I actually don’t like most fic or text posts or headcanons depicting Dipper and Mabel having mental health problems after Weirdmageddon.



Mostly because as a kid, despite rather traumatic shit happening to me, I pushed it aside and ignored it.



Kids don’t address their problems. Kids have panic attacks, sure, but as someone who had been a traumatized kid, all my problems with adjusting and dealing with my shit have been problems I’ve been having as an adult.



Children in general are so much fucking better at pretending to be okay, to the point where they won’t realize they’re not okay until they’re older.



And there’s so much talking about them having problems post-Weirdmageddon that ignores that or exaggerates everything in a way that doesn’t make me feel like my experiences are being validated.



Most of the time when I do see posts about it, it feels like trauma is being mischaracterized for the sake of drama, and I don’t really appreciate that.



Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I actually LOVE the idea of Mabel having some issues with derealization. (I really have not headcanoned any characters with derealization issues like I do, and honestly I need a female character to push some of my issues onto.)



But unless you’ve experienced derealization yourself, you’re not gonna understand that pretty much no one is going to notice you’re freaking out unless you reach out to someone. Derealization is very quiet. It’s refusing to get up from your laptop because you’re starting to think the rest of the world apart from it and your chair is gonna fall away into nothing if you do. It’s trying to pretend you’re watching TV when you really feeling like time is an illusion and your family isn’t real and waiting for the sensation to just go away.



No one would notice Mabel was having problems with telling reality from fantasy unless she reached out to someone about it while having an instance.



And these things aren’t triggered just because good things happened.



It’s triggered by given a reason to think it’s not real. Like a certain song Mabel had heard on repeat while in the Dream Bubble.



She wouldn’t be set off by everything and anything. That’s not how triggers work.



I don’t see either of them being afraid of triangles. I don’t see either twin failing trig because of Bill.



I see Dipper thinking his skin is itching all the time because his body remembers getting stabbed by forks by Bill, and it leads to Dipper hurting himself because the itch just won’t stop.



I see Mabel being uneasy around snow globes and getting upset when they break. I see no one realizing why or understanding that she’s not just sensitive and worried about broken glass. I see no one ever realizing that Mabel can no longer divorce the feeling that the world will end if the snow globe breaks. I can see her being so embarrassed to ever admit that she feels that way.



Dipper’s anxiety problems are not a product of Gravity Falls. He was like that before. Dipper’s anxiety disorder is not new. Dipper honestly would not show many signs of being traumatized because after a certain point, if you have an anxiety disorder, you just stop feeling afraid of shit. Shit that would traumatize someone else just stops affecting you after a point. Dipper Pines saw nothing in the eyes of the Gremloblin that he hadn’t already had a bajillion thoughts about and thus could look it in the eye and not go insane while capturing it, and you cannot convince me of otherwise.



Mabel showing signs of anxiety in the show doesn’t mean she has a disorder like her brother. Everyone has anxiety. Mabel doesn’t get herself so anxious/excited that she almost throws up. Mabel certainly has ADHD, but all of her other emotional issues really seem just like normal kid stuff. Normal, living, human stuff.



I see Weirdmageddon actually being something they look back on when they’re going through hard times and reminding themselves “this is nothing compared to that. I am stronger than my problems. I fought Bill Cipher with my family and we won, and if Bill can’t stop me, then neither can this” and that giving them the inner strength to overcome any issues with derealization, self-harm, anxiety management, etc.



But that’s just my two cents.

