UPDATE: So far response shows I am the crazy one here. (Big surprise, I know.) Most of you experience head or stomach symptoms in response to extreme emotion. Indeed, you say, lurching is the appropriate term. Sweating and loss of breath have also been noted. Thanks for your comments. I'm finding this a fascinating discussion and I hope it helps anyone who writes. It's certainly helping me, though I am now questioning my own neurological makeup.
Back to the original post:
An interesting issue came up recently in one of my writing groups. (I'm a writing group two-timer. Shhh! Don't tell.) And it really has me thinking today about writing and reading emotional response.
It seems to me that in MG and YA lit (and adult memoir) that stomachs lurch in response to emotion more than they actually do in life. I'm actually having a difficult time thinking of a recent book in which a stomach did not lurch or turn. And, I've got to be honest with you all: My stomach has never--not once--lurched in response to a traumatic or an emotional situation.* Am I alone here?
In fact, I clearly remember the first time my stomach lurched. I was fourteen and on a trip to Magic Mountain. It was on a roller coaster and I thought, so this is what it means to have your stomach lurch. I finally know! Really, I was pretty excited because I'd read all about it and had no idea what it meant.
When something traumatic or truly emotional has happened to me, I always have the same physical response. A pain behind my sternum--the pain that happens before you cry for real. Then the pain moves up my throat to the back of my mouth. There it stays until I cry. After crying I feel physically numb and slow until I can act.
So here's my question to all you readers and writers out there. How do you react to tragedy or extreme emotion? Does fiction and memoir adequately reflect your response? Does your stomach lurch?
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Image from the NIH.
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*I've also never felt queasy in response to an emotional event. Fast food is another story.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
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20 comments:
Two weeks ago I got a bill from Virginia Dept of Taxation stating that I owed over $5,000 in unpaid taxes from 2004! And yes, my stomach lurched and I immediately felt sick. With some deep breaths I realized that it HAD to be a mistake, but I felt sick until I laid my hands on the old tax forms. As it turned out, I was owed money. Hurray! But I can testify to the stomach lurching.
I wonder, though, if it depends where you tend to "feel" things. I've always had a tendency to feel sick to my stomach when I'm nervous or stressed. I know other people who get headaches instead.
Yikes, MR! I think that would bring on my sternum pain :)
You must be right: It depends on where you feel your pain. So maybe all this stomach lurching is true to life?
For me, it depends on the emotion. I definitely get stomachaches when I'm very worried. My heart speeds up, my stomach tightens, and I break out in a cold sweat. But sadness brings on the pain in the chest, etc., you described. I wouldn't doubt, though, that authors overuse the stomach-lurching description!
Thinking of another character at a renaissance faire, how would they have a panic attack? No stomach issue - just sternum pain? No hyperventilating? There actually wasn't a stomach lurch in the original piece, and it's definitely not there now...
Yeah, Tadmack. I need to do some research on that!!!
And, you didn't inspire my stomach question: a book I'm reading did. (Actually several books recently) But, our conversation really made me think about writing emotional pain. It's so difficult!
Lisa C: See. A lot of people describe similar responses. I'm beginning to think I have weird responses to panic or emotional events.
Must be something to do with the name, but I get an extreme tightness in my chest - not a pain, just a hardening behind the sternum, as you said. And then the sense that there's a rock where my throat should be, which is sometimes just a hardening/tightening and sometimes is actually painful.
In response to near-death situations (a narrow escape from a traffic accident, for instance), I get a headache that surges from my neck up into the back of my skull as if a hand grew parallel to my spinal cord and then started to squeeze the base of my brain until the pain bands reach around the sides to my temples. Is that concrete enough of a description, or what?
I'm with MotherReader on feeling anxiety and fear in my stomach--"lurch" is actually exactly right, as it feels as if the bottom has dropped out. No nausea, just a gulping emptiness. Kelly's headache response seems like what I feel *after* I know the danger has passed. And sadness is very different too--not so much stomachat all as head and chest. Bring on the theorists of the humors! Can they help?
two writing groups?
do you ever sleep?
Must be the name, Kelly! The same thing exactly--though I don't get the headache response.
Suzanne: I don't know :)
Libby: Bring 'em on! Do you know any?
Alas, no! And Wikipedia isn't helping me much, either, though I do know that the brain and lungs are associated with the phlegmatic temperament, while the melancholic apparently feels things in the spleen. I love how wikipedia lines these up w/Meyers-Briggs types, too!
(here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism)
OMG, Libby, that wikipedia article is just TOO funny. I guess I am "Black Bile," based on the entry :)
I think I've tried to steer clear of stomach lurching in my books, as it is rather a lazy shorthand, even though I do actually get that precise symptom, sometimes. Sometimes my characters have got the shakes, or frozen up or felt sick, but generally I think avoiding specific symptoms is the way to go, since everyone is clearly different.
My classic emotional response? When I'm really, really upset, when any normal person in touch with their feelings would burst into tears, I don't cry. I get nosebleeds. Of course I also get nosebleeds at completely random times too, so no-one should assume anything from them...
I think the least run-of-the-mill emotional response I have is to fear. I don't jump or gasp or anything... I have what feels like an electric shock traveling through my upper body, and the clear taste of metal in my mouth. Like I've bitten down on a spoon.
Anger is dicier, one never really knows which way I'm going to land there, but definitely my nearly-been-killed fear response is a clear, electrical zing. Anyway, if it helps you feel less neurologically impaired, I'm not much of a person who hyperventilates or lurches, either. Mainly anxiety is viewed as an hourly useless emotion, and something to be doggedly got through until there's time to lie down and groan.
Hey, Tadmack, have you ever heard the Canadian rock band Rush? They have a series of songs with the title 'Fear' appearing on different albums. One describes your fear response almost word for word:
'Every breath a static charge; a tongue that tastes like tin.'
('The Enemy Within', part 1 of Fear, from the album Grace Under Pressure)
Sorry, that was the massive music geek in me!
TadMack - I get that sparked feeling too - it comes with the narrow escape from death, hand up the back of the head headache.
Nick - Your music geekery is made of awesome.
Nick: I've HEARD of the nosebleed thing. It's rare, but you're not alone. And, hey: Thanks for the music recs. (I need all the help I can get around here.)
Tadmack: I've heard of that metallic taste too! And...doggedly getting through things is my approach too :)
Kelly: Isn't Nick's music geekery great? And your headache description was VIVID.
In response to fear my stomach tightens, not lurches... In response to desperate sadness, I get a huge lump in my throat (feels like I've got a brick lodged in there) and a tightness in my chest - as if someone's squeezing my heart - and I start to breathe fast and shallow (sometimes until I'm literally gasping for breath and then I cry). And that's how I always describe the physical reactions of characters in my fiction - because it's the experience I know and can describe.
Who knew... a Canadian rock band gets me!!! The static charge description is eerily accurate.
Thanks, Nic! I would *never* call 'smart' geeky! Except in the cool way, of course!
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