Thinking prompt #30: DEPICTING MENTAL ILLNESS

Hi Everyone,

Mental illness is a very difficult subject to write about, even with firsthand knowledge of its pain. How do you avoid clinical descriptions, which distance us from characters, and delve into their subjective experiences instead?

Answer: Come back to the felt sense.

Take an inventory of where in their bodies your characters are feeling their depression, anxiety, other episodes. Does the pressure on their sternum feel like a hot iron? Is it hard for them to swallow? Does their throat painfully close off? Is their breathing growing shallow? Is their pulse racing? Are they unquenchably thirsty? Do they seek solitude, or darkness? Feel a prickling in their scalp? A bitterness in the belly? How does the environment change around them? Are they putting their bodies at risk? What does safety feel like?

In short, describe as viscerally as possible, the sensory details of your character’s stress and dysregulation.

I’ve posted this as a thinking prompt but please take it on as a writing prompt if it suits your work at this time.

Good luck!

Abrazos,

Cristina