>>305177PTSD is often portrayed in movies as something that only affects soldiers who have been through war, with dramatic flashbacks and battlefield imagery. That narrow depiction has shaped how people think about trauma, making it seem like only extreme, life or death situations can leave lasting psychological scars. In reality, PTSD is not defined by the setting where it happens but by how overwhelming and threatening the experience feels to the person going through it.
Trauma can come from many sources, including prolonged bullying in school, emotional abuse, or being trapped in a situation where you feel powerless and unsafe. When PTSD is reduced to a cinematic stereotype, it can make people with less visible forms of trauma feel dismissed or invalidated. The truth is that the nervous system does not care whether the danger came from a battlefield or a classroom, only that it was real and deeply distressing.
Sertraline, a medicine that helps suppress my PTSD, is not some body and mind destroying pill, because before I started taking it I was constantly filled with rage and lashing out at my family and myself, and that caused a lot of damage, while the medication has helped bring that intensity down and given me more control over my reactions.