Disclaimer: This is in no way a substitute for therapy: it’s only psychoeducation. Please consult a therapist and/or hotline and get the help you need if you are experiencing mental health difficulties, especially if experiencing distress or issues that feel unmanageable.
Warnings: Mentions and discussion of suicidal ideation, death, abuse and violence.
Special thanks to @ashanimus and @childlikegoblinqueen
Ever heard of "the sense of a foreshortened future"?
If you have suffered trauma over a sustained and long enough period of time, you may find that you can't imagine yourself living long. You can't see yourself reaching milestones, because it hardly makes sense to your mind that you can go on for that long...given how much you have felt like you've escaped danger, given just how many close calls you have had in life.
Yet the sense of a foreshortened future is a separate thing from suicidality.
If you have both of those together though, it really isn't fun because they may feed one another in a cycle, in the way that symptoms under the same mental health condition have the potential to do the same.
It isn't a desire for pain to end (which is what suicidality is), more so a generated expectation that takes root, and a framework which a survivor tries to fit their experiences into, with the goal to get things to make as much sense as can be. Because it's often the easier thing to devise a simple formula, to feel certainty and to manage one's expectations: rather than embrace the grey areas of uncertainty about how life will turn out.
It's almost as if this feeling of a foreshortened future is in a tug-of-war match between what appears to be solid reasoning, and a person's natural survival instinct along with the hunger for a meaningful life.
This symptom isn't on the *official* criteria for a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist to make any diagnoses, it is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) or International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10). But informally it is sometimes categorized as an avoidance symptom under both PTSD and Complex PTSD, and also under longer-term depression.
(however, I think it can extend to other conditions. The key criteria is it emerges from repeatedly experiencing horrible things until it makes sense in one's head to expect themselves not to last much longer)
If you hop onto Google Scholar to find proper research about it, the findings are very scarce because it's hard to define it, empirically measure it and quantify it in the first place.
Again, it's not the same as suicidal ideation because a foreshortened-future view is an expectation, while the latter is about a desire.
I wasn't taught about this symptom in any training and supervision before becoming a licensed therapist, nor did any of my own therapists bring it up as psychoeducation when I saw them. It was only through online articles on informal websites that I stumbled upon the phrase and it all clicked for my long-term experiences.
But I feel it is good knowledge for anyone providing psychotherapy to bear in mind.
In The Owl House, the grimwalker lore weaved into Hunter's arc, can shockingly be linked with this symptom, symbolically and thematically.
But the show's age rating means it would likely be too dark for the writing team to explicitly incorporate it into Hunter's dialogue.
Hunter was a lamb marked for the slaughter early on.
He has questioned his survival and ability to thrive.
The following article on Psychology Today describes Belos's long-term influence on Hunter pretty well and provides info that strengthens the points I'm making in this whole post:
Link
It's bad enough that before Hunter and Luz found Belos's mindscape, he struggled with the fear of failure to the extent that there was already the raging inner battle between his primal survival instinct and the already knackered part of him that sought eternal rest from his suffering (showing up as suicidal thoughts):
Fast forward a number of episodes...and we see the looming horrors in Hollow Mind that culminated in Hunter's discovery of what his predecessors went through:
followed by permanent rejection by his parental figure:
The power held by a foreshortened-future view, and its potential to isolate you - to make you feel like you're invisible, or a ghost - can be strong.
What Hunter said to Gus in the following screencaps sums up what it feels like pretty well:
In the context of having an abuser, it emerges from the negative beliefs they impose on you. It gets tricky if those beliefs are internalized, and which may remain internalized even after you get to safety and away from said abuser. Internalized until they become what you expect of your life.
It's about those thoughts which you know in your rational mind are lies, but you feel their apparent truth. They go more silent when you practice self-care but they return to try and reel you in again, and to a degree, they succeed in getting you to believe them all over again, before you renounce them once more.
Being in the C-PTSD Club along with Hunter, I personally experience the feeling of a foreshortened future as a voice deep down which almost always says that life feels too long and it therefore feels absolutely weird, like it doesn't make sense. Life feels too long, contrary to that commonly heard cheesy quote, "Life is too short to blah blah blah".
When I reached milestone birthdays like my 21st, it was confusing and made me irritable, feeling an itch deep down that I could not scratch.
The voice asks me why the heck I'm still around when it apparently doesn't make sense. It's a pervading feeling which can be pretty annoying, though I have it far enough in the background that it's like noise instead of being a source of distress.
It's not the easiest thing to explain this, but Hunter may have confusing thoughts creeping into his head like "Caleb didn't last long, why would I?" whereby such thoughts have a strange feel to them. They aren't exactly hard rules, nor are they distant enough that they can be easily brushed aside. Brain hurty, emotions spooky.
After the horror of this night:
I can definitely see Hunter wrestling with this symptom from time to time. No doubt. It was a major loss of autonomy and control that would significantly aggravate what was already brewing deep down.
I'm doubtful that the crew even established this on purpose (unless they actually consulted trauma experts and/or experienced mental health practitioners), but...this one symptom ties in with grimwalker lore so perfectly...it's hella fascinating that all Hunter's predecessors' lives (including Caleb's) were cut short. Prematurely.
They came with an expiry date set by their abuser: something very characteristic of this foreshortened future feeling, though not unique to survivors of abusive home environments (e.g. if you experienced natural disasters over many years, yet had a loving family, you could also feel like you may not live long). And Hunter's experience of seeing the grimwalker graveyard in Hollow Mind is a shockingly visceral and visual metaphor to symbolize a concept like this, which matches perfectly with his symptomology as a Complex PTSD survivor.
The battle for inner peace has a high price: it is ongoing, and extends beyond him being physically free from Belos. Because Hunter can't just trim away the Belos-related memories from his earliest years and formative years. He can't forget, but he can choose to give those memories less attention, and choose not to let them take the steering wheel in the long-term.
In my opinion, the possession scenes don't just portray the physical experience of an abuser returning to try regaining control or restoring the status quo of having the survivor in their grasp.
The scenes also represent the abuser's imprint upon the survivor that lasts beyond the duration for which Belos is present in Hunter's life. Belos is the kind of abuser that is so insidious that he knows he could leave some marks that outlast his directly physical presence, in the event that he meets his own end. He would have definitely thought about this. Leaving the kind of grisly reminders that won't ever technically fade away (not to be confused with how they can certainly "fade further into the background" via therapy, new positive experiences and the support of loved ones).
For example, the patterns of the permanent scars on Hunter look so much like the patterns on Philip's own face and body. When possessed, the markings were dark green, later faded to the colour of scar tissue once Belos leaves his body.
As we all know, it's hella sad to imagine Hunter having to look at himself in mirrors throughout the rest of his life. It was awful enough that he had the haircut-related panic attack.
If we tie all that back to the symptom of a foreshortened-future view: Hunter might be left with a spooky nebulous feeling (that will alternate between coming back to haunt him, and subsiding) that he too has some expiry date that is different from how the people around him naturally and confidently expect to live a substantially long life. As a cult survivor with C-PTSD, Hunter can't afford the luxury of those natural expectations.
I don't mean that he might plan a day in the future to end his own life, not at all. But he may have a strange ghostly expectation of how long more he has till his life may come to an end, and he wouldn't be sure of how this subconscious expectation came about.
The darker days of navigating the confusing mess of his complex trauma may feel like exhaustion from paddling and swimming to keep your head above water to breathe.
Speaking of water and drowning, plus the theme of sinking down vs. rising back up above the water surface...the fact that Camila jumped in to bring him back up, his friends helped to pull him out, and Flapjack passes new life to him...this is also some crazy powerful symbolism for surviving complex trauma.
Falling back on a support network, your "tribe", that won't abandon you.
My other Hunter analyses (link) go into more detail about his support network and why he needs it.
I was talking to a friend about all this: she has relevant lived experience and mentioned that poor Hunter would reach a milestone birthday and perhaps cry at least a bit on that day, maybe even during the birthday party: out of sheer confusion. The confusion would be silently screaming "But...this doesn't...make sense?". And he might feel confusing waves of darker emotions along with a strange sense of joy.
He may make a decision to start a family with Willow, and a confused questioning voice will bother him now and then with "How are you still here, doing this and living to see this?".
(...also, when is his birthday...? Is it documented in some Emperor's Coven records that they will find..? Even the mere concept of having a birthday is messed up for him to think about, given the purpose behind his creation)
Complex trauma changes its survivors' relationships with the world, not just with people, and this can even apply to their relationships with things like joy and how joy is experienced.
Flapjack's absence would have bred survivor's guilt. It might translate into Hunter questioning whether he is worth the love and effort his friends put in for him. This feeling could emerge at random moments over the years in his life.
Visually, I feel that these two frames - the lighting (which I'd say is unique among all his scenes because they are parts of his arc that stand out so much), his pose, his expression - somehow capture the experience of how complex trauma is chronic and long-term:
The currently most known C-PTSD memoir out there, What My Bones Know by journalist Stephanie Foo, has some content that I feel matches nicely with what Hunter is experiencing in the two separate scenes above.
The author describes something she calls "the dread" (if you get the book, it's first mentioned on page 51). I would call it the amalgamation of multiple things such as shame, the fear of impending harm, self-doubt where you question whether you did something wrong, fearing that someone hates you, etc.
And basically, good lord my poor boy in the first screenshot..with that expression of suspecting what he thought was Belos's presence in the room: something about it fits the book author's words, feeling like she was "on the precipice of fucking everything up".
That's certainly something that would cross Hunter's mind multiple times as he processes the worst night of his life. That he could have done something to prevent all that.
With so much pre-existing worry that his friends and family might actually hate him, the possession scenes and Flapjack's death would definitely shake his foundation and I'm sure he isn't past this kind of ingrained thought pattern at all:
Second, the book author calls C-PTSD a shapeshifting "beast" (page 316). And when she fights it, she must use a different strategy depending on what form it takes, and that it will keep coming back from time to time in another form. Which is why there is a particular exhaustion one feels from having to adapt to each battle.
For Hunter, the second screencap of him fighting Belos's coercion in a direct physical manner is the first of many battles he has to win in his mind, even after Belos is gone for good. Outlasting whatever invisible assailant is trying to get him, as he faces inevitable episodes of being retraumatized in the future: these are called emotional flashbacks (one of the symptoms of C-PTSD).
Being a survivor of complex trauma who experiences a weird sense of time via a foreshortened-future view, can feel like being on the outside looking in.
But! To end this meta on a hopeful note, I should reiterate something from my most recent long meta about Retraumatization vs. Self-Soothing, the first part of Hunter's important speech in Thanks to Them touches on wild magic and palisman. Wild magic represents freedom, while palismen (quoting the Bat Queen) represent close bonds in relationships, emotion, and conviction.
Applying this to how we can navigate the swampy waters of a foreshortened-future view, Hunter can use his newfound freedom and sense of agency to create the story he'd like to tell about his life. It is pretty much impossible to avoid bringing beliefs from our young formative years into adulthood. But expectations (which have a direct link with emotions we end up feeling) of ourselves and of life can be altered over time, so they become less rigid and instead more open to new possibilities.
He has an inquisitive mind which is a big plus point in understanding the impact of what he has been through, and I have full faith that he'll do just fine in that regard because of the courage we have seen in him.
Among the hobbies he explores in the future, flyer derby will be one example of an excellent outlet for him because of its physicality: trauma and grief are not only emotional battlegrounds but also highly physical ones. The body is also very much involved e.g. feeling the lead-like weight of depressive moods in one's body, feeling the physical tension of hypervigilance, etc.
It's fantastic that he has Luz, Willow, Gus and company, he will have a very meaningful career, and he'll have everyone else in his large found family.
His story...his heart...his resilience and vitality...it's all truly inspirational.
We might learn even more about the grimwalkers in the finale and that would undoubtedly prompt me to do a shorter Part 2 on top of this meta.
// not like i want to ship but thinking about hunter giving his first kiss and either messing it up or feeling underwhelmed because hm that didn't feel SpECiAL like in human movies
// heads up that i'll be mobile bound for a couple weeks starting tomorrow and even if i can still write and use icons from my phone, i'll be unable to trim my replies :0
" Luz says your family now Hunter. So how about it. You want a cheesy sibling Nickname? " ;; Vee to Hunter
[ Hunter's eyes widen for a brief second at Vee's words, his mouth opening and closing a couple times before words finally decide to leave his lips. ]
" She... really said that? " [ Of course Luz said that to comfort him, but never would he expect her to tell others and Vee - of all people - to be so on board with it. He lets out a soft chuckle, flicking ears betrying his excitement. ] " Well, heh... sure! Got anything in mind? "
[ A far away whistle echoes through the haze that swallows the streetlights, making the air of the playground thick and pale. Hunter doesn't know why he'd spend a sleepless night rocking himself idly on a swing; taking a walk outside sounded like a good idea at first.
But now it hits him that he's alone in a place he's not completely familiar with, with a stranger drawing closer with every note that reaches his pointed ears and makes the flick. ]
" Come Flap, let's head back... " [ he whispers to the red bird sitting on his shoulder, who rubs his little head against his jaw to provide comfort. Hunter lowers his gaze to look at Flapjack and give him a thankful smile while he stands back on his feet.
When he raises his eyes again, expecting to find an empty path, a large cloaked figure is standing a few feet away in the fog. ]
" Sweet Titan! " [ he breaths, trying to step back but tripping on the swing he was sitting on a mere moment ago, falling onto his back while Flapjack chirps alarmingly. ] " Ow! "
molten lava and charred flesh. your heart burned so fiercely that it burnt itself out, leaving horrible scars in its wake; scars inside your chest and on the hands of those who touched you, the hearts of anyone who got close enough to connect to yours. the person you are now is no longer recognizable, burnt up by your own anger and passion and love. the injuries can never be fully erased, but they can be soothed with time and trust and forgiveness.
a bird struggling to get loose. your heart can never hold still. it pounds against your chest frantically, always turning your sights to one thing after the next. when was the last time you were certain? the last time your life was stable? maybe this is how you prefer things. on the move constantly, not tied down to one person or place. you chase one goal after the next. can you ever really feel complete without a place to land? shouldn’t you build yourself a nest?
"Hey, congrats for the Best Dressed on the Ball! I voted on ya! Like your outfit pretty much!"
[ Hunter lets out a soft, embarrassed chuckle, eyes focused on anything but the stranger's gaze. The little smile tugging at their lips, though, show that he still appreciates the compliment after all. ]
" Thank you so much sir, I really appreciate it. "
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