Bessel van der Kolk’s book, The Body Keeps the Score, is about the ways that the body records and relives trauma — and how to escape that cycle. It's a revelation, and if you haven’t read it, it would be great research for any writer, regardless of whether they have experienced trauma personally.

PROMPT

Focus on the way a character’s body remembers something has happened to it. Does your character have a tic, do they somaticize their psychopathology by say feeling pain that represents a psychic wound? How do they stand when they feel a resurgence of that fear? Do they panic when they see pigeons? Why? How does that express itself, and what underlies it? Find an instance of an idiosyncratic physical behavior that is triggered by a difficult moment in a character’s past. Put the behavior in your story in at least two places — after all, this is something that the character is locked into, and a single instance won’t illustrate that — but don’t necessarily explain, at least not it the first time. Let it be a revelation or a realization to the reader, what this means.