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Does Cersei have PTSD?


dsug

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Could Cersei Lannister have post traumatic stress disorder? Some of the most major symptoms are paranoia, isolation, irritability, substance abuse, flashbacks, nightmares, and hypervigilance. Cersei literally has all of these.

Shes paranoid that everyone is coming to hurt her and her children. She isolates herself from Jaime and Kevan, alienating the only people that actually have a shred of affection for her. She's irritable all the time, throwing fits in the Small Council. She's literally drunk like 80% of the time. She suffers flashbacks and nightmares to her encounter with Maggy. She's obsessed with Tommen's safety. 

I know a lot of people just slap the word "sociopath" on her and call it a day, but I think this could be an interesting possibility. While it does not excuse her atrocious actions, it could explain them. 

The question some might have is "what triggered it." Unlike sociopathy, people AREN'T born with PTSD. Something has to traumatize them, hence the post/traumatic. I'd say it was the death of Joffrey, and then Tyrion's escape and murder of Tywin. Though Cersei's always been a rotten woman, I think these events could have easily traumatized her to the point of PTSD. I mean, she's literally got like all the symptoms. 

Thoughts?

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9 minutes ago, dsug said:

Could Cersei Lannister have post traumatic stress disorder? Some of the most major symptoms are paranoia, isolation, irritability, substance abuse, flashbacks, nightmares, and hypervigilance. Cersei literally has all of these.

Shes paranoid that everyone is coming to hurt her and her children. She isolates herself from Jaime and Kevan, alienating the only people that actually have a shred of affection for her. She's irritable all the time, throwing fits in the Small Council. She's literally drunk like 80% of the time. She suffers flashbacks and nightmares to her encounter with Maggy. She's obsessed with Tommen's safety. 

I know a lot of people just slap the word "sociopath" on her and call it a day, but I think this could be an interesting possibility. While it does not excuse her atrocious actions, it could explain them. 

The question some might have is "what triggered it." Unlike sociopathy, people AREN'T born with PTSD. Something has to traumatize them, hence the post/traumatic. I'd say it was the death of Joffrey, and then Tyrion's escape and murder of Tywin. Though Cersei's always been a rotten woman, I think these events could have easily traumatized her to the point of PTSD. I mean, she's literally got like all the symptoms. 

Thoughts?

If she didn't have it before her walk of shame, she sure has it now

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So she had PTSD before she was traumatised? Because you know she started abusing her brother from the moment he was born and she killed her friend because she was well... Cersei. I do think that Cersei has some mental heath issues, PTSD however is not one of them.

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Which character hasn't though ?

The prophecy had definitely messed her up before, then being married to Robert, then her son dying in front of her, and finally the WoS, did not help.

However, she was not a very sane person to begin with, so it's hard to tell what comes from ptsd and what doesn't.

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3 minutes ago, Jon's Queen Consort said:

I don't agree. It was not the prophecy that made her to kill Melara or to abuse baby Tyrion. So she definatelly had issues way before the prophecy.

Yes, if you go reread my comment I did say she was disturbed before the prophecy.

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I think you may have misunderstood me. I whole-heartedly believe that Cersei was born a full blown psychopath. Killing Melara, abusing Tyrion, having the handmaiden beaten till she lost an eye, all that stuff, is totally unacceptable for a child to do. 

While she is sick to start with, I think the combined trauma of Joffrey dying in her arms, Tyrion escaping, and Tywin dying really may have scarred her deeper than she lets on. As I stated, she exhibits tons of the symptoms. 

If that clears anything up...

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12 minutes ago, Jon's Queen Consort said:

What I meant was that she wasn't only a little disturbed, she was already a full blown what people would call psychopath.

I think that term is thrown a little lightly nowadays. You can't tell that with the little info we have: she as cruel and a little sadistic, and seemed to lack empathy, but it's not enough to call her a psychopath.

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30 minutes ago, HairGrowsBack said:

I think that term is thrown a little lightly nowadays. You can't tell that with the little info we have: she as cruel and a little sadistic, and seemed to lack empathy, but it's not enough to call her a psychopath.

The term isn't even really a term. There is no such thing as a psychopath. But from a very young age Cersei has shown signs of antisocial personality disorder.

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Like some people said, she showed indeed some disrupted behavior at early young age. She threw Melara in the well, the abuse of her little brother, ... 

You might say that her believe that sex can be used as weapon, is something that she developed during her time as Robert's wife as a result of his sexual abuse of her. However she already used sex as a way to manipulate before her marriage (when she convinced Jaime the KG). 

I think she was certain a little mental disturbed from an earlier age without she was scarred by life (or you can always say it might have to do something with the way how Tywin was raising his kids). 

However she get probably more scarred by her life: her marriage with Robert, the death of her kids, ... However I am not really sure she has PTSD. I think either those events aggravated her already disrupted mental health or that she has PTSD next to her already existing personality disorder. (Personally I think she has a sort of narcissistic personality disorder, especially if you see how she reacts to the fact Jaime doesn't have two hand anymore and has a beard) 

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32 minutes ago, Tijgy said:

Like some people said, she showed indeed some disrupted behavior at early young age. She threw Melara in the well, the abuse of her little brother, ... 

You might say that her believe that sex can be used as weapon, is something that she developed during her time as Robert's wife as a result of his sexual abuse of her. However she already used sex as a way to manipulate before her marriage (when she convinced Jaime the KG). 

I think she was certain a little mental disturbed from an earlier age without she was scarred by life (or you can always say it might have to do something with the way how Tywin was raising his kids). 

However she get probably more scarred by her life: her marriage with Robert, the death of her kids, ... However I am not really sure she has PTSD. I think either those events aggravated her already disrupted mental health or that she has PTSD next to her already existing personality disorder. (Personally I think she has a sort of narcissistic personality disorder, especially if you see how she reacts to the fact Jaime doesn't have two hand anymore and has a beard) 

Yeah that's what I'm saying. She was already mentally ill, then she got PTSD. Crazy people can be traumatized too. 

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18 minutes ago, dsug said:

Yeah that's what I'm saying. She was already mentally ill, then she got PTSD. Crazy people can be traumatized too. 

The only problem is that the symptoms you mention are also symptoms of other mental disorders that Cersei clearly has. So how could you say that is PTSD?

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Well, with her marriage to Robert, the death of Joffrey and the WoS, she surely has accumulated quite some trauma.

But like others already said, the murder of Melara and the torturing of Tyrion happened before all of that, so she clearly had a problem beforehand. I tend to agree that she might have a narcisstic disorder, and the death of her mother and Tywin as a father most certainly didn't help either, so I think it's most likely a cocktail of many different things. It's quite possible that PTSD is in there now, too, but it's definitively not her only issue.

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The difference with PTSD and personality disorder is that the person who suffers from PTSD is equally surprised by their reactions to the situation and even will display shame for it. A flashback reaction is where people or a situation have elements that subconsciously remind the traumatized individual, and they start behaving uncontrollably as if they are back in the trauma situation. As soon as the people around them respond non-plussed, the traumatized person will snap out of it and feel immense shame for acting like that. So, they are not constantly paranoid or constantly hypervigilant - they react or act paranoid and hypervigilant as soon as there is a trigger, but it also can wear off soon, and then their cognition will realize they overreacted, and they feel stupid and ashamed over it, and hence they might isolate themselves more to prevent from being triggered. Cersei's mind never gets to the "oops" stage. Her paranoia is pervasive and constant.

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Umm, honestly, I don't know. She has strong narcissistic idealization, but other than that, I don't think she has any disorder. She's just like that. And I don't think her paranoia to be of neurotic origin. Everyone in her situation (Maggy's profecy) would develop a healthy level of Paranoia. The problem is that Cersei is not half as clever as she think she is. Obviously she takes for granted that the Valonqar is Tyrion and the younger one is Maragery.

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3 hours ago, OIL, BLOOD, Water said:

No. The only character that could remotely get away with a PTSD defense in court would be Arya Stark. Not even Sansa. 

What? Sansa was almost raped. Tyrion has a serious ongoing trauma. Jaime got mutilated. Theon is, well, beyond traumitized after the torture and will likely never recover. Why on earth would you say that no characters has PTSD?

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