I have a three-year old character. If he sees something super traumatic (people being eaten alive) could he go (i think the term is) electively mute. Like not speak at all, not just about the incident, but at all. Or is that just something they do in the movies. Thank you for the help
I did a little research because at first I thought you’d just heard the phrase wrong/it was a case of … multiple names for the same thing-
there’s something called selective mutism, which is where people become mute under specific circumstances (children who can’t speak at school, trauma survivors who lose the ability to talk when in a triggering situation, etc)
Elective mutism seems to be more specific to all the time. And from what I came up with in my search-
it is more of a movie thing. There seem to be very few cases of it, and of the few reported ones, it looks like some of those turned out to be selective mutism.
There’s a number of reasons why people struggle to talk after trauma. I know personally that I went through periods where I was literally too depressed to talk. I could try and argue with myself mentally that I needed to talk, needed to speak up, needed to do some task and I just.. couldn’t. Other times it just wasn’t worth the effort at all. I knew people wanted me to respond but I could no more rouse the energy for that than I could to get out of bed.
Other it’s the hyperawareness and the reaction to high stress making speaking… too painful. What if they say the wrong thing? They can’t handle anything else right now and anxiety twists their chests into knots.
In cases of trauma sometimes it’s also the fear that speaking will get them hurt again. Not just ‘someone laughed at me/I screwed up a social situation and now they’ll hate me’ but ‘I’m going to get hit for making a sound.’
But the difference between that and elective mutism is that it goes away… and sometimes comes back. There’s usually a trigger for it.
Hopefully that helps a bit,
TS
