#anon01

CW: Trauma, child abuse, torture

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A traumatising event could definitely bring back old symptoms. It wouldn’t have to be “extremely” traumatising. 

Some symptoms might flare up again if they are triggered by something like seeing a person who looks similar to one of their captors, for example. 

The autism can interact with the trauma response so that following a trigger or after re-traumatisation they seem to others to be “more autistic”(I can lose speech, have increased difficulty interpreting non-literal language, have greater difficulty gauging my internal states)

(I cut off contact with my mother because every time I spoke to her it would take me days to recover, during which time I found it impossible to know if I was hungry or not and Other Problems) 

In times soon after trauma my sensitivity to sound has been very heightened - much more than usual.

The amount of time elapsed is not necessarily a good indication of what the continued impact on your character is. People all respond differently. Some people don’t develop PTSD/C-PTSD at all, whereas for others the condition lasts decades. There are lots of things that impact how likely one is to develop a disorder as a result of exposure to trauma (for example duration of trauma, type of trauma, previous experiences of trauma). 

Signs of trauma you might see in them: 

scars 

ongoing pain (eg. back problems from trauma to spine) 

a whole raft of possible symptoms from traumatic brain injuries (problems with balance, vision, tinnitus) 

aversion to things that remind the MC of the trauma

making sure that they always have a clear path to the exit in social situations (this could be always sitting next to the door so that they can escape quickly, or always facing the door so that they can see anyone coming in or anyone moving to cut off access to the exit)

conditioned responses as a result of their time in captivity - for example, if they were punished for walking across the room they might still persist in always walking around the outside of a room if they need to get to the other side. 

volatile relationships with peers or with people in positions of authority 

poor self-esteem

There would also likely be an impact on things like the character’s reading and mathematical ability (from missing three years of education at an important stage).

I just want to add - 10 years is in some ways a long time, but also not. Your main character has been treated horrifically, they spent three years in captivity, three years being tortured. That’s… that’s not a small thing. And while therapy and support are very important and will help your character, it’s not a magic bullet that makes everything better.If you as the author want a character who is extremely traumatised, you’ve got all the ingredients you need.

An innocent question from another character about “what was your favourite planet when you studied the solar system in third grade?” is suddenly a very difficult one - does your character lie, change the topic, or say “actually, when I was supposed to be in the third grade I was being held captive and I didn’t see the sun for three years, much less study the solar system”. 

As an autistic person, your character is likely to find this sort of situation even harder. It can be hard to judge when it is appropriate to talk about traumatic experiences - especially, for your character, if they have spent a lot of time being encouraged to talk about the trauma in therapy and by carers. It isn’t always clear if someone is asking because they want to know the real answer or if they are just making conversation. 

Even if your character has no trauma response from that type of conversation, the amount of processing needed to judge what to do can be very tiring: “is this person asking because they really want to know? even if they do know, are they a safe person to tell? if I don’t tell them about my childhood, what can I say instead? can I lie? what lie can I use? can I say I don’t want to talk about it? how do I do that without being rude?”And that’s on top of the normal processing your character has to do when interacting with other people. All of this is very tiring, and could lead to your character shutting down and not responding, having a melt-down, or just answering with the truth out of default, even if it is not a safe/suitable time to do so.

Anon01

I don’t know if this one would count as PTSD or C-PTSD because straight up torture is something distinct you can point at and say “that, that’s what messed me up” instead of C-PTSD which as I understand isn’t a distinct “big bang” of trauma but rather a series of smaller traumas (correct me if I’m wrong?)… either way, one of the signs of prolonged exposure to childhood trauma involves learning the behaviours as “normal” and doing it for themselves, long after the aggressor is gone, not because the person doesn’t know they’re hurting themselves, but because they’ve never learned any better in terms of life experience and as they get older new things will challenge their worldview of what’s okay, even as they intellectually understand what’s they’re doing is not good.  Think of it as a Pavlovian response rather than a conscious decision.Whatever “a lot” of therapy and “support” is supposed to mean, the short answer is it’s not a quick fix.  Many people struggling with mental illnesses have less, hm, “hardcore” experiences and still under the best of circumstances, with therapy (which you must understand YMMV) and support (support network of ~common~ mental problems get real sick of it real quick, so support for torture needs to be actually qualified and not just friends curing with love)

If an extremely traumatising event happened ten years after the initial cause ended?  Yes.  That’s hardly a long time in terms of recovery.I can’t speak about autism but I will say that generally certain types of disabilities get more abuse than others, physical disabilities is one, and yes autism is another.I will add that from the ask, it feels like the author’s done enough research to have the terminology and general feel down, but is still in the uncanny valley of writing experiences to get the details quite right.  I’d go back and review why they picked this millefeuille of issues, and make sure it’s not fetishizing torture, child abuse, and autism.  I get it, fiction will often ramp things up to 11 to get a more visceral feel, I’ve written some horrendous things myself just to cope (not even for publishing, just for the catharsis), at the same time I’d advise ramping it down a notch, because while all three things are real things that happen, most of the audience in a general sense will relate more to more realistic depictions.  Unless your story is set in a fictional world.  Then just make sure whatever you’re doing is consistent with the world’s rules. 

People’s luck seemed to be getting increasingly worse as days passed in the city. For instance, the young blonde girl who just happened to literally run into him. She seemed harmless enough so it didn’t make sense for him to try to get back at her with violence of some sort. That said, since she was around, perhaps messing with her for a while could alleviate some of his lingering boredom. It was worth a shot if nothing else.

“Hey now, you can hurt someone by running around blind like that.”

“No one got hurt, but you should still apologize.”

Not that he was in any sort of position to lecture anyone.

Hello lovely,

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