What We’re Not Told About PTSD
Photo by Elisha May
It’s not just flashbacks.
It’s not just nightmares.
It’s not just panic attacks.
For some of us, PTSD is quieter, it’s nuanced and often hidden in plain sight.
In the way you over-explain yourself.
Slip into a false version of yourself.
In the way your nervous system won’t let you truly rest.
In the way you feel unsafe in moments that should feel safe.
PTSD Isn’t Just War Zones
Here’s the truth:
PTSD doesn’t only come from guns, bombs, and battlefields. It can come from mental and emotional war zones too.
From losing someone you love in a way that rips your world apart.
From days, weeks, years of gaslighting, verbal or neglect.
From a toxic workplace or environment.
A one-time traumatic event.
From childhood experiences you were never equipped to handle and were forced to bury.
The list is endless, but no one tells you that. Because society wants PTSD to fit in a neat, dramatic box. Something that’s “out there.” Not something sitting in the office next to you. Not something living in your neighbour. Not something in your loved one. Not something inside you.
What We’re Really Living With
PTSD isn’t only about what happened. It’s about what got stuck. Your body keeps looping the alarm system. Your mind tells you you’re “overreacting.” But your soul knows you’re surviving the best way you can. It shows up in the body that can’t sleep. In the hyper-vigilance that never lets you exhale. In the “overreactions” that are actually survival responses.
And here’s the kicker:
Healing isn’t about pretending it didn’t happen. It’s about reclaiming your nervous system. Burning off the shame that whispers: “I should be over this by now.” You’re not broken. You’re a survivor of a war no one else could see.
My Story
I know this because I lived it. For years, I carried undiagnosed PTSD that quietly wrecked my life, my decisions, my trust in myself and intuition. It began when I was gaslit and emotionally bullied for nine months as an au pair. Afterwards, I couldn’t leave the house alone for a week. Loud voices terrified me for years. I was paranoid about being told off for even the smallest, most harmless things. Just being true self felt like a threat.
In the recruitment office where I worked after the event, a colleague asked me to do a list of tasks and my body collapsed under the pressure. I fled the room, sobbing, overwhelmed, and ashamed. My nervous system was wrecked, but no one ever named it for what it was.
Then came more layers:
Watching my mum have a psychosis.
Six months later, I lost my brother to suicide.
That tipped me over the edge. I was “functioning” but barely. Days spent in bed, exhausted. Alcohol and Valium became my daily go-to coping mechanisms.
And then, in the aftermath, I fell into a long-term relationship with an ex-soldier carrying his own unhealed PTSD. When we met, he had night sweats. He gave me an ultimatum to enter the relationship just months after my brother died. I asked for time, six month, but he didn’t give it to me. Knee deep in my PTSD, abandonment, rejection traumas, I got sucked in…
So we became two “broken” people trying to hold each other up. It wasn’t healthy. Part of me knew it wasn’t right, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I was a hot mess, I became codependent, his carer, his parent and I abandoned myself completely. I had no boundaries and I didn’t know what my needs were, there were so many - I was drowning in them. I couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
On the outside, it looked like I had grounding and stability. On the inside, it was chaos. I was in turmoil. I forced myself to live conventionally, even though I wasn’t. I tolerated things I never should have. It was a dark time.
After that relationship ended in 2020 for the final time. Wild camping eventually became one of my healers. At first, I was terrified of being shouted at, kidnapped, or attacked. I had night terrors. I couldn’t sleep. My nervous system screamed at me every time. But I knew I had to do it, I always came back a little bit more me, slowly, the woods and the wild taught me safety again, within myself. I learnt to hold myself, all of me. Today, I feel peace under the stars that once terrified me.
What I’ve Learned
Signs of unprocessed PTSD can look subtle. Left unchecked, for some of us, what starts as PTSD can become Complex PTSD when the trauma is ongoing, repeated, or never given space to heal. Looking back I definitely had CPTSD from 9 months of gaslighting and verbal abuse, and sadly, my ex-partner added to it over a 7 year period. And the longer they run in the background, the more they hijack your life.
I learnt the hard and long way that my CPTSD was shaping everything - without me realising it. It was buried in my subconscious, which shaped my beliefs, which drove my behaviours, which created my reality. Healing isn’t about “getting over it.” It’s about getting underneath it. It’s about releasing what the body has been forced to carry, and remembering that safety isn’t earned - it’s your birthright.
For You
If you’re reading this and recognise yourself - you are not broken. You are not “too far gone.” I’ve walked this path. I know how lonely, painful, and soul-destroying it can feel. But I also know what happens when you alchemise it. When you transmute that pain into freedom and expansion.
You stop living on repeat.
You start breathing again.
You feel yourself again.
And you remember what it means to truly live.
Here’s the chain in simple terms:
Trauma gets stuck in the nervous system → body stays in survival mode (I was there for about a decade)
That survival mode feeds your subconscious mind → constantly scanning for danger.
Subconscious beliefs form: “I’m unsafe,” “People will leave me,” “I’ll be punished if I make a mistake,” etc.
Those beliefs drive behaviours: people-pleasing, avoidance, hyper-independence, or codependency.
Behaviours shape your reality: relationships, jobs, finances, even your health.
You don’t have to keep carrying this weight. Healing is possible.
This is the work I do - helping highly sensitive, empathic, soul-led humans transmute trauma into freedom.
Book a 1:1 session with me today and start reclaiming your nervous system.
