The National Institute of Mental Health defines Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as “a disorder that develops in some people who have experienced a shocking, scary, or dangerous event.” Most people attribute PTSD to soldiers coming home from war. However, many people suffer from PTSD because of situations or events they have gone through. In fact, the majority of survivors of any and all abuse experience some kind of PTSD for different lengths of times. The hardest part about suffering from PTSD in the less mainstream, or most accepted, way, is having to explain to everyone around you why some moments can be so difficult. For a lot of people, including myself, those moments are called triggers, and our battles against those triggers are all part of our survival mode.
Trigger warning: The sound her car makes when she locks it reminds her of the beeps she heard when her mother’s heart stopped beating in the hospital room when she was only six years old, so instead of locking her car using the button on her key she pushes down the locks on each door manually.
Trigger warning: The tire marks on his street remind him of the ones her car made as she peeled away after their fight. She was so angry that she drove too fast, wrapped her car around a tree, and died on impact. He never got to apologize. He looks away and chooses to look up from the road every time he drives by that spot.
Trigger warning: It’s pouring out, that song comes on the radio, and suddenly I find myself bracing for the impact I once felt on the right side of the car. I change the song and switch lanes, turning my focus onto something else.
Trigger warning: I’m driving down Route 2, the main road that has just about everything on it, and notice a new restaurant being built. The same restaurant we used to go to whenever we wanted a really good burger. The first week the restaurant is open my mom asks how the food is. I say it’s good, and we end up eating there after church one Sunday. The color scheme, the smell, the food order, it all sends me traveling back to the past. I choose to allow myself to make new, positive memories in that restaurant.
Trigger warning: The door knob on the bathroom door of some random restaurant is identical to the one I was staring at while he hit me. When I enter the bathroom the first thing I do is look in the mirror to assure myself there’s no blood dripping down my face.
Trigger warning: Someone pulls out a pocket knife to cut open a package, and my hands travel to the lower right side of my stomach where his pocket knife once punctured my skin. I close my eyes and remember that that was years ago and I’m safe now.
Trigger warning: I’m having a bad day, which turns into a bad week, then into a bad month. The stack of stressful days grows along with the anxiety I feel. That feeling brings me back to when I would cut myself to release the tension. The struggle to not go back to my old ways is a daily fight.
PTSD is real. Trigger warnings are real, and so is survival mode. If you are currently suffering from PTSD, and are in survival mode, keep pushing through. All you can do is take it one day, one moment, at a time. If you know someone who is dealing with symptoms of PTSD, choose to at least try to understand that some moments will feel impossible for them to overcome, be a listening ear when they need to share what’s on their mind, but most of all, prove to them you love them in whichever way they’ll most believe you, because that is what they really need.
