Hubert Selby Jr. (Last Exit to Brooklyn) wrote from a deep, dark place that could traumatize unwary readers. That could be because he deprioritizes anything that does not deal with a character’s emotional state:

Very seldom is there any physical description in my work. Occasionally it might be necessary, perhaps for ironic reasons. But physical description is unimportant to me because we don’t live and die on the outside. It’s not so much what I do but what I feel about myself. That’s where I live and die on a daily basis, inside of me…

If you write about what you live and die for, that seems like a good place to start.