Before I start digging into expert knowledge about PTSD, I feel I should abbreviate my list of concussive events which I believe could be causing many of us unwittingly (or not) to be living with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Here are the events:
- December 14, 2012, Sandy Hook Elementary School.
- November 8, 2016, that election.
- February 14, 2018. The Parkland school shooting.
- March 11, 2020 the WHO certified COVID as a world pandemic.
- May 25, 2020. George Floyd is murdered by a white cop.
- January 6, 2021.
- February 25, 2022. Russia invaded Ukraine.
- October 7, 2023. Hamas’s violent incursion into Israel.
- Bibi’s horrific retribution, visual evidence of which covers the front pages nearly every day.
- The Supreme Court Six.
- Climate change.
I think we’re living as if we have been at war, in war-time conditions for the past two decades. That is a surreal accumulation of stress; we’re living in a violent and irrational and endless video game.
Now I’m going to learn what can cause PTSD, how PTSD is determined by professional, what we can feel, think and act when suffering, and how we can treat it in ourselves and others.