Fighting through trauma?

[123456789blaaa]

We're in a bit of a sticky situation in one of the games I participate in. Our character swore to serve and guard an important person. However, while we were guarding her, an outside agent made us flashback to a place where we were raped and defiled by demons. We failed the willpower roll and terror overcame us causing us to abandon our charge. Now we're only partially in control of our character and will need some lucky rolls if we choose to try and go back.

Does anyone have any tips for the character to aid in overcoming the fear? Any techniques? We're one of the most favoured champions of our goddess so we're probably going to pray to her. Thinking of our family and how we have to survive to get back to them is another. I'm not sure of what else to do though.

[Anxe]

Did you mean actual tips for how people overcome fears or system specific tips? Because we'd need to know the system for that... I know a few actual tips from my psych class in high school, but someone else here might know even more.

[JW86]

Sounds dark.

Without being too realistically psychoanalytical of the horribly twisted flashback you described, (i.e. being psychologically broken, tormented, PTSD, whimpering away never to return)...

Transform the horror of it into motivation to kick ass.

They did that? Those bastards..

Go through the pain and horror of it to the point to feeling absolute righteous fury at these abominations, smite them down forever so that no creature may ever suffer such horrible treatment, the evil must die.

[123456789blaaa]

Did you mean actual tips for how people overcome fears or system specific tips? Because we'd need to know the system for that... I know a few actual tips from my psych class in high school, but someone else here might know even more.

The former. Though I can easily go into more detail on the system, setting, and situation if it would help.

Sounds dark.

Without being too realistically psychoanalytical of the horribly twisted flashback you described, (i.e. being psychologically broken, tormented, PTSD, whimpering away never to return)...

Transform the horror of it into motivation to kick ass.

They did that? Those bastards..

Go through the pain and horror of it to the point to feeling absolute righteous fury at these abominations, smite them down forever so that no creature may ever suffer such horrible treatment, the evil must die.

Precisely the kind of thing I'm looking for. Thank you.

[McBars]

We're in a bit of a sticky situation in one of the games I participate in. Our character swore to serve and guard an important person. However, while we were guarding her, an outside agent made us flashback to a place where we were raped and defiled by demons. We failed the willpower roll and terror overcame us causing us to abandon our charge. Now we're only partially in control of our character and will need some lucky rolls if we choose to try and go back.

Does anyone have any tips for the character to aid in overcoming the fear? Any techniques? We're one of the most favoured champions of our goddess so we're probably going to pray to her. Thinking of our family and how we have to survive to get back to them is another. I'm not sure of what else to do though.

Well trauma like that is treated with a combination of long-term therapy and medicine.

But since years of office visits and working with psychiatric health care professionals sounds incredibly boring and impractical in a d&d setting, I would roll with some sort of Divine intervention via your goddess or other magic

[JW86]

Precisely the kind of thing I'm looking for. Thank you.

Welcome.

So it starts with a frozen fear, denial... but as the fear locks in more and more and the horror is felt without denial, the beginnings of a tear form.. the beginning of grief.. through opening the floodgates to the grief, the character's emotion begins to flow, transforming from a flood of grief into an unstoppable force of righteous fury.

[Milodiah]

A big bonus to the above is convincing the other characters that what you experienced will keep happening to other people if you don't do anything to stop it. You'll notice that most of the movements for preventing rape/abuse/bullying/gang violence/etc have the founder who says 'This happened to me in the past and I don't want anyone to ever suffer it again'.

[daremetoidareyo]

Ceremonies and cleansing rituals should offer a psychological catharsis.

[HolyCouncilMagi]

For perhaps a more unique approach that can open up into a can of conflict later, try having your characters bury it. Most of the time, "burying your fears and problems" is something reserved for starting in the backstory and being solved in play, because it's a generally negative thing to be fixed rather than a proper heroic response, but what's stopping them from going into and staying in denial about their feelings? It might be lame if all the characters do this, but there's a sort of tragic realism to a character deciding that what he's feeling isn't worth acknowledging to the detriment of what he has to do and turning himself, slowly but surely, into a jumpy, emotionally-bottled, and cold warrior, hiding the feelings that made him run away but losing himself in the process.

Hey, it may not be heroic, it may not be badass, and it may not be uplifting, but I'd say any DM that would allow righteous fury to push through the darkness should also allow cancelling out the darkness of fear and doubt with a bigger darkness of self-denial and a (warped and badly-handled but genuine) drive to improve oneself through ignoring their negative emotion rather than confronting it. Sort of a "go away fear and loathing, I don't have time to deal with my emotions, the others need me so I'm going to pretend you're not there LALALALA" shtick that leaves the emotional can of worms ready to be opened again for more juicy conflict later.

[kardar233]

Yeah, I've had plenty of characters go through really brutal trauma like this in-game, and if they're rendered immediately non-functional by the experience (like in this case), they generally go two ways: either they stay non-functional until they can find something to hold onto and bring themselves back up, or they push the issues aside to keep doing what they're doing.

The second option is quite interesting because it gives you the chance to illustrate the effects of having that trauma eating away in the back of their mind until they finally have to (or are forced to) face it, either by coming around to it themselves or by having someone else show them the damage that not dealing with their trauma is doing.

[Slipperychicken]

We're in a bit of a sticky situation in one of the games I participate in. Our character swore to serve and guard an important person. However, while we were guarding her, an outside agent made us flashback to a place where we were raped and defiled by demons. We failed the willpower roll and terror overcame us causing us to abandon our charge. Now we're only partially in control of our character and will need some lucky rolls if we choose to try and go back.

If I remember anything from anime, the solution is to scream a lot, replace your lost arm with a metal cannon-hand, get an even bigger sword, and learn how to fight demons better.

[Milodiah]

If I remember anything from anime, the solution is to scream a lot, replace your lost arm with a metal cannon-hand, get an even bigger sword, and learn how to fight demons better.

Or replace it with a chainsaw and do pretty much the same thing.

[Sartharina]

Or replace it with a chainsaw and do pretty much the same thing.

He said Anime, not Evil Dead.