votedmostcheerful
Bronze Member
I am just piecing this whole puzzle together as I am newly diagnosed with C-PTSD yet have been struggling for at least 20 years if not all 46. I was reflecting last night (as I could not sleep -1st night on Effexor) on the affirming and illuminating posts on this site. One thread was about social anxiety related to PTSD with a poster discussing going to a party and the difficulty engaging in small talk with "normals". This resonated with me so strongly (while painful) I really got a kick out of the term "normals". How clever!
This got me to thinking about this.... Are we not sort of Super-Normals? Who of us has not dodged speeding bullets, encountered evil villains, fought never-ending battles and faced insurmountable obstacles. Yet, we are unstoppable, irrepressible and sometimes ungovernable. Right?!
In Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us about Ourselves and Our Society, Danny Fingeroth examines the remarkablability that every hero that seems to enter into public consciousness has experienced some significant form of trauma in his or her life that has practically defined them, a trauma that serves to motivate them in their lives as superheroes (Batman and Spider-Man serve, of course. as the perfect examples), traumas to which they are, and will always be, unable to reconcile themselves or fully resolve. But though both Batman and Spider-Man will, out of necessity, never be able to reconcile their respective traumas, they do, in fact, manage to live with them.
Danny Fingeroth posits that Superhero characters are written the way people in society WANT to see themselves....Are we not like Clark Kent bumbling around Lois Lane and the other "normals" feeling different from them because we have a secret..... Our secret being that we are different. We have seen evil, battled it and still have the strength to rescue others from burning buildings and help cats out of trees. Is it possible that in fact, they are "normals" and we are "Super-Normals......Heroes"? Maybe a responsibility of being a super-hero is learning when danger is truly eminent enough to warrant jumping into the phone booth!
This got me to thinking about this.... Are we not sort of Super-Normals? Who of us has not dodged speeding bullets, encountered evil villains, fought never-ending battles and faced insurmountable obstacles. Yet, we are unstoppable, irrepressible and sometimes ungovernable. Right?!
In Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us about Ourselves and Our Society, Danny Fingeroth examines the remarkablability that every hero that seems to enter into public consciousness has experienced some significant form of trauma in his or her life that has practically defined them, a trauma that serves to motivate them in their lives as superheroes (Batman and Spider-Man serve, of course. as the perfect examples), traumas to which they are, and will always be, unable to reconcile themselves or fully resolve. But though both Batman and Spider-Man will, out of necessity, never be able to reconcile their respective traumas, they do, in fact, manage to live with them.
Danny Fingeroth posits that Superhero characters are written the way people in society WANT to see themselves....Are we not like Clark Kent bumbling around Lois Lane and the other "normals" feeling different from them because we have a secret..... Our secret being that we are different. We have seen evil, battled it and still have the strength to rescue others from burning buildings and help cats out of trees. Is it possible that in fact, they are "normals" and we are "Super-Normals......Heroes"? Maybe a responsibility of being a super-hero is learning when danger is truly eminent enough to warrant jumping into the phone booth!
