Science seeks similarities.
Only through patterns can it label pain: a migraine, not just a headache. Crohn’s, not colitis. One type of cancer over another.
Psychology and psychiatry try to work the same way.
You answer checklists. You fill out scales. You’re observed and measured.
As if the soul could be scanned. X-rayed. Biopsied.
As if it could be weighed, quantified, converted into data.
But the soul doesn’t like to be mapped.
Trauma doesn’t submit to categories.
It doesn’t fit criteria.
It is wild.
It is intimate.
It is always, always personal.
Not long ago, even love was listed as a disorder.
Homosexuality was labeled an illness. A deviation. A pathology.
And then, under pressure from the LGBTQ community, it was removed from the manual.
Not because it changed, but because the world did.
If something as essential as love could be misdiagnosed, what hope does trauma have?
The trauma I live with is mine.
Some of my symptoms resemble “classic” PTSD.
Many do not.
Psychiatrists recommended cannabis.
“There’s no conclusive research, but many patients report improvement,” they said.
I told them I used to be addicted — to weed, to other drugs — and that my PTSD erupted while I was using.
They still pushed for it.
Because now everyone’s talking about cannabis as a cure.
I have nothing against it. But like anything, it’s not for everyone.
One psychiatrist — a hospital director, no less, told me I had Generalized Anxiety Disorder, not PTSD.
Fine, I said. Let’s call it that.
Then I had a violent flashback in the middle of a grocery store.
I fought off four men trying to restrain me, but I wasn’t fighting them.
I didn’t see them.
All I saw was darkness.
All I felt was war.
So, I was back to PTSD.
Back to “combat shock.”
Back to a name that didn’t help much but at least sounded closer to the truth.
Science can replace a heart. A lung. A liver.
But sometimes it can’t cure eczema. Or a fungus under the nail.
How can we expect it to always know what to do with the soul?
I believe in the person who listens inward.
Who knows that while we’re all a little alike
we’re also entirely different.
Each of us is like a yellow wildflower growing in the middle of a manicured lawn.
Our pain is our own.
Our trauma is ours alone.
Sometimes, a single detail a sound, a glance, a word, changes the entire picture.
So please, stop saying “this is normal for PTSD,” or “you’re just like that other guy.”
Because maybe I’m a little like other trauma survivors
but I’m also completely different.
My PTSD must be treated as if it’s the only one in the world.
Because it is.
Because it’s mine.
And mine alone.
***
Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.
