: Re: How to get the "back again" part after horrible experience? Ok, so I have a character, Jack, and I don't know how to get him on the "back again" path. You know, when you move past what

@Carla500

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tl;dr

I find myself wanting more detail in the question. "Lauren Ipsum" says that it is inappropriate to give story-specific detail, but you could still say, for instance, whether or not the items in the “series of traumatic, personal events” are of the same type. …Also whether or not the guilt and blame are justified — although the feeling is that they are not. (I take it that the fear of future “traumas” is rational.)

I find myself getting vague memories of characters, in movies, who have a dark (evil) or pathological [usually both, conflated, I venture] inner motive, and who normally appear "normal" to other persons. The point there is that it sounds as though you do not want to go in that direction. (The ulterior motive is the important one, in such cases.)

I second “Rapscallion” ’s statement that one is not unaffected by traumatic events. There is the point that one is generally able to come across as “normal”. (This is informed by the simple fact that things such as friends, sunlight and activity do make one feel better, directly and immediately.)

/tl;dr

There is a “quick-and-dirty” fix available, if you need it: appearing to be “normal” can be a “survival” trait. That is… however badly one might have been affected by something, such as to cause (or strongly dispose) one to pertinent emotions or behaviour… this can be astonishingly over-ridden, where the detail of a situation triggers an (irrational and subconscious) belief that some particular behaviour (“normal” or otherwise) can protect one from a feared hurt. A simple example is an injured animal; in the presence of a predator, an injured animal will behave as much as possible as though it is not injured. The parallel with a human being in a social situation is fairly straightforward.

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