The Perks of Being a Wallflowers Realistic Portrayal of PTSD

Tera
13 min readJun 13, 2021

Ever wonder why Charlie kissed Sam instead of Merry Elizabeth in the scene of Truth or Dare? The scene which made hundreds of thousands of watchers cringe and feel second-hand embarrassment? Yes, it’s the scene where the majority of second-time watchers skip and as well as the scene which made us all question its purpose of existence. Originally a book, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a film based on a freshman who is still processing the loss of his best friend Michael and his late aunt Helen. The film covers a variation of topics that touch upon mental health, trauma, self-discovery, death, and abuse. It’s about the need of feeling accepted and finding a purpose or a place. The narrator, Charlie, struggles with depression and blames himself for his aunt Helen’s death without knowing the truth about their past. Charlie’s behavior reveals to us his diagnoses of PTSD without telling the audience, contrasting with his narratives. PTSD causes behavioral problems, and to fully understand the grasp of this, it must be looked at from a psychological perspective. What makes The Perks of Being a Wallflower realistically portray PTSD is the fact that the audience can sense the signs of Charlie’s trauma without entirely understanding the plot.

First, we must understand Charlie’s state at the beginning of the movie. He is an introverted freshman who just lost his best friend. Therefore, Charlie does not have any friends once he joins high school, a reminder of the fact that his social awkwardness and introverted personality make it harder for him. Being a wallflower has its perks for Charlie, but the unfortunate side for him is that he is unable to seek help as he can’t communicate with others immediately. It’s hard for him to express his emotions to others straightforwardly. His circumstances make it even more difficult for him as once he joins high school, he starts to get frequent flashbacks of his aunt Helen. This worsens Charlie’s depression and or anxiety along with Michaels’s death. Charlie simply does not understand why he begins to feel this way, but it is because he is still repressing his past trauma. We can see this in Charlie’s characteristics and behavior which dive into something deeper.

Alone

Sigmund Freud’s theory on destructive behavior implies that aggression correlates with our actions and behaviors which intend to cause harm towards a person whom it is directed at. He stated that human behavior dives into thoughts and feelings which lie in our subconscious. Therefore, Charlie’s behavior could have possibly been led by his subconscious mind and this is represented in a couple of scenes. Destructive behavior may cost friendships, safety, or stability, and more noticeably, impact our actions.

The National Health institute describes that having at least one avoidance symptom can add to understanding the diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s hard to fully understand whether sometimes Charlie is showing avoidance symptoms, or it’s just the fact that he’s introverted. But we certainly do see him avoiding participation in his own life. On Charlie’s first day of English class, he has the answer to all the questions his teacher asks, but yet he never raises his hand. His teacher asks,

“You should learn to participate. Why didn’t you raise your hand?”

Sitting quietly in class

This just gives us an example of how Charlie does not participate, even in the simplest things. Charlie withdraws himself from making new friends which makes him very lonely. He observes the people in the cafeteria, having something to say about everyone. Although Charlie, surprisingly, is disassociating with life. Charlie listens to the mixtapes created for his sister, he watches his brother’s football games, has his father create his shop class project for him, and watches as his sister was abused by her boyfriend. The Traumatic Stress and Substance Abuse Problems or ISTS describes dissociation as an outcome of trying to avoid reminders of traumatic experiences. Perhaps Charlie is trying to distract himself from the death of Michael or his aunt Helen, or it is something deeper than that. But Charlie notices himself not participating fully, and so he states

“I’m trying to participate by listening to Sams’s collection of big rock ballads and thinking about love. Sam says they’re kitschy and brilliant. I completely agree. I’m also writing essays and studying extra books outside of class.”

We notice how his participation is avoidance or a distraction from whatever else might be going on in his mind. We know that Charlie has dissociation problems not only because of his avoidance but also as Webmd describes, a pause in how the mind handles information. We are aware that Charlie’s best friend Michael had recently committed suicide, which further affects Charlie’s disconnection, making his surroundings worsen. The source describes “You may feel disconnected from your thoughts, feelings, memories, and surroundings. It can affect your sense of identity and your perception of time.” Charlie starts listening to Sams’s favorite music pieces and only reading the books his teacher recommends to him. Charlie starts to grow a new personality and adapts things from Sam and his friends. Charlie sees Sam dancing with her boyfriend, but he imagines if it was himself dancing instead. The diagnoses mentioned a key aspect to Charlie’s past, the disconnection from memories. Charlie does not remember the abuse he had endured as a child nor did he understand it at the time. We can distinguish that Charlie loses a sense of time once he starts taking drugs. For example, during the New Year, Charlie sits on a couch and the scene fastens in time which has a strange effect on display. This was purposely done to show how the time went by so fast as he sat there, alone, watching others living their lives and having fun. Charlie was doing the opposite of that, observing them instead, or in other words, he was being a wallflower.

New Years

As Charlie gets introduced to his new friends, he starts experimenting with new substances, such as drugs. He’s always seeking distractions and drugs were his temporary escape. People with post-traumatic stress disorder try to keep their minds off of things, wanting to feel good for a while or have their emotions go numb. Wanting to be away from the anxiety, stress, and depression, substance abuse increases his irritability of having destructive behavior. We see an example of this the night he stayed out in the snow, creating angels. Charlie was creating snow angels, something that might be considered a child’s act even if on drugs. This can symbolize a part of his childhood and innocence which was taken away from him. He passes out, and then the next day he awakes in the hospital. His behavior is resulting in a risk to his safety and stability. As Charlie experiences his dissociation, the use of the drugs provides him with that distraction he was so eager to seek.

creating snow angles

Healthline explains how common risk factors for self-destructive behavior consist of drug use. As mentioned before, Charlie gets hooked on drugs, and the drugs may have increased his anger. His drug use seems to worsen around the time of December, the time his aunt Helen had passed. This increases Charlie’s depression hence he’s eager to feel something else. Once Charlie has been shunned by his friends, he doesn’t have anything else to distract himself with once the drugs and parties are over, thus his comfort is gone. His coping mechanism was the distraction of Sam and Patrick, the essays he wrote for his teacher, and the drugs that made him feel numb. This simply shows how his drug use adds to his avoidance symptoms. People with PTSD tend to do exactly what Charlie had demonstrated.

Charlie begins to date Merry Elizabeth without wanting to but didn’t want to hurt her feelings by breaking up with her. He only suffered more as it led to building pent-up frustration as he couldn’t bring himself to end it. We can understand his irritability once Charlie imagined what he felt about their relationship when Patrick gave him an option of truth or dare.

“Charlie, how’s your first relationship going?”

“It’s going so bad that I keep fantasizing that one of us is dying of cancer so that I don’t have to break up with her”

Although Charlie did not answer with that, we further see his vexation. Instead, he was asked to kiss the prettiest girl in the room, and he kissed Sam. This was not expected of him to do as he’s viewed as the shy, caring, and thoughtful freshman. He kissed another girl in front of his girlfriend which showed the lack of control he had over himself and his actions. This lack of control is a form of self-destructive behavior as mentioned in Sigmund Freud’s analysis. His behavior then cost him his friendships, which is a common outcome to people with such symptoms. Once Charlie tried to apologize to Marry Elizabeth, he tried to explain what he was going through without actually understanding it.

truth or dare

“I just get so messed up inside like I’m not there or something.”

This represents what Charlie struggles with, which is the inability to control his behavior. In such a bad state, he feels as if he’s not himself or as Webmd mentions it as the feeling like you are a different person sometimes. Charlie had an out-of-body experience which all simply adds to his dissociation issues as touched up upon throughout the film. It’s understood that it’s harder for Charlie to express his feelings as an introvert who dissociates frequently. WebMD mentioned that feeling like a different person sometimes is a part of dissociation. Charlie’s mental state worsens and he does not want to be left alone again, just like once Michael left him, or perhaps once he was left alone with his aunt Helen.

This affair leads to the cafeteria fight. Patrick finds himself in a conflict with Brad, which resulted in a physical fight against Brad and his friends. As Patrick is overpowered by the others, Charlie steps in to help his friend. The screen turns black, as it’s shown from Charlie’s perspective. Once the screen is visible to the viewers again, it seems to be that Charlie has defeated them all. He had so much anger and frustration held back that he blacked out. It seemed as if it took him a while to fully process what he had done from his facial expressions. This scene contributes to elaborate on the lack of control Charlie has, metally and physically. As stated before, Charlie loses control of what is happening in the world, such as the people surrounding him. Charlie looks around the cafeteria, identifying the faces staring at him in shock. Once he leaves the principal’s office, Sam walks up to him.

“How are you doing Charlie?”

“I keep trying but I can’t really remember what I did.”

Cafeteria fight

Charlie seems to be unable to fully understand what’s going on around him, which shows an underlying message to his aunt Helen’s abuse. Charlie, a shy freshman who got bullied around by his classmates, was able to beat down two seniors. This simply shows how much anger he had inside of him without actually being aware of it. He blacked out and tried to remember what he did, this scene represents Charlie’s PTSD to the audience subtly. All of his behavioral matters conclude that Charlie is mentally unstable which is because his conditions worsen throughout time. He did not understand what was wrong with himself and it took time to come to a closure.

The night before Sam has to leave for university, Charlie and Sam kiss. This triggers Charlie as he relives the memories. We can see this from his expressions, as Sam rubs her hands around him. He stops for a second, remembering aunt Helen at a time like this. He remembers her hands on him, and he remembers her telling him to keep all the secrets. The next day, having processed all that information, it left him in a state of shock. It hurts him, knowing that a person he loved the most and blamed himself for the death of turned out to be such a monster.

It took time for Charlie to remember the abuse he had endured. According to UCLA psychologists, Charlie had no explicit memory of his early childhood trauma, which is another occurrence with PTSD victims. In addition, we’ve seen the trauma affect him even when he was not fully aware of the abuse. Charlie did not remember the event once Merry Elizabeth kissed him, and this might be because Charlie felt the same way with Sam as he did with aunt Helen. He mentioned that Sam was fun, beautiful, and sweet, which matched a similar description of his aunt. As Sam opens up to Charlie about her dark past, Charlie mentions that,

“My aunt Helen had the same thing done to her. She turned her life around.”

“She must’ve been great.”

“She was my favorite person until now.”

This line in the film showed that Charlie felt the same way about Sam as he did with Aunt Helen. GracePoint.org introduces that external reminders such as places, activities, situations, or people, arise distressing memories with the victims of PTSD. The external reminders include physical symbols, exposure to people, places, or such connected with the traumatic event. This evidence might be the reason behind Charlie’s trigger. The National Mental Health Institute mentions that the cognitions and mood symptoms consist of negative thoughts about oneself or the world. Once Charlie has figured it out, he comes home and starts banging his head against the wall.

“It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”

He has distorted thoughts about the event which have made him blame himself. As a child, he blamed himself for his Aunt Helen’s death, but now, he states how he wanted her to die as revealed in the phone call with his sister. As Charlie is having his mental breakdown, he repeats

“Stop crying. Stop crying.”

This quote could be further interpreted, it could be his ongoing train of negative emotions, guilt, fear, and anger all in two sentences as he blames himself for what had happened. The distorted thoughts about oneself or the world can be a change in mood symptoms that Charlie represents yet again. The next determination of his diagnosis is the nightmare. As Charlie sits in his chair, he thinks everyone is staring at him as he has flashbacks like intrusive thoughts. In the Perks Of Being a Wallflower script, they describe it as a “paranoid nightmare,” all of which is a part of the descriptions of the symptoms. His ongoing negative feelings, and physical sensations such as sweat, trembling, and pain are all expected in the understanding of the plot.

Charlie narrates the story, and we see his perspective as he expresses his thoughts along with the scenes of the film. It’s almost as if the film is speaking to you, and for some people, it actually does. Charlie takes us along in his journey of self-discovery, change, and understanding. The film realistically shows high school life according to its reviews as well as its characters and circumstances which resonate with others. As someone who went through a shockingly similar experience, The Perks of Being a Wallflower demonstrates an accurate portrayal of one’s behavior and feelings while facing childhood trauma. Not everyone goes through the same experiences when it comes to trauma or life in general, but the film yet manages to resonate with many. When I first watched the film, I did not understand what had actually happened to Charlie until the very end. But that’s how it is with PTSD victims, it’s hard to immediately recognize what the other is going through. Understanding Charlie’s life and his perspective give us insight into the deeper meaning of what he was actually going through.

He blamed himself for his past with aunt Helen and we see this as he stated “it’s all my fault.” I understood how Charlie felt as he repeated to himself to stop crying, we both felt something so indescribable. He remembers everything, his aunt Helen’s abuse, his cafeteria blackout again and again unable to control it. It’s an overwhelming wave of pressure that hits all at the same time. Everything is starting to make sense but you still feel as if it doesn’t. As you are trying to gain control again, you are physically and mentally unable to. Charlie repeats to himself to stop crying which communicates what was stated before. We can hear Charlie’s shaky breath from the scenes which indicates his anxiety attack, we can hear him inhaling and exhaling as he’s trying to gain that sense of control. He’s trying to control his physical state; the tears, and his mental state; the shock. Charlie has lost control over himself and this was the breaking point as he then passes out. As someone who had to go through the same situation as Charlie, the film gives comfort knowing that you are not the only person. The film gives comfort because it’s something you can relate to and understand without needing all the dialogue. I personally understood all of his different stages of grief. Its plot twist can resemble my own life as no one else was aware of it. It helps bring closure to oneself because you can understand the behavioral changes that impact you. It’s sickening knowing that an adult could take advantage of a child, something which both Charlie and I had to understand from such a young age. But that is a step closer to growing up, understanding the real world of ours, which The Perks of Being a Wallflower gave a glimpse into.

--

--