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Self destructive behaviors are defined as behaviors that are bound to harm you physically or mentally. It may be unintentional. Or, it may be that you know exactly what you’re doing, but the urge is too strong to control.
Derek knows this of course, hell he’s a profiler for gods sake, and yet, he thinks he’s fine. But, he knows, deep down, that he’s not.
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The alcohol addiction started not long after his dad died, he needed a way to cope and his mom was living in a bottle as it was. So he drank, and drank until he was nauseous and he did it day, after day after day. He stopped at 15, but it made its mark and ‘till this day he still avoids more than three shots.
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He stopped drinking at 15, but he picked up an even worse habit. If you asked him about the discoloration on his wrist, he would say it’s from work or the sun, which is believable but a lot of them came from razor blades. His sisters know, having caught him more often than he wished and they never told their mom, it was their secret. Sometimes he wished they did, maybe he would’ve gotten help but deep down he knew he wouldn’t have.
He stopped cutting once he made it to college, having no reason to do it with Buford no longer hovering over him. He never liked it when Derek cut, said it ‘ruined him’ or ‘made him weak’. He still thinks about it when cases get to hard to forget, but he never goes back after promising to Garcia he wouldn’t after he called her after cutting too deep and not wanting to risk his job with calling Hotch.
“You can’t keep hiding behind this facade, you need to open up”
That was what she said to him, the memory of the tears in her eyes and the way her voice cracked when she talked never leaving his mind whenever walked into his bathroom.
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Hyper-sexuality is a bitch, he only values himself and believes people only want him for his body because his personality isn’t worth anything. So he plays this off with a ‘playboy attitude’ but he doesn’t WANT sex he just feels useless without it. He blames his past relationships for it, and Buford but he’d rather not think about it.
No one would judge him for it, it’s a trauma response but he’d rather not tell them, they’d either not believe him or start babying him and it took him months to get them to stop walking on egg shells around him.
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His temper isn’t his favorite thing, and neither are his abandonment issues. Whenever he feels like someone is trying to leave him he tries to leave them first, or at least make it hurt less when they do. Pushing them away, acting cold, yelling at them or just ignoring them when they ask what’s wrong. He’s done this to Garcia more than he wants admit, he’s done it to Spencer , Emily, Elle etc.
He’s also done it to his family, but they also do it to him, guess that’s who he learned it from. His mom ignores and treats people coldly without verbalizing what they did wrong, Sarah yells and screams at others assuming they did it on purpose, even when they make it clear they didn’t. Desiree isolates herself trying to prevent herself from getting hurt by whoever and has a hard time forgiving.
Self destructive behaviors run in his family, his father and mother both came from heavy drinker families, and their inability to communicate made their kids unable to communicate as well.
He doesn’t blame them for it, he’s old enough to get help to unlearn these behaviors but without them he doesn’t know who he is.
So, he’ll keep them going until everyone understands he’s too far gone to save and it’s a waste of time to care for him.