A User's Guide to PTSD, Part I: What I Did In The War

[rachelmanija]

This is Part I of a three-part essay on post-traumatic stress disorder: understanding it, having it, writing it.

Part I: What I Did In The War. (Introduction; background; what happens during trauma; what happened to me.)

Part II: What Does A Flashback Feel Like? (My history with PTSD, and what it felt like to me.)

Part III: I Don't Have To Do

Comments

[rushthatspeaks]

This is absolutely fascinating. I won't comment at length at the moment because I'm at work and typing while waiting for pages of a book to scan, but this has been both interesting and useful.

[arielstarshadow]

The universe really does provide. That sounds odd, until I tell you that I'm working on a novel right now (it will be a romance) where the female protag is suffering from PTSD (it actually took me a while to give it a label - it was in the process of doing major character work that it finally hit me that "Hey, all of this being totally screwed up is PTSD.") Contemplate domestic abuse, only on an immortal, lasting 100+ years, doing things that would kill a mortal, and that's it in a nutshell.

Obviously, any other writing you want to do on this would be really appreciated, especially talking more about "coping" strategies and how you would behave/react in situations that would trigger the PTSD (as well as exactly what situations would trigger it).

[matociquala]

Yes.

Just like that.

[copperwise]

Excellent. Just excellent.

I have been told by several people "well, you don't really have PTSD, because you weren't raped or in a war." Most people have a very limited knowledge of it.

Mind if I link this when you're finished?

[rachelmanija]

Please do! I am hoping it will be widely linked, largely because I've gotten those exact same comments. I meanly suspect a subconscious desire to make you shut up already and stop talking about disturbing things.

[elisem]

Oh, man. I am with you on that one.

(And my internal response has tended to be that if hearing about it makes them so uncomfortable, then living through it would have killed them. But that's a lonely response....)

[em_h]

I’ve several times come across people who have the symptoms, but don’t think their trauma was significant enough to warrant their reaction, since they weren’t in combat or were only molested and not physically injured or it was a car crash rather than an act of violence. This seems a sufficiently common idea that I suspect that it’s a manifestation of the illness all by itself, possibly a form of survivor’s guilt.

Something that happened repeatedly when I was being interviewed about Between Mountains is that the interviewer would say, "You know, I was really thinking that Daniel had PTSD; but then you said he didn't, so I guess that surprised me." Trying to explain that I didn't say it, he said it, and that Daniel is by no means a reliable reporter of his own psychological condition, well, that seemed to be beyond the grasp of many

[rachelmanija]

I was thinking of Daniel when I wrote "war correspondent."

The thing about vomiting from stress is that it does happen, but in my experience, generally to people who are prone to that anyway, not as an obligatory element of emotional distress. So your defense holds.

[em_h]

To the best of my knowledge there's only been one study done of PTSD in war reporters, but it suggested that the rates are nearly the same as for combat veterans. But it may be even less socially acceptable for reporters to admit to (guilt plays a big role in that, I think).

I'm also interested in what's sometimes called "secondary PTSD" or "secondary traumatization", which is fascinating because it's basically trauma by narrative; I think the first time I heard about it was when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa started encountering high rates of emotional problems among their data entry clerks. It does seem like constant long-term exposure to narratives of direct trauma causes a much milder but real form of trauma itself (cf Lili in Between Mountains or Rachel in my first novel). This may be too indirect and subtle to be of much interest for most fanfic, though.

[coffeeandink]

I remember reading about reports of "survivor guilt" like trauma among the children of Holocaust survivors who had not themselves ever been in a concentration camp, usually having been born after the war, which seems like it might be related.