I saw Frozen this past weekend and I am self-identifying with Elsa a whole bunch. It's probably best if I go in order to get this giant bunch of word vomit out.
The unnamed king and queen in the movie are one of the most accurate depictions of my parents I've seen in a movie. My mom is as neurotypical as they get, but my dad is probably somewhere on the spectrum. When the king told Elsa to "Conceal it; don't feel it," I felt a slight twinge of empathy. While growing up, every time I would melt down, they and others would always tell me to "Just deal with it." I hadn't been diagnosed yet, so they always assumed I was just being picky.
Too many things going on? "Just deal with it." You can't understand me? "Just deal with it." Everything I tried to explain I got back a "Just deal with it." I had to deal with those toxic words so much that I internalized dealing with everything on my own. I have the most difficulty with asking for help with even minor things now.
I have severe anxiety issues. I get anxious sometimes in movie crowd scenes. So during the ball, when Elsa had her panic attack, I was right there with her. I recognized the clipped way she ordered the gates closed. She knew it was coming and had to get out of there fast.
During "Let it Go," I was not okay. As soon as Elsa sang "Couldn't keep it in/ Heaven knows I tried," I started bawling. One of my constant refrains when I'm melting down is "I'm trying." As soon as something similar passed Elsa's lips, I was her. And the rest of the song, about her giving zero fucks about anything anymore, was so wonderful. I have to care or I get worse. But for those three minutes I could revel in her freedom. I can't listen to the song now without crying.
One of the bad things about anxiety issues is even the most minor things trigger flashbacks. There was a post on tumblr a while back about how people deal with events. They were a bunch of graphs with how much a subject is being dealt with versus time passed. There were various personality types and anxious people were one of them. That graph had a giant scribble instead of a line. When a user made a comment that apparently axious people could travel back in time, someone made another comment that it was easy, al we had to do was think about a mistake we made. Elsa's flashback is in the same vein.
tl;dr -- Elsa is basically me and the next time I go to EPCOT Norway, I'm hugging her.
