: Re: How to write about trauma I never experienced So, in a story, I have a girl who has been ritually abused and raped by her father for being born, as he wanted sons to continue his bloodline.

@Debbie451

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I think the ritualized rape is bit of a red herring here unless you want to write torture porn. The brain has ways of dealing with and responding to mental trauma and they do not particularly depend on the specific source of trauma AFAIK. So you probably do not need to worry about the specifics of the cause just describe the resulting symptoms.

So you can start with something like the generic psychological trauma page on Wikipedia. (Not probably the best page to start with and not even the first google hit but linking to Wikipedia is usually safe as everybody knows what it is and how reliable it is.) Move on to read about the specific symptoms that fit.

You can also be more specific and read about the effects of child sexual abuse.

Note that the two above have lots of overlap with the expected disorders they can cause.

One issue is that it would be tempting to go overboard with this. To over-describe the specifics of the abuse or to give the character too many symptoms or make them too powerful. This is definitely one of those things where less is more though. Usually she is coping but sometimes something catches her by surprise.

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