Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Sounds Like You?
"I feel like the past is happening now," suddenly reliving a traumatic event through vivid flashbacks, nightmares, or intense body sensations.
"I feel hyper-alert or constantly on edge," scanning my surroundings, easily startled by sudden noises, and finding it hard to truly relax.
"I am constantly avoiding things"—people, places, or even thoughts and memories—that remind me of what happened.
"I feel emotionally numb or detached," finding it difficult to connect with others or feel positive emotions like love or joy.
"I struggle with intense mood swings or outbursts," getting disproportionately angry or irritable without a clear reason.
"I have gaps in my memory about the event," or I find myself questioning what is real or true about the experience.
"I feel fundamentally unsafe, even in places where I know I should be secure, like my own home.
"My sleep is constantly disrupted" by insomnia or intense, disturbing dreams that replay the theme of the trauma.
"I have intense feelings of shame or guilt," often believing I was somehow to blame or that I could have prevented the event.
"I find myself engaging in risky or self-destructive behaviors" to try and distract myself or manage the overwhelming internal distress.
"The wound is the place where the Light enters you".
-Rumi
What is PTSD?
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a profound and complex reaction that can occur after experiencing or witnessing a deeply disturbing event where your safety or the safety of others was threatened. Unlike typical stress, PTSD is characterized by the feeling that the danger is not over, leading your brain and body to remain in a state of high alert. This manifests in four key ways: re-experiencing the event through intrusive flashbacks or nightmares; actively avoiding reminders of the trauma; struggling with negative changes in mood and thoughts, such as profound shame or detachment; and experiencing hyper-arousal, which includes intense irritability and being easily startled. Essentially, PTSD is a natural, yet painful, failure of the nervous system to fully process and file away a traumatic memory as belonging to the past.
"Why am I feeling this?"
People develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) because the intense, overwhelming nature of a deeply distressing event—such as combat, a severe accident, or abuse—essentially overloads the brain's capacity to process memory and regulate fear. When faced with life-threatening danger, the body's natural defense systems are activated; in PTSD, this system fails to deactivate once the threat is over. The traumatic memory is not filed away properly, leaving the nervous system perpetually vigilant. This leads to the characteristic symptoms: the memory is constantly intrusive, the individual avoids reminders, and their emotional regulation and arousal levels remain dangerously high, a sign that the brain is still operating as if the threat is present.
How can Therapy Help with PTSD?
Therapy provides a specialized and effective path toward healing from the impact of PTSD, offering more than just coping strategies. It is a carefully managed process where you work with a trained professional to process the traumatic memory itself, moving it from an active, overwhelming experience to a past event. Evidence-based treatments, such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) or Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), help to calm your overactive nervous system, reduce the frequency of intrusive symptoms like flashbacks, and challenge the negative beliefs about yourself and the world that the trauma has created. The ultimate goal is to restore your sense of safety, regain control over your emotions and reactions, and allow you to fully re-engage with your life without being held captive by the past.