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Is it possible for you to get PTSD from a story you wrote? Can you be seriously psychologically damaged from an experience you invented in your head? I wonder if that has happened to me.
Being a New Yorker, I find myself with a cynical look at the world. If you do something nice for me, my first thought it "what are they after?" I expect people not to come through, I expect to be abandoned, it's just the lessons that life has taught me (If life has taught you otherwise, count your blessings). I expect good things to end and bad things to continue indefinitely. I'm sure a lot of that cynicism comes through in my writing, what surprises me is that there is also a thread of hope, of endurance, and in the end love.
I can't speak for most people, but when I write, I put my all into a work, especially serious novels of any respectable length. I immerse myself in it and I let the world I am created consume me. I'd like to think that's why a few people read what I write. But it isn't always healthy and I think in one instance it has irreparably harmed me.
Finding Jenny is a book that brought me to my knees. I don't know how many people saw it to the end because it was quite severe. The second part is easy to explain. Jenny is kidnapped and tortured and demanded to confess her sin of being transgender so the evil pastor can compassionately murder her. It is one of those race against time books. But in the core there is a message. Jenny cannot deny herself. It is also the first place I've seen the current "transgender script."
In the book, Jenny, while being tortured, says "I am a girl, I always was and I always will be. From the day I was born until the day I die." Sound familiar? a decade after writing the book it is in meme form everywhere.
But here is the thing. Though I wrote those words myself, the sentiment is beginning to grate upon me. It's odd, because I'm not one who switches ideologies often. But I think what is going on is that by me being damaged by the story, my angst has spilled over into aspects of the story where it doesn't apply.
See Jenny was kidnapped and tortured and near death. As I was living that book in my head, something strikingly similar happened in the real world shortly after. Jessica Lumsford was kidnapped and killed in real life and the story somehow got linked to that tragedy. I fell into a pit of despair for months and I almost didn't pull out of it myself. I didn't want to live in a world where such evil existed, even if the evil is of my own making.
So, I wonder, can your own stories give you ptsd, is it possible to heal yourself from it?
Comments
Heal thyself?
I regard PTSD as a kind of scar (the Post part implies you survived the original experience).Healing yourself would be a form of self cosmetic surgery which at best leaves a smaller scar. I recommend getting others involved (which you are doing through this post).
The sentiment grates on me because I'm so much more than girl.
Write
Write the healing and pour yourself into it as much as your poured into writing about Jenny.
PS I made it al the way through Finding Jenny.
Writing as a cathartic
It is doubtful that you can get PTSD from writing a story. Perhaps writing it just revealed your true feelings about an incident? I'm not a good author, but when I started writing, it was more to pour out my pain than to make money. In a sense, most of my stories are true, as unlikely as that may seem.
If you are feeling pain after writing a story, let it pour out by crying or what ever helps you. I don't drink or do any sort of drugs, legal or not. This is not because I am so holy, but I know the after effects of those things and don't want to experience them.
G
Hmmm...
Hi Gwen...just hitching a ride...
I agree that it is most unlikely one gets PTSD from writing a story. One is far more likely to experience a past 'nightmare' from reading a tale. I have written snippets of a tale that I cannot reread because of the memories that return even though I was able to write them without a problem.
These memories of the past never fully heal. They simply become less prevalent in our lives. I have seen interviews with WWII veterans who remember the horrors they experienced so many decades ago as if they occurred yesterday. The same holds true for any of us who have experienced such things. What therapy does is give us tools to use to recognize the 'triggers' of these memories returning and how best to deal with them when (and not if) they reoccur.
One With Too Many Memories...
Kelly
You are hung on parts of a story.
I have had this problem. Where I am hung and stuck thinking about a certain part of a story. Like having a song stuck in my head, but instead it is a scene of a story. And a upsetting one at that.
To solve this problem, I just continue the story in my head. If the person is killed, having it be either heaven, reincarnation, or both. Just something to offer peaceful closure to move on for everyone involved.
I hope this helps.
Writing is mostly carathic for me,
but some of the stories here have bothered me deeply, so much that I am extremely cautious what I read. There are writers whom are excellent at their craft I won't read.
bad parts of story
In my story I have times like that but as i start the next chapter. I find a happy spot. You need the happy spots to get past the bad ones.
I have never published any
I have never published any fiction online yet but recently I was writing two characters who suffered from abuse at the same time a little girl who was brutally beaten was finally identified. I kept getting the same images of people physically and verbally abusing kids in my head as I tried to plot the story. I had to stop multiple times and let tears fall because the thought of creating someone who would be suffering was getting to me. I know it is my own work but it still hurt to put the words together.
I believe that if you aren't moved in some way at the idea that someone is being hurt then you aren't human.
And to be honest after reading Finding Jenny and reading your reaction it earns you a lot of respect from me. The fact that something you know is fiction still impacts your feelings shows you are more than an author, you are a person with a heart.
I'm told STFU more times in a day than most people get told in a lifetime
PTSD from fiction I think it's possible.
First I'd like to say you are my favorite author, as such I have read everything I've seen come out with your name attached.
While I have never heard of anyone getting PTSD from there writing I think it is possible; I (another Jenny) sadly could have been the star of this series mentioned if only the whole murder suicide thing had happened to my parents. My PTSD diagnoses came at the ripe old age of 12, when we all got counseling after my mother was institutionalized. From my experience with the disorder it is triggered by a memory: The sound of glass breaking reminds me of a moment when I was five and I spend the rest of the day shaking in fear. Memories are only as old as the last time you remembered them, as I remembered the story about being five my brain wrote over the old memory with the way I remember it happening. If you truly immerse your self into a story (reading or writing it) I could see those memories having the same effect as a tragic real life event that's in the past.
I hope this feeling you are having doesn't stop your writing as I have always felt that your tragedies seem genuine, and the solutions are never easy, even when things get better it isn't all sunny days and roses. I think that is what makes me love your writing. while I didn't have the same experience as Jenny I can relate to her, and some of your other characters.
Is it possible to heal yourself, I think only you can. If it were possible to remember the memory less traumatic, writing over the old experience with one that effects you less or to find a way to sever the triggers I think you can get over traumas, but if your successful let me know 27 years is a long time to avoid glass.
I am always amazed at the power of words when they come flowing out of the heart; even in small numbers.