9781422285756

? DID YOU KNOW? PTSD affects more than 7 million Americans. But in time—and often, with help—people can integrate traumas into their regular lives. They may not be exactly the same as they were before, but they can learn to move on.

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It seemed like anything could send him into a rage— his son’s toys on the floor, an overcooked steak, anything. Each night, he would have dreams about being in the middle of battle again. The nightmares got so bad that Bill tried to avoid going to sleep at all. Even when Bill wasn’t angry, he wasn’t happy. Nothing seemed to really matter to him anymore. His wife worried about him. His kids were often afraid. Bill had left the war, but the war hadn’t left him. Bill has a classic case of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is a mental disorder, but it’s different from most other disorders in at least one very important way. When someone suffers from anxiety or depression, we often don’t know exactly why. The cause may be physical, emotional, or some mix of the two. But with PTSD, the cause is clear: trauma . But what is trauma? A trauma is an upsetting event, but it’s more than that. A trauma is an event that is more extreme than what most people experience. The experiences that Bill had in Iraq are not “normal” human experiences. Constantly fearing for one’s life, killing people, seeing people killed— these are intense, horrifying experiences. They are often impossible to forget. For example, if your grandparent dies, that’s very upsetting. But the loss of an elderly person is an expected part of life. People might say it is the “natural order of things.” It’s Terrible Experiences, Traumatic Experiences