Sorry I haven’t been around lately. It’s been a difficult month or so and I find it difficult to write about psychology and mental health problems when I’m upset and stressed myself. Guess it gets just a bit too close. I want to provide you all with the best information I can and I don’t want my own issues and difficulties to unduly slant what I write.

So, is there anything I can learn from the past couple months that I can pass on to you, my readers? Any insights that can help you develop realistic characters? I’m not sure. I’m sorting through my thoughts at this point. I can say that prolonged stress can really alter the way a character (and person!) acts and thinks and feels. Even a highly competent character can realistically be expected to have difficulties when trying to cope with prolonged stress.

This reminds my of some old research on stress. I don’t recall the researchers and I probably don’t have the details right, but when dogs were exposed to electric shock in the floors of a cage and they couldn’t predict or control what was happening, eventually they just ended up cowering in a corner. This led to the development of the idea of “Learned Helplessness.” (I know: the ethics of such research are questionable to me too.) For humans, the reaction may show up in a person (character) staying in bed, or spending all the time playing solitaire or some such game. It’s avoidance and at the same time, a giving up.

Cognitively, the thoughts may be something like “Why bother?” Thinking is difficult and feels muddied or like your character’s head is encased in cotton or molasses. It’s hard to see beyond the immediate. Of course, that tends to keep the stress going in many cases.

The stress your character is going through doesn’t have to be life threatening, like captivity and torture. I would think (I don’t know, haven’t done much reading in this area) that learned helplessness might just develop in such situations also. I would recommend if your character is in such dire straits that you do a bit of research on the effects of torture and prolonged captivity. Amnesty International might be a place to start.

So, what sort of things could set this up? Caring for an elderly, demanding parent; living in an abusive relationship; poverty and inability to make ends meet; chronic illness. The list is probably endless.