4 Things I Learned About Trauma While Writing My Latest Novel
When I first started drafting my second novel, I had no idea I was writing a story about trauma. The plot had arrived whole and complete like an egg dropped into my head; at its center glowed the yolk of a personal experience that I was still trying to understand.
(7 Things Writers Should Know About Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.)
Because I didn’t have the clinical terms to diagnose what was going on, I wrote from a place of behaviors and symptoms, all of which I had experienced or witnessed, and many of which were still present in my life.
Looking back, I think that helped my process. Sometimes, when we hear a label or a term, and we think we know what it means, we stop paying attention. The word trauma turned out to be one of those terms I thought I understood. Over the course of the next several drafts, I came to understand what it really was, and the things I learned fundamentally changed the way I think about myself and the people closest to me in my life.
1. Trauma is not what happened in the past; it’s what you carry with you.
My main character Mallory grew up in a violent household. Her situation is fiction and different from mine, but I was writing to understand how living this way impacts a young, developing mind.
As part of my writing practice during the early days, I would pay close attention to my body in daily interactions, noticing its reaction to loud sounds or sudden motions. When I got to the scenes where Mallory had to talk about her past, I sat at my desk and talked to an imaginary person about my past. It was astoundingly difficult, even in an imaginary scenario, to talk about what had happened. My body was doing all kinds of crazy things to cope, and I recorded that, noting specific behaviors and sensations. I did more research. I read books and studies, poured over reports, interviewed experts. I realized I was writing about trauma.
“We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past,” writes Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk in his groundbreaking book, The Body Keeps Score, “It is also an imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body.”
Before writing this novel, I had viewed trauma as an experience where you suffered bodily harm, with obvious physical injuries. Mallory’s story is a witness story. She wasn’t the recipient of the physical injuries, so she believes that she’s fine. Her thinking is that the past is the past and she should just get over it and move on.
It’s easy to understand why someone present in a building during a mass shooting would experience trauma, even if they themselves were not shot. I had never applied this logic to the scenario of violence in the home. I found scores of studies to support that witnessing abuse is just as harmful to your health as being the direct target, which led to my next realization.
Check out Carol Dunbar’s A Winter’s Rime here:
(WD uses affiliate links.)
2. You cannot get over trauma by pushing through, manning up, and moving on. It’s not about will power; it’s biology.
Writing through my fictional character, I began to understand this “imprint” and how the biology of trauma had wreaked havoc on my life. Our defense mechanisms are in charge of ensuring our survival, and when triggered, they send us into fight or flight mode. That releases hormones like adrenalin so our heart pumps more blood, increasing its rate of respiration, so more oxygen flows to our muscles. This helps us to escape.
According to Dr. Van Der Kolk, the ability to escape is a critical indicator in determining how a traumatic experience will affect you.
As a child living at home, if you can’t escape because you have nowhere else to go, you keep returning to have these adverse experiences, triggering your body’s defense mechanism over and over. When your stress hormone levels remain high, they turn against you, stimulating fear, depression, rage, and disease. As the pattern continues and this circuit fires repeatedly, it becomes your default setting.
Years later as an adult, the slightest provocation in everyday life can then slam you into fight or flight mode, where suddenly your body is secreting massive amounts of stress hormones, your heart is pounding, you’re clammy all over, and you feel like the situation is dire even though it’s not. This led me to one of the most meaningful revelations for me as a mother.
3. Trauma changes your ability to handle normal, daily stressors.
Let me give you a concrete example. As a young mom, whenever I saw an over-flowing garbage can in my house, I would get emotional and yell. The garbage situation had to be taken care of immediately, and for the best possible outcome, the person to handle it should not be me. This would confuse my family and cause a lot of tension because it would come up unexpectedly—I’d be in a wonderful mood, see the garbage, and snap.
Writing Mallory gave me an opportunity to explore how these triggers can occur with no warning or awareness of what’s happening to you. Writing through her, I was able to break down those moments with a play-by-play: what she thinks, what she feels, how her body responds, and what, in reality, is actually going on.
This is why trauma cannot be defined as an event that took place in the past: for the person being triggered, they are still living through it. That’s the reality of fight or flight as it goes coursing through your body—it’s irrational, invisible, and difficult to overcome.
Before learning about the biology of triggers, I had always thought that my outbursts were a character defect on my part. I had thought that I was an inferior grade of person because I could not control my temper, such as during those over-flowing-garbage situations. Now, I understand what’s occurring in my brain and central nervous system. Now, it makes perfect sense, given my history, why certain sights and smells would cause me to be triggered. Being conscious of this is what gives us the power to change the course of history.
4. Becoming aware of your triggers is key to breaking the cycle.
I don’t want to be a person with triggers, but not wanting them doesn’t change the fact that they are there, which means it’s my responsibility to deal with them. Mallory is on the cusp of becoming an abusive person. I wanted to show this because we don’t often see violent women portrayed in literature, and it’s key to breaking the cycle.
As long as we remain unaware of our triggers, we remain controlled by volatile emotions, and we will continue hurting the people who we love. Bringing awareness to these triggers doesn’t automatically erase them—those reactions will still occur in the body. But when you understand why, you’re able to tell yourself, “I’m safe. I’m okay.” Over time, as your body learns to trust that this is true, healing will take place. I know, because I took myself through this same process.
Breaking the cycle is the journey that young Mallory takes.