3 Things We Get Wrong About PTSD
Correcting These Major Misconceptions Can Help You Heal
1. There’s No Hierarchy of Trauma
I know this guy who saw his friend get kidnapped by insurgents in Iraq and that was the last time he saw him alive. I know a guy who got shot in the head twice…separate occasions. I know guys who are missing limbs. And I knew guys who aren’t around anymore to tell their stories.
It’s hard to hear this stuff and not feel…unworthy. It’s hard not to compare yourself and wonder if you’re entitled to be as messed up as you are. But that’s just a trick the disease plays on you to keep you from healing.
Sometimes people talk to me about their trauma. The conversation always goes the same way. They tell me about some horrible trauma in their past — a car accident, an assault, some other crazy shit — they tell me about the impact that it had and then they say, “But I know it’s nothing like what you’ve been through.”
See, that’s what I got wrong all these years. I looked at people who had it “worse than me” and felt like I ranked below them somehow. And it was only when people started relating to me the same way that I saw through the game.
Here’s the truth:
