I think what happened this time really illustrates that tearing down leaders and disregarding their mental health is unavoidable in WoW raiding guilds. It’s never the goal of those who do this to hurt their leaders, or it rarely is. It’s just that WoW mythic raiding itself engenders high emotions, strong opinions, and frustration when things don’t go well (and there will always be times they don’t go well, it doesn’t matter if you’re a world 1 guild or a world 5000 guild). And people get caught up with their opinions and feelings, and forget to see the big picture when they eventually need to vent. Indeed, this happened right at the peak of our progression, when there was no real reason to be frustrated. And some of the people leading the charge this time are people who are 100% clear that this is what caused me to leave the game before and that it will retraumatize me now, and indeed even had once told me they wish they had behaved differently in the past. I know they hate knowing that they hurt me, and if people who already are trying hard not to hurt their leaders do this, it seems to me that this kind of stuff is inevitable.

So, knowing that even the most well-meaning people cannot avoid doing this (well, many can, but being that we need almost 30 people on our team, it is maybe too much to assume all of them can control their emotions and behavior well enough), and knowing as I do now how intense this trauma is for me, I wonder if it was a mistake I returned at all. It seems almost that it is worse for me to return, offer all I have to offer, have so many people come to rely on me in so many ways, and then just break down when the bash-our-leaders thing eventually happens again. Once I break down, it’s like I pull out the floor that people relied on to support them without warning.

People relied on me to help tank keys every week, and now I cannot bring myself to go online in WoW at all (outside of when I need to for guild stuff like raid). How many people thought they could rely on me to achieve certain things (help gear an alt character they’re preparing to help us, help gear a main character by getting a certain rating that will allow them to upgrade their gear, help maintain a main character by doing at least a certain number of keys each week)? This is just the first week I’ve taken a step back, and this part of my semi-flaking on people is already too apparent to me.

Also, when people ganged up on shandare in the past, I was there to emotionally support him. To help him know I saw his hard work, assiduity, and all he suffered, and that he had nothing to blame himself for because he did his absolute best, with the most respect and kindness he could for everyone. Anyone else in his place could not have overall done better, they would just be ganged up on for some other reason that happened to be their weakness. But this time, I wasn’t able to support shandare emotionally at all. Indeed, he had to put aside his feelings to try to support me. And on top of that, I had to let him know that I was pulling up the floor from under his feet, taking away support for him that he had likely come to count on. By needing to put myself first, in his moment of pain and suffering, I could not even guarantee I would be able to be there for him long term.

This last point worries me the most. Not helping as much with people getting gear, not helping as much with callouts or morale during raid, all this is relatively transient, temporary. It may lead to future roster issues, if our progression becomes much worse, but if leadership can be strong, roster issues can be overcome. But to provide support for our leaders who BADLY need it, then take it away when they need it the most, this can do really shit things to their mental situation. I know this from personal experience. After I was extremely traumatized for nearly a year, I started receiving wholehearted support from a new officer, the first time I felt I was being supported by someone without their own agenda. Though I was extremely traumatized already by then, I had hope that I would be able to recover now that I finally had someone who would truly support me. But then, after I had come to fully rely on and trust him, he could not handle the pressures himself, and flaked on me mid-tier when things were the worst. That was the moment I felt like any recovery was hopeless. I stuck around for another year after that, but I was a dead person walking, people in real life told me I looked like I had cancer, I became familiar with the suicide prevention hotline, and every second of every day I hated myself and the world. To be sure, I was flaked on by the person I trusted with no warning, leaving me to clean up the mess of his flaking out, so perhaps that twist of the knife was deeper than what I may be doing to shandare now. But that does not change the fact that my actions now in choosing to withdraw much of my help and support is still flaking when I am needed the most, flaking on someone who had come to rely on me and trust me. When this happened to me before, I no longer had the mental capacity to deal with anything (though I dealt with it still, zombie-like), and I worry what this now will do to shandare.

A leader who does not have the mental capacity to deal with everything means the eventual breaking down of the guild. I’m doing my absolute best right now to recover as much and as quickly as I can to be able to be supportive again, but harm has already been done. And isn’t it reasonable to assume this will happen again in the future? As mentioned earlier, it seems to be a fact of life in WoW mythic raiding. We were lucky this only happened once every half a year to a year.

So, should I have not returned at all, when I cannot guarantee that I have the resilience to deal with people inevitably, constantly, sticking a knife into my trauma? These thoughts don’t change anything because we are where we are, and I am back and have reacted as I reacted. It is just something I’m musing about to inform what future decisions I want to make. If it’s worse to provide support when I can but to withdraw it when it’s most needed, maybe the best thing I can do in the future is to not help as much as I am capable of helping when people don’t hurt me, unless I can be sure I will never be hurt too much sometime later (which doesn’t seem likely anytime within the next 10 years, with how this retriggering of my trauma has worsened my situation). Is support that can be withdrawn at the worst time, because of my personal weakness, worse than no support at all?