Coping and managing stress can be difficult during normal times. During a disaster or another stressful situation, the difficulty is even greater. And if one of the people dealing with the situation has PTSD, the need to manage this reaches an entirely different level.

Now, while I’m not a therapist, I know a lot about this topic because I’ve had my own dealings with stress in the form of PTSD. That has caused me to sit on the couch side of the therapist’s office. Yes, they all seem to have couches. During that time, I’ve worked on my mechanisms for coping and managing stress. I’ve learned a great deal about how the mind works for those of us who deal with very stressful conditions, which disasters bring and like those we’ll all experience during long-term events, should they happen.

My Personal Story of PTSD

After being home from overseas for a couple of years, I started having problems. I had no idea what was going on. I had panic attacks. Also, I got light-headed, agitated, and was not understanding what was happening. Then, on August 30th, 2017, a fair amount of stress was happening where I worked. I was a Stateside program manager, overseeing a large security contract in Iraq. Well, this week was not fun. Tuesday the 29th was bad, but when I woke up on Wednesday the 30th, things were definitely worse.

It’s hard to describe, but in a nutshell, I was a wreck. I felt like I’d been awake for a week and as if somebody had worked me over with a baseball bat. I was agitated, confused, short of breath, and on and on. Not sure of what was going on, I asked one of my co-workers to take me to the hospital.

My heart and everything other than my blood pressure were fine. My blood pressure, though, was through the roof and wouldn’t come down. Luckily the ER doc and my boss both recommended I talk to someone, so I set an appointment up with a counselor. I did that and was sitting in his office the next day.

Stress and Conditions Such as PTSD Are Related

Shortly after that, I was diagnosed with PTSD that goes back to my years working for Blackwater in Iraq. Since then, it’s been a roller coaster with some challenges, many of which manifest themselves in the next section on Common Stress Reactions. Now, before we move on, I want to say that until August of 2017, I was someone who thought PTSD and stress-related problems were overrated and used as a crutch.

I'm here to tell you and will speak with anyone who wants to know. PTSD, stress, etc., are real problems that can be very challenging. So, if you know someone with a stress-related condition, don’t discount the challenges they face. And, to those people like me who didn’t put much stock in it, you’re very wrong. Stress and stress-related conditions do exist, and at times they can be crippling. It's especially important for people with PTSD to find healthy methods of coping and managing stress.

How Does PTSD Work?

PTSD, as I’ve experienced it and it’s been explained to me, works like this. A person is exposed to one or more stressful incidents. When a stressful event happens, our bodies are probably in a fight or flight stage.

In other words, your mind isn’t able to take the time to process what is happening correctly. Instead, it focuses on just what it needs to do to survive the situation you’re in. So, instead of processing your thoughts so they don’t bother you later, your brain stashes the information brought in from your senses in the frontal lobe of your mind. Your prefrontal cortex is the part of your mind that is responsible for thinking, analyzing, etc. However, the prefrontal cortex shuts down when your stress-related heart rate hits 180  to 220 beats per minute.

It means that your brain isn’t capable of processing the event, so it is stopped in your frontal lobe and is never handled to be filed away in another part of the brain where it is mostly forgotten.