I am a terrible person.
I deserve to die. To be tortured to death. Executed in the most inhumane manner possible. Reanimated, restored, and put through the entire process again, and again, ad infinitum.
I deserve to suffer for all eternity.
Why?
No reason.
What have I done?
Nothing.
So, why do I feel this way?
I have Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
Specifically, OCD with a focus on ‘Badness’: When I am feeling stressed, I start to doubt my actions, what I do, and say, and imagine everything I have said and done harms another and I need to be punished for it.
It is illogical. Everything is illogical with OCD. It is a mental illness that makes people feel and think things that are not logical, not likely to happen, with no relief from the fact that what you worry about probably did not, cannot, or will not happen.
Most days, I live with my OCD the way you live with an unsightly birthmark: every now and again another person glimpses something not quite ‘normal’ but that is the extent of it. Other days, it flares up, and I feel anxious and guilty for any minor indiscretion. Usually this happens when I am tired or stressed.
I never drink to excess, and I do not take recreational drugs. I have a hard enough time managing my thoughts without substances and I never got over the fear high school teacher instilled into me that drugs will destroy your brain. The same way they convince you that the first time you have unprotected sex you will one-hundred percent get a girl pregnant. Taking illicit drugs on the background of a mental health disorder, and having a family history of mental health issues, is like flicking matches at a puddle of oil. It may never light, or one tiny ember will burn your life down.
On a bad, OCD-heavy day, it takes very little effort to convince myself I am worse than all of history’s worst dictators combined, every murderer that ever lived, every criminal, for something as silly as putting rubbish in the wrong bin or accidentally dropping an item in a store and returning its slightly dented package to the shelf.
I take medication to make sure it does not get out of hand, and I try hard to keep on top of meditation, mindfulness, and exercise to keep it from affecting my day-to-day life, and my creative interest of writing and drawing.
What does this have to do with writing? Simply this: Mental health issues are prevalent in society and writing about these, and writing these into characters, can make for some very interesting story telling.
I could have started this article talking about the signs and symptoms of OCD. I could have written about the statistics of OCD, and reasons for its rise. Instead, I wrote about it from a first-person perspective, and my experiences.
This is how I would introduce a mental illness into a short story, with descriptions of how a character feels, rather than why they feel that way. As an author, your role is to help readers engage and experience the life of their characters, rather than simply teaching them about a character.
A character with mental health concerns can make for very interesting writing. Consider a neurosurgeon who has OCD about locking the doors of his car, and has a panic attack every morning, but then heads to work and does not bat an eyelid when performing 6 life-threatening brain surgeries in a row? Or the commuter on a train who is so stressed about not being able to read body language and simple facial expressions that he loses his temper at a gunman that storms the train and overpowers him out of rage and disregard for his own safety.
Or, for a real sting in the tail, why not write about a character whose life is going down the gurgler, all their relationships have fallen apart, and then in the final moments before something utterly catastrophic happens, they learn everything they are thinking/doing comes through the lens of their mental illness?
When it comes to writing horror, understanding mental health issues and writing characters with such issues can breathe life into your story.
Nothing ruins a horror story like a character who responds calmly, and logically, to an utterly horrific situation. Humans are emotional creatures. Millions of years of evolution have hardwired our instincts to make them as strong as bone, and just as hard to break. If you have any underlying issues, if you are prone to OCD, depression, anxiety, they will come out roaring when faced with horrors beyond comprehension. This should happen to your characters, too. Including mental health issues when writing a character or their backstory will add layers to your writing. For example:
- Can the reader trust the narrator? Are they a reliable storyteller? Or is their mental health problem altering the story?
- Is the character doomed to fail because of a mental health problem? Or is the mental health problem yet another obstacle they need to overcome to succeed?
- A personal favourite of mine is: Does the person with a mental health problem act illogically, but in a way that would be normal or logical for someone with a particular mental health disorder? Someone with OCD may react very calmly to emergency situations that do not involve themselves directly (I know I do) and yet go to pieces when their desk drawer is untidy. What would a reaction like this look like during a terrorist attack? An invasion of body snatchers, or the birth of an elder god from the depths of the Pacific Ocean?
Practice making your characters unwell, both mentally and physically, and you will open entirely new perspectives in your stories. The golden advice of “Murder your darlings!” should be followed by “Or, at least, maim and cripple them and drive them insane!”
- About the Author
- All Posts by This Author
Ben Matthews is a physiotherapist and horror author. His work has been published in print in IFWG Publishing’s Killer Creatures Horror Stories with Bite, and Spawn 2: More Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies, for which he won the Aurealis Award for Best Short Horror Story, 2024.
His work has also been published online at Tales from the Crosstimbers, Whisperhouse Press, and The NoSleep Podcast.
He lives in Western Australia with his amazing wife, who thinks horror stories are silly, and his young daughter. When he is not working or crawling around on the floor pretending to be a gorilla, he’s reading or drawing. You can follow him on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bjcmatthews or check out his website: https://bjcmatthews.wixsite.com/ben-matthews-author