Warning: obviously I’m talking about trauma here. It’s clear from the title. I don’t go into explicit or excruciating detail, but if you don’t like talking about these serious topics, then this is not the post for you. I’m not censoring myself on my own website. Carry on.
Anyway, trauma. We love to impose it on our characters. Many readers lap it up. And for some of us, writing about trauma is a form of therapy to soothe our own wounds.
But here’s the issue. Authors often reach for the most obvious forms of trauma, like sexual assault or murder, rather than digging deep and finding different elements to talk about. In doing so, they leave blind spots in the fiction space, losing opportunities to connect with readers who may not have ever seen their own experiences mirrored.
Today, I’m talking about the aftermath of these traumas here, not the experience “in the trenches,” so to speak. Too many focus only on the immediate suffering rather than the subtler reverberations througout a person’s life. Probably because showing bad things happening on the page is more exciting and obvious, while showing the long-term effects requires care and precision.
You can reverse-engineer the reality of these experiences from my suggestions, but I often find it most interesting to see how a person lives after the active suffering has ended and they have to go their own way. That’s where I am in my stage of life, and that’s what I want to discuss.
Today, I’m going to share some possibilities of different types of trauma you could represent in your work. This isn’t an exhaustive list; there are others I may not have considered. I’m also not the Arbiter of Trauma, so there may be unique experiences I haven’t encountered before. Consider this a tasting menu rather than a full deep dive.
⤝❖⤞
A quick recap/disclaimer
I did a full article into how to respectfully portray trauma, and all my caveats there still apply.
Do your research and speak to survivors. Balance the trauma you include rather than using every single type of trauma ever. Rely on trauma-informed beta readers who can ensure you’re not becoming melodramatic. Represent the person first and the trauma second.
If you’re unsure whether you’re doing it right, please feel free to review the above linked post.
I’m not explaining every nuance of these experiences here because that is beyond the scope of the post and is not necessarily about how to write them. You will need to do your own research.
⤝❖⤞
Self-Harm
Self-harm is a form of control that is often seen in adolescent girls, similar to eating disorders. This isn’t to say that everyone who self-harms or suffers from anorexia/bulimia is a teen girl, but that’s the primary demographic. Women tend to turn their suffering inward rather than outward because that’s how we’re socialized to deal with our feelings.
When the environment is chaotic and painful, we seek forms of pain that we can control and thus metabolize our suffering into something we can understand. It also serves as a form of self-punishment, contextualizing the feeling of being “wrong” and “bad” into a physical sign.
This, of course, leaves lasting repercussions for our psyche, not to mention our bodies.
Potential topics to explore:
Feeling guilt or discomfort with one’s scars.
Constantly covering up to avoid showing anyone.
Embracing them as a part of your life history.
Intrusive questions about why you would do that to yourself; shock and horror from others that causes shame.
Being forced to educate others about the etiology of self-harm when you don’t want to.
“White knighting” from others who see you as “broken” or in need of care.
Perverse sadness when scars start to fade, perhaps causing urges to make new ones.
Sudden and overwhelming urges to self-harm again when you’re faced with extreme emotions.
Being forced to find new coping strategies.
Getting addicted to tattoos or piercings as a way to safely experience the same high.
Surprise when other things hurt because you thought you had a higher pain threshold.
⤝❖⤞
Emotional Incest
Emotional incest occurs when an adult, typically a parent, relies heavily on a child for their emotional regulation and self-esteem. It may be associated with sexual incest, or it may not. Many “boy moms” are emotionally incestuous, and there are often weird romantic overtones.
A child should never be responsible for an adult’s emotional comfort; a parent should have the skills to self-soothe and the adult community necessary to process their feelings. Unfortunately, a lot of parents are basically children themselves and don’t bother developing their own self-esteem, instead sticking it on their kids. This then results in a vicious cycle of children parenting children unless the victim identifies the issue and treats it.
Potential topics to explore:
Trouble understanding the difference between healthy relationships and codependency.
Confusion when others have a healthy relationship with their parents, particularly the gender of the incestuous parent.
Difficulty with close, intimate friendships, perhaps crossing boundaries without meaning to.
Unease with others of the incestuous parent’s gender.
Intrusive thoughts about sexual or romantic activities with people who match the incestuous parent’s description.
Need to “reparent” and rebuild healthy boundaries.
Learned helplessness and a pattern of codependence in romantic relationships.
Shunning romantic relationships for fear of being hurt, consumed, or erased.
⤝❖⤞
Medical Neglect
Whether it’s because your shitty parent didn’t take you to the doctor when you were growing up, or constant belittling from the medical industry, many people (especially women and people of color) do not get the high-quality medical care they deserve. This often leads to fear around medical treatment, delayed diagnosis, and shame from others who don’t understand why you won’t just go to the damn doctor.
Potential topics to explore:
Feeling the need to handle all pain without medical intervention because you haven’t been taught to go to the doctor.
“Toughing it out” as both a badge of pride and a constant frustration.
Fear, suspicion, and dislike of the medical industry.
Delayed reactions to pain; realizing years later that you’re in pain due to an old injury that never healed.
Being surprised when an old pain resurfaces and struggling to connect where it comes from.
Delayed diagnoses due to refusing treatment.
Treating primary care as a waste of time, resulting in severe consequences later.
Others being surprised and horrified when you admit that you underwent a serious illness without medical intervention.
Dismissive and judgmental comments from medical professionals who don’t understand why you didn’t come in sooner or get your needs met earlier.
⤝❖⤞
Delayed Mental Health Diagnoses
Going along with the above, many (again, especially women and people of color) are not diagnosed with mental illnesses until much later in life. Prompt intervention would have saved them years of discomfort and feeling out of place, but now they’re forced to pick up the pieces and try to figure out how to move forward.
Potential topics to explore:
Retracing your life history and seeing how the signs were always there despite how everyone ignored them.
Constantly feeling out of place and like an alien among others.
Overpathologizing yourself and seeing everything as a symptom of your disorder.
Wanting to tell everyone about your diagnosis as a way to prove that you’re not “broken.”
Overidentifying with the diagnosis and making it your entire personality.
Conversely, not wanting to tell anyone for fear of being called a faker.
Being forced to relearn everything in light of new information.
Avoiding community because you want to be “not like other girls.”
Feeling helpless and overwhelmed by the amount of information available on the condition; wondering why you didn’t see it before.
Anger and resentment toward the medical industry and your loved ones for not intervening sooner.
Avoiding information about the disorder because it destabilizes your sense of self.
⤝❖⤞
Being Disowned/Ambiguous Loss
According to Psychology Today, about half of LGBTQ people are estranged from at least one family member, which is markedly higher than the general population. Homophobia and transphobia are alive and well.
This creates something called ambiguous loss, where the person is alive but can’t be accessed, either by choice or for safety reasons. Ambiguous loss is something society simply doesn’t talk about; it’s another form of disenfranchised grief, as we’ll talk about in a minute. And it causes a remarkable sort of pain that is almost more excruciating than someone dying.
Potential topics to explore:
Pressure from others to “leave the past in the past” and reconcile before it’s “too late.”
Waves of resentment, anger, and sorrow about how you were treated.
Questioning your own life history and wondering whether it was really as bad as you thought.
Going back and forth between wanting to punish the perpetrator and wanting to be left alone.
Spiteful, petty commentary about the person; wanting to see them suffer.
Sense of loss that you didn’t get have the childhood you wanted.
Anger that you don’t see your experiences portrayed by others.
Resentment toward those who had a happy childhood or who don’t have experiences that you do.
Overidentifying as a victim; feeling like a martyr and uniquely persecuted.
Trying to compete with others who have trauma and proving you had it worse than them.
Dismissing others’ experiences or insisting that they can’t understand how you feel.
Ruminating on how much different you would have been if you had been treated well.
⤝❖⤞
Disenfranchised Grief/Parental Estrangement
There are many forms of disenfranchised grief, such as miscarriages or pets dying, but I’m mostly talking about when an estranged or abusive parent passes away. You can likely universalize this with some tweaks, but I’m not going to overstep my bounds.
Disenfranchised grief was the topic of my book, Funeral of Hopes, wherein Orrinir struggles about whether to reconcile with his abusive, estranged father who is dying of alcoholism-related disease. So, if you’d like to see this advice in action, you can take a gander at my book.
Potential topics to explore:
Feeling like you don’t have the “right” to grieve because you didn’t want contact with the person before they died.
Wondering if reconciliation would have fixed anything or made you feel better.
Feeling like it was your fault or you weren’t good enough.
Feeling broken, wrong, alien, or unwanted.
Struggle to accept consolation or sympathy from other people.
Anger and grief at the person’s death.
Unspoken feelings that you don’t want to express to others.
If you’re still in contact with another relative, shame or embarrassment that they’re not “enough” for you.
Revisiting old memories and wondering if you overreacted.
Longing for praise from the person who is now gone (similar to ambiguous loss).
Vacillating between wanting to have the last word and wanting to move on.
Frustration that others offer sympathy without truly understanding how you feel.
Feeling you need to feel a certain way for your grief to be valid.
Feeling nothing, and feeling bad for feeling nothing.
⤝❖⤞
Survivor’s Guilt
Survivor’s guilt doesn’t just come from surviving a car accident; it can arise from many circumstances. That could be living through a war, watching a loved one die of a disease, or fleeing from a school shooting.
The other person doesn’t even need to die from the issue; they could instead be horribly maimed or be left with lifelong disabilities. Regardless, when someone suffers and we don’t, it causes its own form of suffering.
Potential topics to explore:
Feeling like you live on borrowed time.
Thinking you must avenge the other or live in their stead.
Feeling bad that you feel bad because “nothing happened to you.”
A sense of responsibility for the other person’s memory or safeguarding their legacy.
Constant “what ifs” about how the incident occurred and what would have made you die instead.
Resentment that you’re left to pick up the pieces or care for the other person.
Sense of invincibility or magical thinking about being called to a higher purpose because you survived.
Anger at the unfairness or the caprice of fate.
Worrying about fate or wondering if your time will be “revoked” if you make a poor decision.
Anxiety about not being good enough to have survived.
Hypercompetency and obsession with doing more with your life.
⤝❖⤞
Childhood Bullying
Years of anti-bullying PSAs have made a big dent in childhood bullying, but what about those who didn’t have the luxury of parental or teacher oversight? These harmful comments end up living with us for years until we address them ourselves, impacting our self-esteem and how we engage with others.
Unfortunately, people often stop caring about the issue once the victim is all grown up, assuming we’ll get over it. But without dedicated treatment, these wounds fester.
Potential topics to explore:
Obsession with being liked and likable, often removing parts of one’s personality that would be undesirable.
Fawning behaviors and overagreeableness.
Placing yourself in uncomfortable positions because you’re afraid to speak up.
Fear that no one really likes you or that they’re always laughing about your behind your back.
Trouble accepting praise or assuming there’s going to be a hidden cost.
Difficulty making friends; feeling awkward and out of place.
Needing constant reassurance.
Shunning friendship because it feels fake.
Always waiting for people to turn on you; difficulty trusting anyone’s intentions.
Brushing past your own accomplishments or not wanting to talk about yourself with anyone.
Constant worries about being “too much,” whether that is talking too much or being needy.
⤝❖⤞
Limerence (from the Limerent Object’s Perspective)
Essentially, limerence is a form of “romantic” obsession with a fantasy version of a human, called the Limerent Object (LO). It’s not love, but rather a type of delusion where the limerent makes up a perfect caricature of someone they know (or think they know).
Limerents are happy to tell you all about how badly they suffer and how miserable they are, as you can see over on the r/limerence subreddit. So we don’t really need to talk about them. I’m talking instead about how the Limerent Object (who may not even know they are an LO) feels.
Potential topics to explore:
Paranoia about other people watching you; always feeling surveilled.
Trouble setting boundaries with the limerent.
Discomfort with the situation, but fear of hurting their feelings.
Cognitive dissonance about how the person sees you versus how you really are.
Pressure from others to “play nice,” pursue a relationship, or accept their attention as positive.
Nagging feeling of something being off but not being sure how to address it.
Being gaslit into thinking that the situation is normal from those who don’t understand what limerence is.
Loneliness because you can’t put the experience into words or underscore its severity.
Anger with the person for being delusional and treating you like an object.
Avoiding any situation where you have to be into contact with the person.
Fawning and freezing behaviors when the limerent acts inappropriately, like touching you without consent or making sexual comments.
Damage to other relationships, including mutual friendships.
Sense of loss, especially if you had a friendship with the limerent before they turned on you.
Concern for the limerent’s mental health and helplessness because intervening would make it worse.
⤝❖⤞
Humans treat each other terribly, and many things are beyond our control. Trauma can manifest almost anywhere that bad things happen, whether that is fantasy fiction or books set in our world.
You don’t have to limit yourself to capital-t Trauma. As long as you address the issues with respect and care, you can open up a brand new world of interesting insights through your work.
