If you have PTSD, you are not alone. It can be really scary, but help is available.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is actually a very common condition which is caused by people experiencing something very frightening, dangerous or something that makes you scared for someone else’s safety.

How you might be feeling

If you’ve been through something really scary, you may feel sad, anxious or worried for a few weeks afterwards, but these feelings usually fade. If you have PTSD, your body and mind were so scared, they are now struggling to process the event, and so your brain thinks the danger is still all around you. This can make you feel scared, nervous and make you jump at loud noises, or have lots of nightmares. It might also make you have other symptoms or feel these things:

• Constantly thinking about the event.
• Images of the events keep coming into your mind
• Bad memories, called flashbacks, that make it seem like the trauma is still happening
• Difficulty sleeping and/or nightmares
• Changes in how you feel emotionally, i.e. frightened, sad, anxious, angry
• Avoiding certain situations that remind you of the event
• Feeling numb, stunned, shocked or dazed and have difficulties connecting with life around you
• Denial that the event actually happened

You might also feel a wide range of emotions, that you’re not used to feeling (or that you can normally ‘shake off’ such as

• Anger – that something terrible has happened to you. You may be angry towards the people involved or angry at yourself if you feel you should have done something differently.
• Guilt – that you believe you should have done something to prevent the event from happening or you may feel you were responsible or to blame. You may feel guilty that you survived when others didn’t.
• Frightened – that the  same event could happen again or that you are not safe anywhere or with anyone. You may feel too scared to tell anyone about what happened.
• Sad – that it happened or if someone died or was injured.
• Ashamed or embarrassed – by what happened and you might feel worried about telling anyone in case you get told off.

Why do I feel like this?

If you have PTSD, your brain is having difficulty in processing what has happened to you. Normally, when you sleep at night, your brain takes all the memories of your day, and puts them into the right places in your mind – so when you get up the next day, you’ll remember where you put your school books, you’ll remember you promised to meet your best friend at the bus stop and remember all the fun things you did that day. 

The problem is, when you experience something very frightening, your brain ‘forgets’ to process the memory – it’s too busy trying to deal with whats happened. This is a normal reaction that humans have evolved to have over thousands of years – it’s what keeps us safe – and is called ‘fight, flight or freeze’. If you were a caveman, there’s no need to think about where you promised to meet your best friend if a sabre-tooth tiger is infront of you, you need to just RUN! 

So, if your brain hasn’t been able to process the traumatic thing you went through – it doesn’t put it in your memory bank, and so thinks that almost all day, every day, that you’re still in danger. This means your body stays in the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response, and so you might feel nervous, scared, overwhelmed or sad, and don’t know why. Check out the video below which explains more about Fight, Flight or Freeze.