Since I'm on a hunt for better information on the topic of post-traumatic stress disorder, I figured I would take a bit of time here and share at least a few basic principles of what it is and does. There is so much misconception around PTSD, and trauma is one of the most overlooked forms of human suffering out there.
Take all this with a grain of salt, also, as I am not a licensed professional or anything like that. I'm simply a person who has dealt with the effects of PTSD for several years, who's trying to help other people learn the signs and symptoms and how to take care of themselves sooner rather than later. I was several months into the thick of it before I even realized that I had PTSD, and it hadn't come to my attention until a therapist openly told me that's what I had been experiencing. Not all trauma is the same, as not all people are the same, but this is the gist of what I understand of the condition itself.
Most people (including some therapists and areas of the mental health field) are often under the assumption that PTSD can only occur to individuals who have been through life-threatening situations, like war veterans and plane crash survivors, or sexual assault victims (although sadly, even there, some people argue about that, which is truly horrible.)
While this is true, this is also not all that trauma entails. It spans a much, much wider ring of people who were put into a position of complete helplessness, either to a life-threatening degree (commonly referred to as big-T trauma) or one that severely threatens your psyche (also called small-t trauma).
In both cases, the symptoms of PTSD remain consistent: the affected individual may become more easily agitated or flighty, they may avoid specific things or have extreme reactions to seemingly minor things that they may now associate with the time that they felt trapped or helpless in the past. The big misconception with a "trigger" is that it means a person is "angry at or offended by" a specific thing. This is a false idea about triggers, which makes it even harder for the people who legitimately have them and must endure them.
A trigger - an actual trigger - does not "offend" a person. A trigger quite literally 'triggers' back the memories or emotions of your helpless past, as though you have been put right back into that situation where you could have been fighting for your life. Triggers are often personal and unique to the trauma a person has experienced, so no two trauma survivors are ever quite the same.
To make an example of just how personal triggers can become, I'll actually use my own first traumatic experience involving the abrupt loss of a good friend: for several months following the incident/s, I couldn't be near a lot of the things that I knew they enjoyed, such as Mario games, and BTS. They themselves were not things that harmed me, but they reminded me of someone who very much did, and so their connection left me extremely weary of them. Whenever I would see them, I would remember what happened, and I would feel like I was there again, stuck, like the past could not just leave me behind.
This is why triggers can be so debilitating to some people. Sometimes, we simply cannot handle things which remind us so clearly of the times we crawled our way out by the skin of our teeth. We must take extra precautions to ensure that when we do come close to these triggers, that we are not sent into a spiral of horrible thoughts and feelings or drained of our emotional stability. Sometimes that means taking in things in moderation, and sometimes that means cutting those things out altogether, and anything that went with it.
Another big misconception to trauma is that people are not "really traumatized" or that the situation was "not really a big deal". The point of the matter is that it is not any of our God-damned business whether it was a big deal or not. We do not have one another's eyes, and we cannot see and feel exactly what one another has seen and felt. As well, all people are different, and not all people will handle the same situations equally.
Some people are traumatized and bounce back a month later. Some people are traumatized and stay affected by it for the rest of their lives. Some people with PTSD smile and laugh and push on through the pain. Some people with PTSD go mute and become depressed for many years. There is no telling how trauma will affect any one person. So why should we feel the need to judge one another of experiences we never experienced in the same way?
I have been blamed - to my face - of my trauma. As though it was my fault that it was there, or my fault that it was causing me to react the way that I was. And I want to make this abundantly clear: we did not ask to be traumatized. We did not WANT to suffer with this kind of disability. We can deny ourselves and try to continue and shove it down and pretend that it isn't there, but it will not keep trauma from existing within us. It isn't a choice that we can just flip on and off like a light switch.
(A side note, with that said the same is also true that we who are traumatized cannot use trauma as a crutch in life. But there is a very big difference between working through PTSD, and using it like a "be nice to me" card. Please remember that no one is obligated to be an asshole. Nobody gets an "asshole obligation" free card. Not even trauma survivors. Yes we have triggers and painful pasts, but we are doing the best that we can to work through them despite the challenge, and the best of us don't use that as an excuse to get out of shit.)
As a final note for the people who know of friends, family, or people with post-traumatic stress disorder: we are doing the best that we can. Sometimes people with PTSD do need more help than others, sometimes we do need to be stepped around more carefully, sometimes we do need professional help and treatment, and sometimes our recovery is extremely minimal. It frustrates us, too. But we are doing the best that we can. We are overcoming it the best we can. We are surviving as best we can.
And the best thing anyone can do for someone who does have PTSD is be there for them. Be open and mindful, and supportive, doing what you are able to also.
I don't ask for anyone to bend to my needs, but I do my best in the ways that I am able to in order to get through trauma. I recently learned about content filtering on Tumblr and I'm using it to more accurately flush out the content that I know I am not able to handle. I've blocked users, filtered posts, and made my dashboard safe again for me to access without the fear that I will scroll right into a trigger and end up suffering for the rest of the day afterwards. This is my active work to handle trauma, and it is what is within my control. I cannot ask people to just "not post or reblog such and such thing, or things with such and such person". What people post is their choice. What I choose to filter is mine.
But I'm not always that lucky in other places. I have to be *very* careful to not scroll too far down sometimes when I put in certain Google searches. I have to be *very* careful every time that I check the Cars and Planes tags on AO3, only doing a quick scan of the latest fics, and keeping a lookout on triggering material, both for my sake and for some of my friends' (sometimes it's better to give a heads up so people aren't walking straight into it). There are still things out there that I entirely can't touch, there are still areas out there where I have to steel myself, and even then, I have run into triggers in places I thought for sure would be safe (side note, thank you and also fuck you, DeviantArt). And I have to keep pushing through, those times. But I am trying, I am taking the steps that I need to take and handling it the way that is healthiest for me to handle it in.
And I hope that people can be mindful of those things, for everyone who has to go through those things, and for everyone who is trying to take little steps, wading through their traumatic sewage hoping that the water will grow shallow with time. It really means a lot when people try to help us out. We're all just trying to make it to another morrow, together.
