A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

I am once again having a failure of imagination. Please pitch in by suggesting a trauma which would plausibly make a character willing to go on a suicide mission. For story purposes, I want this character to be motivated by externally-caused depression rather than solely by idealism.

1. No rape or child abuse. No "terminally ill" or "suicidal because biochemically depressed." I'd prefer to not do "My entire family/significant other/child was killed," but would consider it if the circumstances were interesting.

2. I'm not mentioning the exact setting to avoid giving you all preconceived notions, but it's steampunk in an area where access to steam tech varies widely. Tragedies that could only occur in very rural, pre-modern areas are fine. Tragedies that could only occur in a steampunk context, like tragic zeppelin accidents, are fine. Bullying via Facebook will not work.

This is the third book in a loosely connected series. It doesn't have to be read in order, and requires no more background than what I'm about to tell you. In the first book, Graceling, some people have special abilities, called Graces, which may be magical or may be enhanced versions of real talents, such as acting or fighting. In Fire , set in a different part of the world, some people and animals, called monsters, are overwhelmingly, dangerously attractive and charismatic.

The link between the three, apart from the shared world, is a sadistic, psychopathic serial killer named Leck, Graced with mind control, who takes over a kingdom and rules it for 35 years in the manner you would expect, until he's defeated in Graceling. His ten-year-old daughter, Bitterblue, is installed as queen with a council of advisers to rule as regents until she's old enough to take over. In Bitterblue, she's about eighteen, and starts investigating what really happened to the kingdom during Leck's rule (unsurprisingly, no one wants to talk about it.) The book as a whole seems inspired by things like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, post-revolution Romania, etc.

This is hugely and admirably ambitious. As an allegory of personal and political trauma and recovery, it's largely successful. As a fantasy, and especially as a fantasy set in the same world as the other two books, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It doesn't read like a fantasy. It doesn't feel like a fantasy. The concepts and language are extremely modern, as in America right now, and don't match the Renaissance-ish time period. There is nothing Leck does with magic mind control that couldn't have been accomplished in non-magical ways. With minimal rewriting, the book could have been set in either an imaginary country in our world, or a completely different and more contemporary fantasy world.

I liked this the best of the three novels, but, as a much more ambitious work, it also had more glaring flaws. I didn't like the romance at all, though thankfully that's a relatively minor part of the plot. There was a lot of repetition of ideas, revelations, and plot points, making the book feel over-long and in need of editing. Bitterblue comes to essentially the same realizations repeatedly, when she only needs to do so once. There's no humor whatsoever - at one point a man turns up with the Grace of turning his head inside out. I laughed and laughed, and then realized that it was actually supposed to be horrifying, not funny. And the names continue to be terrible, such as "Gracelingian" as the name of the language and a man named Thigpen, which I can never not read as Pigpen.

Still, the strengths are quite strong. Bitterblue is a very sympathetic character. I rarely encounter novels on this subject at all, and considering how hard the subject is, it's pretty well-done. Oh, and there are several important gay and lesbian characters in the supporting cast. Warning for disturbing material appropriate to the subject matter, including sexual violence, child harm, and mass murder.

( Spoilers are enciphered )

Bitterblue

My favorite novel on the subject of personal and political trauma and healing is this: Where She Was Standing, by Maggie Helwig. It's not fantasy.

What would I like to do today? Curl up with any one of the delicious-looking books which have just arrived in my home!

Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein. WWII girl pilots and spies, female friendship, and did I mention that they're WWII girl pilots and spies? This is by one of my favorite authors, and people are saying it's amazing. Please do not spoil. I am sure it has many twists.

Everybody Sees the Ants, by A. S. King. I have no idea what this is other than Sherwood highly recommends it, it was nominated for the Andre Norton Award, and she said that it is very psychological and the less you know before reading, the better. Please do not spoil!

Shadow Ops: Control Point, by Myke Cole. Contemporary military fantasy by an author who did three tours in Iraq. I expect the military details are all very accurate. This looks very enjoyable. Bonus: black protagonist is actually on the cover.

Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear. Fun-looking nonfiction.

Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism. Written by a man with an autistic daughter, it promises to pull in personal accounts, science, history, and culture to explore the increase in or increased awareness of autism.


What do I actually need to do?

Complete an online course in Trauma-Focused CBT. By the way, the course seems very comprehensive, as far as comparatively brief online courses go, and it is free if you register. If you complete it, you get a certificate. It's intended for children who have gone through a traumatic event, but could be adjusted to work with adults. I have to complete the course, produce the certificate, and demo a section in front of the class.

ETA: Also, the therapist and the child can play a game where different names of emotions are written on individual pieces of paper. The therapist and the client take turns picking out one of the pieces of paper out of a box (without showing the other) acting out the emotion and having the other person try to guess the feeling.

My emotions upon imagining myself doing this exercise: horror, embarrassment, anxiety, panic, hysteria, inappropriate laughter, denial, disbelief, doom. Well... I know which section I WON'T be demonstrating to the class!

Please taunt me by discussing the books I have mentioned. No spoilers, please. I will select one to reward myself with when I'm done.

This is about triggers in the technical sense, of the "cues" mentioned by the DSM-IV in its criteria for PTSD: "intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event."

I have a much more detailed explanation of triggers here. (Warning: uh, triggery in that it contains descriptions of PTSD and abuse.)

In LJ/DW culture, people often use "trigger" in a much more colloquial sense, to mean "a thing which is upsetting/disturbing/unpleasant." But in the technical, trauma-related sense, this is what a trigger is:

Triggers are not merely upsetting in general. They are things which bring back memories or feelings associated with trauma.

Triggers are highly, highly idiosyncratic. (There are exceptions to this, which I'll get into in a moment.) They don't have to directly relate to the general nature of the trauma. In fact, they are at least as likely to relate to some random thing associated with the trauma, not with the nature of the trauma itself.

For instance, a person who was raped in a car would be at least as likely to be triggered by hearing the song which happened to be playing on the radio during the rape, or by the feel of a vinyl car seat, as she would be by fictional depictions of rape, discussions of rape, or the word "rape." (Some people, of course, do end up triggered by all fictional depictions of rape, etc. I'm just saying, not all people, not always.)

I suspect that the reason for this is that "rape" is a very general thing. But a specific trauma is specific. A fictional rape may bear very little resemblance to one's real rape, and so not touch off any specific memories. But the song, the vinyl seats, the smell of the man's cologne, and so forth, are real things which get burned into the very cells of one's brain, and the fibers of one's nervous system. They may bring up reactions which happen before you even know why you're reacting.

ETA: Forgot about the exceptions to the "idiosyncratic" thing. There's two big categories of those:

1. Most people whose traumatic reactions reach the level of diagnosable PTSD will be physically triggered by sudden loud noises and unexpected touch. It has to do with how our nervous systems are wired. Those things are inherently startling, and if your startle reflex is cranked up past a certain point, inherently startling things will provoke the same level of physiological/emotional reaction people normally have when, say, someone suddenly leaps out of a dark alley and sticks a gun in their face.

2. When similar sorts of traumatic things happened at the same time, in the same space, to large groups of people, you can take a pretty good guess at what triggers will affect many or most of them simply by looking at notable features of the trauma or the area in which it took place. For instance, some insensitive landscape designer stuck a bamboo grove on the grounds of the Veteran's Administration. Unsurprisingly, you can tell who the Vietnam vets are by which ones are taking a very wide path around the bamboo. In the unlikely event that burning papers start fluttering down from the sky, the people who have very strong reactions are probably the ones who were present in New York during 9/11.

End ETA.

People often warn me about fictional depictions of child abuse. I am not triggered by that, or by fictional anything. I was tied up and abused. I'm not bothered by rope bondage in fiction. (Feel free to rec me rope bondage in fiction!) But I did have something trigger me yesterday, and I'm writing it up because it was such a great example of how triggers actually work - and can be dealt with.

( Cut for length; also, kind of navel-gazey. )

Two years ago I wrote a set of posts called “A User’s Guide to PTSD.” They attracted a lot of attention, and several people friended this LJ in the hope that I would write more in the same vein. I pointed out that I write about mental illness approximately once every two years, so it could be a long wait. If any of them are still reading, I hope they enjoy this follow-up. If you missed the first set, I've linked them below.

Part I: What I Did In The War. (Introduction; background; what happens during trauma; what happened to me.)

Part II: What Does A Flashback Feel Like? (My history with PTSD, what it felt like to me, and dealing with other people who have it.)

Part III: I Don't Have To Do That Any More. (On recovery; lingering effects; book, film, and TV recommendations.)

I recently underwent training to join a team which counsels people in crisis situations. A crisis situation could be finding the body of a loved one who died of natural causes. It could be witnessing a car crash. It could be surviving a brutal mass murder. (All calls are absolutely confidential, so while I discuss the training a bit below, you will never hear any counseling anecdotes on this blog.) Since the team is run by psychiatrists, they’re very concerned with the psychological effects on the volunteers. During the training, I and the other prospective team members were repeatedly asked to consider what triggers we might have and what situations we might find especially disturbing, so we’d either be able to prepare ourselves or bow out of situations involving those triggers.

Since I was abused as a child, had a family member murdered in a domestic violence situation, had other family members die slowly and painfully of natural causes, was in a serious car accident, and have done several suicide interventions not to mention attempting suicide myself, I was confounded by the idea of avoiding crisis situations with possible triggers. What crisis situation wouldn’t have one?

“I think I’d be upset by dead children,” I hazarded. “That’s one I haven’t encountered yet.”

Statistically speaking, a prior history of PTSD puts you at risk of recurrence should you again be exposed to trauma. We are not strong at the broken places. The broken places remain fragile. We build up our strength around them to compensate. If we’re lucky, that’s sufficient.

I do not expect to have any kind of catastrophic meltdown. If I did, I wouldn’t have volunteered. I do expect that, if I come across a particularly disturbing situation, it will exact some sort of price – some sleepless nights, some nightmares, some hyper-vigilance – the sort of thing I’m subject to anyway if there’s a lot of stress in my life. Basically, the same sort of thing the counselors are subject to regardless of personal history, should they encounter something sufficiently unsettling.

One can’t avoid all stress, but it’s easy to avoid work which puts you into direct contact with other people’s traumas. But avoiding it also exacts a price. I sometimes get a feeling as if a fire alarm went off in my head, a sudden sense of urgency and the conviction that something terrible is happening somewhere and I ought to be doing something about it. This sense can keep going at a low level for weeks on end, periodically startling me with an especially intrusive feeling that I should go! Go now! Run!

I used to identify this as a peculiarly specific anxiety attack, though what it really feels like is the world's most useless psychic power. I cope mostly by consciously acknowledging it for what it is - a habitual firing of neurons that were overused for too many years, and never got used to peace. It's not meaningful. It's annoying background noise. It doesn't mean I have to actually do anything, though if it gets especially "loud" stocking up on earthquake supplies or activities of that nature sometimes helps.

But in fact, terrible things really are happening somewhere at any given time, and I really ought to be doing something about them. I don’t expect that being a volunteer crisis counselor will make the alarm turn itself off permanently. But at least I will be doing something.

(I could elaborate, but I had to write three separate essays over the course of ten weeks on “Why I Want to Join the Crisis Response Team (please detail your strengths and weaknesses,)” and I’m a bit sick of the subject. No, I didn’t say anything about fire alarms in my head. I figure that sort of thing can wait till they know I’m not a raving axe maniac me a bit better. Though I think that if most and maybe all people were to disclose absolutely everything that goes on in their heads, they'd all sound at least as strange as I do.)

A year ago I was involved in several (unrelated) extremely stressful situations. I would lie awake at night thinking, “What if right now [something terrible] is happening?” I should note that this wasn’t my internal fire alarm. There really was a reasonable chance that [terrible thing] might, in fact, be happening at any given moment. That being said, my insomniac obsessing was helping neither the situation nor me. I wanted to see a therapist, but my insurance only covers therapy in cases of “major mental illness” as defined by the insurance company.

I went to a psychiatrist and asked for a diagnosis, only to be informed that in her opinion, I was under a lot of stress and would benefit from therapy, but did not have a mental illness, major or otherwise. “Actually, especially given your history with mental illness and what’s going on in your life right now, I think you’re pretty emotionally healthy.”

You can probably imagine my mixed feelings about that statement. (When I explained the situation with my insurance, she kindly wrote down for their behalf that I met the DSM-IV criteria for an adjustment disorder. “Technically speaking,” she added to me. An adjustment disorder is psychiatrist-speak for “temporarily unhinged by the sort of stressors that occur under normal life circumstances (death of a loved one, job loss, divorce, etc), as opposed to the extraordinary stressors that can cause PTSD (rape, combat, natural disaster, etc).” And yes, the therapy was very helpful. I'm now much better at walking away, letting go, and otherwise not pouring all of myself into a futile attempt to fix someone else's life.)

It wasn’t only that, after so many years of trying to fix my mental illness, the fact that I had largely succeeded was now preventing me from getting needed mental health care. It was also that PTSD, even before I knew what it was, had shaped so much of my identity that I felt strange without it, or even contemplating the idea of being without it. And yet she was only telling me what I already knew. It was as if, after many years of debating with myself over whether I was willing to lay down my armor and weapons in order to get out of the war zone, I found that I had already dropped them. And that I’d known I had, but rather than either pick them up or kick some more mud over them, I’d taken mental note of where they lay, just in case, and tried not to think too much about the lack of weight at my belt and back.

I thought of finding a different metaphor, because PTSD is not actually helpful protective armor but rather a set of massively counterproductive and painful reflexes that can feel like they’re all that stands between you and your own destruction. I also realize that my choice of imagery does not exactly shout out “emotional health.” But the metaphor I used is the one which feels true.

I can sleep through the night. I can eat without having to consciously make myself swallow each bite. I can let people touch me. I can walk down a busy street without flinching. I can sit with my back to a window or door. I can sleep while people walk into my room, if I know in advance that they might. I can let people walk up behind me and not turn around. I do notice when people walk up behind me. I guess I kept a pocket knife.

This is not PTSD as defined by psychiatrists and as recorded by history. I no longer meet a single one of the criteria. By that standard, I don’t have that illness any more. What I have now, technically speaking, is a sub-clinical set of reflexes, attitudes, and sensitive areas that were shaped by the experience of having PTSD.

(By the way, it’s still totally fine to say, “Rachel has PTSD.” I’m not particularly attached to the DSM-IV criteria, nor to the concept of having it now vs. having had it in the past.)

To return to the crisis counseling, I’ve considered the possibility that I’m attracted to it because it offers me the chance or excuse to pick my weapons back up, so to speak. But I don’t want to automatically assume that my subconscious is trying to kill me. Sometimes it’s best to operate under the assumption that your instincts are sound. That nothing bad is happening right now. That you’re not in denial. That, however unlikely it may seem, you really are all right.

Any sort of crisis-related field draws people who have been shaped by trauma. Those fields also draw people who haven’t, but are there for other reasons. I know why I’m there – and that it’s fine that that’s why, but it doesn’t make me a better counselor, let alone a better or cooler or stronger or more compassionate person, than those other guys. It’s just the road I happened to drive in on.

Like my first set of posts, this one is intended solely to reflect my own experience, not anyone else’s. That being said, having gone through all of this, I’ve learned some things:

That trauma is influential, but doesn’t define us or our lives or our choices.

That trauma isn’t what makes us special or interesting or ourselves, though how we choose to deal with it may be one of the things that does.

That we all live with our own private battles and own private pain, even those of us who don't have horrific stories to tell.

That ongoing pain and struggle doesn't mean we're not leading quite happy lives anyway.

That we can get much, much better.

That it isn’t our fault if we haven’t yet.

That change is possible, always, at any time, regardless of what we’ve done or haven’t done or for how long.

That it isn’t hopeless unless we’re already dead.

And that, courtesy of one of our more entertaining training sessions, you’re not dead till the coroner says you’re dead.

This is Part III of a three-part essay on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: understanding it, having it, writing it.

Part I: What I Did In The War. (Introduction; background; what happens during trauma; what happened to me.)

Part II: What Does A Flashback Feel Like? (My history with PTSD, what it felt like to me, and dealing with other people who have it.)

Part III: I Don't Have To Do That Any More. (On recovery; lingering effects; book, film, and TV recommendations.)

ETA: Several years later, I added Part IV: Postscript.

After all that, I have never been either formally diagnosed with or treated for PTSD.

( Unusual Circumstances May Cause Unusual Problems )

( Recovery: Traditional Methods )

( Recovery: Non-traditional Methods )

( Don't fall in love with your own beautiful suffering. )

( Recommended Media: Nonfiction )

( Recommended Media: Fiction, TV, and Movies )

I hope this was helpful, useful, or enlightening. It was hard to write, and not just because of its extreme length. Some of it was stuff I've never told anybody before. There was even a point when I considered not posting it at all.

I was tremendously pleased and flattered when so many of you, when nominating the anime character I most resemble, thought that sanity and stability were among my most notable traits. I briefly had the woeful thought that after writing a three-part essay detailing my suicide attempts and blackouts and flashbacks and sleeping with a weapon in my hand and so forth, if I ever asked that question again, you would all say, "You are crazy suicidal teenage terrorist Heero Yuy from Gundam Wing!"

On the other hand, most of that craziness is in the past. Regarding what remains, I believe that while I may have more total crazy than the average person, I am also much better than average at dealing with and controlling it. Not to mention the advantage I gain from not pretending that I have no crazy. In equation form:

More crazy + more anti-crazy skills - denial = less insanity.

Less crazy + fewer anti-crazy skills + denial = more insanity.

Or so I hope. Actually, so I believe, considering that the total amount of time I spent considering not posting this was approximately thirty seconds. Surely Heero would have deleted the entire series without posting, in the unlikely event that he had the self-awareness to compose it in the first place.

As always, please feel free to link, ask questions, comment, share your own experiences, correct my science and statistics, or recommend media on the subject. And anyone is always free to friend this LJ. (Though I mostly write about manga, anime, and books, not mental health issues.)

ETA: I do still read and am grateful to receive comments on these posts, even many years later. I can't guarantee to respond to every one because it can be a bit overwhelming, but I do read them.

This is Part I of a three-part essay on post-traumatic stress disorder: understanding it, having it, writing it.

Part I: What I Did In The War. (Introduction; background; what happens during trauma; what happened to me.)

Part II: What Does A Flashback Feel Like? (My history with PTSD, and what it felt like to me.)

Part III: I Don't Have To Do This Any More. (On recovery; lingering effects; book, film, TV, and music recommendations.)

ETA: Several years later, I added Part IV: Postscript.

You probably all know what PTSD is, in general terms: a mental illness resulting from trauma, often occurring in combat veterans but not limited to them, best-known for causing flashbacks, nightmares, and acute anxiety states. But people who have it often don't realize what's going on or don't seek help, and much of the fiction which deals with it reads as if the authors referred to a checklist of symptoms rather than finding sources from the point of view of someone who actually has it.

That would be my point of view.

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to have a flashback? I can tell you. (It does not typically involve acting out the entire trauma in real time, complete with dialogue and screaming. Vomiting is also not essential, nor even, as far as I know, likely.)

Also, the method I used to recover, more or less, and one of the issues I'm dealing with now, are both things which I have literally never seen addressed anywhere. I shall be very curious to hear if anyone else has had similar experiences.

I'm not a psychologist, and so can only speak from my own idiosyncratic perspective, plus a bit of research and discussion. But if you’re writing a story about someone who has cancer or know someone who does, it’s fine to look up cancer on Wikipedia, but you’ll learn more by going on to talk to a person who’s doing chemotherapy right now. And if you've ever done any interviewing, you know that the shortest route to an interesting response is "What did it feel like?" So I will tell you how it feels: how it feels to me.

Keeping that in mind, I mean this as a public service announcement— if nothing else, I hope that it will improve the depiction of PTSD in fiction, fan- and otherwise, for my own reading enjoyment, and reduce the incidence of gratuitous vomiting— so feel free to link far and wide.

Here's the DSM-IV criteria for PTSD. The DSM-IV is the American manual on diagnosing mental illness. I don’t think it's the be-all and end-all of existence, but it’s more familiar to me than other countries’ criteria, so that's what I'm using.

( You don't have to have been in a war. )

( Two people, same trauma; why only one case of PTSD? )

( How I got into this mess-- skip to the next cut if you've read my book, know me well, or have been on my friends list for a while. )

( What I did at the time, and some theory on how that relates to what happened later. )

This is trauma: You are walking along the path you always take, when suddenly the ground cracks under your feet like rotten ice, and you fall. You're shocked and terrified and you think you're going to die. Then you slam into the bottom. Maybe you break some bones, maybe you're just shook up and bruised.

This is normal recovery: You climb out of the pit. You go to a hospital. Depending on the extent of your injuries, recovery may be long or short, but after some length of time, the casts come off and you get on with your life. Maybe you're a little more cautious about where you put your feet, but it doesn't interfere with your life.

This is PTSD: You break bones at the bottom of the pit. You move to get out, and the bottom of the pit crumbles just like the path did, and you're falling again, stuck in that same moment of terror and shock and pain. And you keep on falling, and you will fall forever unless you grab a rope.

Grab that rope.


Feel free to ask questions, comment, share your own experiences, correct my science and statistics, or recommend media on the subject.

I am a fan and I read and write fic, so I will not feel in the least that you are being voyeuristic or trivializing if you want to ask me a question about how to make your Spooks/MI-5 or Magneto/Professor X or 3x4 story more realistic. In fact, I would probably request that you send me the link when you're done.

ETA: I do still read and am grateful to receive comments on these posts, even many years later. I can't guarantee to respond to every one because it can be a bit overwhelming, but I do read them.