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rwhague · 3 years

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Anxiety Disorders for Writers Summarized

We traumatize our characters all the time with violence—witnessed or experience—traumatic life events, or stress beyond their wildest dreams. It is not a far-stretch to assume that your characters might be experiencing things beyond their ability to handle. So, when you are terrorizing your characters, think about what level of terror you are creating. The goal of this post is to explain what happens in the body during these elevated levels of stress.

As always, this is not a tool to diagnose or treat any mental illness in anyway.

Anxiety is defined as “a vague feeling of dread or apprehension.” This can be caused by different triggers—external or internal. It is not the same as fear, however, which is feeling afraid or threatened by an identifiable external stimulus that represents danger to the person. Anxiety is unavoidable in life, but it becomes a disorder when it begins to significantly impair daily routines, social lives, and occupational functioning.

People suffering from anxiety disorders have unusual behaviors like panic attacks, unwarranted fear of objects or life conditions, uncontrollable repetitive actions, re-experiencing traumatic events, or unexplainable or overwhelming worry.

There are 3 basic stages to anxiety: Alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. They are characterized by the following:

Alarm: Adrenaline rushes the body and the blood sugar goes up in expectation of being expended on an action.

Resistance: The digestive system sends blood to muscles, lungs, and heart. Heart rate increases, breathing rate increases, and oxygenated blood goes quickly through the body. If the person is able to relax or adapt during this stage, things go back to normal.

Exhaustion: Body stores are depleted, yet the body is still being triggered to respond. There is not much capacity left. If this is left in a chronic state, it can lead to depression.

Anxiety is very uncomfortable. Logical thought can be difficult which makes getting out of the cycle difficult. People generally try to get out of the stress response by “adaptive measures.” These can be positive measures: relaxation techniques, imagery, breathing slowly, meditation, etc. Ineffective measures lead to things such as tension headaches, pain syndromes, and decreased immune systems.

Differences in levels of anxiety:

Mild Anxiety: wide perceptual field, sharpened senses, increased motivation, effective problem-solving, increased learning ability, restlessness, fidgeting. ‘butterflies in stomach,’ difficulty sleeping, hypersensitivity to noise.

Think secret agent going in on a mission. A little bit of anxiety is appropriate for the task at hand.

Moderate Anxiety: perceptual field narrowed to immediate task, selective attention, cannot connect thoughts or events independently, in ‘auto-pilot,’ muscle tension, diaphoresis, pounding pulse, headache, dry mouth, high pitched voice, faster rate of speech, GI upset, frequent urination

Think someone who just walked away from a car accident.

Severe Anxiety: perceptual field reduced to one detail or scattered details, cannot complete tasks, cannot solve problems or learn effectively, behavior geared toward anxiety relief is usually ineffective, does not respond to redirection, cries, ritualistic behavior (OCD symptoms), severe headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, trembling, rigid stance, vertigo, pale, elevated heart rate, chest pain

This is on the verge of hysterics. Think the woman on Airplane.

Panic: perceptual field reduced to focus on self, cannot process any environmental stimuli, distorted perceptions, loss of rational thought, doesn’t recognize potential danger, cannot communicate verbally, possible delusions and hallucinations, may be suicidal, may bolt and run, or totally immobile and mute, dilated pupils, increased blood pressure and pulse, flight, fight, or freeze

Thank God, this stage doesn’t last very long.

If a person reaches panic levels, they are in danger. Those around them who are part of the ‘support group’—family, friends, health care providers—primary focus should be on maintaining safety as they may harm themselves. Going to a small, quiet, and non-stimulating environment may help. Panic levels can last from 5-30 minutes. Talking to the person in a quiet, rational, reassuring voice is key.

But we’re talking about fictional characters, so ethics be damned! Wanna ramp up the tension? Have your character be in a state of panic and the person with them does everything WRONG. Conflict is key to your stories. Nothing is more interesting than watching someone do it the WRONG way!

Anxiety can be used a plot device and character arc as well. The more terrified of X the greater the sense of accomplishment when the goal is reached. In a previous post, I talked about Batman and how he harnessed his fear of bats to become a creature to be feared. So what causes anxiety in your characters? Is it a traumatic childhood that they need to face? Were they victimized in some way? How can they rise above their fears, defeat the underworld, rescue the princess, or save the kingdom? This is a story arc, or at minimum a character arc.

This has been a broad overview of what anxiety is. Next post will be about individual disorders related to anxiety.

Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing, by Sheila L. Videbeck, fifth ed., Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2011.

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rwhague · 3 years

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The Truth About Evil

*Trigger warning* Details regarding the execution of Jews during the Nazi regime.

One of the biggest shames in writing history is the mischaracterization of the mentally ill. I could go into a long rant about this point alone citing all the scenarios and atrocities. I believe there is a central misunderstanding within the population or writers that leads to these mischaracterizations—the myth that one must be mentally ill in order to be evil. Why would someone murder a child? Because they were a sociopath. Why would someone cut up their parents into tiny pieces? Because the voice in their head told them to. This waving of the hand over atrocities and claiming they had to be insane is appalling. Of course, the more uncomfortable fact is most people who commit evil are sane, rational people.

This fact should chill us to the bone. Because that means that ‘normal’ people are capable of horrible atrocities. We are capable of incomprehensible evil.

I’ve heard it said that one should read history from the eyes of the perpetrator, not the victim to prevent themselves from going down the same road. This is good advice.

One of the books that inspired my story Surviving Midas was Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution by Christopher Browning. It’s a harrowing read and one I had to take breaks from in order to finish. There is very little in terms of records regarding the mental state of the Nazis who executed the Jewish people during the holocaust. During the investigations that followed the war, very few former Nazis would admit to having taken part in any executions. For whatever reason, the men of the Reserve Police Battalion did share their stories.

So what sort of men was it that executed millions of Jewish people?

For the most part, ordinary men as the title of the book implies. These were farmers, craftsmen, factory workers, with families and children of their own. The Reserve Battalion 101 was given orders to arrive in a town called Jozefow at the break of dawn, haul the Jewish people from their homes, load the men up into trucks for a workcamp, and shoot the women and children. According to certain accounts, these men were shocked and horrified by the orders they were given. Even their commander spent most of the day wringing his hands and muttering about what terrible business they had been wrapped up in.

Group after group after group of women and children were taken out to the woods, forced to lay down on their stomachs, and shot in the back of the neck. Many of the officers did not make it through the first couple of executions before asking to be removed from the task. Their requests were granted.

They could have gotten out of it from the start, and some of them did. Upon arrival to the Jozefow, their commander informed them any could step out of line and go back to the barracks. Only a couple took him up on that offer. Others would later say they were too stunned in the moment to react with a clear mind, but that wasn’t the only opportunity to bow out. One officer states he stayed up by the trucks for the rest of the day loading the men and being sure to look busy any time a new group of executioners was being rounded up.

So, why did they do it?

Per their statements, they feared being considered ‘too weak’ or ‘cowardly.’ They did not want to ‘lose face’ before the other policemen. As one officer stated: “I must answer that no one wants to be thought a coward.” It was one thing to refuse at the beginning, he added, and quite another to try to shoot but not be able to continue. Another stated his reason to not refuse was simply because, “I was a coward.”

One policemen, who killed as many as twenty before quitting stated: “I thought that I could master the situation, that without me the Jews were not going to escape anyway . . . Truthfully I must say that at the time we didn’t reflect about it at all. Only years later did any of us become truly conscious of what had happened then . . . Only later did it first occur to me that (it) had not been right.”

Others rationalized their actions by believing they were not going to alter the fate of the Jews by saying no anyways. In one bizarre statement, an officer stated he killed only children while his neighbor shot the mothers. His belief was by shooting the mother, the children were dead anyways.

I write about this from perspective of an author because I think it’s important for us to be aware of this. Part of the job of an author is to show the truth through lies, and it’s not the truth that most heinous crimes are committed by the insane. It’s misguided, rational people who do the most damage. People who are afraid—in fear for their life, in fear of their livelihood, or just in fear for their reputation—are the most dangerous of us all. Let us strive to know truth and goodness and not be afraid.

And let’s tell the truth with our lies (stories) so that others can see it too.

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, by Christopher R. Browning, Harper Perennial, 2017.

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