gosherlocked:

ebaeschnbliah:

ivyblossom:

sheepcereal:

ivyblossom:

Why does the idea persist that John has PTSD? He demonstrably doesn’t have PTSD. 

He has the opposite of PTSD. His characterization hinges on the fact that rather than needing to process fear and trauma, John needs more fear and trauma to be psychologically healthy. Mycroft diagnoses it in ASIP, Sherlock cures John of his supposed PTSD with danger and fear, and his supposed limp with running and jumping over cars. His symptoms only come back when he gets so bored and restless that he gains 7 pounds and takes up cycling (at least a bit of daily danger in an urban environment) to try and cope.

Why take it as read that John has PTSD?

Hmm I might have to question this a bit. Sherlock certainly improves his symptoms in a ideal way only fiction can possibly muster, but John does rather show a lot of traits commonly found in sufferers of PTSD, the ASIP night terror notwithstanding. It’s nothing so explicit as his breaking down into a non functional state, but his bouts of ostensible anxiety, irritability, aggression and yes the hand thing, the thing that is a clear giveaway everytime John is in a truly uncomfortable situation, one he doesn’t feel control in (unlike those moments with Sherlock in the face of danger where he does) are all, when together grouped easily as remnants of a mild to severe anxiety disorder likely stemming from, if not PTSD.

Given that away from Sherlock, his fictional stabaliser, his drinking increases (curly dad says: there’s a subtext with John’s drinking), depression, his night terrors return and his temper is shown to break quite a few times via shouting or violence, I’d say he is a right candidate for PTSD. PTSD doesn’t demonstrate in everyone in a universal fashion, and in this case in place of actual treatment we suspend out belief to allow Sherlock himself to be John’s medicine. John may very well not have experienced his trauma in the height of battle, which may be one theory as to why it manifests like it does.

See, the thing about this story: John did not have a night terror in ASIP. We thought he did off the bat, because that is how a normal person would react in his place and that’s what it looked like, but the story then corrects us. 

John doesn’t cry after his dream because the dream scares him, he cries because he woke up. His current situation, alone in a bedsit with a limp, a tremor, nothing to do and no enemy to fight, scares him. Being awake is the terror, not the dream.

You say “his night terrors return”. His dream about Sherlock in HLV actually underscores my point; those aren’t night terrors, they’re happy memory reels. He dreams about the good times with Sherlock, then wakes up miserable and shouty.

Everyone thinks John’s traumatized by what he’s seen in the war, but he isn’t. That’s a major point in his characterization. Seen terrible things? Yes, dreadful, far too many. Want to see some more? OH GOD, YES.

John is not a normal person. He pretends he is, much the same way Sherlock pretends to be a sociopath, but neither of them are being completely honest. They both project what they wish they were, but cannot be.

I can argue that John doesn’t have PTSD because his characterization and the plot of the entire show demands it, but I don’t have to, because Mycroft tells us that John doesn’t have PTSD. And John agrees with him, which is why he stops seeing his therapist about it. When he does see his therapist again, it’s about something else. (Grief.)

John wasn’t traumatized by the war. He misses it. And now he’s addicted to Sherlock and his battlefield. That’s who John Watson is.

No PTSD …. Yes!!!  By losing his job, John thinks he’s lost his utility too. That’s why he is depressed.

I agree. And I seem to remember that Martin does the “hand thing” in other films as well, so it is not necessarily to be read as a symptom of John’s PTSD. 

And another aspect: John is a doctor and soldier, but I think in order to feel really useful he has to be a doctor under stress, under extreme conditions. This is one point of the Bainbridge shower scene in TSoT – John is back in his element, saving lives under dramatic conditions instead of diagnosing strep throats in his surgery. 

@ebaeschnbliah, @ivyblossom