I have a story that I’m revamping where the MC has already faced two things that have her trauma.
1: Watching her mother’s suicide at 8 years old.
2: Being abused for 6 years
And as I don’t know much about psychology, or that type of trauma, I was hoping for some advice on how to write it when the trauma is shown or represented.
trauma is a hard subjects, qustions how do you present it here is a few advice you should consider in your adding of trauma. which I dont really know anything about, but I can give an advice to adding it.
1, is it necessary. is it important to the plot. trauma is often used instead of giving the character’s personality. dont do that, what is the point of it been in the story?
when will the readers know, its never good to start out your story by telling the sad backstory, its also often played wrong, because the readers at the start have no care for MC, so the sad backstory, well they dont care, its better to add later when readers have started to care.
The story is about her escaping that abuse and readjusting and she’s still having a hard time when she thinks about her mom’s death. So, yeah it’s important.
Keep in mind that often, people who have gone through abuse are more weary than others. They startle easier and have a hard time trusting. They’re going to have a harder time connecting with other because of that betrayal from their parents.
@Psychologists might be able to help a little more with this than me!
(Sorry if you didn’t want to be tagged!)
Watching a death occur in front of your eyes can definitely cause PTSD which is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That can include reliving the moment in your head (aka flashbacks) intrusive thoughts. Things around the victim might be triggers and cause overwhelming anxiety attacks as well. Depressive episodes are likely. With triggers also, feeling unsafe when you actually are occurs with someone suffering from grief. Nightmares of reliving the event, dreams of the person who died saying hurtful things they have never before and would never. They might start to tell themselves that they are the cause for the death.
Or, their body might numb itself, forget the event. They will still grieve but it might be short and their brain will push it mentally aside as a coping mechanism, possibly forgetting and losing track of their actual experiences, their own life, their memories might turn grey. I suggest just researching to be honest and watch or read blogs/articles about trauma from actual professionals, it’s more valuable and more reliable because they can tell you more than anyone here. (I don’t think there is an actual professional here that’s majored in psychology and this type of stuff.)