♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦

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Topic #126

What’s the strangest medical or psychological condition
you’ve ever given to one of your characters?

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Welcome back to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop! If you’re new to the series, the authors included are grateful for your reads and appreciate, even more so, when you share our writings with your friends. If you’re new to the series, welcome aboard. The authors engage and impress weekly. Be prepared to become a regular reader.

Let me start by saying that I take mental and physical health very seriously. To have a medical condition or disability that affects your daily life is nothing to laugh at. When any psychological or physical condition shows up in my books, it is with the heart of raising awareness, but also showing it as a common human condition. Thus, they’re not strange, so much as stigmatized or mysterious.

Being a survivor of abuse, I long ago decided to talk about the disorders that give rise to abusers, as well as the repercussions with which their victims walk away. The latter is more dear to me, but helping survivors or would be victims avoid abuse or heal from it, requires understanding the perpetrator. The more you know, so they say.

Of especial interest to me, which you’ll see me write about often on social media, is the Sociopath and Sociopathic Narcissist (SocNarc). Personality Disorders are not strange. Research say that they make up 1-3% of the population, and could be as high as 5%. The entire range would probably make up more like 30%. Narcissist spectrum can be relatively harmless, like athletes and actors who enjoy their very public role. That said, there are those on the spectrum who are quite dangerous, and cross with sociopathic disorders (psychopaths being the rarest of them all, perhaps). These individuals can make life torturous for those with which they interact. They can be family, friends, coworkers, even acquaintances.

On my social media, I highlight the behaviors of politicians and other individuals in positions of authority that emulate the behaviors of domestic abusers. Likewise, I write characters with such behavioral problems, and how that affects the others in the story. On social media, I am asking readers to realize how to hold government officials accountable. When you realize the game they are up to, you can both defend yourself and your interests from harm.

Let me be clear, they can do a lot of harm. It’s not just immature bullying here and there. SocNarcs usually undertake sustained abuse, focused on a group or individual. They rather enjoy it, to boot. I suppose that right there is the strangeness, at least for those of us who do have empathy. It’s difficult for us to understand a desire to cause pain and take joy in it.

In my World War II thriller, it is the father. In my paranormal, dark fantasy, there are several figures who fit the bill, and at multiple levels. In my first novel, they’re on the fringe, creating obstacles for the heroes. Whether they drive the narrative in the action or from the shadows of a character’s past, they serve to remind readers of the dangers and the disturbing reality of such personalities.

Let’s hop on over and see what they other authors have to say this week…

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