Everypony knows Fluttershy as Fluttershy. She has the softest, sweetest, meekest little squeals of fearful shock whenever a leaf touches her, she often doesn't leave her property for days, and her animals hear her voice far more often than her pony friends do. Her friends don't really mind her quirks. After all, they all have their differences; it's part of why they work so well together!
But Fluttershy's "shyness" isn't just a character trait. She has something to tell them, and although mental health isn't a topic that's ever really come up amongst her closest friends, she's quite literally saved all of Equestria with them. Several times. Surely that must mean that they have a strong enough bond for her worst-case fantasies to be absolutely untrue and disproportionately bad?
My only criticism is that she tried to do it with all of her friends at the same time without Doctor Cognitum there. I suspect she'd also find a less interactive means of informing them, like writing a letter.
My personal headcanon will always be Pinkie is depressed, but that's just me.
Thanks for writing. :)
does no one in this fucking town know tact
Okay, there's no way the others would be this tactless. Except maybe Rainbow.
Shoutouts to Harry.
Shoutouts to angel, too.
Is that angel saying that or fluttershy?
This time?
Does those really work?
10612931
1) It's Angel speaking!
2) By "this time," I believe the train of thought I had there was that her emotions were already pretty wild and she was crying because her heart felt wrenched about by those emotions, but the feelings she had been having had to do with anxiety and terror concerning her friends' potential reactions to her disorder. Angel's kind actions affected her much more strongly than they normally would have due to the fact that she was in such a heightened emotional state, but this time, she's crying harder for a good reason!
3) Obviously, there's no real magical one-size-fits-all cure for panic attacks/hyperventilation/etc., but the 4-7-8 breathing technique does, in general, work pretty well (to varying levels of success) for most people!
Its main uses are to help those dissociating to ground themselves within reality, calm down from anxiety or panic attacks, get to sleep, stop hyperventilating, stop stressing so much, and probably more that I'm forgetting right now. The reason that this tends to work is because it forces the person's mind and body to focus on regulating their breath. For example, I've used it while panicking before, and my panic attacks are (usually) triggered by overthinking. Can't overthink if I'm focusing super hard on counting my breaths, because it's really hard to breathe in that pattern with a tight chest and torture myself with nine billion horrible thoughts at once. I have to pick one, and the breathing technique must take priority.
(Sorry for going off on a bit of a tangent; if the author's note didn't tip you off, I'm a big fan of going off on mental health rants
)
10608740
I like to think that Pinkie Pie has ADHD, or possibly narcolepsy (fun fact: the two have a pretty large overlap of symptoms!).
I don't know why neither of those options ever crossed my mind, but looking back, that does seem much more likely! Thank you for commenting
10613458
Mental illness is a really delicate topic, so a lot of people avoid it. The problem is that when people avoid it, mental illness becomes misunderstood. Some one with mental illness needs sympathy, understanding, and support rather than dismissal, mockery, or stigmatization. Like I've had people tell me that I can't have chronic depression because I laughed at something, never realizing that you can learn the social moment to laugh while not feeling happy.
And the thing with Fluttershy's disorder is that it can become so intense that you'd rather DIE than deal with other people. We would never expect someone to physically stand in a fire and be okay with it, but mentally that's what mental illness is like. Suicide is less painful than the stress.
Personally, my pinkie headcanon is she's like Robin Williams. She wants to spread job and happiness, because it makes it easier for her to ignore her own sadness and pain. Many great comedians had issues with depression and other mental illnesses. I would have given props to the show for tackling them in the last pinkie episode. Rather than 'fixing' sadness, acknowledge that sadness is a thing that just happens, sometimes with no reason at all! It's not fixing it. It's not magically making a person normal. It's understanding that this is a part of who they are and deal with it. When I tell my friends I'm having a 'bad day' they don't ask me what happened. They know that it's a day my depression wants me to kill myself.
Anyway, kudos for trying to tackle the subject. It's not an easy one at all.
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Don’t worry, mental health is a serious issue.
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Absolutely. The first step to understanding something is to learn about it. Unfortunately, it seems the glorification of attacking and exiling uninformed people has become more important to a lot of folks than the actual education of said uninformed people. Of course people that don't know anything/much about a topic might say some ignorant things, but if they're talking to someone and asking questions (ignorant or not) about that topic, then that means that they want to learn, and, in theory, want to become less ignorant. How on earth is that going to happen if they're immediately ostracized for accidentally wording something in perhaps not the greatest way?
And I can definitely see that! Especially in Party Of One where she finds that escaping into a fantastical world of "different friends" is easier than dealing with her beliefs that her friends have decided to cut off all contact with her; her wanting to avoid that with parties to give others what she struggles to and/or can't give herself seems pretty spot-on.
That's part of why I appreciate my partner and my best friend so much. I'm usually the friend that's spouting off jokes and being the most active in the Discord server we run, but some days I'm dead silent and only talk in the group chat with the three of us (most often venting about how shitty I feel and/or what C-PTSD flashbacks I've had that day). They offer me just as much conversation and unconditional love and support as they do when I'm cracking jokes every two seconds without ever trying to "fix" me because they know that the best thing to do for me when it's a bad trauma day is to just give me a safe place to scream and let me feel bad.
Thank you for the conversation! I may do other fics like this with the other Main 6, though perhaps in a more positive light (and maybe an alternate chapter for this fic, because I will admit, I did write this at 2am, and depressed bitches and 2am do not mix well).
Just out of curiosity, did you exaggerate Fluttershy's behavior to fit more with the story?
10636686
I suppose the Fluttershy in this fanfic could either be seen as one from an AU, or maybe the Fluttershy that we don't see on the screen. I doubt that Hasbro would write in a scene containing something as...dark, I suppose...as a panic attack, nor would they write in all of the nuances and various traits that define Avoidant Personality Disorder. It may be my cynicism speaking, but I'm sort of glad that they didn't try; I don't exactly have that much faith in mass media's abilities to properly portray mental illnesses, especially those as complex and already widely misunderstood as personality disorders.
My only criticism is that Pinkie sounded out of character. I get that maybe one time she would say something ignorant, but I doubt she would keep going with it if it was making Fluttershy upset.