J is for job
Feb. 26th, 2013 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snowynightWhat your character does for a living, even if it doesn’t feature prominently in your story, will profoundly affect who he is and how he responds to the world around him. In our society that we're so defined by our jobs that job loss and a change of job position is a major job source. However, jobs do come with hazards.
When you're writing about a high risk job such as a police officer, FBI agent, or a paramedic, it's easy to think of the physical hazards that come with the job. They are at high of being exposed to violence and friendly fire, falling while ascending and descending from roofs or while chasing suspects in a crime, risk of contracting a contagious disease, but surprisingly, according to a research on police officers, the main stress comes from organizational issues such as the demands of work impinging upon home life, lack of consultation and communication, lack of control over workload, inadequate support and excess workload in general. A law officer may never use their guns in their entire work life, but they still have to face work stress like you and me. Sleepiness/fatigue in the work place can lead to poor concentration, absenteeism, accidents, errors, injuries, and fatalities. There's a reason that cardiovascular diseases and suicide are two main diseases that haunts this line of work.
The secret of professional resilience lies in many things: Positive relationship with people with your superior and colleagues, a larger support network outside of work. Physical fitness has a positive impact and ability to communicate traumatic experiences. However, there's a less well quantifiable factor in that if your characters' value align with their job, they will be more robust. On the contrary, guilt or shame experienced during and following a dangerous threat will enhance the trauma.. Perhaps this happens because guilt and shame link to a belief that if we are responsible for threats to our own safety, we have become a threat to ourselves…and our body therefore turns on our survival responses to protect us.
So obviously if you want to use job-related trauma to the best effect in hurt/comfort, hit them when they need to deal with loads and loads of paper work just for doing their jobs, let them miss their children's first ballet performance because they need to chase a criminal's car. Let them be helpless and feel a loss of control, a loss of support. Let them question the value of the job they are doing. Remove their support network. Usually the canon provide us lot of of chance with potential to be a rope to hang themselves. Explore them. Let them be tired, frustrated, and exhausted. Every small things can add up and be the straw to break a camel's back. Let them be isolated from the rest of the society. Everything's confidential and they just can't understand. Then you have the recipe of a coming collapse of your characters from accumulated pressure. And they're all invisible so they don't even know to get help.
I hope the post helps you to break your characters with their jobs and I really welcome any comments, suggestion and discussion in the comments.
Reference:
Occupational Hazard Datasheets - Police / Law Enforcement Officer
Emergency services: trauma on the job
Stress in police officers: a study of the origins, prevalence and severity of stress-related symptoms within a county police force
What causes PTSD and Job-Related Trauma?
The Most Underestimated Hazard of Police Work
When you're writing about a high risk job such as a police officer, FBI agent, or a paramedic, it's easy to think of the physical hazards that come with the job. They are at high of being exposed to violence and friendly fire, falling while ascending and descending from roofs or while chasing suspects in a crime, risk of contracting a contagious disease, but surprisingly, according to a research on police officers, the main stress comes from organizational issues such as the demands of work impinging upon home life, lack of consultation and communication, lack of control over workload, inadequate support and excess workload in general. A law officer may never use their guns in their entire work life, but they still have to face work stress like you and me. Sleepiness/fatigue in the work place can lead to poor concentration, absenteeism, accidents, errors, injuries, and fatalities. There's a reason that cardiovascular diseases and suicide are two main diseases that haunts this line of work.
The secret of professional resilience lies in many things: Positive relationship with people with your superior and colleagues, a larger support network outside of work. Physical fitness has a positive impact and ability to communicate traumatic experiences. However, there's a less well quantifiable factor in that if your characters' value align with their job, they will be more robust. On the contrary, guilt or shame experienced during and following a dangerous threat will enhance the trauma.. Perhaps this happens because guilt and shame link to a belief that if we are responsible for threats to our own safety, we have become a threat to ourselves…and our body therefore turns on our survival responses to protect us.
So obviously if you want to use job-related trauma to the best effect in hurt/comfort, hit them when they need to deal with loads and loads of paper work just for doing their jobs, let them miss their children's first ballet performance because they need to chase a criminal's car. Let them be helpless and feel a loss of control, a loss of support. Let them question the value of the job they are doing. Remove their support network. Usually the canon provide us lot of of chance with potential to be a rope to hang themselves. Explore them. Let them be tired, frustrated, and exhausted. Every small things can add up and be the straw to break a camel's back. Let them be isolated from the rest of the society. Everything's confidential and they just can't understand. Then you have the recipe of a coming collapse of your characters from accumulated pressure. And they're all invisible so they don't even know to get help.
I hope the post helps you to break your characters with their jobs and I really welcome any comments, suggestion and discussion in the comments.
Reference:
Occupational Hazard Datasheets - Police / Law Enforcement Officer
Emergency services: trauma on the job
Stress in police officers: a study of the origins, prevalence and severity of stress-related symptoms within a county police force
What causes PTSD and Job-Related Trauma?
The Most Underestimated Hazard of Police Work
