PTSD – Sionnach's Online Lair

Writing an Ongoing Relationship

I’m writing about Thomas and Hadrian again. They’re on a new case, searching for a new killer and running into a number of ghosts. What I’m having the most fun with is their relationship. It’s fun to write about the first bloom of love, but what I really enjoy is writing about how couples make a partnership work.

Falling in love is easy. For me, anyway. I always laugh when reviewers say a couple seemed to get together too soon. When I was single, I could fall head over heels for someone after knowing them a few hours. I love being in love. I guess I’m a free spirit. And I don’t make small talk. Even now. I’m intense and like to get to the nuts and bolts of a person. People often tell me their darkest secrets. I’m not sure why, but I always fall in love with them a little when they do. If there’s any chemistry there, as well—

Staying together is the hard part. I’ve been with my husband longer than some of my readers have been alive. Every day, I make the decision to connect and understand. Loving another human and sharing your life with them isn’t easy—especially if you’re both passionate, damaged, and sensitive. We’ve never broken up, but there were a few times that were close.

In this book, Thomas is trying to assert his independence. He’s madly in love with Hadrian, but he doesn’t want to be smothered by him. He’s trying to figure out his boundaries so he can set them.

Hadrian is dealing with a diagnosis of “soldier’s heart” (PTSD), which he sees as a threat to his strength and manhood. He’s worried about adequately protecting Thomas—and doesn’t really hear when Thomas rejects his protection.

I’m setting them up for a collision, but they’ll find their way out of the wreckage and be stronger for it. If two people are truly committed to making a relationship work, they find a way.

And that’s why I love writing romance—and love writing these “how they stay together” stories most of all.

If you want to read the first book in this series, a standalone, you can find it on Amazon and free with KU.

If you’re curious about another paranormal series I wrote where the characters’ relationship grew over a three book series, you can check out Love Songs for Lost Worlds, also on Amazon and free with KU.

Positive Spin on a Negative Review

I hate negative reviews. I suppose no writer likes them. My latest book, Carillon’s Curse, doesn’t have many (so far) but the one it has on GoodReads has proven more of a blessing than a curse. Not only does it do a great job at warning people like this reader to avoid my book, something in it has ignited a spark of creativity for the next book in the series. (Yeah! I’m making it a series!)

The reviewer accuses Hadrian of being bipolar. At first, this was deeply hurtful. One, I have bipolar disorder. It sucks the way people throw this word around, usually with little understanding about what bipolar disorder actually is. Two, I wrote Hadrian as having PTSD. I didn’t spell it out because I couldn’t find exactly what it was called back in 1888, but I thought I wrote the symptoms well enough that people could recognize it.

I have PTSD, and forget that most people don’t know the things I know. Somehow, I thought PTSD symptoms had become common knowledge. I didn’t even intend it as an Easter egg. (I had a similar experience with Frank’s ADHD in the Love Songs for Lost Worlds series. No one ever mentions it, so I’m not sure if readers see it.)

Before I read this unflattering review, I had already decided I was writing a series and was stumbling around in the dark trying to figure out what Thomas’s and Hadrian’s wants and misbeliefs (or Lies, as K.M. Weiland calls them) would be. And then came this wonderful, horrible review! After I got over being butt hurt (that took a day or so), I realized that the reviewer had unwittingly given me a gift of writer’s gold.

I’m going to full on embrace Hadrian’s PTSD, name it, have the characters talk about it, and involve some of the (probably horrendous) treatments of the day. There will still be a gruesome murder—or several—to solve, but Hadrian’s internal struggle is going to be with his PTSD and how it affects his and Thomas’s relationship.

Thomas, my beloved, oft troublesome Thomas, has clubfoot. His disability is physical and visible. Hadrian’s disability, being mental, is invisible—and possibly even less understood during the time period in which they live. The whole thing really pleases me, and my fingers can’t type my thoughts fast enough. I’m no longer struggling with the gears of this plot, I’m heating the pavement.

So, if you get a negative review of your work, look for anything valuable in it. Not necessarily, as some people say, constructive criticism. I’ve rarely found anything constructive in a negative review. Those people aren’t your beta readers, they’re often people simply bent on being nasty. But see if there’s anything that sparks an idea. When something is painful, the best, most productive thing a writer—or any artist—can do is use that pain to fuel your next creative endeavor.

Never let the naysayers win. Ever.

Writing with Youper

My favorite writing tool right now isn’t a writing tool at all. It’s Youper, an app intended to help people—especially people suffering with depression and/or anxiety—track their moods. It does a great deal more than your average mood tracker. (And, no, I’m not getting paid to say any of this.) Besides providing a series of guided meditations, breathing exercises, and gratitude exercises, Youper uses methods based on cognitive behavioral therapy. It asks questions that encourage the user to examine the situation and the user’s thoughts about it. Then, Youper runs through a series of “thought traps” and asks if the user is falling into any of them. It sounds crazy, but just identifying the thought traps made me start seeing my problems and my reactions to them differently.

For example, when I first started using Youper about nine months ago, I often fell into the thinking trap Youper calls “catastrophic thinking.” When I’m in catastrophic thinking mode, I jump to the worst conclusion. The first week I used Youper, I became panicked one morning because one of my cats (that puffball known as Bruce Banner) was vocalizing a lot. It reminded me of when one of my other cats suffered a urinary blockage that eventually led to him having surgery and heart problems as a result of the surgery. (Urinary blockages in male cats can be life-threatening events and should always be taken seriously. You can find more information here.) After a few minutes with Youper, I realized that I had gone from worrying that my cat was meowing a lot to “OMG!!! Bruce is gonna die!!!” When you’re locked in catastrophic thinking, you forget that—although bad things often do happen—you’re an intelligent, resourceful human being and will probably be able to deal with them.

I was able to step back from my fear and PTSD-triggered anxiety to reassure myself that I would watch Bruce closely over the next several hours and see if he showed any other signs of a urinary blockage or urinary problems. If I observed anything else worrisome, I would rush him to my vet, who is one of the most dedicated, compassionate, wonderful men I have ever met. I wasn’t a helpless ball of nerves; I was an experienced cat parent who had handled difficult situations before and would do my best to help my beloved Bruce.

It turned out Bruce was just really chatty and playful that morning. (Blocked cats don’t play; they run around frantically, get in and out of the litter box where they will strain and produce no urine, and cry.) After a few weeks with Youper, I realized that catastrophic thinking was sort of my go to mind trap. If my husband was late, I started imagining he had been killed in a car accident. If my son didn’t return a text, it was because he had been murdered. Some of this fear is understandable. A cousin I was close to died in a car accident and my best friend from college was murdered. Horrible things do happen, but living my life expecting every scenario to end in tragedy wasn’t helping anything.

Writers tend to be sensitive people. We frequently deal with rejection and often suffer from problems like depression, bipolar disorder, social anxiety, drug addiction, etc. In my case, I have bipolar disorder and PTSD. Sometimes, I think I write to escape my demons and to try to make sense out of the chaos of my past. Opening my wounds and bathing in blood can encourage me to write. But it can also bring me so low that I can’t get out of bed. If you ever feel the same way, please give Youper a shot. I hope it helps you as much as it’s helped me.

Grinding Teeth Can Cause Exposed Bone

I grind my teeth at night. Sometimes, I catch myself clenching my jaw during the day. I struggle with anxiety and have PTSD from childhood trauma and have frequent nightmares. I’m not sure the nightmares are related to teeth grinding, but nighttime teeth grinding is common among people with anxiety. I never really thought this mattered much–even when I cracked a molar one night–but it’s a much bigger problem than I thought. If you grind your teeth, don’t let what just happened to me happen to you.

Basically, the constant grinding has caused the bone tissue in my jaw to build up into little hills. The tissue over these bony ridges is thinner than normal, so when I ate some toast for breakfast one morning, the toast (I’m serious) scratched my mouth and exposed the bone. It’s a small cut, maybe a little less than the size of the tip of a pencil eraser, but it hurts like crazy.

If you have anxiety, talk to your dentist to make sure you aren’t grinding your teeth at night. Ask her if she has any suggestions. I was supposed to get a bite guard a couple of years ago when I cracked my tooth, but my insurance wouldn’t pay for it. I have new insurance that covered sixty percent of it and am getting one made for sleeping, but I don’t know if that affects the bone growth.

I should be okay. I’m using antibiotic rinses and eating a soft diet for two weeks. If it doesn’t heal over, I’ll have to go to an oral surgeon. I had never heard of anything like this, which is why I’m sharing it now. It has nothing to do with writing other than delaying my novel’s release date a bit, but this seemed a good time for a PSA post.

Take care of yourselves–particularly if you’ve been abused. When you’ve lived through those kinds of things, you have to love yourself just that little bit more.