Ask Dr Jax

This is a very late post. I plead a wedding, a 40th birthday party and a cold all in the space of nearly two weeks. Oh and not forgetting school holidays. Yay. Not.

Anyway, time for the good doctor.

Question: How correct is it to say that one painful event can shape a person's life?

Answer: Like I said in a previous post, it's not really events that shape people so much as the relationships people have with one another. It's true that people do attach importance to certain events but most of the time, it's not really the event in particular that's the problem, though the event can certainly be a catalyst. Generally speaking, if, for example, a man is cheated on by his wife, that won't put him off all women forever even though it is certainly a painful event. But if, say, he had a difficult relationship with his mother - perhaps she cheated on his father - then that could influence how he views women in general. In isolation, events are just events. It's when you look at them in conjunction with the relationships people have in their lives that they take on meaning.

Thank you the good doctor!

And I shall leave you with the golden rule that Dr Jax keeps telling me about having characters that are too self aware.

If you think they're too self aware, then they probably are. :-)

Ask Dr Jax - Dr Jax Responds Part 3

Okay people, last Dr Jax post (until next month).

When two people meet, if they are the opposite end of the spectrum to each other, can they ever find a common ground? The situation I am thinking of is the following: If the woman has had major responsibilities in her life, but is now free and just wants to have no-strings attached fun, whereas the man, having lived a hedonistic lifestyle, now has major responsibilities, can there ever be a happy ending?

Dr Jax: Yes, definitely. They would have huge amounts of common ground. The woman knows what it's like to be responsible and the man knows what it's like to be hedonistic. But they've essentially met at the wrong time in their lives. What they need to do to get their happy ending is to synchronize what they want out of life. They are like pendulums swinging to extremes and both out of sync. But if the attraction is strong enough they will stop swinging so wildly and will slowly synchronize, finding a happy equilibrium.
They may also have other interests where they could connect. For example, liking the same authors, the same food, holidaying in the same place, etc, etc.

And this one is from me, because this is a HUGE problem for me. How do we know if our characters are being too self aware?

Dr Jax: A good rule of thumb is if you think they are too self aware, they probably are. :-) Other red flags (though not bad in themselves, they can be indications if taken as a whole that things aren't right): Your character frequently thinks about how events in their past have made them behave. Your character is never surprised by their own actions. Your character doesn't grow. These are the things that from a psychological viewpoint dont't reflect how real people behave. People don't think about events in their past as influencing their current behaviour. People are often surprised by their own actions. And people do change in response to things that happen in their lives.

So how self aware are people about their behaviour generally?

Dr Jax: Dimly at best. Solid research shows that our consciousness runs one to two seconds behind our actions. So we act, then become aware of acting, then we make up justifications for doing so.

Thanks once again for your questions everyone. Will do this again next month!

Ask Dr Jax - Dr Jax Responds Part 2

The good doctor responds to more questions...

Dr. Jax, do you think we're aware of the events in our past which have shaped us? Or is it more common to simply assume you're all right, and that you're more or less 'normal'?

Dr Jax: Yes, most people think they're okay. However, the things that shape us the most are the relationships we have with other people rather than events. And the most important relationships are the ones we have in the first two years of life - these echo throughout our lives. Yet we have no episodic memory of those years - or if we do, then we usually remember them wrong because episodic memory is unreliable. Of course, we are often aware of events in childhood and we may attach importance to those events but in reality single events shape us much less than relationships do.
Jackie's note: Here is where psychiatry and writing fiction diverges a little - as writers of course, we have to attach some importance to events as these are easily read signposts to the reader of our character's conflict. However, I think given how important relationships are to people, it's a good idea to examine an event that has happened in a character's life and make sure to assess how that event related/changed the relationships the character had with others, not just how the event changed the character themselves. As an example, the character with the abusive father - obviously the first time his father hit him will be a big event that will have an impact (no pun intended!) on him, but it's good to think about how that event affected his relationship not just with his father, but also with his mother (was she there? Did she see it? How did she react to it?) and brothers/sisters etc.

I have a question about my hero. He's a workaholic who can't acknowledge that he's capable of feeling love and believes that he doesn't want or need a permanent relationship--believes he's better off on his own. (loss in his childhood, father had stiff uper lip attitude and wouldn't talk about the loss so hero learnt to supress his emotions). The problem is that, going on this, this character doesn't sound much fun (very work- focussed and buttoned up) But I don't want him to be like that. I want him to be outgoing and full of charm. Is this inconsistent with the above? Would a man who's closed off emotionally (and scared to love) have culitvated an outgoing, charming image? What would his unconscious psycholigical motive be?

Dr Jax: Sounds like you want your hero to be two different types of people! However, you can make his behaviour more consistent. If his father was a stiff upper lip type of guy, then you need to decide whether your hero becomes like his father, or consciously tries to do the opposite. Perhaps he has developed a charming, debonair exterior as part of a decision not to let anything matter too much to him. Emotions are painful so he won't let himself feel too deeply, he just wants to have fun, float along the surface of life etc, etc. Unconsciously this is to protect himself from feeling because feeling equals pain, but consciously he perhaps would be telling himself it's because he doesn't want to be all buttoned up and stiff like his father.
Jackie's note: My chess hero has problem with emotion too. But I've chosen the opposite to charming and debonair. I've made him very serious and logical. No, he's not charming and flirty because he views being charming and flirty as pointless and he doesn't need it to get girls anyway. Consciously he is contemptuous of people who are emotional because it's logic that's important, emotion clouds thinking (he's like Dr Spock without the ears!). Unconsciously he is trying to protect himself from feeling because he is afraid of what happens when he lets himself feel - bad things happen when he gets angry. No, he's not the life of the party but that's part of his character arc - what happens when you give him a heroine who won't let him get away with being all serious and logical, forcing him out of his comfort zone?

So, I have a question. An overriding theme present in every one of my books is self-esteem (and I wonder what that says about me!?!). And all of my characters seem to define themselves through their work (or lost job, in some cases). I wonder how big of a role work plays in other people's lives. Is it common for people's self-esteem to be wrapped up in their job?

Dr Jax: Yes, very common, especially if this is the only part of your life that is going well. If other aspects of your life suck (such as love/social life) then work becomes extremely important to you because it helps you feel better about yourself. It gives you validation from the outside world etc.

So big heaps of thanks to the good Dr J!! Hope that was helpful to people. If there are more questions, I can do one more post so let me know. The doc is happy to answer any more - especially as he loves talking and hates the writing up so this is the perfect balance for him. :-)
If not, I'll run an Ask Dr Jax post next month.

Thanks all for your fabulous questions!

Ask Dr Jax - Dr Jax Responds Part 1

Got some great questions for Dr Jax - thanks everyone! I'll post some answers today and then some more tomorrow. If any of the responses prompt more questions, feel free to ask. I'll run this until the end of the week.

Have also decided to make the first Monday of each month a regular Ask Dr Jax Q&A. So if you haven't got a question this time, there's always next month.

Righto, before I launch into the answers, here is the usual disclaimer. Dr Jax is a psychiatrist, not a writer or editor, and any advice he gives is based on what would happen to real people in real life situations that may not be suitable for fiction.

Alrighty.... (Dr Jax's answers have been paraphrased)

Question 1: "I'm thinking oppression could break someone...or strengthen them to fight/rise up....does their personality type of other background play a part?

Dr Jax: Yes, background and personality do play a part. If their early experiences have taught them resiliency - ie good attachments to people, even if it was just one person who cared about them - then they would be more likely to deal resiliently to life's tragedies (fight in other words).

Question 2: Firstly, is it credible for a teenage boy to have a goal to be a volunteer doctor in third world countries, due to an unconscious need to prove his self worth following the deaths of his mother and brother in an accident? Secondly, is it credible for that boy, now a man, to leave Africa and his work as a volunteer doctor (and his unconscious quest for self worth) in order to return to the UK to be a father to a child he never knew he had? Or would he stay in Africa? Note: I've paraphrased this.

Dr Jax: Firstly, yes, it's credible for a teenage boy to have this goal - more plausible if he was the oldest brother (I met many people like this in med school!). To answer the second question, you need to consider what kind of person he is. As a kid was he serious? Or did he like to have fun? Was he curious? Or was he a cautious kind of person? What was he like at school? What were his favourite subjects at med school? etc, etc.
Then you need to look at that in conjunction with his past. How does he view fatherhood? Is being a good father important to him? Or does he put the needs of others before his own needs?
Also, consider how working in an under resourced third world country would have changed him. Because it would definitely change him.

Question 3: How do you start helping someone get over a phobia? Spiders for example.

Dr Jax: There are two ways of dealing with phobias. Flooding - which is sticking the person in a room full of tarantulas and keeping them in there until they're no longer scared. This works but is obviously very traumatic and not as effective as the second option. Systematic Desensitisation is the other way. This involves firstly learning deep breathing exercises and relaxation techniques (no mention of spiders at all). Then the 2nd step might be thinking about spiders as you practise your deep breathing. Third step might be talking about spiders- still deep breathing etc. Fourth might be looking at pictures of spiders while deep breathing, etc, etc. This goes on until you are able to look at real spiders and not feel scared. This process might cover a considerable period of time.
People's background and/or personality doesn't make any difference to the treatment.

Question 4: When figuring out conflict, we often use a character's early experiences with people to determine how they view life when the story opens. What I'd like to know is when they have these early experiences, how do people normally react? For example, if a character had an abusive father, would he become abusive himself or would he be more likely to abhor violence?

Dr Jax: People generally react in two ways to early experiences. They either identify with the treatment or they do the opposite. In this instance, your character may subconsciously decide that violence is okay and go on to be an abuser himself. Or he could decide that violence is never the answer and eschew it entirely. Note - when people do the opposite, they almost always do it in an angry way or in a way that makes a statement. For example, your character may tell his father angrily that violence is not the answer or deliberately not fight back as a way of making his point.

Okay, I'll post up Part 2 tomorrow. I have paraphrased people's questions and also Dr Jax's answers (let me know if I've got any of your questions wrong!). Feel free to post if you have any other questions, or use the contact tab just below my blog header!