The world watched 9/11 happen in real time, and a strange kind of silence followed. Millions carried that day in their nervous systems, whether they were in New York or watching through a television.
I wasn’t there, but I recognised the aftermath for people. The sleeplessness, the scanning for danger, the mind racing or being silent. That is what Complex Post Traumatic Stress does, it builds its own internal Ground Zero.
My journey with CPTSD isn’t from that day, but its about knowing that you are not alone and understanding why certain stories, certain shocks can live on in us long after the headlines fade.
I’ve lived most of my life on high alert. My CPTSD started when I was 18 after a childhood that taught me danger could wear a familiar face, and a first relationship that proved it. The violence left me with a Traumatic Brain Injury and Epilepsy but the hardest part was to heal was the wiring underneath it all - the nervous system that refused to stand down.
Eight years ago it finally crashed. Total Shutdown & Disassociation. But the last 3 years, i’ve been trying to teach my body that the war is over, some days it believes me, most days it doesn’t.
Some trauma is private, born in rooms no one else ever entered. Some is shared and broadcast in real time to millions. 9/11 was that kind - a collective wound that rewired the world’s sense of safety overnight. An attack on Human Consciousness. When I look at how people still talk about that day - the disbelief, the anger the endless searching for what happened - I recognise that pattern in survivors. We replay that moment trying to find the missing frame that explains everything.
For me, the work of recovery has meant understanding that the need to make sense of chaos isn’t madness, it’s the mind trying to restore order. Whether it is one person’s trauma or a nation’s the impulse is the same - to believe that if we could just understand it all, we’d finally feel safe again.
I’ve spent years trying to make sense of the wreckage inside me, and lately that has meant deep diving into subjects that interest me. At the moment it is deep diving into 9/11 and the questions that still haunt it. The research keeps my mind busy, but it also reminds me I’m not the only one trying to piece things together. Isolation makes the world smaller, and focus gives it shape again
So this is where I start telling the truth about what recovery looks like, and things I’ve learned over the years. If you are reading this and you feel that you have been living in survival mode too, you are not the only one. There is still a life to be build in the aftermath. I’m building mine one steady step at a time. I hope it could help you too rebuild yours too.
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