Writing PTSD

A good friend of mine has a really bad case of rape related PTSD and clinical depression (Before you ask - six times, six people, first one at 14, she's 22 now). She gets pretty freaked out by sudden loud noises, nightmares, flashbacks, the whole package. The flashbacks aren't something you forget once you've seen one. You know the line "the lights are on but nobody's home?" That's pretty much what happens to her. The only way to spot it if you're not having a one-on-one conversation with her is to notice the absolute blind terror in her eyes while it's going on.

I know I'm making her sound like the Hollywood victim whose mind is completely shattered by trauma, but that's not at all the case. She's outgoing, she's adventurous, and she has a pretty active dating life. She's also done a lot of activist work for other survivors. Her trauma is part of her, but it would be an incredibly insulting mistake to treat it as all of her.

edited 13th Feb '15 10:51:31 AM by KyleJacobs

I'll second what Kyle is saying because I've seen the same thing. Some people go through shit so bad, mundane happenings cause them to go into "crisis mode" where they disappear into themselves and become a high-functioning robot, only to freak the hell out once nobody is looking. Doesn't mean said person isn't totally "normal" twenty-nine days out of thirty.

Anybody looking to write it, take note...PTSD is weird. Even experts don't understand it, and that's because nobody even admitted it existed until quite recently. Organized study of the problem only dates back to (depending on how one wants to count "organized") the early-to-mid 20th century. So, any author looking to write it ought not to expect to understand it, because nobody does.

To replicate it effectively in your writing, talk to people who suffer from it and base your depiction off what you hear. Again, considering the experts don't really have a handle on it that's really all you can do.

PTSD is actually reasonably well understood by now, at least in presentation if not in casual relationships. (Then again, when you get down to it casual relationships aren't well-understood for most non-pathological psychology.) Mythologizing like that makes it worse.

What makes it different is that it can't really be treated in the sense we're used to. Medication or therapy appear to have little impact a lot of the time. PTSD taps into some very basic, very primal survival instincts, stuff that probably predates our being recognizably anthropoid, much less human.

Now I am wondering. Armored Trooper Votoms, the Red Shoulder March. Described as PTSD in musical form, Chirico goes berserk and has a mental breakdown when it starts playing when he and Fyana are alone on a spaceship.

He instantly hunts down the source and starts doing everything in his power to stop, Fyana only stops him from shooting the computer playing the music and portraying the video footage of what the Red Shoulders did because they need the computer to help navigate through space.

Then there is the Roots of Ambition OVA where Chirico has mentally blocked out the attack on his home and every attempt to bring it up makes him snap and nearly ends with him strangling Yoran Pailsen.

Would this in any way help relate to PTSD as we understand it today?