A.R. Mitchell's Blog, page 11
September 28, 2023
Author Voice
Author Voice
Creating A Character Who Can Respond
An amazing quote or life goal that I encountered was, “be the person you needed when you were younger.”
And I think that’s excellent advice for those of us attempting to heal. We have the life experience of living the need, and we often know what is needed when we respond to others who are dealing with similar situations to those we need healing from.
So how do we transfer this to a person who’s not real (fictional)? Is it safe to have a person like that in our brains? Or are we stepping into a fantasy world?
The answer is - if you’re writing fiction its perfectly safe. Your needs are real and healing is real… the person or character who gives you the healing doesn’t have to be real.
Stories are a bridge between the not real and the real. When we read a book or watch a movie, we know its on a screen and its something we can turn off or put down. We control our engagement. The same is true of writing and interacting with characters who are helping us heal.
The only thing that is real is the emotions you get from the story… and the story, if you want to write it down. (But because you made up the story, its still fiction.)
So you want to spend your time with a character who’s going to be helpful and healing instead of hurtful. Finding the person your inner child needed and being that person in a fictional realm is excellent behavior training for becoming that person in the real world.
Fire fighters, emergency medical crews, and police officers are trained to respond to crisis. They train so much that as soon as they’re called to respond - the response goes to their training. Its automatic.
Writing fictional characters who have the emotions you need is like that as well. It trains your brain and body to respond with healing, instead of the hurt that you were raised in or exposed to.
In the Red Trouble series, my lead character Hawk Morrison adopted his wife’s two children from a prior marriage. These kids survived war zones and horrific conditions. They don’t act or react like normal kids. Instead, they consistently expect to be hurt by the adults around them. And Hawk’s consistent patient reaction is, “You don’t survive hell, beg God for a family and then be furious at them.” Then he will always sit down with these two kids and talk to them, usually with an offer of a hug. 1
To an audience I hope Hawk brings healing and comfort, just like he offers to his wife and children.
Lady Detective Bo McCarren was in chaos all through her childhood. Her reaction is to run, hide, or fight. Most of the time she chooses fight. It’s to the point where in the first episodes she gains the title ‘rabid chipmunk’ from her unwilling mentor Detective Harrick Dasan, who has dealt with runaways as part of his career.
To an audience I hope Bo teaches grit and survival, as she slowly gains people she can trust through her life experience. (I’m hoping to get noticed on the Vella platform and make several seasons of Bo’s Snake Catcher adventures. Bo is a darker character than most, but she’s also more traumatized and after you see what’s on Vella - she’ll look rather tame regarding the content.)
The Mist Walker, Erinys, is the quiet one who is continually struggling, fighting for others, but isn’t certain how to protect or find peace with herself, who she is and what she has to do. When she meets Mason Jaymes, she finds a protector who carries a secure peace despite all the trauma he’s been through and together they seek to bring healing and freedom to those who can’t fight for themselves.
To an audience I hope Erinys and Mason bring healing and peace to wounds that they might have.
With my characters on Wattpad I try to do the same, because Wattpad is full of teenagers, who need an example of a healthy dad and daughter relationship. They need to see a functional family who works together to overcome problems. The Sidenstrasse Tapestry had an estranged couple getting back together, determination and saving family, while rescuing their oldest daughter and grandchildren from domestic violence. (Nothing explicit or beyond PG-13). The Seven Swords of Diya deals with adoption and fatherhood as well as conquering fear. (Plus, if you’re familiar with Dr. Michael Heiser’s work - it has some of that too. Bonus round! Again, nothing explicit or beyond PG-13.)
Read The Sidenstrasse Tapestry
These characters are markedly different than most of the books on the modern library shelves because they are working toward healing from trauma as characters. They are victims, but they are not staying victims. They are also not continuing into toxic situations, bad romances, or downward character spirals like many popular books. It may take some of my characters longer to get out of those dark places, but the audience is hopefully going to see that struggle and go, “She feels like me when I went through _____!”
You can do the same with your writing. You’ll find messages that are close to your heart and play out through your characters. Some people are able to identify these themes immediately - my writing style means that I have to write through them and go, “Oh! That’s what my brain and heart needed to work on!”
Perpetual Disclaimer for this series:
I am not a counselor or a mental health professional. I am going to attempt to avoid things which will cause alarm or harm, but I can't know what will trigger each individual. If you need to speak to a mental health professional please know that there are resources available.
Your stories are amazing!
Chronic Writer
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A. R. Mitchell's Vella Serials
1The Red Trouble series isn’t religious, it’s an action adventure family saga mixed with spies and romance. Its just that one line where Hawk invokes a higher power. So if you don’t believe or are triggered by religious material - The Red Trouble series does not contain much of it. Hawk happened to be in a World War II prisoner of war camp with a chaplain, a rabbi and America had more traditional conservative religion based beliefs at that time. I attempt not to push anyone into a corner and force them into a belief system with my writing. Religion does come up, because… people believe things, (Shocker! Lol!) but it is my intent to do my best to make my work enjoyable and open to all, regardless of beliefs or backgrounds - because that’s what good writing should do.
September 21, 2023
Author Voice
Author Voice
I said last week that author voice impacts how you describe the world and the characters in your story.
We’ve practiced describing the setting.
We’ve practiced describing the characters.
Now we’re going to take this into the real world.
I said that by writing or storytelling, you get to develop your author’s voice. But I also said that trauma makes our voices silent.
So let’s talk about how you get back your voice, by using story.
The mental image I’ve been trying to get you to work with for your setting, should be in your head as a safe zone. You can go there and know that even though the place is currently only in your imagination, that this is a spot where you are in control.
This control is a good control. You have chosen to be in this space and it should have nothing that is going to upset you or make you feel unsafe.
You have the mental image setting and its safe. You are in control. This means, in this spot - you have a voice to say what needs said. You can imaginitively, or verbally in this setting say, “I need ———.”
Once we realize there’s going to be no consequences for speaking our need in that space we can go furthur, and say to the character we have in the scene. “I need ——-. Can you give it to me?”
And then let the character respond with a yes. (I’ll give you an example below.) Then continue to tell the story of what it would be like to successfully receive that need.
Again, no one has to ever see this. And you are learning. The point is not to polish until it meets extreme perfection - the point is you experiencing the emotions and healing you need.
Here’s a scene from The Mist Walker:
Erinys struggled with her sudden vulnerability. “May… I… ask… to feel protected? I… I just want to rest on your shoulder.”
(Above is the ask. Below is the yes from the character.)
“Of course my lady - that’s easy.” Mason Jaymes allowed her to come close.
She hesitated.
“Its all right,” Mason soothed, seeing the fear grow in her green eyes. “Whatever you’re thinking of - that’s not here and now. You know I won’t hurt you?”
“Do I?” Erinys wondered softly.
He watched her for a moment. “Beautiful, please stop allowing fear to control you. Rest now. Tomorrow’s problems can solve themselves.”
“I am… not a… problem? This is not inappropriate?”
“My shoulders are yours to cry on. We’re both fully clothed. Nothing is going to happen to you. I know my limits and I will always ask to see if I am welcome. You saw me with a child earlier. If I can handle baby spit up, I can handle a woman’s tears.”
“I am… not too much?”
“However could you be too much for me to handle?” he asked, in disbelief, a small smoke tinged chuckle in his throat. “I’m an illegal arms dealer, Beautiful. I’ve handled much more dangerous things and people. Handling danger is my job… except now. Now, its my job to protect you.”
She leaned against his shoulder, feeling oddly secure. “Thank you.”
He shifted his head slightly, facing her as she tried to hide. “Thank you for trusting me.”
The Mist Walker will be published on Amazon October 2023!
Here’s a sneak peek on Wattpad: The Mist Walker!
Perpetual Disclaimer for this series:
I am not a counselor or a mental health professional. I am going to attempt to avoid things which will cause alarm or harm, but I can't know what will trigger each individual. If you need to speak to a mental health professional please know that there are resources available.
Your stories are amazing!
Chronic Writer
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September 14, 2023
Author Voice
As you work on describing things such as location and characters, you’ll notice that you have certain ways of seeing, saying and describing the situation.
This is called Author Voice, or Writer’s Voice.
Every storyteller has a unique Author’s Voice, whether it shows up in the written word, or as they’re speaking out their stories. But trauma takes away our voices, so this is a skill we need to get back.
Trauma takes away an individual’s voice not always in the literal sense, but in the sense that they are not seen, not heard, and their needs are not acknowledged.
Regaining your voice is a slow process of learning that you can speak, you can speak up for yourself and its ok for you to be unique in your storytelling style. There is also the element of not being afraid to stand in that uniqueness.
How do you develop that voice?
By writing or storytelling, you get to develop that voice through learning
1. how to do descriptions, which will help you say what you need.
2. how to describe characters, which helps you realize the people around you and what you need from them
3. how to describe emotions, which helps you realize your needs and feelings
In the coming weeks we’ll go over these things.
For a real life example, if you want: You can check out The Mist Walker on Wattpad and notice how each character has their own speech pattern or point of view when telling the story or speaking to other characters.
Red Trouble has the same thing. It’s narrated by Hawk (an American male), yet you can ‘hear’/read the difference in speech patterns between him and his Russian wife, Karina.
Red Trouble can be found on Amazon or Wattpad.
(On Wattpad I have Red Trouble rated mature because of historical content. There’s nothing inappropriate or obscene.)
Perpetual Disclaimer for this series:
I am not a counselor or a mental health professional. I am going to attempt to avoid things which will cause alarm or harm, but I can't know what will trigger each individual. If you need to speak to a mental health professional please know that there are resources available.
Your stories are amazing!
Chronic Writer
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September 7, 2023
Storytelling Elements
Storytelling Elements
I want to build on our description lessons, but do things a bit differently this week.
I’m going to have you describe the characters in your setting.
In storytelling, not only does the setting have to be described, but the characters in that setting have to be described. No one is going to judge you on this. Description is simply taking a picture using words.
The ‘using words’ part can sometimes frighten people because they don’t think its a skill they have. Here’s the method I use…
Describe one thing at a time.
I like it when descriptions flow as if you were looking at the scene or character. So if you’re describing someone, start from the top of their head and work your way down as if you were first meeting them. Unless your narrator is super shy… then they may start at the character’s shoes, because that’s what they’re focusing on.
When you describe a character, your audience is meeting them for the first time. So you get a chance to show your character’s personality through physical features, body language, clothing and dialogue. (We’ll get to dialogue later.)
Let’s focus on physical features, body language, clothing…
This is a scene from the sequel to my upcoming novel, The Mist Walker. The Mist Walker will be released in October 2023.
"You are the war criminal Mason Dodd’s son…" Erinys murmured in shock.
Mason Jaymes nodded.
"You’re so different from Dodd…" she whispered. "Same build, same eyes, strong jaw, high cheekbones, square face… wide shoulders. I don’t know why I did not see it before… yet… you are so different… your build isn’t used to tower over people, your eyes are warm instead of deadly ice, your jaw is set - but will smile in kindness, your cheekbones are creased near the eyes and I’ve never seen them not lift in a smile… and your shoulders are stronger, I think, from bearing others burdens."
She describes not only physical features, build, face shape, hair color, eye color - but body language. If I’ve done my job correctly as a writer, you should be able to ‘see’ Mason Jaymes as a character.
Learning how to write takes time. There are writer resources throughout the internet and many writers have their own resources available. I have a short book detailing some of the things from the blog called, "Your Story is Not An Agenda.” I’m also working on an extended version of the Hero’s Journey/Monomyth series that we finished earlier in July called, “The Hero’s Journey from Trauma to Healing.” I’ll give updates on that when its ready.
One other thing, your writing will not sound like this. Every author has a unique way or method of writing. Its not the penmanship, its the way a storyteller tells or delivers their message, and in the things they notice and choose to share with their audience. That’s called Author Voice. We’ll talk about it next week.
Perpetual Disclaimer for this series:
I am not a counselor or a mental health professional. I am going to attempt to avoid things which will cause alarm or harm, but I can't know what will trigger each individual. If you need to speak to a mental health professional please know that there are resources available.
Your stories are amazing!
Chronic Writer
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August 31, 2023
Storytelling Elements
Storytelling Elements
Description
Part 2
Last week I had you describe an image. I said, “A storyteller’s job is to take the image that they have and make it accessible to everyone. So if you’ve never been to a beach before, you’ll be able to know what is looks like based on what the storyteller is describing.”
There’s another way to describe a setting.
Humans have five senses…
Sight
Hearing
Smell
Tatse
Touch
These senses are how we interact with the world.
Trauma puts all these things on alert, and they often stay on alert. Its like your body has the emergency sirens on all the time instead of just when there’s a need to respond to something big.
Can you imagine if your local fire station or ambulance did that all the time?
Constant lights, constant noise, constant speed, constant stress. Your body can usually handle these things in small bursts, and that’s what its supposed to do. But unfortunately, trauma means that our bodies keep the lights and sirens on within our bodies and mental spaces long after the event is over.
Trauma often makes us lose the ability to calm down.
This unfortunately can make our five senses go into overload much quicker than everyone else’s.
A way to calm down our senses and the rest of our body is to settle into that mental safe space and start using our imaginations to interact with the five senses. We’re not actually there, so we can’t touch the beach’s sand - but we can imagine what it would feel like.
I’ll repost the video if you want to use it:
So take the setting that you described last week and experience it through the five senses…
Sight
Hearing
Smell
Tatse
Touch
Comments are open if you’d like to share your writing!
This skill is not only helping your body calm, but its developing confidence and building those mental highways of imagination. The skill of writing descriptions is going to come back later, so keep working with it. You’ll also find that the more you experience and focus on your senses, it can either be overwhelming or incredibly calming. So when you do this, pick places that are either calming or nuetral. Do not do this at Walmart. (see story below)1
PS: I have been blogging for a year this month! If you know someone who would enjoy this blog series or my work, please share this with them! Or post it to a social media that you use. Thanks!
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Perpetual Disclaimer for this series:
I am not a counselor or a mental health professional. I am going to attempt to avoid things which will cause alarm or harm, but I can't know what will trigger each individual. If you need to speak to a mental health professional please know that there are resources available.
Your stories are amazing!
Chronic Writer
Share Chronic Writer by VintageInkSlinger
Thanks for reading Chronic Writer by VintageInkSlinger! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
A. R. Mitchell's Goodreads Page
A. R. Mitchell's Vella Serials
1Adventures in Walmart - I accidentally got my ears zeroed in on the loudspeaker and got stuck in freeze mode staring at feminine products and completely forgot I wanted granola bars and chocolate. And I love chocolate! My brain and body had gone survival mode, was considering the loudspeaker a threat and suddenly granola and chocolate didn’t matter anymore because standing perfectly still was camoflague against giant noise from a source that I could not see. It made sense in cavewoman brain… “Giant loud beast far above - must freeze so it doesn’t see me! Food doesn’t matter! Survive! Stay still!”
August 24, 2023
Storytelling Elements
Storytelling Elements
Part 3 Description
When we focus on something, it creates mental highways in our brain. After bad things happen the mental highways are often devoted to avoiding that bad thing from happening, or accidentally reliving that bad thing.
This is due to stress and survival. Its perfecly all right to drive down these mental highways sometimes - but its an ugly tiring commute if those are the only roads you mentally drive with your thoughts.
Storytelling like we did last week reroutes those mental highways. But there’s more you can do to anchor yourself into your mental healing safe space.
Let’s go back to focusing on the mental space. In storytelling this is called a setting.
Writers have to describe the setting their story takes place in so other people who are reading or listening to their story can mentally ‘see’ that place too.
There are two ways you can do this.
First way, describe the mental image.
If your mental image is a beach, tell me about the colors. Sand isn’t always yellow. The sky isn’t always blue. The ocean isn’t always calm.
You get to set the scene with what you’re describing.
A storyteller’s job is to take the image that they have and make it accessible to everyone. So if you’ve never been to a beach before, you’ll be able to know what is looks like based on what the storyteller is describing.
If you’d like, you can describe this. I have the comments open if you’d like to post it.
The second way is a bit more challenging… but its equally important, because it opens the door to allow us to feel things, including our emotions. We’ll talk about that next week.
PS: I have been blogging for a year this month! If you know someone who would enjoy this blog series or my work, please share this with them! Or post it to a social media that you use. Thanks!
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Perpetual Disclaimer for this series:
I am not a counselor or a mental health professional. I am going to attempt to avoid things which will cause alarm or harm, but I can't know what will trigger each individual. If you need to speak to a mental health professional please know that there are resources available.
Your stories are amazing!
Chronic Writer
Share Chronic Writer by VintageInkSlinger
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August 17, 2023
Making the Story
Making the Story
A lot of people think that they’re not creative enough, but as I’ve shown you the past several weeks, you already have the pieces. Its just that we don’t recognize them as a story. Part of this is because we often get scared of our mental images. That’s because our needs and wounds are the loudest things in our hearts and minds.
Why?
Because they need healing.
Healing is a NEED.
We need to heal in order to function and move from survival to thriving.
So do not ever believe that your healing isn’t important.
Let’s go over the story elements…
At this point we’re not going to work on anything scary. I just want you to get used to the fact that you can tell a story. So let’s stick with mundane happy things.
You have a mental image.
You have at least one character in that mental image.
You have your protector character with you
Something happens in that mental image.
The something that happens has a beginning, middle and end.
Example: Your mental image is a beach. (mental image) You are there. (character) You have a happy dog with you who is your loyal friend. (protector character) You have a frisbee in your hand. You throw it. (beginning) The dog runs after it and catches it. (middle) The dog brings it back to you, excited and happy. (end)
Comments are open.
This is a story. If you want, you can print this out and circle the elements. Or you can write your own example and find the elements.
The secret is we do storytelling like this when we’re afriad. We do storytelling like this when we’re worried. We do storytelling like this when we accidentally trip over something that makes us revisit our trauma.
We know how to tell stories - we’ve just been using our mental highways for fear and anexity based storytelling, instead of healing. Simple exercises like this build confidence in your abilities to not only create something positive but to reroute all the gloom, doom, boom traffic that travels and lives in your mental space and brain highways.
PS: I have been blogging for a year this month! If you know someone who would enjoy this blog series or my work, please share this with them! Or post it to a social media that you use. Thanks!
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Perpetual Disclaimer for this series:
I am not a counselor or a mental health professional. I am going to attempt to avoid things which will cause alarm or harm, but I can't know what will trigger each individual. If you need to speak to a mental health professional please know that there are resources available.
Your stories are amazing!
Chronic Writer
Share Chronic Writer by VintageInkSlinger
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A. R. Mitchell's Goodreads Page
August 10, 2023
Story Elements
Story Elements
Part 2
Characters
Characters are the population of your story. The story is about them and the things that happen to them. How the characters react tells you what kind of personality they have.
I live with five dogs. They all have their own attitudes and mannerisms. One naps belly up and has the posture of a potato, while the other hates people touching her head and when she gets excited will roll on your feet.
These are things that make characters…
Actions: They cause something to happen. What do they do?
Reactions: Something happens. What do they do?
Mannerisms: Something happens. How did they react physically? How did they react emotionally? How did they react verbally?
We all know these things. They live in our brains and bodies. We remember them in frightening situations or traumatic events. We spend a lot of time with the flickering thoughts of, “Oh. I could never do that - my (person from the past) would react like (blank) and that would be (emotion or result).”
That’s a story. That’s a character.
Granted we always think these things when we’re terrified of that person or incident from the past… but what if we could say….
“If that happened my character would react by comforting me and that would be helpful, because I wouldn’t be scared anymore.”
Or….
“If that happened my adult would react by helping the child me how to not be helpless. Adult me would protect child me.”
This is the power of characters. We can call on them to help us. Not like a prayer or a worship situation - but as in, “I need an example of how to act in this situation.”
This week… take your mental image, and put a character in it.
Try to make the character someone you need in your life, or someone you needed in your life during a crisis. They can be a real person or someone who isn’t real. They just have to be a helpful protective presence… whatever that looks like or you feel like you would need.
And yes, go with your feelings on this one - not the logic process. Its fiction. You’re allowed to follow your feelings - no matter what they might be, or where they might lead. You are not doing anything destructive with words on a page that are kept private.
For example: If your mental image is a beach, and you’re walking along the beach alone… give yourself a good dog to walk with you.
Comments are open!
PS: I have been blogging for a year this month! If you know someone who would enjoy this blog series or my work, please share this with them! Or post it to a social media that you use. Thanks!
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Perpetual Disclaimer for this series:
I am not a counselor or a mental health professional. I am going to attempt to avoid things which will cause alarm or harm, but I can't know what will trigger each individual. If you need to speak to a mental health professional please know that there are resources available.
Your stories are amazing!
Chronic Writer
Share Chronic Writer by VintageInkSlinger
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August 3, 2023
Story Elements
Story Elements
Part 1
Mental Images
Your story is meant to heal someone. It has a beginning, middle and end. You don’t have to know them all. You don’t have to look at your healing and say, I want to have it accomplished and spelled out by this time, and this is what’s gonna help. It doesn’t work that way. Healing is an ongoing process.
The beginning of a story doesn’t look like much. Its an introduction to what’s going on.
The middle of the story is how things are changing. Its usually chaotic, messy and awkward, with some plot twists and if you had plans - they probably aren’t going to work the way you wanted them to. Its a lot like life. You make plans to go to the beach - it rains. These are the challenges to overcome.
The end of the story is how the challenges are overcome and the messy chaos is resolved. It doesn’t always have to have everything tied up in a neat little bow - but we’d like to think that somewhere in fiction, there’s a perfect happy ending.
The actors in the story are called characters. They don’t have to be people - they can be dogs, or fish, or something you made up. Each of the characters has their own personality or role in the story. They move the story along to the next thing by their actions and reactions.
If you don’t have a character to move the story in a direction, all you have is a mental picture of a place.
Mental pictures of places are awesome. They give you a place to go when chaos is happening, but if you want to heal, there has to be some sort of healing force or action in your mental picture. That healing force can be another person who you trust, (a character), or it can be an event at your mental safe space location, like imagining the icky feelings as mud and getting them off in the ocean. (In this case you would be the character.)
This week, work on finding a mental picture. If you have a mental picture - find something to do within that mental picture. It can be a real place, a place you made up, or an image you found on the internet.
You can leave a comment if you want to describe here or you can grab a notebook and write it down for you. But keep the notebook or document handy because we’ll continue to add to it as we go along.
Next week, we’ll talk about characters.
PS: I have been blogging for a year this month! If you know someone who would enjoy this blog series or my work, please share this with them! Or post it to a social media that you use. Thanks!
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Perpetual Disclaimer for this series:
I am not a counselor or a mental health professional. I am going to attempt to avoid things which will cause alarm or harm, but I can't know what will trigger each individual. If you need to speak to a mental health professional please know that there are resources available.
Your stories are amazing!
Chronic Writer
Share Chronic Writer by VintageInkSlinger
Thanks for reading Chronic Writer by VintageInkSlinger! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
A. R. Mitchell's Goodreads Page
July 27, 2023
The Aftermath of Trauma
The Aftermath of Trauma
Trauma rewrites our brains. Stress from whatever happened makes survival a priority and if we don’t know what to do with that stress it stays in our systems.
The lions, tigers and bears response of survival from our ancestors takes our logic brain out of the room so it doesn’t sit there and judge us as we fight for our lives. This ‘fight’ doesn’t have to be literal or actual - there are multiple human survival responses including: fight, freeze, flight, flood, faint, fawn
Fight: Striking back - exactly what it sounds like
Freeze: freeze response, think of a scared rabbit which freezes when you accidentally find it - exactly what it sounds like
Flight: running away - exactly what it sounds like
Flood: When all the emotions become too much and the person goes into overwhelm mode where they just have that emotion and cannot be consoled (ie: uncontrolled screaming, crying or anger)
Faint: passing out, the body is so overwhelmed that it needs to do a hard reset (think of the body rebooting like your computer)
Fawn: a scared response of total submission and making yourself the least threatening as possible, (can also be known as tend and befriend in older research, but that response is slightly different)1
Here’s a quick video from the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0915yv2
(She’s got a few more and uses different terms but the response is the same. Apologies that I couldn’t embed it in the email or on the blog, but currently Substack only works with Youtube video players and this was directly from BBC)
But once we survive the big bad thing - whatever it is, we need safety and connection to heal from it. And sometimes other humans are unhelpful, untrustworthy, or unable to give us what we need.
These unhealed wounds are ‘emotional soul holes’. This just means that something that you needed to heal, wasn’t given, so you have an emotional hole in your seat of emotions (soul, heart, etc.). You don’t have to beleive in a soul, but most of us understand heart-based emotion language even if we’ve never experienced it.
I shared earlier about my experience as a small child in a car accident, my parents were off doing their thing and I just emotionally shut down, until all the emotions were reawakened after a second car accident as an adult.
Writing either fiction (not real events or people) or non-fiction (events or people who were real) can help fill in these emotional soul holes in a safe way. The process helps you unlock and ‘feel’ the emotions that were too big. It can also help your brain sort the things without going into overwhelm mode.
We’ll start with a few story elements next week.
Perpetual Disclaimer for this series:
I am not a counselor or a mental health professional. I am going to attempt to avoid things which will cause alarm or harm, but I can't know what will trigger each individual. If you need to speak to a mental health professional please know that there are resources available.
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Chronic Writer
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A. R. Mitchell's Goodreads Page
A. R. Mitchell's Vella Serials
1Tend and befriend in more modern research is less about being submissive and non-threatening and more about banding together against the threat. It comes from the thought that early family groups had more women than men, and the women would band together to protect the young children. You’ll see this in the animal kingdom as well. Fawn is closer to unhealthy submission in the face of a threat, and is an individual’s response - not a group response. Hopefully that makes sense.
