Asking for help is hard

“If you’ve experienced trauma and you haven’t been able to get help – or you tried and it didn’t work, or you didn’t even know where to start – I want to say something plainly: it’s not you.

We ran a survey with PTSD UK back in 2020 to understand what help-seeking actually looks like for trauma survivors, and the numbers still stop me every time I look at them. Nearly three quarters of respondents rated their mental health as poor or very poor in the past year. The average person was juggling twelve different symptoms at once – not one or two, twelve. And 92% were experiencing symptoms at least once a week, nearly half said “all the time.” That’s not a bad patch. That’s a life being lived under siege.

And still, most people don’t get help. Only 1 in 4 do. It shouldn’t be that way. If you’re one of the 3 in 4 who haven’t, I want you to know: it isn’t because you didn’t try hard enough, or because your trauma isn’t “bad enough”. It’s because there are real barriers in the way, some outside you such as long waiting lists and high fees, and some are inside you, beliefs shaped by society, friends, ourselves. I came up against many of these too. Regardless of these barriers, you deserve support. 

What gets in the way inside you

The practical barriers in accessing support are only one part. Another is what happens in your own head. Thoughts that stop you from reaching out. And it’s rarely just one and many feel true – but just because thoughts feel true, it doesn’t mean they are.

“What’s going on with me?” Not knowing what you’re experiencing, or whether it even counts as PTSD, keeps a lot of people from looking for help at all – it’s hard to ask for something you don’t have words for. You don’t need a diagnosis or the right words to deserve support. “I don’t feel like myself lately” is a good place to start; the rest often follows.

“People will judge me.” Stigma tells you needing help means something’s wrong with you. The truth is closer to the opposite: needing help means something happened to you. The fear is almost always worse than what actually happens.

“I shouldn’t feel like this when others have it worse” / “I should be stronger than this.” Shame and guilt. Feeling like your experience wasn’t as bad as someone else’s, that you shouldn’t be struggling now. But everyone’s experience is different and equally valid, no one’s trauma is worse than anyone else’s. If it traumatised you, it traumatised you. That doesn’t make you weak.

“I don’t know where to get help from.” Sometimes the barrier isn’t emotional at all – it’s not knowing what help might be available or not knowing which door to knock on first. That’s solvable, and it’s exactly what the next section is for.

“What if they say it’s not bad enough?” Fear of rejection – that you’ll finally ask and be told you don’t qualify. That’s a reflection of an overstretched system, not a verdict on whether your experience is valid.

“They didn’t listen last time.” A bad experience – yours or someone else’s – can be enough to stop you trying again. That’s human. It’s also worth remembering one bad interaction doesn’t mean help doesn’t exist for you elsewhere. It’s painful if it happens, but you can try again.

“I’m fine, it’s not that bad.” Avoidance, and denial – telling yourself you’re fine because facing that you’re not is its own kind of frightening. But admitting to yourself that you need help, is the first step to getting it.

I experienced these thoughts or versions of them myself. None of it means you’re weak. It means you’re human, dealing with something that makes all of this harder to believe that you deserve support and reach out for it.

What’s actually out there – and why it’s rarely just one thing

Nearly nobody I know who’s rebuilt their life after trauma did it with a single form of support, including me. It’s usually several forms of support, trial and error to find which ones work for you and often layered, sometimes trying different things at different points and returning to them later if they didn’t work or you need to come back to them. Here’s what’s out there, and a concrete way to start with each.

Online resources
Information from trusted resources online can help you put language to what you’re experiencing. Understanding what’s happening and why is often really helpful for you to accept what’s going on with your mind and body, and communicate it with others.

How to try it: start with PTSD UK’s own resources on symptoms and trauma types, so you can be confident it’s reliable information.

Books
Can go deeper than a single article, and give you a fuller framework for understanding your own experience over time. 

How to try it: PTSD UK has a list of recommended books you can try. 

Podcasts
Fit into the gaps books and appointments don’t – a commute, a walk, around the house. They can be useful when you can’t focus enough to read.
How to try it: look for podcasts hosted by people with lived mental health experience, clinical expertise or related to the same kind of experience you’ve been through, rather than general wellbeing content.

Therapy – NHS or private
This the one people think of first, and it matters. But “therapy” isn’t one thing; different approaches suit different people and different types of trauma, including CBT, EMDR and trauma-focused therapies.
How to try it: for NHS, ask your GP about self-referral to Talking Therapies, and it’s worth signing up to the waitlist anyway because there are things you can do whilst you wait. For private, look specifically for trauma-informed or trauma-specialist practitioners rather than general counselling – and if the first one doesn’t click, that’s a sign to try a different fit, not a sign to stop.

Self-help tools and apps
These are there when nothing else is – 2am, mid-panic-attack, in the gap between sessions or the year-long wait for one.
How to try it: this is what I built remind for. It’s not therapy, and it’s not trying to be – it’s a low-stakes first step if you’re not ready for therapy yet, or a companion alongside it if you are: grounding tools for the moment you’re triggered, tracking for your symptoms and patterns, and resources to help you make sense of what’s happening, available whenever you need them.

Charity support
Charities are often built around specific experiences and they can offer a range of information, services or signposting. There’s no shame in accessing charity support, that’s exactly what they’re there for.
How to try it: search for charities related to your experience, you could reach out to them even if you’re not sure what you need yet – they’ve spoken to hundreds of others like you, suggesting possible next step is often part of what they do.

Peer support
Peer support groups matter more than people expect. Being with others who’ve lived something similar, or who share your particular circumstances – as a man, a woman, from a specific community, a veteran, a survivor of a particular kind of event – can do something therapy alone can’t.
How to try it: PTSD UK and other trauma charities run or can point you to groups; look for one matched to your specific experience where you can, not just a general one.

Talking to family, friends or colleagues you trust
This can be a form of support too, even if it’s not “official.”
How to try it: you don’t need the perfect words to start – “I’m finding something hard and I don’t really know how to talk about it yet” is a complete sentence.

Medication
Medication can help, and it’s not a sign of failure. What it can do is create enough space for other things to work. How to try it: talk to your GP about it as one part of a plan, not the whole plan.

Learning coping strategies and making lifestyle changes
Sleep, movement, nutrition, routine – won’t undo what happened, but it helps build the resilience that makes other challenges easier to deal with.
How to try it: pick one small, unglamorous thing – a regular sleep time, a short daily walk – rather than trying to overhaul everything at once.

None of these are mutually exclusive, and none of them are “less than” the others. What worked for me was several of these stacked together at once, and which ones mattered most changed over time. If you’ve only tried one and it hasn’t been enough, that’s not you failing – that’s one piece of a puzzle that needs more than one piece.

Where to start

Pick one thing from all of this and try it this week – not all of it, just one thing. None of these routes require you to have it all figured out first, and none of them close the door on any of the others.

It took me over two and a half years of trial and error, and a combination of things, to find what actually helped and learn to manage my mental wellbeing. I’m not telling you that to be discouraging – I’m telling you because if it’s taking you a while too, that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means you’re up against real barriers, some practical and some due to how trauma makes you think – and none of it is your fault. Start with one. Keep going. There is a way through.”

If you’d like to try the remind app, created by Freya, you can do a 7-day free trial to see if it’s for you. After that, it’s £7.99/month or £79.99/year and you can cancel anytime.

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