Six Symptoms of PTSD that is hard to talk about
Updated: Aug 14, 2020

With several mental and physical health conditions, unnecessary symptoms embarrass people. They don’t need to be, but when you live with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), apparent behaviors and symptoms can come one when you don’t expect them, and draw unwanted attention from people around you. While we can simply say that there is nothing to be embarrassed about, this is natural for feeling this way when it appears like everyone is watching you. Possibly a loud noise made you scream and jump in the public place or you met a stranger who, for some time, appears the same to somebody related to a trauma you have encountered. Regardless of how your PTSD impacts you, you should know that you are not alone. There are many embarrassing symptoms of people with PTSD they don’t talk about, but they should know that there is no shame in living with this disorder.
Take a look at some symptoms that people with the PTSD don’t like to discuss:
1. Some people only sit in a few places, particularly in public. Maximum time they have their back against a wall so they can see everything going on in front of them. So nobody can walk up behind them.
2. Some people get frightened very easily. A little loud noise or a sudden movement makes them jump or scream. In case somebody sneezes in a room, they jump out of their skin and everybody looks at them. They are afraid to watch horror films, not because they get scared, but the feeling of being afraid is embarrassing.
3. People generally don’t understand that hypervigilance causes intense sleep interferences, so employers consider PTSD people’s accommodation requests for adjusted hours stem from bad sleep habits or laziness. People with PTSD would not want them to know it’s because they took sleep benefits, handle nightmares and screaming awake, woke up hourly, and inadequacy of beneficial sleep.
4. Compulsory trigger responses in public – irrational fear, mood swings, frightening easily, panic attacks. Every time these things occur in public, people with PTSD have no control over their reactions.
5. The inability to connect intimacy or sex with love is another embarrassing PTSD symptom people don’t talk about. Some PTSD people are recently married and they are seeking to find that they don’t think anybody will be ever as close to them as they could be with somebody else. There is a big part of them that is behind powerful steel walks that nobody is permitted through. Always being in a defense mode, they cannot concentrate on letting their walls down. Another embarrassing symptom is when they discuss their past life and what happened to them. They separate the persons they were before and after the event.
6. Crying at many times and then being unable to share why they are crying because of the nature of it is another embarrassing PTSD symptom.
If you or your loved ones are affected by the PTSD they don’t talk about, contact Refresh Psychiatry