(This is a continuation of our discussion about this post about Pearl’s behavior, to which I originally replied: “This could easily be an example of dissociation, which is a common reaction to severe trauma and a symptom of PTSD. The behaviors exhibited ans described here are totally consistent – numbness, confusion, single-mindedness, inability to act, a feeling of loss of identity. Pearl is pretty heavily coded as being mentally ill, and all of this fits in with both her history and her other behavior.” fairymascot asked me to publish my response.)
[First, a disclaimer: I’m not a mental health professional yet, and I’m also not Rebecca Sugar, so I can’t say for certain that any of this was her explicit intention. However, this is my interpretation of what we’ve seen. TRIGGER WARNING in the commentary below for discussion of trauma, death, and suicidal behavior.]
So, the first thing you have to understand is that trauma and people’s reactions to it rarely make straightforward sense. Someone can experience a major trauma and be fine, and then later have something more minor happen to them and that’s what “breaks” their ability to handle it and results in the development of post-traumatic symptoms. Triggers can be almost completely nonsensical – for example, if someone witnessed their best friend being murdered in their home, they might be triggered by pistachios, which were on the counter before the murder, but not by guns, the actual murder weapon. This is one of the reasons people have “silly”-seeming triggers – the brain makes weird, random associations that often don’t make logical sense. Trauma is not simple, and people can react to it in ways that really seem strange if you don’t understand the situation.
This is particularly true in cases where a person has experienced multiple different traumas, or long-term trauma, primarily characterized by creating a situation in which the sufferer is trapped, or feels trapped – as though there’s no escape (for example, long-term abuse of some kind, repeated assaults which feel like a pattern/cycle that the sufferer can never get away from, being abused and then later being assaulted, being a prisoner of war, etc). In these cases, people can develop what we call complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or cPTSD. (More info here: https://outofthefog.net/CommonNonBehaviors/CPTSD.html ) Unlike “standard” PTSD, which usually develops after a singular distinct/unrepeated trauma (a terrible car crash, a loved one dying in front of you, being mugged by someone with a gun, etc), cPTSD results in changes on the level of the personality – as in, this the sufferer doesn’t just experience symptoms on the surface level, but their entire personality shifts or, in the event of trauma early in life, becomes shaped by their experience of the trauma.
So let’s look at Pearl. Assuming the caste theory is right, we know about three distinct traumas in her life: her early life being considered a “lower being” (which, regardless of whether or not this is a “cultural thing,” is as undoubtedly abusive and damaging as slavery and caste systems in real life), the War(s), and Rose’s death. The first two are ongoing, and the final is a singular event. A caste system is, from within, unescapable, a fact of life; the War(s) likely lasted hundreds or thousands of years, and Pearl couldn’t leave; even Rose’s death, which they must have known was coming in the months before Steven was born (Rose knew she was going to die, which is why she made the video for Steven; I find it unlikely she hid this from everyone else and just disappeared without explanation), must have felt like an impending doom that Pearl couldn’t prevent, reinforcing her beliefs in her own helplessness, worthlessness, lack of agency, etc. This is more than sufficient (even if we eventually abandon the caste theory) to result in a raging case of cPTSD.
So what would cPTSD make a person like?
“People who suffer from C-PTSD may feel un-centered and shaky, as if they are likely to have an embarrassing emotional breakdown or burst into tears at any moment. They may feel unloved – or that nothing they can accomplish is ever going to be “good enough” for others. People who suffer from C-PTSD may feel compelled to get away from others and be by themselves, so that no-one will witness what may come next. They may feel afraid to form close friendships to prevent possible loss should another catastrophe strike. People who suffer from C-PTSD may feel that everything is just about to go “out the window” and that they will not be able to handle even the simplest task. They may be too distracted by what is going on at home to focus on being successful at school or in the workplace.”
Yeah, that sounds a lot like Pearl, doesn’t it? She has a desperate need to be in control of her environment, she gets panicky at small disruptions and setbacks, she feels worthless and weak, when she “gets like this,” as Amethyst put it in Rose’s Scabbard, she frantically runs away and hides; in Pearl’s mind, just about everything is a huge disaster waiting to happen, and when it does, the whole world is going to end.
So now that we have a clear picture of the situation, I’ll answer your questions about dissociation. Sorry that was so long, but it’s a context thing!
“would her episodes most likely stem from the trauma of rose’s death, or the war? and does it make sense for them to be primarily linked to rose (triggered by memories of her and characterized by fixating exclusively on her), or would they be a more general thing?”
This is complicated. It could be either, or both, or a combination of these things and her underlying feelings of worthlessness and lack of agency. From what we’ve seen, anything to do with Rose is a primary trigger. Regardless of how healthy or unhealthy Pearl and Rose’s relationship actually was (signs point toward pretty unhealthy, regardless of either party’s intentions), Pearl saw Rose as her savior, her protector, her purpose and meaning in life. Rose is the one who gave her permission to be a person and not just a thing, who freed her from her Homeworld-enforced caste; Rose was her entire purpose for existing! Pearl was Rose’s knight, her guardian; protecting and serving Rose was what Pearl built her entire life and persona around. Without that, she literally sees herself as worthless. That’s why she could use herself as cannon fodder in the war without even thinking twice about it; if she wasn’t protecting Rose, she felt that she had no reason to exist. Rose gave her an identity, and with Rose gone, that identity is suddenly wildly unstable. If the identity that Pearl built for herself is based on being Rose’s guardian and confidante, what is she now that Rose is gone (because she couldn’t stop it, is the thought, no matter how ridiculous that is)?
This is actually another pretty common symptom of long-term trauma; sufferers pick something well-defined to prop up their sense of selves (”horrible things happened and I couldn’t do anything about it, but now I’m a doctor and I help people, so this is my entire life now and I don’t care about anything else,” “bad things happened and I’m a mother; my children are my life and I’ll never let anything happen to them ever,” “I’m a person who parties, I’m fun when I’m drunk and that’s how people like me, that’s me and nothing else, because everything else has been bad and scary,” etc.) and if they fail at that one thing or have it taken away, their symptoms become much more severe because they’ve lost their crutch. It can even cause them to re-experience the entire trauma. The kind of trauma we’re talking about here, long-term and inescapable, creates a sense of learned helplessness and lack of agency or identity; it’s natural, when coming out of that, to want to grab onto something you can say you “are” and build yourself up around it.
Pearl was Rose’s knight. Rose is gone. Pearl failed at being what she IS. She couldn’t be a Pearl the “right way,” she’s already defective, but Rose said that was okay and let her be her knight instead! But she’s failed at that too. Rose is dead. Everything that ever happened was for nothing. Pearl couldn’t do the one thing she was supposed to do. Therefore Pearl is nothing. “She’s gone, and I’m still here.” So what is she now? What is she supposed to do? What is she supposed to be?
Dissociation is a response to trauma that a person can’t escape otherwise – it’s a way of “getting away” when actual escape is impossible. Rose WAS Pearl’s escape. While Rose was alive and around, Pearl could use her as a way to ground and center her identity. Now, reminders of Rose just reinforce the fact that all of that is gone, and Pearl doesn’t have a way to center herself anymore. So even if the dissociation is “about” the long-term abuse as a lower caste or the terror of being trapped in a never-ending war, Rose is the primary trigger because Rose was the good thing that is gone. She represents all of it, and the hope she offered of being able to get away, and how that hope was ultimately dashed (because Pearl failed).
So a dissociative episode’s trigger could go like this: reminder of Rose –> immediate pain because Rose is gone –> why is Rose gone? –> because I couldn’t do my job –> why couldn’t I do my job? –> because I’m worthless –> I’m worthless because I’m not really a person, I’m just a pearl, I couldn’t even do that right, Rose trusted me to be better but she was wrong, I tried and tried and tried but I couldn’t do anything, I killed myself over and over to protect Rose in the war but that still didn’t save her in the end, my life meant and means nothing, I am nothing, I am nothing, I am nothing. Dissociate to escape the nothingness/the pain/the memories. This isn’t necessarily conscious. From Pearl’s perspective it could feel like “reminder of Rose –> rising feeling of panic/grief –> need to escape –> dissociate.”
Most of the time people don’t decide to dissociate, or even really know why it’s happening. The trigger can be completely unrelated to the trauma. Loud noise? Dissociate! Someone cut me off in traffic and it startled me? Dissociate! Have to give a big presentation at work? Dissociate! Had a nightmare? Dissociate! Slightly awkward social interaction? Dissociate! Dissociation is the brain’s “oh shit, I can’t handle this” panic button. And the brain plays it pretty loose with the trigger finger.
So far, most of Pearl’s big episodes have all been triggered by Rose. (The ones mentioned where she seems to dissociate, and a couple of times that seem more panic-oriented, like when Amethyst is damaged and they have to go to Rose’s fountain and Pearl has a meltdown about the vines in the sanctuary and starts talking about them as “desperate, clinging things without purpose” and she’s clearly actually talking about herself.) But her episode in Space Race doesn’t have an “obvious” trigger, other than reminding her that she feels incredibly trapped on Earth (remember: cPTSD is heavily related to a feeling of being trapped/helpless) and feeding into her need to escape (and potentially her suicidal, self-destructive tendencies), and we’ve also seen smaller incidents where she panics because of mentions of the War(s), or fear of another war, and as that becomes more and more likely we’ve seen Pearl’s “bad” episodes become more frequent.
My thought would be that as external stressors increase, Pearl’s episodes are going to continue to become worse, more frequent, and easier to trigger (unless someone steps in and helps her). When Amethyst’s gem was cracked and it seemed like she might die, VINES made Pearl hysterical. Usually she might be irritated or disgusted (or deeply saddened, since this is Rose’s place) by the vines, the pressure of trying to save Amethyst and not knowing if they even could (because, again, Rose is gone, and whose fault does Pearl think that is?) made the minor trigger of the vines into something that could launch her into a full-on panic.
Another possibility is that she could retreat into a new purpose – protecting Steven from threats – and completely subsume herself into that, to the point that that BECOMES her new identity. We might see that expressed through fanaticism (potentially including the kind of suicidal behavior we saw in her and Garnet’s memories of the war), more severe panic at any perceived threat to Steven, or a larger shift in personality. Steven seems to be discouraging this kind of behavior, and hopefully that kind of support from Steven and the other Gems will help to head off anything too drastic, but it’s kind of up in the air.
So to finish off this incredibly long and rambling response (sorry), triggers aren’t always obvious, but anything that reminds Pearl of her “failure” or sense of worthlessness and lack of identity or makes her feel trapped/like she needs to escape are a pretty safe bet as something that could cause a dissociative episode/panic/etc. So far, mostly that has been reminders of Rose or the War. But as things get scarier, it could get worse.
ok, people, please look at this. this is quite possibly the single greatest piece of analysis i’ve read for any fandom. it’s amazingly written and jaw-droppingly enlightening, not just about pearl’s character, but about psychological trauma in general. please do yourself a favor and read this!!!
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AngelMihe 