My MC was a prisoner in war, she was tortured and made to watch her comrades get burned to death. When she is rescued and brought back home, how would ptsd symptoms start? Would she act normal, or would symptoms start right away?
So we have PTSD and we have delayed onset PTSD and we also just have ‘sometimes people don’t recognize the beginning symptoms of PTSD because Shock or because their brains are normalizing’
Also, technically because you don’t have PTSD until… I think it’s 3 months after trauma. The very initial period is what we call post-traumatic stress. It becomes PTSD when a) the symptoms cause enough disruption in the life and b) it has lasted a certain period of time.
All of this means that you do have some leeway in how you portray her coming back.
I do doubt she would act ‘normal.’ Especially if by normal you mean ‘like she did pretrauma’
What may happen is she shows one set of symptoms (shut down emotionally, doesn’t want to talk about, activated nervous system translating to trying to work too much. Not quite conscious but she needs to keep moving) to slowly adding other symptoms/maybe swinging the opposite direction with some of the symptoms. Endless, agitated energy becomes depression. Flashbacks might occur. Panic attacks.
She may begin showing those symptoms immediately upon coming home. A lot of people get to safe environment and then just… meltdown.
You might have people, including herself, not realize she’s beginning to show trauma symptoms because they see it as grief and grieving.
So you definitely have options when it comes to how you want to play this- I just wouldn’t advise ‘completely fine/normal’ personally. At least not *actually* completely fine/normal. There is of course the option of her being aware things are falling apart, but putting on that front for others.
Hopefully that helps some,
TS
