Emotional Healing

[MoonKit]

Well we've all heard stories about werewolves with increased healing abilities and we always assumed it was physical healing. But what if it was emotional healing? What if they could get over a death or heartache at a rapid pace?

Discuss.

[Bloodyredbaron]

This makes a bizzare kind of sense.

Or maybe it's just the beer and cold medicine kicking in.

Something smells purple.

[Whisperwind]

hmmm thats an interesting thought.

it makes me sad in a way though.. i'm a believer that the pain we go through makes the good all the sweeter. if they got over it fast.. i dont know that they'd get attached to people/places/things (other than for their usefulness as opposed to love or something like it)

but if you were talking about werewolves that arent really a part of society... that might explain it. they dont remember/have the same attachments, they might not have the same morals.. because they dont really get hurt and take things for granted.

well, at least, i'm thinking of a more apathetic werewolf. im sure there are a ton of other ways that can be interpreted. thats just my two cents!

[Terastas]

Not so much a result of their healing as it would be by necessity. Being a werewolf should be too much of a headache for them to have any time to be all emo.

It's how it is for the werewolves in my present-day story anyway. The outline I have right now has the pack's alpha getting killed in the opening sequence, but because they have so much to preoccupy their thoughts, they put off a proper funeral for so long that, by the time they do get around to paying their proper respects, some of them can't even remember if he really is dead or not.

It's not that they're incapable of emotional trauma or more resistant to it. It's because if they do stop and give into it, things will only get worse. They have facades to maintain in the daytime and duties to the pack at night -- they don't have time to get all broken down with emotion.

[Leonca~]

I suppose it would be possible. If the change into a werewolf were to make the person think more like an animal, become more survival oriented and not as emotional as a human, it might alter the way they perceive their lives and respond to things. This wouldn’t be so much a healing ability from emotional trauma as a restructuring of thought so that those kinds of problems don’t mater any more.

[Berserker]

Eh I've heard of instances where an animal separated from his mate or master becomes traumatized nearly for life, slipping into a kind of depression from which they rarely recover. In many ways intelligent animals are even more emotional than humans, because they can't easily wrest control of their own feelings. I think being a werewolf might actually enhance one's emotional attachments, and as a result, emotional healing is more difficult than for a normal person.

[WerewolfKeeper3]

Eh I've heard of instances where an animal separated from his mate or master becomes traumatized nearly for life, slipping into a kind of depression from which they rarely recover. In many ways intelligent animals are even more emotional than humans, because they can't easily wrest control of their own feelings. I think being a werewolf might actually enhance one's emotional attachments, and as a result, emotional healing is more difficult than for a normal person.

I've heard that too... interesting question though...

[Silveera-Ice]

An interesting theory, possible, but they would surely still be emotional creatures, they should still mourn the death of a loved one for a similar amount of time...

[Wingman]

The manga Parasyte, which I recommend reading, has an excellent example of what might happen with a werewolf. The main character becomes slowly changed by his condition(which is having an alien parasite in his arm), and he becomes increasingly inhuman over time. He finds a puppy that was hit by a car, so he takes it off the road and comforts it until it dies. Then he tosses it in a garbage can, because "It's just meat." or something similar. It's only when he actively stops and thinks about it that he realizes how much he's changed, upon which he buries the puppy.

Depending on what sort of werewolves you have, and your take on how "human" animals are, then yeah, as their mind becomes more animalistic 'useless' emotions might be pushed to the side or even lost altogether. Though, it makes sense that they would still care for their loved ones and such, but strangers? They're just one more body on the pile.

[Terastas]

He finds a puppy that was hit by a car, so he takes it off the road and comforts it until it dies. Then he tosses it in a garbage can, because "It's just meat." or something similar. It's only when he actively stops and thinks about it that he realizes how much he's changed, upon which he buries the puppy.

That's an interesting scenario, mostly to me because he still took time out of his life to have sympathy for it while it was still alive (which is something I doubt a lot of normal human beings in my life would do); it's only after it has died, when it is no longer a living thing, that he becomes insensitive.

Werewolves may become desensitized the same way: with their feelings of sympathy, regret and remorse still as strong as ever, but with too much else occupying their minds to have time for sentimental symbolism. Human enough to care for the puppy while it's alive, not human enough to carry on with the sentimental symbolism of a funeral, but still human enough to realize they're becoming less human.

I still think it'd be more a result of necessity than a lack of humanity. We tend to think of funerals as a necessity, but a werewolf might think of them more as a luxury. If one of their packmates is gunned down, it's just as tragic as it would be for anyone else. But if the crime scene has been blockaded off and they can't retrieve the body: oh well, life goes on.

That's how it would start anyway: with the emotional rituals going first.

[RedEye]

One should also consider that in most cases the Werewolf is both a hunted "animal" and a haunted person. Conflicts like that have a way of desensitizing people to many of the more "interactive" rituals they go through.

Regardless of whether your dreams are fulfilled by becoming a Werewolf, or your nightmares are made real by what's happened to you; you are now in a very risky and dangerous place to be. Friends will flee from you, even if you are trying to help them and enemies will be emboldened by your physical change of shape.
Your only solace will probably be with your own kind. Think about that: the only people who won't flee or attack are people who are just as messed up as you are. This is not a good place to be, since you will reflexively accept their viewpoint on things and act accordingly. This is called the "Stockholm Syndrome" and can turn abductees into allies of their abductors who will support the actions of the people who originally were their enemies.

A Werewolf would need a friend who wasn't a Were' him/her self as a validation of their own need to be accepted by someone...anyone.
With the Werewolf, you have the social needs of both Human and Wolf; both are social and both need the support of others for their own happiness' sake.

A Werewolf would be open to anyone who would accept it, simply because both species have the same needs; and THAT could be exploited bigtime!

[Leonca~]

Maybe becoming a werewolf would intensify the existing emotions of a person? Someone who is naturally detached emotionally might become more so, and someone who is very emotionally responsive to things might develop exaggerated emotions. Maybe it might be tied to their shift cycle, if they are influenced by the moon (it’s that time of the month! ).

[Celestialwolf]

To me, the healing is only physical and not emotional; they'd still have to cope with things and get over them like normal people would. Granted, being a werewolf, one might not care as much about, or be as effected by situations or emotions as they would have been before (they'd probably overcome most fears; they wouldn't mind being alone in the forest at night, for example).

I don't think emotions would be any stronger per-se, but with the strengthened senses and increased opportunities for an adrenaline rush, one might remember things more vividly. I like the idea that extreme emotions would come into play more often and could increase the desire to shift...

[Scott Gardener]

My short answer is: yes, and no, but more no than yes.

Biologically, my particular envisionment of werewolves do happen to have some degree of regenerative rebalancing that has a Prozac-like effect of correcting serotonin. But, so many other things get thrown off at the same time, most notably norepinephrine. The neurological biochemistry of lycanthropy in my storyline becomes its own subspecialty of medicine by the 2040s, and it's complicated enough to keep a lot of doctors and scientists employed.

The rebalancing effect is not strong enough to make up for the fact that becoming a werewolf changes one's entire views about what is or isn't real as well as drastically overhauling one's sense of self identity. If becoming a werewolf ruins one's life, the biochemical effect doesn't fix that. What is most notable is that it does make one tend to be less resistant over time towards being a werewolf itself. However, one is perfectly free to worry about that, wondering whether or not the change of heart represents having one's soul siphoned away or believing that one is no longer who they used to be.

This change is also part of the total picture of lycanthropic psychiatry, which also includes the personality changes that go with state-of-mind shifts accompanying physical shifts, persistent and lingering changes of thinking even when human, general behavioral changes that accompany having enhanced smell and hearing, and a generally more feral and lupine mindset slowly working its way into one's brain. Awareness of these effects tends to cause at least as many problems as they fix, though mundane issues like boyfriends and girlfriends or annoying co-workers quickly become trivial by comparison.

[Terastas]

It's so nice to have a doctor in the pack.

Scott also raises a point I'm embarrassed to have missed myself (since it's going back on something I've probably mentioned like a hundred times already by now): that just plain becoming a werewolf in general can be traumatic and emotionally scarring.

Scott pretty much summed up why that would make a werewolf more emotional, but you could argue that the other way and say that, considering what every werewolf had to go through to become a werewolf, events which we may consider traumatic might not always measure up to that of becoming a werewolf. If every single day of their life is emotionally-scarring, if they didn't tough it up, they'd eventually snap and blow their brains out.

A new werewolf would be expected to be emotionally fragile and require some guidance from the rest of the pack, but sooner or later the massive pain and heartache a werewolf endures every single day would effect him less and less. Eventually he'll start expecting it tomorrow, learn how to better deal with it and get used to it, or at the very least he'll get sick and tired of feeling sorry for himself and start making an effort.

So you could argue that it goes both ways: emotionally fragile as a newcomer, emotionally hardened as a veteran.

[Scott Gardener]

It's not all pain and sadness. Remember, once one pulls lycanthropy outside of the social context of what we assume would happen in present day, most of us envision lycanthropy as granting a lot of spectacular special abilities, while taking away very little.

And, when dealing with reality-shaking realizations, such as being one bite away from either killing off humanity or bringing about a major upheaval, then most things that get other people depressed seem trivial and underwhelming. So, your girlfriend of three months broke up with you? Big deal; I had to kill mine so she wouldn't slaughter a small city.

[Thunderclaw]

It's not the first thing I would think of.

[Cyberwatt]

Interesting thread, everyone. Rapid emotional healing is an interesting fit with physical healing, assuming that werewolves would be driven purely by laws of biology. If there was ever a supernatural context to consider, that might not apply. Please correct me if I'm wrong (chalk it up to "newbyness").

Going on the assumption of a more transcendent view of WWs: since one would assume that many werewolves have varying personalities and that said personas are, in some way, shaped by heredity and environment both, would it be reasonable to take a more individualistic approach rather than painting all lycanthropes with the same brush? What I mean is this: perhaps only a certain percentage of werewolves would be "afflicted" with this rapid healing of the emotions, while others are not.

Perhaps this emotional healing might be an extreme form of lycanthropy, suffered by only a few?

[Terastas]

Perhaps this emotional healing might be an extreme form of lycanthropy, suffered by only a few?

I think "rapid" emotional healing would be more the result of circumstance as opposed to a variation of lycanthropy. Becoming a werewolf is traumatizing, but people that have already experienced trauma of a similar level might cope with it better than others.

Going back on my own writing, one of my main characters, Todd Lie, is a werewolf the rest of the pack is hesitant to trust because he is abnormally insensitive (especially for a werewolf). What the pack will eventually find out, however, is that his life was exceptionally screwed up to begin with; that as deceptive and unstable as werewolves can be, they still offer him more honesty and more stability than he's accustomed to seeing from his peers. He wasn't a naturally insensitive individual -- the pack just found him after he'd been desensitized elsewhere.

Meanwhile the other main character, Paul McCaig, starts off as his polar opposite. They actually had very similar lives that took very similar downturns, but Paul only realizes the same thing that happened to Todd happened to him after listening to several of Todd's rants. He has to deal with the hazards of being a werewolf and face up to some very painful facts about his prior life simultaneously, making him that much more emotionally unstable.

So I wouldn't say there are different kinds of lycanthropy. Just that different people respond to it in different ways.

[WolfeGuardian]

Hm the thought is intriguing to me but thing is I'm not to sure of this since from what I have heard when a werewolf loses it's mate it goes through a huge pain loss and will most times die from it's depression,drowning itself,or not eating but if it could emotionally heal faster it would be amazing and a life saver for the wolf

[Wselfwulf]

Interesting, because in general it was purely portrayed as a physical regenrerative ability. However, for me, the emotional aspect is better as a damaged part, the internal conflict between the savage and the civil, a tortured, strained mind, which deals with grief and emotional trauma in ways that might be primal or typical (or again, a conflict).

[Rosiewolf]

I wouldn't necessarily think that werewolves could get over guilt, death of a loved one, etc faster than humans. I mean, everyone has their own reaction to certain things and because of that, they would be able to get over events at different rates than others. So, basically, just depends on the person.