“You should just get over it and stop thinking about it”
But that’s just the thing – people with PTSD literally can’t just ‘stop thinking about’ their trauma. One of the illness’s most common symptoms is intrusive thoughts, and they’re just that: intrusive. These thoughts don’t even have to be triggered, they can just surface by themselves, at any time, in any situation. There’s no controlling it. An intrusive thought can pop up for just a moment or it can stay with you all day, or even longer. They can completely destroy your day and anything you’re trying to do, whether it’s homework, your job or just spending time with friends and family or taking part in a hobby, oftentimes you just can’t shake it. It may not seem that bad just once or twice, but when it’s day after day it can start to seriously ruin your life. If it was something people could just choose to ‘get over’, then trust me, they would.
“You should just avoid the things that trigger you and then you’ll be fine”
Avoidance can and will help with a lot of triggers, but it just isn’t possible for the majority of people to avoid absolutely everything that triggers their symptoms. When my symptoms were at their worst I’d be triggered by Evian water. By leather jackets. I’d panic when I got too physically close to another person in public. And I had to deal with all of this while going to sixth form and getting an education. A sixth form where people sometimes drank Evian, sometimes wore leather jackets, and sometimes got very close to me. Without literally locking myself in my house and refusing to leave it, there was literally no way I could avoid everything that triggered me, and several years later, now I can deal with Evian water and leather jackets and most of the time I can deal with people being close to me, I still have to face things that trigger me most days. Just recently I’ve had to deal with and address one of my biggest triggers, one that I still struggle with on a daily basis. I’ve been physically sick over it, but unless I want to compromise the happiness of my future, which I will not do, it’s absolutely unavoidable for me.
PTSD isn’t nearly as easy to deal with as a lot of people think it is. It’s something that an estimated 8% of adults will experience some form of PTSD in their lifetime – that’s one in thirteen Americans – and something that’s affecting that many people in such a drastic way can’t continue being stigmatised the way that it is. Something needs to budge, and it doesn’t look like PTSD is going anywhere anytime soon. We have to change the attitude people have towards PTSD, and we have to do it now. We must create a storm.
photography by Emma Tallon