The Psychology of Zuko | Avatar: The Last Airbender

please father i only had the fire nation's best interest at heart i'm sorry i spoke out of turn come on strike me you've never held back before it's time for you to look inward and begin asking yourself the big questions who are you and what do you want that's who you are zuko someone who keeps fighting even though it's hard my father who challenged me a 13 year old boy to an agnikai how can you possibly justify a duel with a child i'm angry [Music] [Music] we're going to be talking about some pretty heavy stuff today child abuse domestic violence sexual violence trauma self-harm suicide and genocide if you can't engage with these topics safely then i recommend clicking the video in the top right where i talk about some really beautiful stories by neil gaiman with my little puppy willow sources will all be cited in the corner of the screen and in the description i want to say a big thank you to everyone over at my patreon simply because crowdfunding means that i don't have to worry about topics like these being demonetized as much because well they are on youtube if you want to support this kind of content then it's greatly appreciated and the links are all down below i thought it was my honor that i wanted but really i was just trying to please you zuko's story is one of rising above abuse of picking up the pieces of yourself and figuring out who you are meant to be in the wake of it of reconstructing your understanding of the world and seeing the lies you were raised with but to truly understand his journey we need to look closely at what zuko means and feels psychologically when he talks about honor zuko repeatedly justifies and contextualizes everything he does as a way of regaining his honor in the eyes of the fire nation and more importantly his father he burns the kyoshi village down he throws himself into the icy wilderness with the avatar on his back with nowhere to go risking almost inevitable death rather than let go of what in his mind is his one chance his one way back to redemption he betrays airo the one man who has always been there for him across the years he portrays katara's trust all for a chance at regaining his honor emotionally it causes him to flash to anger at a moment's notice honor is such a deeply rooted idea in zuko's mind except psychologically it's not actually about honor is it honor is a cultural sociological idea something that has been used to hide ozai's manipulation and abuse to justify it psychologically to zuko obscuring it when the true force behind zuko's actions is shame shame is so deeply rooted in zuko's mind that he doesn't even recognize that this is what he feels that this is what it is but i don't feel any shame at all i'm as proud as ever prince zuko pride is not the opposite of shame but it's source true humility is the only antidote to shame shame can be broadly understood as individuals intense disappointment concerning their own shortcomings which they perceive as discrepant from standards of significance to them or important others it's difficult to understate just how important the moment his father challenged him to an acne kai and burned his face was for transforming how zugo felt about himself and the world please father i only had the fire nation's best interest at heart i'm sorry i spoke out of turn you will fight for your honor i won't fight you zuko comes into this moment thinking he should only be ashamed for speaking out of turn in defense of those lowly fire nation soldiers but to ozai the greatest sin is to refuse to put your enemies in their place to violently assert yourself to quibble over right or wrong to put family or friends first it's all showing weakness rather than power or strength that reluctance to be decisive by violently asserting himself is where he dishonored himself in the eyes of his father and it's why this moment radically changes his view of himself and the world in the aftermath after the duel the fire lord said that by refusing to fight zuko had shown shameful weakness as punishment he was banished and sent to capture the avatar only then could he return with his honor those standards ozai lay down in that moment suddenly take on a new importance for zuko psychologically as a way he should measure himself why he should feel ashamed expressions of violence anger and power become a way towards pride and self-esteem of bringing himself closer to his father's standards synonymous with being strong and undoing that shame in a way zuko is creating what is sometimes called a false self that makes a show of being real feeling fulfilled as a way of meeting someone else's expectations of them because they don't view themselves as an individual with legitimate needs or wants or thoughts not really right from the first episode zuko is heavily relying on that fury and frustration as a source of his fire bending no matter how much ira insists otherwise when he betrays iro fully capitulating to ozai's way of thinking you can see the raw ferocity in zuko's face as he firebends unlike any other moment in the series shame focuses on the self as characterologically flawed victims who attribute abusive maltreatment to deficits or flaws in their character may then experience even greater helplessness and hopelessness thereby exacerbating failures to report abuse or seek help what this means is that victims of abuse involving intense shaming will sometimes attribute that shame to inherent parts of who they are their character their bodies that though they cannot change or control it inherently justifies the abuse in their mind and after being burned across the face and banished left scarred and without a home for putting family and relationships when he refused to fight over power zuko is taught to see that kinder part of himself as weakness intensifying that sense of hopelessness in himself and making him less reluctant to seek help in ira or blame ozai because he has been taught to blame that side of himself dishonorable not because he has done something shameful but because he is shameful and ozai telling zuko he is weak and shameful by nature goes back a long time before his banishment ozai nearly tossed zuko over the palace walls to die when he was just an infant because he was disgusted that zuko might not be a firebender as a child zuko's attempts to rescue animals to figure out what was right and wrong crying when hurt earned him nothing but scorn even simply by being a weaker fire bender than azula ozai insisted that azula was born lucky but zuko was lucky to be born all of this creates a growing undercurrent of characterological blame for his abuse his mother ursa did work to assure zuko otherwise to tell him he was worth so much but after she disappeared ozai's view of him and the world was the only thing being emotionally reinforced eventually culminating in his banishment which psychologically confirmed everything he had been told but shame also warps how children manage their abuse victims may conceal the abuse to avoid stigmatizing the self or family as morally corrupt to shield others from feeling meta shame regarding the victim's disclosure to minimize further attacks from family members for revealing the abuse or because the victims felt inability to manage shame this doesn't necessarily mean that victims of abuse will recognize the abuse is wrong when they're hiding it but that sometimes managing that shame will mean they reframe these traumatic events so that there's no need to reveal them to think of them as abuse that they are normal temporary or justified children who are physically harmed by their caregivers frequently attribute the mistreatment to them being bad that they could have avoided the beating if only they had behaved appropriately this may provide the child with a sense of control over the abuse and serve as a protective factor commonly they will tell themselves they've tempted their abusers that all families fight but it's over now that the abuser has assured them it won't happen again or that the child could have simply avoided it and they might in the future except as with most abuse these things are cyclical they go into periods of calm and then ramp up in tension and happen again and these thoughts are coping mechanisms when they're trapped in that unhealthy cycle as a lot of children are zuko experiences many of these same thought patterns he blames himself characterologically and doesn't speak about it to others because the alternative is that his own father does not love him that he's a cruel capricious abusive man and all those moments that he has felt loved by him were wrong that they were fictions so instead he must have forced his father to act the way he did he could have avoided it if he wasn't being bad or in this case dishonorable a cultural and sociological idea that exists almost objectively in a sense outside their relationship so that ozai cannot be blamed for treating him this way for a time he even prefers to play missoula for his childhood however damaging and unhealthy this is this way of thinking gives zuko a sense of control a way back hope in a twisted way that he could have managed this situation and can in the future but it's also not as simple as that is it because though zuko does kind of blame himself characterologically for being weak part of him doesn't want to it resists that focuses on the self as flawed can prompt escape behaviors and they will sometimes respond angrily this is often termed humiliated fury or shame rage shame rage need not but may in certain individuals reflect self-protective mechanisms meant to avoid attributing shortcomings to stable self-characteristics zuko was always prone to frustration we see that we see azula riling him up as a kid pushing him into the fountain shaming iro for giving up after his son's death all of which zuko has to control his anger with but it's pretty clear to me that that anger evolved into something else something darker and more violent in the wake of his punishment the week after being banished zuko arrives in the western air temple iro insists that he'd take time to heal his burns have barely begun to heal but zuko immediately flashes to anger what else would i expect to hear from the laziest man in the fire nation this isn't just angry this is cruel and we can contrast this moment with when zuko learns that iro lost his son liu tin it means uncle's a quitter and a loser what are you talking about uncle's not a quitter oh yes he is he found out his son died and he just fell apart a real general would stay and burn busting say to the ground not lose the battle and come home crying how do you know what he should do he's probably just sad his only kid is gone where before zuko empathized with iro who was hurting and he saw the importance of having time to heal to step away and reflect he will not give himself that same love anymore something happened to that part of him it's almost an uncontrolled violent rejection of those parts of himself he equates taking time to heal and reflect with weakness with laziness sounding exactly like azula did all those years ago afraid of attributing his shame and dishonor to those stable self characteristics zuko overcompensates emotionally and rejects anything any emotion any thought that could be viewed as close to that anger and aggression became a way of appearing decisive like his father wanted taking action for action's sake not quibbling over right or wrong it's that humiliated fury that shame rage that we just read about a reactive self-protective mechanism because he wants to view those things not as an inherent part of who he is but as something that can be purged and destroyed because if he can't then he's never coming home he will never see his family again he will never feel his father's love and he can't bear that at its core this is zuko's struggle is he inherently weak or can he get rid of those parts of himself by becoming more violent more cruel more like his father and are those parts of him worth anything at all when said against the world that ozai has created for him one absent of love and empathy it's hard to see where he fits and it takes seeing those parts of him as valuable again to begin rebuilding his self-worth dad's going to kill you zuko grew up in if not a broken household than a household of broken people ozai abused his wife from the first day he met her after this day do not mention hira your family or your old life ever again you belong to the royal family now and to me it's a textbook tactic of abusers to isolate their partners from friends or family any people who could question the way their relationship works and to more easily control them while in some relationships the abuser may insist that anyone trying to help the victim is just trying to undermine their relationship or control them ozai is just being sadistic here he's acting on an ingrained sense of entitlement and ownership over her but there is a subtext here that i think is really important to address there's a lot of implication that ozai abused arthur either physically sexually or both when she returns to the fire nation palace zuko offers that she can sleep in her old room the very one where she would have once slept with ozai but she insists that one of the guest rooms will be just fine as she wanders about the palace she is plagued by feelings of guilt of being unsafe of simply walking in the halls where he once stood and when she comes before a grand imposing picture of him she suffers something of a breakdown symptomatically these are all common reactions for abuse victims returning to the places of their traumatic experiences while we are never told explicitly what happened with ursa and ozai it's a pretty reasonable conclusion to draw literal physical space can feel threatening to victims of especially spousal abuse and especially sexual violence where patterns of expected behavior from the past create conditioned responses like this often ones that manifest in submissive or passive behaviors where asserting oneself becomes difficult even in situations where they know that they are perfectly safe trauma creates irrational feelings and responses in us and that's okay but it's why we have to work through them and ursa does with iro's help even facing ozai again behind bars without his powers with ira right behind her ursa feels that same fear as he swears that she will beg for death before him and yet she manages to overcome that trauma response and control those flashbacks those paralyzing symptoms which is a real cornerstone of trauma recovery this dynamic between ozai and ursa is important to understanding the social environment in which zuko and azula were raised it was already isolating being a product of the royal class but its toxicity is only compounded by the unhealthy parental dynamic controlling what should have been the primary stable elements of their lives one paper found that children who were exposed to parental violence were significantly correlated with depression ptsd and in particular aggression something that we see in azula as a controlled methodical violence and as frustration turned rage in zuko we don't know if zuko or azula ever personally witnessed direct violence against ursa at ozai's hand either physical or sexual zuko's lack of awareness of her feelings towards the palace upon her return suggests maybe not but this is also something that can be normalized in the eyes of children anusa may have gone to great lengths to conceal it from them she often put herself even physically between ozai and the children most famously in agreeing to leave in exchange for saving zugo's life it is after all subtext whatever the case zuko either witnessed the abuse personally or he witnessed the fallout the tension the underlying control verbal and emotional that ozai exerted over his mother that cycle of abuse going round and round violence just a more subtle kind of violence surveillance where one feels that they even privately are being watched are not safe can be invaded at any time a panopticon of fear that controls you even when you are alone if you've ever lived in a house like this you'll know what that fear is like while ursa may have done her best to create a safe environment for her children ozai was unequivocally a neglectful parent as well as the one that controlled every element of their lives what they learned in school who they could speak with how hard they trained when how and which needs were met abusive dynamics thrive in families where one partner controls the finances and most of the decisions regarding the children especially in social communities where they occupy a traditionally protected role of authority such as because they are the ordained head of the house and it's only more dangerous in cultural environments where the authority should not be questioned these sociological and economic structures are inclined to justify and protect abusers and it's precisely the situation that ursa finds herself in with ozai the unquestionable fire lord who controls which friends they're allowed to see when they're allowed to go out how they learn and what they learn abused spouses like this caught up in these dynamics will often be trying their best but it's like swimming and trying to keep everyone around you afloat you can only do it for so long and eventually you're going to drown regardless of us efforts ozai created an environment that neglected zuko and azula's emotional and psychological needs twisted their understanding of what love and strength was and taught zuko and azula to value their father's approval above all else one paper looking at child neglect identified three factors with the greatest psychological impact family conflict and maternal support and paternal affection measured predicted children's internalizing externalizing and social behavior as they grew up these three factors in children developing healthy psychological bonds explain a lot of zuko's early childhood being exposed to repeated family conflict and a lack of any fatherly affection what he did have was maternal support but that too was undermined by the neglectful environment that ozai created and eventually ursa was gone too children given limited emotional support inadequately deal with challenging interpersonal situations and they struggled to manage their emotions helping explain zuko's own difficulties with emotional regulation particularly anger but other emotions across the series too the darkest way this manifests in zuko is in the blue spirit a persona he adopts numerous times across the series he uses it to seek vengeance on someone who humiliated airo he robs and beats people up steals their food and he uses it to almost take arpa it's a multi-dimensional symbol but it seems to align with zuko's darker desperate almost obsessive nature the mask lets him become a hollow version of himself without accountability whatever way his feelings take him surrendering to his lowest instincts as iro says it is in a sense what ozai wants of him a machine and it's why him turning away from that idea of himself at first is marked by him throwing down the mask co-parenting is the degree of unity between parents and the way that they teach and nurture a child and it goes without saying that osi and ursa employed entirely different parenting strategies ozai tells zuko that he is sickened by the sight of him because zuko always wrestled over what is right and wrong even as a child instead of deciding what was right and wrong asserting himself as an expression of will and power ozai views indecisiveness like this as differential as weakness and was punished ursa on the other hand encourages moral exploration in zuko alone we see her admonish zugo for hurting little turtle ducks and she repeatedly reinforces that good natured side to him the kind that wants the best for others and wants to figure out what that is ozai reinforced strength and power a kind of self-righteousness while ursa reinforced empathy neglectful households with an abusive parent will often have low degrees of co-parenting with a cycle of shame and reinforcement that makes it difficult for children to express themselves authentically figure out who they are meant to be because life never really settles into a coherent moral world children exposed to abuse go through many such anger to shame cycles in which children are implicitly backing down and apologizing for their inappropriate behaviors to appease the parents a darned if they do and done if they don't emotional dilemma they need to manage understandable feelings of anger in response to normal frustration like task failure and also manage these via submissive or appeasement displays to prevent parental counter-attack fundamentally for a child this is a really difficult emotional landscape to navigate to know what to do to appease your parents to be treated as a good child and gain self-esteem and social approval in that world as you develop your understanding of yourself self-concept is about creating our own sense of identity who we are who we want to be especially between the ages of 7 and 18 and it's closely tied to self-esteem and the positive things that we believe about ourselves so where azula developed a self-concept around her father's parenting as a fire-bending prodigy consistently rewarded for her displays of power and ferocity and decisiveness zuko gravitated towards his mother who validated that indecisiveness as moral exploration who assured him he is valuable and loved in spite of his lack of ability i failed no i loved watching you that's who you are zuko someone who keeps fighting even though it's hard and when we think about ozai standards here that's only comparatively compared to azula zuko is a talented firebender at 16 he bested a fire nation admiral it's almost like in one sense ozai just wants to pet his children against each other that it wouldn't matter how good zuko was just that he is worse than azula because that self-concept is complicated for zuko he is told both you are someone who never gives up and you are a failure those feelings are contradictory but it's what children with low co-parenting are often stuck with psychologically and they've got to manage that somehow especially after his mother leaves zuko is never given a healthy way to deal with his frustrations with the world and doing so is taken as disrespectful defiance repeating that anger to shame cycle and pushing him to develop a more damaging self-concept identity versus role confusion is a crucial part of the teenage years adolescence experience and identity crisis which is described as an attempt to define who you are where you're heading and how you fit into society it is the first real opportunity to develop continuity with the past meaning in the present and direction for the future and is the basis for self-acceptance and self-esteem but ozai never gives zuko the opportunity to develop that continuity that identity a fully coherent self-concept and he's stuck with that identity crisis because this is the truth that shame was coded into the way that zuko was parented long before he was ever banished instead of being told that he failed at something ozai tells him over and over you are a failure and that creates a distinctly different relationship with failure in someone's mind when we talk about trauma and abuse when we're trying to help someone who has been through something like this it's easy to narrow in on individual instances the darkest and most dramatic moments but sometimes it's the small repeated monotonous moments often over years that have the longest lasting psychological impact on themselves and how they view the world these persistent feelings of shame were intended to make zuko feel like an outcast a common theme in abusive households in some cases of physical and or sexual abuse disclosures lead to the most feared outcome of all being removed from one's home and family once again this may reinforce the perpetrator's admonitions and reinforce the child's developing self-view as a figurative and now literal outcast children are left imagining their parents rage and feeling responsible for the disruption of their entire family this is discussing children being reluctant to talk for fear of being removed by government agencies placed in foster homes and the like but there is an underlying theme here that remains true abusers will blame their victims for causing arguments and rifts within the family and the shame they inflict manifest in them feeling like an outcast meaning recognizing or disclosing the abuse would confirm those feelings that they aren't part of the family that they are responsible for tearing it apart in some cases abusers will exploit this outcast feeling to gain control over their victims painting themselves as their only source of support and affection and inclusion particularly in the case of sexual abuse while others may withhold their approval to maintain control over them which is what we see with ozai i think this feeling most clearly comes out in zuko when azula tells him that his father wants him to come home father's changed his mind family is suddenly very important to him family are the only ones you can really trust father regrets your banishment he wants you home there was always an inner circle in which azula was welcome and zuko has only ever been able to grasp at the fringes if your parents have ever played favorites or put your siblings needs or tantrums above your own treated you as selfish for wanting the same sort of attention then you'll know what that's like that sense of being an outcast was always there for him only reinforced after ursa left and made concrete by his banishment it's such an intense feeling that like a lot of children zuko doesn't want to call out his abuse to see that he is being manipulated here and he turns to anger when iro suggests that this is at all not authentic you don't know how my father feels about me you don't know anything because zuko at least subconsciously knows that if this isn't real it only confirms that fear that he is an outcast that he has splintered the family forever that he will never return as a kid zuko seems to have imagined his family as kind of happy or at least functional he says that there were times when they were truly happy and he used to believe that his father would never hurt him not really how truly happy they were and how much of it was the hopeful wishes of a child making sense they could of the world we don't know but it does mean that zuko felt keeping his family together was precious to him and he feared being responsible for destroying it at one point we see that zuko suffers from nightmares where his mother cries out to him for help and he does nothing it's mocking the night she left she tells him that everything she has done is for him it's intended to assure him that he hasn't done anything wrong that this is out of love but that feeling very easily evolves into a sense that you were a burden seeing someone else give up so much for you especially in such a negative social and emotional environment continually tearing down your self-esteem that you and only you are responsible for tearing apart your family all of this tells us that he is struggling with these thoughts these feelings all stemming from him being told that he is an outcast and if you've ever felt that way then you'll know how long it takes to unpack those feelings i'm angry it's easy to think of zuko as older more mature than he really was but he was only 11 when ursa lived still a child barely in the middle of his development psychologically and entering some of his most important years i don't know what you were like at those ages but i was still growing i went through a pretty rough relationship in late high school a lot happened a lot that i at that age just didn't have the emotional tools to deal with i wasn't equipped to support that person in the way that they needed and left me with a lot of emotional baggage to work through over the years guilt and shame and frustration with my inability to help them and manage what happened with her stayed with me for a long time it changed me quite fundamentally to be honest almost single-handedly sparking my interest in mental health and prompting me to do something about it and i was 18 19 at that point when i was dealing with that not 11 or 13 and i didn't have to do it alone zuko dealt with this guilt this shame and abuse at a far more vulnerable age and the scars that left him with literally and psychologically likely resulted in a form of ptsd post-traumatic stress disorder this first requires a stress factor exposure to threatened death or serious injury either directly or witnessing it it's easy to focus on the agony kai as that instance it is after all the moment that zuko keeps returning to normal teenagers worry about bad skin i don't have that luxury my father decided to teach me a permanent lesson on my face but as we've discussed this moment grew out of a long history of shame and guilt and even violence given the chance that he witnessed ozai abusing ursa it's because of this that i actually believe zuko suffers from complex post-traumatic stress disorder instead psychologically similar symptomatically but defined by a chain of repeated traumatic events rather than a single incident this is putting aside the fact that zuko is repeatedly exposed to death and risk across his travels in the series two negative alterations in cognition and mood inability to recall key features of the trauma overly negative thoughts about oneself or the world exaggerated blame of self or others for causing the trauma negative effect decreased interest in activities feeling isolated or difficulty being happy zuko definitely suffers from the third fourth and fifth he is consistently plagued with feelings of failure and disappointment in himself leading to overly negative thoughts about who he is and an exaggerated blame of himself for causing his own trauma i deserved to be banished for my weakness but the more interesting psychological effect here is difficulty being happy happiness doesn't come to zuko naturally and multiple times rather than allowing himself to be happy he shuts down the moment we see this when he goes on a date with jinn in basing say turning away at the last second without explanation the simple emotion to him feels wrong undeserved unnatural and the moment he allows himself to feel happy in season two when he and ira are running a tea shop together it's fleeting it's fragile it falls apart the moment azula walks back onto the scene and that anger that moodiness the glare's return it is not only difficult to let himself be happy but that feeling is easily undermined and destroyed when he was first banished iro presses him to enjoy the sights of the world after all he's going to be out here for a while the only view i'm interested in seeing is the avatar in chains there are a lot of reasons that people emerging from abusive dynamics find it difficult to be happy their emotions were often sidelined their happiness minimized in favor of their siblings or spouses or their abuser their experiences were treated as less valuable less real i know some people who would express themselves and are told okay you feel that way but you shouldn't here's all the reasons you shouldn't it's not legitimate you know it's recognizing that they feel that way but not actually empathizing with it people in these scenarios attempt to navigate these abusive emotional landscapes by either not expressing their emotions or reflexively suppressing them and in the long term will struggle to express them openly even in safe environments often resulting in communication issues with partners or family because their problems as well as their happiness were never treated as equal zuko's difficulties being happy are also compounded by his fear of being seen as weak so used to conditioning himself for a world of ruthlessness and power where empathy and connection where we find so much of that happiness is looked down on the third element of cptsd is intrusion symptoms unwanted memories nightmares flashbacks emotional distress and reminders or physical reactivity after exposure to traumatic triggers prince zuko have you forgotten what happened last time you dueled the master i will never forget xiao comes to burn his face in the same way his father did you can see the memory light up in his eyes and a flashback that momentarily shuts dugo down it paralyzes him he repeatedly suffers from nightmares like the ones we've discussed about ursa and emotional distress from things that bring back those darkest moments in the comics when he returns to the palace zuko suffers from chronic insomnia that turns into a kind of paranoia that he is not safe that he cannot trust other people these are intrusive thoughts zuko reflects on the past a lot across the series most famously in zuko alone but not all of these count as unwanted intrusive symptoms victims of abuse are often taught to remember their mistakes to reinforce that shame that they are meant to feel and zuko is constantly in the process of re-evaluating his past it's no surprise that we see so much of it even so he does clearly exhibit intrusive symptoms of a kind the fourth element of cptsd is avoidance avoiding trauma-related stimuli this one is complicated because until season three zuko doesn't really recognize that what his father did to him is wrong and doesn't try to avoid things related to it in the beach though after finding himself amongst a swamp of old family memories in their old batch on amber island zuko's experience with this place suddenly becomes unpleasant he's slowly realizing that his childhood even with these scraps of happy memories was a deeply traumatic period of his life and he decides to destroy it i'm freezing i'll make a fire [Music] there's plenty of stuff to burn in there one of my favorite moments in the entire series is when azula comes to find zuko at their family house i thought i'd find you here those summers we spent here seemed so long ago so much has changed come down to the beach with me come on this place is depressing it's one of the only sincere moments of care and affection that azula has with zuko as an adult she comes to find him when she didn't need to and asks him to come with her so he wouldn't be alone because on some level she understands the pain he's in when zuko says so much has changed it's not the memories or ozai but him and his perception of the past for a long time he tried to maintain that rosy view of his childhood the one that he feared being an outcast from but that's slowly been deconstructed and by this point he can't sustain it anymore it's too caught up in what he is now realizing are traumatic events of his life azula and zuko can look at each other honestly here and recognize that they have a shared trauma all of this gives rise to a kind of avoidance wanting to leave behind the things that remind him of that neglect his shame the guilt the fifth element is alterations in arousal and reactivity irritability or aggression risky or destructive behavior hyper vigilance heightened startle reaction difficulty concentrating difficulty sleeping many of these are self-evident in zuko across the story but i want to narrow in on risky and self-destructive behavior in bitter work airo teaches zuko to redirect lightning but after ira refuses to shoot lightning at him to test this technique insisting it's dangerous zuko heads up to a mountain top during a vicious storm swearing at the sky in what is one of the most striking scenes of the series you've always thrown everything you could at me well i can take it and now i can give it back come on strike me you've never held back before some people have read this scene as zuko being suicidal but i want to push back against that zuko is seeking out a dangerous situation yes but not in an attempt to end his life so much as control the situation where he could not before many self-destructive behaviors can be understood as symbolic or literal reenactments of the initial abuse they serve the function of regulating intolerable feeling states in the absence of more adaptive self-soothing strategies people harm themselves or engage in self-destructive behavior for a myriad of reasons and not all of them have that suicidal subtext here zuko wants to be struck by lightning an ability that he knows his sister has but he doesn't and it's also the purest form of fire bending fire bending that his father used to scar him as a child if we read this symbolically as herman suggests this is zuko not only wanting to demonstrate that he is finally azula's equal which was always a source of shame for him but that he can handle himself where he was helpless before against his father something that actually plays out very literally when he confronts his father during the eclipse no this is instead zuko trying to reconstruct his capacities for self-care and self-worth first by asserting control and regulating that intolerable feeling state of helplessness one he's been stuck with in a way his entire life even if it's being done in a really unhealthy way the last marker of cptsd is functional significance it must impact the person's ability to function in everyday life one study looked at nine areas of life and found that those suffering from ptsd exhibited problems with every single area except communication zuko's trauma repeatedly interferes with his ability to learn and apply the wisdom that ivor imparts and it clearly impedes his ability to take care of himself often resulting in reckless self-destructive behavior he throws himself into the wilderness without food or water multiple times prompted by those feelings rooted in trauma and he cares little for his own daily needs of rest and respite even neglecting food the clearest way that we see his trauma interfere with his daily functioning though is probably with iro you brought this on yourself you know we could have returned together you could have been a hero you're a crazy old man you're crazy and if you weren't in jail you'd be sleeping in a gutter his trauma manifesting in anger and shame significantly impacts his capacity to build healthy relationships sabotaging them over and over as he turns on the one man trying to help him it's important to note the longevity of these symptoms though relapse is one of the most common experiences with people dealing with trauma and it represents one of the major ways that it interferes with their life returning over and over to those cyclical abusive dynamics and harming their healthy relationships in smoke and shadow zuko enters a new social world as firelord he has responsibilities new relationships but that self-doubt creeps back in and he finds it hard to engage in this new community in this civic life he falls back into old habits and defers to his father as a source of wisdom and truth returning to one's abusers or no longer being convinced of the things that they have learned after they left them is extremely common so zuko falls back into some crueler anger-prone ways and those feelings of isolation shame and weakness keep coming back because the road to healing is not a straight one sometimes it's slow sometimes it feels like you're sliding backwards no matter how hard you work and sometimes you take a wrong turn even if you know where you want to end up despite all of this i think it's most accurate to view zuko's story as one of processing his neglect and abuse one of rising beyond his past losing his way and finding it again of becoming i was never angry with you i was sad because i was afraid you lost your way one way to look at processing trauma is changing how we evaluate ourselves our decisions our past what happened to us what in us is worth loving and what in us is worth protecting children look to their parents for evaluative feedback and this defines the framework through which children evaluate their own successes and failures children who are repeatedly exposed to negative and degrading interactions with their parents are likely to experience feelings of low self-worth and to evaluate their own performance through a harsh negative lens similar to that of their parents children who have suffered physical abuse are likely to attribute great importance to minor failures and blame themselves for these failures zuko's repeated negative and degrading interactions with his father mean his ability to evaluate himself is just a mess and so much of recovery is unlearning and adjusting to a healthier way of evaluating yourself and the world those moments in which you begin to understand that the things they did were not okay that you weren't a bad kid that you did not deserve it that you deserve support and love and care and time studies have identified two incredibly important factors in post-abuse recovery the first is support from a safe parent someone with whom they have the emotional infrastructure but not the abuse of context that helps them shift that self-evaluation and self-concept ursa could have played this role if she was around she stood up for him in the past and it's likely that zuko's ability to evaluate himself was a lot better when she was around once she vanished his self-evaluation came mostly from ozai it's no surprise that there is such a marked difference between zuko at 11 and 13 years of age that's nearly a fifth of his life some of his most formative years left with only his abuser as a parental guide the things his mum taught him slowly melting away replaced with everything that ozai believes about him that damaging self-concept the second is physical distance from the abusive context the person or the place it's because of these that zuko's recovery only really becomes psychologically possible after iro enters the picture a safe parent and ironically after his banishment distance following the death of liu ten zuko becomes iro's surrogate son of sorts as much as iro became his surrogate father i'm sorry i just nagged you because well ever since i lost my son uncle you don't have to say it i think of you as my own but there's something else here there's a reluctance on zuko's part to allow himself to feel that dynamic to supplant ozil in any way because that would on a subconscious level mean acknowledging that ozai was not a good father but still iro does push zuko to deeply re-evaluate his relationship with his past his father and the trauma he went through and in those early stages zuko often responds by lashing out i think you are exactly what you seem a lazy mistrustful shallow old man who's always been jealous of his brother one of the reasons that it's so difficult to help those in abusive relationships whether they are children or adults is that they can sometimes view help as someone trying to tear their relationship apart malicious or jealous even the victim might feel that they know their relationship better than you do they know their family you don't know what's going on and often they'll acknowledge that yeah it's not perfect but they're always convinced that it's going to get better that they have some control over what happens and where it's going getting help let alone leaving means recognizing that they don't have that control that it isn't real love or that the good parts of the relationship aren't worth sticking around for and that's a really hard thing to internalize especially if you've been in that dynamic for years if you've got kids with them if you have invested that much of your life in this person and that idea that the people who are trying to help are really trying to control you or don't understand is often reinforced by the abuser which we actually see azula do on ozai's behalf multiple times why don't you let him decide uncle it's the sense of are you going to let others tell us how we should run our relationship or our family survivors will often have defended themselves as i chose this life but that's not always true for a lot of people it takes a long time to recognize what is going on and zuko certainly wasn't ready to confront that at times he lashes out in similar ways falling back on calling ira bitter and suspicious and jealous seeing it as him trying to take his family away from him rather than trying to support him and that unfortunately isolates them even further but of course in time iro does break that wall down and manage to help zuko and we need to look at exactly how that happens psychologically there are five critical elements underpinning how people recover and re-evaluate themselves post-abuse safe attachment self-esteem and self-cohesion meaning making symptom mastery and affect tolerance safe attachment means developing healthy relationships broadly recovery can take place only within the context of relationships it cannot occur in self-imposed isolation in renewed connections with other people the survivor recreates the psychological faculties that were damaged or deformed by the traumatic experience these include the basic capacities for trust autonomy initiative competence identity and intimacy the guiding principle of recovery is to restore power and control to the survivor working to undo that feeling of zuko as an outcast his journey is full of him slowly rebuilding those relational capacities creating a new support network of sorts zuko is met with empathy from an earth kingdom girl who sees his scars i know what you've been through we've all been through it fire nation has hurt you it's okay they've hurt me too this takes him by surprise and challenges his belief in him being alone in the world that he has to deal with this in self-imposed isolation and it puts him in an unfamiliar relationship of trust and assurance that bonding over shared strength as he has to do with ozai and azula isn't the only way but over shared vulnerabilities too there's a symmetry of experience between him and others he begins to realize and a similar moment happens in the crossroads of destiny when he reaches out to katara and katara empathizes with him over the fire nation taking their mothers away from them zuko alone is all about life amongst a poor earth kingdom family who powers and feed and trust him where he takes on a surrogate older brother role mentoring this kid giving him a glimpse of growing up in a healthier family and he finds this difficult as he's rebuilding these relational capacities of trust and autonomy he hands off a knife that iro gave him exhibiting that same supportive role that iro did for him zuko and jet work together to bring food to the masses and he forms positive bonds with others embarrassing say he finds himself in a world where he is not an outcast in each of these zuko forms healthy safe connections with others on his own developing that new capacity for trust and attachment and autonomy ones based on connection and not performance or expectation that false self for much of the series zuko exists in a kind of self-imposed isolation he lives around people but refuses help he will not talk about his issues and in an emotional sense he does not live in the same world as other people this feeling most clearly intensifies when zuko chooses to leave iro behind insisting they have nothing more to learn from each other it's only after seeing that his isolation is not as concrete or needed as he thinks it is that he can exist in the same emotional world as others that he allows himself to be vulnerable in a way that he hasn't been since ursa was around expanding his support network again and feeling more emotionally safe around others that true self that was repressed after ursa left is starting to come out again but the most important relationship in all of this is of course with iro not only because he symbolically finds a new father but because iro demonstrates what love and trust is inviting him to trust in return he creates that safe space skills that he is then able to put into practice on his own when he finds himself in isolation without him after zuko speaks down to his crew and insists that their lives don't matter at all compared to his honor airo does something very simple he accepts the apology he empathizes with zuko's frustration forgiveness was not something zuko ever lived with under ozai most famously during his agony kai when he begged for it after unknowingly disrespecting his father and after zuko fails to capture aang iro encourages him to rest rather than admonishing him as a failure ira models a new kind of love one with forgiveness and empathy a recurring theme that culminates in perhaps the most powerful moment in the series i am so so sorry uncle i am so sorry and ashamed of what i did i don't know how i can ever make it up to you how can you forgive me so easily i thought you would be furious with me i was never angry with you i was sad because i was afraid you lost your way zuko's capacity to relate to others to evaluate himself was so damaged that he didn't understand how iro could ever forgive him even this far along the path to reconstructing his ability to create safe attachments with people he still expects anger and it is only iro's unending ceaseless forgiving love that brings him through it self-esteem and self-cohesion is intended to ensure that the self-injurious behaviors and impulses are replaced by healthy self-caring routines feelings of guilt shame and self-blame are relinquished in favor of a new or newly restored sense of self-worth obsessive self-critical review is replaced by a more realistic appraisal reflecting a more positive view of the self as one deserving of care and capable of leading a self-caring self-fulfilling existence at the beginning zuko exhibits an inability to let himself rest self-care is treated as weakness as laziness and there is no time for healing guilt shame and self-blame are pervasive forces in zuko's mind that control an extremely negative self-concept but in the same way that iro exhibits understanding and forgiveness he also reinforces zuko's sense of self-worth he validates zuko's efforts and fire meaning skills which have always been a source of insecurity and shame for him excellent form principle you taught me well and when zuko finds he cannot shoot lightning like a zulu iro doesn't just treat him like a failure but he takes into account zuko's struggles and teaches him an alternate skill that more fits his abilities lightning redirection he gives him a realistic appraisal with a route to finding new strengths and meaning he validates zuko for doing the right thing over and over most famously after zuko lets up a go from under lake laogai building up his self-esteem and self-concept you did the right thing letting the avatar's bison go free eventually zuko allows himself to explore this new way of looking at himself and he finds that he is happier and more fulfilled starting a tea shop with iro he even recognizes that he does deserve rest and care he finds love in tea satisfaction in living a simple life of love connection and humility which ira always told him was the one true antidote to shame that damaging self-concept as the banished weak prince anoza's obedient son the source of his shame is slowly undone this shift in how he understands honor eventually leads him to find the luxuries of royal life in the capital hollow the palinkin the food the wealth because he has come to understand on some level that his honor is not a material thing his anger is deeply wound up in his fire bending and ira encourages him to find a new source to control himself and those impulses fire bending comes from the breath not the muscles this bears fruit when he faces the dragons and works to understand that fire bending can come from his love his warmth his passion not just his anger those old self-destructive risk-taking tendencies are undone and zuko finds new healthier ways of processing his emotions fundamentally ira's most important role is offering a new kind of self-concept a new way to evaluate himself a new route to fulfillment that zuko never would have otherwise found nurturing a new sense of who he needs and wants to be i'm begging you prince tuko it's time for you to look inward and begin asking yourself the big questions who are you and what do you want meaning making is when the survivor assigns new meaning to the trauma to the self and to the world in which traumatic events occur and recur some individuals as they discard a sense of the damaged self will embrace the belief that misfortune endured has yielded newfound strength and compassion and others will transform their experience into creative pursuit or determined social action embracing a survivor mission imbuing their experiences with meaning that is both life affirming and self-affirming this is all deeply tied to reconstructing one's self-esteem and self-cohesion meaning making is about re-evaluating the traumatic events in a healthier way victims will often start out believing that they deserved it that they tempted their abuser or even if they recognized they didn't they'll still be unwilling to blame the abuser which we very much see with zuko over time though zuko begins to internalize that maybe he didn't that conversation with the earth kingdom girl recognized that it wasn't okay same with katara in the crossroads of destiny when zuko insists that he wants his destiny iro pressures him over and over to ask what that really means is it your own destiny or is it a destiny someone else has tried to force on you this question isn't just asking zuko to reconsider where he wants to be in life but it's forcing him to reckon with how the destiny he has been chasing is deeply rooted in him believing that he deserved to be neglected abused and banished iro is pressing zuko to understand something he has been afraid to believe that it was child abuse that there was no justification that this was all forced upon him and it was not his choice the moral stance of the therapist is therefore of enormous importance it is not enough for the therapist to be neutral or non-judgmental the patient challenges the therapist to share her own struggles with these immense philosophical questions the therapist's role is not to provide ready-made answers but rather to affirm a position of moral solidarity with the survivor iro in this sense takes on the role of counsellor in meaning making standing in moral solidarity with zuko but not providing the answer in a way he models a kind of trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy helping to construct that new trauma narrative creating those negative and distorted thoughts around his trauma and linking them in with his behaviors in ways that he wasn't considering on his own challenging that destiny is about helping him find a new autonomy as well a life he has chosen for himself after being told for his life that his wants and needs just aren't as legitimate following this moment when trapped with katara zuko does for the first time blame the fire nation rather than himself for the loss of his mother even if he doesn't blame ozai specifically his trauma narrative here is beginning to change and he feels lost psychologically this is a very common reaction for people just beginning the road to recovery a loss of direction or purpose or cohesion at first regardless of them starting to heal it can still feel like your understanding of yourself or your past and the world is falling away something that people rely on even if it's an unhealthy view of it that's why meaning making is so hard to do and it needs to be done in a supportive safe environment because for a lot of people the traumatic events in their past are intimately tied to the good parts of their life too the line between them can be so thin especially for a child that letting go of one can mean destroying the other and that is so hard even so after getting this close it's such a vulnerable position to find yourself in that zuko relapses and returns to his father something that feels more stable and reliable unable to resist that fulfillment he thinks he wants but it does lead to an interesting moment psychologically in his meaning making journey my father decided to teach me a permanent lesson on my face here zuko seems to recognize on some level that what his father did was wrong but not the broader context of his abuse this again is very common recognizing that an instance of abuse is wrong but that it was the exception and the broader social context is fine this is the calm in that cycle of abuse they've reconciled and ozai assures him that everything is fine and survivors will latch onto that when of course it will not last forever zuko here insists that he is angrier than ever and he doesn't know why blaming himself again he still can't quite yet believe and reach that new trauma narrative he hasn't emerged as his true self feeling worthy of protection and love and he's still stuck behind his false self as he says he was the son his father always wanted but it wasn't him it is only later in facing his father during the eclipse that zuko fully internalizes a new trauma narrative my father who challenged me a 13 year old boy to an agnikai how can you possibly justify a duel with a child it was to teach you respect it was cruel and it was wrong that one what his father did to him was cruel and wrong two he wasn't weak he was just trying to please his father and three that he is in a better place now he can handle his emotions and he knows what he needs to do recognizing repudiating and having a plan moving forward are key parts of a recovery trauma narrative he's confronted the existential despair that he could not face as a child that his father is a terrible parent he's mourned the loss of that trust and he is moving on and like a lot of survivors zuko creates meaning from those traumatic experiences he has held on to what he has learned that it has made him wiser and compassionate and knowledgeable as he ventured across the world and to be clear that is not to say that there is always a purpose to someone's suffering or that going through terrible things is important because it makes you stronger that's wrong and it's harmful and it's dismissive a lot of the time sometimes traumatic experiences are just traumatic this simply respects that traumatic experiences are multi-dimensional secondly his trauma becomes a social action mission he insists that he is going to help the avatar defeat the fire lord and he knows his place in that between all this zugo has found new meaning in his past in himself and with it is forging a new future symptom mastery is when persistent symptoms have abated or become more manageable stimuli that acts as triggers can be avoided with healthy coping routines and stress management techniques that are resistant to extinction zuko manages this as well when he starts to feel himself isolating he instead reaches out to those he trusts avoiding shutting down lastly effect tolerance this ensures that the effects associated with traumatic events no longer overwhelm or threaten to overwhelm and are deprived of their immediacy and fierce intensity defensive numbing and without dissociation and dangerous impulse exposure to fire or threats of physical violence do not cause zuko to numb or the like but not all traumas require all of these things to be reconstructed sometimes trauma survivors are able to mobilize strengths in one of these domains to cope with vulnerabilities and secure recovery in another this is kind of what we see here zuko doesn't flinch when he's facing down against his father during the eclipse because he's always had that effect tolerance and he uses that to make meaning for himself speaking his trauma narrative to his abuser slowly but surely zuko builds new relationships finds a new understanding himself makes meaning from his trauma and is no longer affected by it growing up we were taught that the fire nation was the greatest civilization in history what an amazing lie that was there is an understated and under discussed side to zuko's psychological growth we're focused a lot on how trauma works what it does to us how we recover from it but baked into his past almost foundationally is the nationalistic ideology that zuko is exposed to about the fire nation and the war questioning his loyalties is deeply tied to him seeing what the war really means what it's doing to people and what his father is doing to people what does being crown prince mean in a world like this iro writes back to zuko during the siege of basing say when he was a child describing the city as magnificent and awe-inspiring he notes the superior craftsmanship of their knives and jokes about burning the city to the ground i find this moment really interesting because it shows iro before he too recognizes the horrors of war instead painting it with a subtext of honor and glory a gentleman's war it is only after losing lieutenant his son in this very siege that ira sees the true nature of war and renounces it if only privately leaves from the vine falling so slow world war ii saw over 70 million dead 11 600 people every day one every seven seconds for years with the deadliest bow of that being in the pacific theater against imperial japan by far the main inspiration for the fire nation part of the reason the death count was so high was the distance physical and emotional between the higher-ups and the experiences of the average soldier the military including those at the top were intensely radicalized with a utopian vision of spreading japanese supremacy and prosperity across asia believing that what they lacked in materials they would make up with courage and a willingness to sacrifice something they felt their enemies in china and the united states lacked they bought their own propaganda in other words because all of this is really easy to believe when you don't see people dying you instead just hear the tales coming back the glory the spectacle of war it is hard to escape the nationalistic ocean in which you swim and it bleeds into your understanding of history fire nation children were taught that the air nomads had a military that it was not a genocide it was a fair fight and zuko was likely taught the same in nazi germany they made sure to depict the jews as a nefarious rich powerful group undermining the german people and society rather than the reality a diaspora of disconnected small communities i do not underestimate the greatest enemy with whom we have to fight but i reject jury with every means in my power and without reserve in order to preserve the hereditary endowment of my people depicting them as an adversarial group a cohesive collective rather than individuals as fisher does here muddies the waters in the minds of people justifying their deportation and genocide it's just the enemy when auschwitz workers were asked how they could possibly participate in these atrocities against civilians they answered that to them enemies were everywhere they were told they came from every walk of life they were academics and they were businessmen not just soldiers they were trying to destroy their people in every way culturally and socially and so the line between civilian and soldier simply disappeared they were all enemies of the state that's the sort of belief that zuko was brought up with an honorable war as a way of spreading prosperity and that there never was a genocide but a war against those in the way of progress this is again a kind of child abuse lying to them about the world and dictating to them their role in it their place what does it mean to deconstruct those beliefs beliefs that are deeply tied to your understanding of how the world is meant to work and your understanding of yourself the psychology of radicalization and de-radicalization helps articulate how this happens focusing on the significance quest people want to feel like what they do matters they have a place in the world that they are not an outcast but a building towards something that matters this is often exported on a nationalistic and political level to the entire population radical nationalistic and political ideologies will exploit this feeling by giving people that sense of significance often exporting it to the entire population in a cultural narrative even if that significance entails committing or endorsing violence when zuko protested at the war meeting to his father he took issue with sacrificing fire nation soldiers needlessly not with the war broadly seeing the violence as necessary to spread their prosperity and progress to the entire world for a long time zuko finds personal significance in his role as the crown prince as a part of that participating in this global generational project to bring the world under the fire nation's righteous rule honor is a material thing a clear comparison can be drawn to the imperial japanese population a national quest over decades in which they all have significance and to truly understand how deep this can go i want to read you some of the last words of 23 year old ishizu hayashi who famously wrote to his mother before sacrificing his life in a suicidal attack i am pleased to have the honor of having been chosen as a member of a special attack force that is on its way to battle but i cannot help crying when i think of you mom when i reflect on the hopes you had for my future i feel so sad that i am going to die without doing anything to bring you joy these were complicated people with dreams and hopes but they were all warped to work within that nationalistic ideology in particular though loss of significance due to personal failure invites a collectivist shift towards one's group and its norms and values and they tended more strongly to self-identify as members of collectors nation or religion rather than as individuals peoples whose lives do not appear to be going well are disposed to embrace an ideology whether it be nationalistic social or religious that promises significance if only one followed its dictates again this theme of failure and shame keeps coming back with ozai's reinforcement that zuko is a failure it is no surprise that zuko falls more deeply into identifying with his role within this nationalistic collective attaching it to him being the crown prince trying to follow its dictates to feel like he's worth something the first time that ozai tells him he is proud of him is when you think zuko has killed the avatar the fire nation's ultimate threat believing that zuko has finally given up on himself as an individual and fallen into the collective under him it's because of all of this that it should be no surprise that zuko reaches his most nationalistic right after being banished his lowest point where those feelings of losing significance of failure of shame of being an outcast are most intense one study even found the cultures which place a value on honor and obedience are more prone to radical nationalistic ideologies because they can more easily exploit people's fear of losing significance deradicalization then centers on finding a new significance and that's exactly what zuko does deradicalization may occur if one came to regard one's radical means as morally unacceptable ineffective or both and hence unlikely to promote one's significance deradicalization may reflect a weakening of such radicalizing influence by falling outside of its sphere is only and being physically removed from the fire nation even on the run from it the zuko falls outside of the social spheres reinforcing his radicalization and into a new social sphere developing new connections new values friendships trust on his own but more importantly he is confronted firsthand with the realities of the war that he and his family have waged he sees the scars inflicted on civilians the family is torn apart by the dead he sees towns wiped off the map refugees fleeing and for what slowly that perception of the war as a noble honorable conflict is broken down much the same way has happened with iro the war is not only an ineffective way of bringing prosperity to the world but horribly wrong iro focuses on zuko as an individual rather than as part of a collective he gives him a new way of reintegrating into society a new individualism where zuko fell into radicalization because of those feelings of failure airo builds him up till he has a sense of honor that exists outside of that ideological framework and one of the most interesting parts of this shift is his psychological relationship to being the crown prince at the start zuko's identity is expectedly very caught up in it in that role in the nationalistic collective but zuko's loyalty to the fire nation begins to fade when he cuts off his top not to disguise himself it's also symbolically severing ties with the fire nation some way inescapably he begins to explore who he is then outside that royal context what significance he can find until that is zuko alone for a long time his self-concept and significance has been dominated by ozai's belief about who he should be but he's starting to recognize that either he's never going to get that or that he doesn't want it to the point of even letting go of his identity as crown prince you might think that iro would even encourage this after all he's helping him find a new self-concept but he actually does the opposite in the avatar in the fire lord ayro gives zuko the crown prince's headdress insisting it is for him that he shouldn't purge that part of himself but that it doesn't mean he has to support the war and its cruelty that it symbolizes in zuko alone zuko reflects on who his mother made him to that he is someone who fights for what is right that he might get knocked down but he keeps on getting up again there's a new meaning to being the crown prince in all of this and he starts to internalize that he will pick it back up when it means all of those things my name is zuko son of ursa and firelord ozai prince of the fire nation an heir to the throne i think it's really interesting here that before he mentions firelord ozai before he mentions being heir to the throne the things that give him status and power he declares he is ursu's son he's wrestling with both these conceptions of himself these two different routes to significance so it's no surprise how demoralizing it is when he reveals himself and is cast out from the village even when he tries to help when he tries a new way he isn't wanted despite seeing this he still can't quite let go of that significance that he finds within ozai's nationalistic ideology it's so deeply entrenched in his mind as crown prince obedient son because his family emotions are so caught up in it as well the line between family and nation has blurred and it's because of this as well that he relapses because it's so easy to fall back into it to return to his father but this itself leads to a crucial step in de-radicalization even after attaining everything he thought he wanted achieving those goals even after investing everything in this way of looking at the world he is still unhappy he has not found that significance that he thought he would and it leads to his final disillusionment culminating in zuko's showdown with his father during the eclipse growing up we were taught that the fire nation was the greatest civilization in history and somehow the war was our way of sharing our greatness with the rest of the world what an amazing lie that was the people of the world are terrified by the fire nation they don't see our greatness they hate us and we deserve it see much like ira offers a new self-concept ira and ursa help zuko find a new route to personal significance one where he feels empowered happy where he can be himself where he has overcome his past someone who can end the war and find honor for himself you have always followed your own path you restored your own honor it's easy to feel stuck in your trauma in the cycles of abuse and relapse and the struggle to find out who the hell you meant to be in the wake of it for some people it's such a big part of their life that they're left not feeling like a real person just this thing left over that had things happened to them but where azula serves to remind us that some people are still lost in the mires of abuse zuko gives us hope that one day they will find peace maybe you just need a hand out of it if you've ever been in an abusive family or relationship or friendship if you've been consumed by your anger your fear your loneliness then you'll know what it's like to lose a sense of yourself of who you are of being someone worthy of love but zuko's story reminds me of a line that i want to share from albert camus in the midst of winter i found there was within me an invincible summer things might be hard right now but hold on to that invincible summer hold on till you find that person that takes you in their arms and tells you that they were never angry they were just afraid you had lost your way [Music] hey everyone uh if you don't know me my name's alex and i've been the editor behind most of this channel's videos for the last almost three years and i'm here to sadly announce that this video is my last i know it's too much tim was kind enough to let me choose which video would be my final and i think this zuko psychology video kind of dealing with mental health while also talking about avatar is just kind of the perfect culmination and send-off for my time doing work for this amazing community so i wanted to say thank you to you all for supporting content like this like if it weren't for you this job wouldn't have been possible for me it wouldn't be possible for tim we none of us would be able to do this if it weren't for you so thank you before i became a part of this amazing community i was married confused and working a day job to support a life that i didn't really realize was wrong for me and i was just trying too hard to make it work but thanks to my friends family tim the tail foundry and all of you i feel like i'm finally on a path will lead to my own self-fulfillment one day and yeah if it weren't for all of you guys i wouldn't be here right now and that's something that i'll always keep close to my heart and i'll always remember you all for so thank you again this video this is just going to be me saying thank you a million times but that's exactly the thing all things in life serve as stepping stones and i feel like it would be wrong of me to try and make this stepping stone last forever as much as i want to keep making avatar videos mental health videos and talking about writing and world building eventually five years down the line however long i'll end up hating it and i just don't want that i want to be able to remember this fondly last fall i started going to animation school and with the tail foundry the other channel i work for i think it's really time for me to buckle down for the next three and a half four years and just focus on my animation and tail foundry and just let those two things serve as my current stepping stones where my feet are planted i think it's the best next step for me and i'm very excited to see what comes of all of it so wish me luck if you care i mean if you didn't care you probably would have clicked away by now so thank you for watching me talk see she's sad that i'm leaving tim and you don't even know who he is this channel and its community has always been important to me and i'm actually kind of excited that i get to sit back again and enjoy it as a viewer i get to see a new video pop up from hello future me that i haven't watched a million times over because i've been sitting in my bedroom for 30 hours editing it i get to watch it as a viewer i get to be surprised so i'm very i'm very excited for that if you want to keep up with my work you can follow me on twitter and instagram or my youtube if you want to see some of my upcoming animation projects or you can go over to tail foundry where that that's just where all my editing work will be done in the future and we've got some really cool stuff planned over there so i recommend you pop over there and check it out it's gonna it's gonna be beautiful so that's about it i mean i i feel bad for taking up this much time but if you're still here thank you for listening i love you um if it weren't for all of you again i wouldn't be able to be here and i appreciate you with all my heart um stay nerdy and i'll see you in the future god i can't get that i can't get that outro the way he does how does he say he goes stay nerdy and i'll see you in the future he says it so like dramatically and i can't really pull off the dramatic stay nerdy and i'll see you in the future i guess that's is that good is that is that as good as it's gonna get [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 1,544,551

Keywords: explained, theory, lore, analysis, how to, psychology of azula, psychology, mental health, avatar, last airbender, atla, aang, zuko, iroh, katara, sokka, korra, legend, firebending, waterbending, earthbending, airbending, bending

Id: oNOy6plGUCY

Length: 91min 10sec (5470 seconds)

Published: Sat May 21 2022