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Why It’s So Hard for People with PTSD to Set Goals
The misguided survival strategy that prevents people with PTSD from setting goals and living their lives
“I don’t know why I can’t answer that,” I said. “I just have this feeling that once I figure it out, I’m going to get hit by a bus.”
I was sitting on the cheap heather gray couch, the kind you see in waiting rooms of dentists’ offices, looking out my therapist’s second-floor window onto the rainy street below.
The brakes of a city bus made their complex hiss as it slowed and screeched to a stop and a homeless man limped in front of it, dragging, not pushing, an overflowing shopping cart, and all I could think of was what if it didn’t.
Stop, I mean. The bus.
She asked me what my goals were. Or what I wanted. Or hoped for, maybe, I can’t remember exactly. But I can remember looking out the window and not at her and being completely incapable of answering whatever question she asked.
I was a year or two out of the army, a sophomore or junior in college and I wasn’t doing well. The booze couldn’t put me to sleep anymore and the nightmares invaded the daytime and the distraction turned to consumption.
