Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is sometimes called Battle Shock or Battle Fatigue. It is caused by stress like seeing a friend die, or be badly injured. It is not limited to soldiers in battle.
Women and children who have been abused often have PTSD. Civilians living in, or near fighting often have PTSD. PTSD is common among disaster survivors.
The severity of PTSD can vary a lot. It is possible to become completely non-functional or be almost normal with PTSD.
Regardless of how severe your PTSD is, coping with the effects can be difficult. The passage of time will help, but it is possible to do things that will help you recover better and sooner and be able to get important things done meanwhile.
I can not say what will work for everyone, but I can offer what has worked for me. I hope it will help readers. I have had numerous bouts with PTSD during my life so have had way too much opportunity to work out how to deal with it.
Sometimes we do not have the luxury of a lot of recovery time and we still have to function as best we can, in spite of having PTSD. It is better to take whatever recovery time you can manage before you start trying to function too much.
Find something that makes you feel better and enjoy a lot of it for a while. Repetition of something soothing has been very helpful to me. Some examples to get you started finding what might work for you are:
1. Games. I have used the old single player computer battleship that Windows used to come with. I am not sure whether bloody video games will help or not. You will have to test how you react to them to know. They could cause flashbacks. I have also used a deck of playing cards to play solitaire over and over. If you use this one, you will probably need extra decks of playing cards because you will wear them out. Jigsaw puzzles can also help, as long as your mind and hands are up to them. Do not use these if you get frustrated from them.
This is a very long post, so it is necessary to break it up into several posts.
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