up and having breakfast around the time it all wraps up. So it's just like, I would I will say I would be very pissed if I got up and went to go to my favorite coffee shop.
00:48:16
Speaker
on Raptika and just wasn't there. Yeah, I'd be very angry. So I get it. And you'd start to not have a great opinion of Plants Walkers, maybe. Oh, my gosh. I'm just, you know, yeah.
00:48:36
Speaker
I will say one thing I wanted to kind of you know is we're kind of wrapping up discussing a little bit of this is to also highlight that the typical response to trauma is to return to you know kind of to recover like the actual natural just even two things like
00:48:55
Speaker
sexual trauma, even for things like combat, the rates are still fairly low to really develop this full PTSD. It's not to me not to pay attention to it, not to, you know, ignore it, not to kind of attempt to do things to better, like to help yourself. It is to just say though, you know, this hopeful thing is most people are pretty resilient. People do recover.
00:49:19
Speaker
I think that's one of the things that I always just want to come back to is the vast majority of people are very resilient. Humans are fantastically resilient. They shouldn't have to be. It'd be nice if there was some sense of justice and a greater purpose and meaning for
00:49:34
Speaker
You know, bad things happening in our society, but most people have still go about their day today. They still do live their lives and kind of because we have to. And I think that is something that's important to remember is I do struggle, as I said earlier on with this idea that, you know, like there's certain elements of being on.
00:49:55
Speaker
social media and Twitter in particular times, it really does feel like you need to feel guilty if you are enjoying things. And I think that that's actually kind of a bummer just because you enjoy. So like this happened with, you know, me showing excitement over the Sheldon secret lair. And I get called a shill for a company that is profiting off of a dead man. Like,
00:50:20
Speaker
less than two hours after I post, just excitement about something. This is weird odd societal behavior. People
Reflections and Future Narratives
00:50:30
Speaker
need to understand that there are multiple things that could be happening and you do need to find enjoyment. You need to find the things that are important to you and that you can still enjoy. For me, that's for me.
00:50:40
Speaker
And screw those people, that secret layer is dope and it's great that they're raising money for a good charity. He worked directly on it. Yeah. Yeah. I'll admit, I know I'm close to the issue, but yeah. Yeah. And multiple things can be true at the same time, but he worked with him. Multiple things, Alex, you know me and Mike, you know how I love them.
00:51:07
Speaker
One more thing I want to mention is, and I think Sean had mentioned it, is that they're not going to keep bringing the trauma dump into the story. You know, they're going to move on from mentioning the trauma and every story going because they do have to move on at some point. I don't know if it's going to continue through this current three story arc or if we're going to start. Seeing some movement away with the outlaw junction. Yeah.
00:51:37
Speaker
But, uh, yep, that's a good, a good call. I didn't like, we'll probably see some, some echoing ramifications, but I'm sure we'll continue to see ramifications because it's such a big change, but.
00:51:50
Speaker
We're not going to see the focus that we have in the last year. Yeah. Like everything having to be tied back to it. Yeah. And it's, it's great. I think it's really good that we've got what we have. It's so good. We get this, Hey, we got this much story, but that they put gave that much space to this story in particular.
00:52:15
Speaker
With strong writers, like the writers that we trust to handle that. I mean, I know I didn't get to be on with Sean. But that was important to me, right? Like the way that she wrote a lot of the stuff to do with mindfulness-based elements around Kaya. You know, the notes I had saved in my phone for that around just not even just burnout but grief.
00:52:37
Speaker
that had writers that I think were able to tap into that in a way that we needed to let breathe for a while. It doesn't mean we need to stay there forever, as you guys are, as you're saying. And. Kaya is going to go have her vacation on Kaldheim with Tyvar. I'm so jealous. They're going to go fishing and.
00:53:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I just remember there was a thread that basically was like, and Tyvar is going to get her laid because he'll definitely know which people to like send her to. Yeah, right. Yeah. Like, well, this person's going to be wanting to talk a little bit too much. So don't go to them. Yeah. Yeah. That was great. So yeah. So we hopefully will have some less heavy topics coming up, I guess.
00:53:30
Speaker
I don't know when we've exploded is hopefully having Chase's triumphant return to the show. So that could be fun. Great to have them back. Yeah. Just thank you all. And we'll talk to you soon. Yeah. And if you're going to Chicago this week, I hope you have a lot of fun. Bummed I'm not going to be there, but I hope you enjoy it if you're going to be in Chicago this weekend.
00:53:54
Speaker
Take lots of photos of Gavin's unknown event cards because I need to see them. Yeah, I know. I'm so much FOMO for that. That's like the thing that I've done. Yeah. Yeah. So have fun this weekend, y'all. Bye. And that's our show for today. You can find all of the hosts on Twitter for now. Hobbs can be found at HobbsQ, Tay can be found at Tayatransense, and Alex can be found at Mel underscore Chronicler.
00:54:24
Speaker
Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to the Goblin Lord Pod on Twitter or email us at goblinlordpodcast at gmail.com.
00:54:33
Speaker
If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood Gob's Hugs, our link tree can be found on our Twitter account and in the description of today's show. This has everything from various discount codes to the link from our Patreon. The music for today's show was by Wintergotten, who can be found at vintergotten at bandcamp.com. The art was done by Steven Raphael, who can be found at Steve Ruffle on Twitter. Gob and Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing forthos content.
00:55:01
Speaker
Check them out on Twitter at hipsters MTG or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.