#scriptshrink consultants

Anon4

“The same way you’d normally write a thought, followed by anxiety or dismissal of said thought” is how I’ve been doing it in my own writing because that tends to be how it goes for me

Anon32

I agree. Maybe with repetition. My intrusive thoughts usually stick around until the situation is passed. So like if I have an intrusive thought about dropping a fragile item, it will stay until I have put it down safely. If I have an intrusive thought about driving off a bridge, it won’t fully go away until I’m over the bridge.  So, just What if I drove off the side of the bridge? No, I’m driving straight and it would be bad if it happened, so I should just be careful and keep driving straight. But what if it just happens? It happens in my dreams all the time. It wouldn’t be like in my dreams because in my dreams my car is able to drive underwater and there’s still fresh air, so just keep driving, I’m almost past and it will be ok.

elizafaraday

TW: violence and blood mentions 

An intrusive thought is like having some pessimistic voice in your head with a one track mind and is impossible to be argued with. In the past, I’ve had one about stabbing my significant other. And not just a voice. I imagined it at random times. The blood. The knife I would use. I never would have acted on it, but whenever I got stressed out and felt trapped and overly criticized I almost fantasized about it. I was horrified by the thought. But that didn’t make it go away. What made it go away was not stressing about it or trying to suppress it. Basically accepting it, and realizing why I was having those thoughts. And just saying “I won’t.” So I guess, there doesn’t have to be just thoughts but visions are possible. And fighting them makes them more stubborn.

Charlie

I always, always had images in my head but I don’t really think in words - just images. So I always saw really detailed images of these bad things, just flashes, but they wouldn’t go away.

Anon32

Some people might not notice depending on how well they know the person. I’m usually able to function mostly normally, I think. It’s just all wrong. People that do notice but don’t understand have commented that I’m “in a mood” or “in a funk” or maybe acted like people do when someone daydreams like “snap out of it” or “earth to anon32!” I feel like I don’t get as much done as normal, but I can make myself be somewhat productive.

nothowiplanned

Almost nobody notices when I’m mildly depersonalised - I think I come across as not really paying attention but that’s about it. It’s difficult for people not to notice when I’m very far gone, but when it’s comparatively mild no one seems to notice.

Jellyfish

yeah, if somebody knows you well enough they might say you’re spaced out or distracted, but most people probably won’t notice

barc0de

Yeah! Ive mostly been told i look spaced out and move a bit slower than usual & eyes get unfocused but thats pretty much all i can recall

Charlie

I’ve had complete strangers ask if I’m okay, though that happens very, very rarely.  Usually no one notices, not even friends. If they do then they’ll comment that I’m acting “weird”. The people that tend to notice most are teachers - they will say I look distracted, unfocused, distant, etc.

danny

A lot of these are different for everyone, but I’ll chime in for some parts. When I dissociate, it feels like nothing’s real and that I’m not a person. I’ll be physically and emotionally numb. It can be hard for me to see how what’s going on or how my memories connect to me. The best way I can describe that is that it’s like if you repeat a word over and over, it loses all meaning… except in this case, the word is everything. I’ll sometimes feel like I’m just watching whatever’s happening. A lot of the time, I shut down and it’s difficult for me to talk about how I’m doing. If it’s particularly bad, I may not be able to really hear what someone is saying, or I can’t respond at all. When the latter happens, it seems like the words I want to say are just stuck in my head and they won’t come out. 

For me, the length of time I’m dissociated depends how badly I got triggered and how I’m doing in general. Usually, the best way for me to come back is distracting myself by listening to music or a podcast, drawing, reading, etc. If I’m around people, it can help if they talk about something random that’s unrelated to what caused me to dissociate in the first place. Grounding techniques can help as well (focusing on what you can see, hear, smell, and feel or counting objects of a certain color).

nothowiplanned

I usually say it’s a bit like playing a video game. I’m controlling the character’s movements and I know what’s happening to the character, but I have no real sense that the character is me. I did dissociate during rapes and to be honest it was a relief more than anything else. It was a problem when it became my default response to stress or anxiety/fear, but while I was being raped it was just a relief. It was happening to someone who wasn’t me and that was as good as it was going to get. As for how long it lasts it really does vary. For me it usually lasts between 30 minutes and 3 hours, but as danny said grounding techniques can help me to come back. So can sugary food. If I’ve dissociated very far away I can also lose time, and struggle to respond to people.

Anon32

I usually feel a bit back inside my body, like instead of me being my body, it’s a shell around me and I’m looking out like the eyes are windows. Because nothing seems real or I seem like an observer instead of a participant, nothing is interesting or can hold my attention. Before I realized I was dissociating, I would say that I had “the blahs”, being bored and the things that usually are interesting aren’t. For me it can last a few hours or all day. I usually just sit and let it pass unless I have to work and then I just do. It might all be a dream, but dream me has to get this work done so I might as well. I can lose time as well and responding is difficult. Because I’m NB I sometimes get dysphoria related to penetrative sex, so I’ve tried to purposefully dissociate to reduce dysphoria then, but I can’t force dissociation.

Charlie

There’s a lot of talk about what dissociation is like generally, so I’ll just chime in describing my experiences of dissociating at the time of trauma, if that’s alright? 

It’s a bit different to dissociating in general, you have the same kind of symptoms but you’re still in a highly emotional situation. You’re aware of what’s happening and you’re still afraid, but it’s almost as if you’ve become so afraid that the fear has lost meaning, you can’t process the feeling. So it becomes numbness and you shut down. There’s really no word for it, you completely freeze.  It’s a bit different in these situations because the dissociation is a direct response to trauma that actually helps the person survive it, so there’s no grounding/escaping until it’s over and the character feels safe again. 

CW: Trauma, child abuse, torture

Snail

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. 

barc0de

When you hear your voice in your head, you’re consciously making words. You can’t intently listen to what the words are because you’re producing them yourself.

When psychotic people hear voices, they are disconnected, disembodied voices, sometimes coming from internally, like a thought that was louder and not produced consciously by you, or an external voice, heard just as real and loud as if someone was talking beside you or a few feet in front of you. With that said, you can see how difficult it would be to be talking to someone while someone who isn’t there is talking and interrupting as well.  I tend to most hear my voices as internal, so words that pop up in my head that sound just as real as if someone where talking, except in my brain. As if it was telepathy. I can listen to them like regular sound, and I as well hear external voices and noises. These to me are often said right next to my ear, shouted or mumbled from a distance, and heard (other random noises) as if they were in their realistic place (most of the time).

Charlie 

This is absolutely realistic - from what I know about OCD from my own experiences and people I’ve talked to, these are some of the most common symptoms. Personally I have a similar compulsion, where I count every step I take and have to make sure I end my journey on a “good” number. Lots of people with OCD are very number focused. Obviously to make the portrayal as accurate as possible, remember to show the obsessions as well as the compulsions. People frequently forget about the anxiety and distressing thoughts that lead to compulsions.

elizafaraday

Not all symptoms of PTSD are vivid or directly correlated to anything. I can only speak to personal experience, so please feel free to correct me. I am not sure how much is OCD or dealing with trauma. But sometimes I get a jolt of fear from thinking about the events too vividly. Or if something about my body reminds me about my attacker (scars or realizing we had the same eye color), I get a spell of the “willies”. Just an uncomfortable skin crawling, stomach jolting feeling. Panic attacks are common for me when there is too much noise or people too close behind my back. If I’m in a crowd I stress and have to find a wall to lean against to catch my breath. I get unsettled by having people taller than me too close or seeing someone move their arm up to their head too quickly. But not full on panic attacks. Just a momentary jump scare. Inability to relax is a common symptom too. It took me months to be  able to slow down enough to focus on a book long enough to read. And restless sleep,  even without vivid dreams. Just tossing and turning and not being able to turn off the feeling that something could go wrong.

I don’t know if that was helpful. But for good references, I highly recommend Change of Address by Jordan Brock. It is a wonderful story and #OwnVoices.

Rebel

Yes… Your character is avoiding the source of his anxiety (the partner), and avoiding is classic social anxiety (and anxiety in general) behaviour.

barc0de

Damn relatable.  I think every relationship I’ve had I ended because it made my anxiety get so high. I also cant keep up with NT peoples need to communicate every second of the day

Basically anxious people: need a lot of space 

Relationships: much less space

Anon32

Alternatively, social anxiety, need to be reassured constantly that they aren’t a bother and the partner does want them around, but they can’t ask for the reassurance or they will definitely be a bother. So they don’t ever ask for what they need in the relationship. And somehow, those actually go together. I need constant reassurance that I’m not a bother and I am wanted, but I also don’t want to talk all the time. My partner gets upset that I don’t call on breaks or want to talk on the ride home from work, but he also doesn’t understand my desire to have a hand on his leg while in the car or that I ask for hugs a lot when we are home, just random reassuring contact.

Jellyfish

I’ve never been in a romantic relationship but I know with friendships that have been difficult the only thing that is stopping me from ending it is the fear of how they will react when I actually try to end it with them

elizafaraday

Also, some one who is with a person with anxiety has to be really blunt. Like, I love my spouse because he has a way of bringing up issues in a reassuring way or forgetting them. He doesn’t let resentments brew and get worse, so I can just trust him. If he isn’t mentioning it, it isn’t a problem. I couldn’t deal with someone who didn’t say what they meant.