To start with, I cannot claim to be an expert on the topic, and I am not in the mental health profession. Most of what I know comes from a combination of writers who *are* in the mental health profession, writers who have experience with mental health issues and special interest. (Yes, abuse and trauma is one of my special interests. Mostly because of personal experience.) A few of my fan fiction stories involve the topic, and I like abuse/trauma recovery stories so I decided to write a post about it.
The origin of this post is related to an argument I had with someone who because incredibly incensed at the idea that a behavior could be linked trauma. They absolutely did not want this trait to be linked to trauma! The character is canonically “free spirited!” They could not possibly also be “acting out” because of a response to abuse! Even though they agreed the character had been abused. Nope. This one trait of being “free spirited” could not possibly be acting out. This character is not a sad traumatized victim or a little kid acting out!
We ended up mutually blocking each other because they wanted to cherry pick what personality trait could be due to abuse and what wasn’t.
My argument was that when you are in an abusive or toxic situation, everything is due to trauma or also about the trauma. (Even if only a little bit.) Trauma is unavoidably part of having a thinking, feeling brain that reacts to things. When a thinking, feeling brain reacts to something upsetting or dangerous, or both it’s going to make sure you avoid contact with the thing that caused the reaction. If you can’t avoid contact with the thing (or the reason) it will find ways to help (or “help”)you deal with it. (Note: Brains are actually very stupid and a lot of the things it thinks are helpful are kind of the opposite.) And then when the thing is finally gone, you have a reaction you don’t need anymore, that is no longer useful for survival.
Yes, you survived something that was upsetting. Your brain wants to make sure it doesn’t happen again and/or is responding to something that reminds it of the thing. Garbage in, Garbage out. Congratulations, you’ve got trauma! (Now if only trauma had a simple cure. It does not. You might say “therapy,” but even therapy is not simple.)
So! Mr. Free Spirit’s caretakers. On one hand is an abusive woman who feels his only use is as a meatshield at best. She hates him. People who hate you who are also responsible for your education and care do not do very well at either. You are going to act out, while also being free spirited, particularly if you are being enabled by someone who is encouraging you to act out, while undercutting his wife’s authority…which encourages her to be more abusive. This is definitely a situation where there is no structure or consistent discipline. Kids tend to react to inconsistent discipline by acting out in various ways.
Now, the writer may or may not have intended this dynamic. But the dynamic I saw reminds me very much of similar, real life dynamics and seems logical to me. Mr. Free Spirit is very much the Clown within the family dynamic. (Note: Mr. Free Spirit is not a blood relative of the family, but he’s being more or less raised by the family with an implied obligation he work for them. This is an additional complication to the dynamic.) Mr. Free Spirit survives/deals with the dynamic he’s in by being very silly! And he’s enabled by the father, who approves of this free-spirited behavior. (Note: Mr. Free Spirit is actually free spirited. It is generally not hard for a Clown to be a Clown. He’s just also acting out and is being enabled.)
To continue: Mr. Free Spirit’s guardians have a son and a daughter. The mother is hyper-critical of both of them. The father mostly ignores them and instead favors Mr. Free Spirit because of his free spirit. This is not great for someone’s emotional well being or ability to relate to others. Mr. Free Spirit has a very close relationship with the son and daughter, despite efforts of the mother to undermine or otherwise damage their relationships.(The father meanwhile encourages the son and daughter to view Mr. Free Spirit as family.)
Within this dynamic, the eldest child is a Caretaker. That is, she’s the responsible one who is essentially taking over the parenting roles that the mother and father are not fulfilling. She strongly views both her brother and Mr. Free Spirit as her actual brothers, and wages a very quiet campaign to protect Mr. Free Spirit and her brother from the mother, with limited success. (She’s still a kid, and she has to deal with the mother’s hypercritical behavior and disapproval in her interests.)
The brother at base is an Appeaser. As aggressive as he appears in canon, at base he wants everyone to get along, and he thinks this happens by Doing What You’re Told. (And yelling, lots of yelling is involved, and making the other party feel bad.) He wants acceptance from his parents, but can’t get it from his father, so he tries to get it from his mother. (Who at least is giving him attention in the form of extremely negative criticism that pits him against Mr. Free Spirit.) So he yells and disapproves of Mr. Free Spirit. (Which somewhat creates a division between him and Mr. Free Spirit, because Mr. Free Spirit both believes the disapproval is correct, and that it isn’t fair. Yes, you can feel both ways at the same time.) This is extremely damaging for a relationship, particularly one that is supposed to be a future Ruler/Advisor position.
(Again, the writer may or may not have intended this dynamic. Different cultures, different cultural standards and so on play a part in this interpretation of the story and characters. The writer is Chinese, I am not. On the other hand, people are still people and people generally have the same reactions when awful things happen to them. That is, they end up having trauma.)
So, Mr. Free Spirit has trauma. And slowly becomes even more traumatized. Because given the givens his situation slooooowwwwwwllly gets worse. It is a downward spiral of bad to horrific. And I think the writer does a good job of showing a character who is clearly traumatized, but still more or less functional. Well except for dogs. Mr. Free Spirit is terrified of them, and it’s apparently played like a joke. (Which as someone who was terrified of a specific breed of dog due to having been attacked by a dog of that breed, I find to be kinda annoying.)
Where I feel writers (fan or pro writers by the way) tend to go wrong is that they either don’t understand this, or they make it about free angst. (Or about misery-porn where you just heap on the awful and the reader eats it like grimdark chocolate fudge brownies.) The thought process seems to be trauma=weak, with an added bit of blaming the person who is traumatized for being traumatized. I find this attitude to be pretty annoying! Particularly in cases where you have a “strong” character who has been through bad, terrible things but of course they are not traumatized, because only “weak” or “emotional” people become traumatized. With of course, examples of those “weak and emotional” people to contrast with the Strength of your Strong Character Who Don’t Need No Therapy.
It should be noted I first encountered this tendency with pro writers by the way. From my personal observation, usually dude pro writers. Very occasionally lady writers. With dude writers it was mostly women who became traumatized. If a woman wasn’t traumatized it was because of her indomitable strength and the fact that she was the pov character. (Can’t have the protagonist seem weak, after all. Or seem human.) Lady writers seem to be more likely to write equal opportunity trauma. Either might use “not affected by trauma because Strong” or “not affected by by trauma because of the norms of their culture. (we will now make the norms horrific.)” <==Either version is super annoying!
Now, I tend to like writing and reading about strong characters who are also traumatized. They seem pretty okay, but close up there are cracks in the surface, and as the character lets themselves become more vulnerable, the cracks widen and then all the trauma leaks out. And then it slowly gets dealt with (because I love fics about recovery from abuse). The preferred view of trauma victims in fan fic (and some original fic) seems to be “nearly catatonic with fear.” Which can have it’s place I guess? Except there is more than one way to react to something terrible having happened, and more than one way to have a character react to whatever happened to them.
In a way, I think this might be part of a larger culture of victim blaming. You can’t feel sorry for a victim who is extremely pissed off all the time and will punch you in the face for surprising them. You can possibly feel sorry for a victim who’s weeping in the corner and shivering with terror. (Okay, might also be harder to write hurt/comfort for the former. No cuddles for your protagonist, they might get a fat lip!) Trauma is ugly and can make the person experiencing it behave in ways that don’t seem to make sense. (See above: brains are very stupid and come up with survival strategies that are stupid, and then you are stuck with those survival strategies when you don’t actually need them or want them. Also, you never wanted them in the first place. Thanks, brain!) The solution to the problem I think is a willingness on the writer’s part to do research about the topics they’re writing about.
Now, this is an expansion of an earlier post on tumblr, and I did not bother to give actual advice beyond “do the research.” I also lacked any of the books or meta posts I am largely basing my information on. (And I don’t remember where they are because a lot of them I read decades ago. Sorry!) I can however give something like a guideline to writing trauma or abuse.
- Is the character aware they were abused/or are experiences trauma from something that happened to them? (Yes, you can be unaware you were abused, and unaware that you experienced something traumatic and have symptoms, which is kind of what some of the pro writers I’ve seen might have been trying to do when writing “character indifferent to abuse/trauma because cultural norms” only they forgot the part where what happened to the character was still traumatic.) How does the character react to a) finding out no, that’s not what a healthy living environment looks like b) other people reacting to their reaction. Note: this might be a funny story to them that turns out to be really not funny at all, or they brace for something that they expect to happen, that mysteriously doesn’t.
- If aware they were abused/traumatized, what exactly do they consider abuse/trauma? Do they think having been emotionally abused is not a thing because emotional abuse does not exist/it’s just people whining about hurt feelings? Are they really ashamed that they flinch at the sound of bottle rockets, because a cousin’s fingers were blown off, but understand that PTSD exists?
- What are they afraid of? What are their triggers? How do they react to something that has triggered them? It could be a flinch, but it could also be driving your elbow into someone’s gut when they sneak up behind you. Insomnia and nightmares are also possible things you can inflict on your characters, as well as panic attacks. Were they neglected or experience food insecurity? Consider all of these possible aspects when writing the character. <== Try to keep this balanced. They don’t need everything at once for maximum sad.
- Note: Self awareness of trauma or experiences of abuse or other traumatic event can and should lead to morbid humor almost everyone is horrified by. A problem I have noticed in some works is that they fail to understand the part humor can play in both recovery and the dramatic beats within the story. Let your traumatized character be funny, let them make fun of their symptoms and let them make fun of people being horrified.
- In many cases you are going to want a sensitivity reader. Yes, even if you are writing from personal experience. You are not exempt from badly worded thoughts or explanations.
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