#i mean. it could also be bc of my period. that always causes psychological torture!

[kristillianlibraryarchive]

been dissociating a lot lately and I can't tell if we're about to split a new member, if one of us is trying to front, or if someone is revealing themselves

[scripttorture]

hello there. i'm worried about the accuracy with which i describe a torture victim's mental state during the whole ordeal. is it likely that extreme stress would make them apathetic towards further pain/their situation? i mean, a person can only handle so much fear and that could be a defense mechanism, right? or would they be always anxious bc they are in danger? apologies if a similar question has already been answered and i haven't noticed. thanks for your hard work btw!

I think the big thing here is that you seem to be imagining it is one consistent mental state. It isn’t. Usually torture victims will experience quite a range of emotions while they’re being abused.

 Don’t worry about it, we’re all here to learn and I understand that it’s hard to find good sources. :)

 Apathy is not typical except when the victim is being starved.

 Most tortures cause more-or-less the same psychological effects, but tortures that deprive us of something we need, like food, water, social contact etc. can have some different effects. I think that’s due to how our bodies respond to- well not having enough of something we need to survive.

 One of the things starvation does is make people much more apathetic. It blunts emotions. But this is also accompanied by very intense mood swings and sudden outbursts of temper. This can make dealing with large numbers of starving people a challenge.

 My impression is that the body’s defences in these sorts of situations are much more to do with pain then emotion. It isn’t apathy: it’s the physical limits of sensation.

 To illustrate what I mean let’s imagine the junction between two nerve cells. The message (in this case pain but can be any sensation) cross this junction via a chemical process. The simple version is that one nerve releases a signal chemical into the gap and these bind at specific sites on the second nerve. The second nerve takes up the signal and the process repeats at the other end.

 There are a limited number of these binding sites on each individual nerve. That means there is an absolute physical limit on sensation.

 Basically we reach a point and the hardware just can’t process any more. It also means that adding other sensations (loud noises, strong tastes, even different sorts of pain) interferes with someone’s ability to process what’s going on.

 It ‘takes’ some of those limited binding sites away from signalling extreme pain and into signalling ‘actually your nose is pretty itchy’ or ‘that light is really bright’.

 This is why you sometimes have torture victims describing ways they self harmed while being tortured. It numbs the sensation of the torture itself.

 And this isn’t the only thing that happens. The body has a variety of painkiller-chemicals it releases. Victim’s also pass out. Over a prolonged period of time (ie weeks) pain thresholds rise.

 Getting back to torture more generally: torture victims have access to the same range of emotions as everyone else.

 Instead of one intense emotion survivors typically describe swinging between quite a few different emotions. There isn’t a set ‘typical’ pattern here. Fear is generally among the emotions survivors go through. So is despair.

 But rage and spite and defiance are incredibly common too.

 What I see most often are processes born of individual circumstances. Sure victims are afraid of what’s going to happen to them. But they’re also worried about their families and their friends. They wonder about what will happen when they get out and fantasise about life afterwards. They wonder what will happen if they die and whether the people they leave behind will be OK.

 They get angry at the injustice of it all. They hate their torturers. And sometimes that comes out as shouting abuse but it can also come out as surprisingly rational argument or a quiet insistence that these people are wrong.

 Victims show compassion and support towards each other. They pray. They get nostalgic about the times before all this. They cry. They find ways to laugh.

 In short these are people. People in extreme circumstances yes, but people nonetheless.

 So, sources first, and then writing advice.

 I recommend Alleg’s The Question, as an account of torture by a survivor. I recommend listening to this interview with Bobi Wine which took place about a week after he was tortured and this interview with Ahlam ‘Mother of Martyrs’ Khidir. I also recommend Monroe’s A Darkling Plain available from Cambridge University Press as a collection of interviews with an array of survivors of trauma.

 From a writing perspective I think the best way to tackle this sort of thing, to get into the mindset, is to focus on the character.

 What is central to this character? What are the main things that drive them? Who do they care about most in the world? Are they part of a movement or were they picked up at random?

 I have two characters in a story I’m working on at the moment who were tortured. They were both caught up in government crackdown against a popular uprising.

 Zhou was completely removed from anything political. He’s not particularly bright, he had a sports scholarship and he was trying his best to take care of his mother.

 So when I wrote about what he goes through, yes he’s scared. But most of the time he’s thinking about his mum. He’s thinking about how she’s alone, whether she’s worried, if she’s getting by OK.

 He thinks that he has to live, because if he dies here she’ll be all alone. And his biggest fundamental fear throughout is that he’s let his mother down.

 By contrast Kibwe was very involved in politics. He’s seen his friends vanish one by one and he refuses to show fear to the people responsible.

 He’s angry and by God are they gonna hear about it. He shouts, swears and generally lets these bastards know exactly how little he thinks of them. And part of why he can do that is because Kibwe is completely, unflappably sure that his side are going to win.

 He’s worried about his friends. But they are all part of something larger and if any of them are martyred then they died for all the right reasons.

 So tie it to the character. Think about why they’ve been targetted and what their priorities are. Think about what you can show your readers about these characters and how you can use an extreme situation to highlight that.

 And take a look at the sources I’ve suggested. In my experience looking at what survivors have to say makes a lot of this make more sense.

 I hope that helps. :)

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