 A ton of people struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, but do you know how to help somebody with PTSD? What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And welcome back to another video where this week I'm diving deep into the topic of how do you help somebody who struggles with mental illness? And PTSD is so prevalent and I'll be talking about the stigma around PTSD, misconceptions and things like that later on in this video. But it's so so so important to know how to help somebody with PTSD and really the dos and don'ts. And PTSD is a form of anxiety and it's important to kind of understand what PTSD is all about. Now here's the thing, I'll be honest with you, I don't know everything. I am not nearly as well educated about post-traumatic stress disorder as I should be, alright? So here's what I did, I turned to my buddy Kaleila from the channel Post Traumatic Victory. It is an amazing channel. Kaleila is awesome. Make sure that you go check her out and subscribe. I will put links in the info card and down in the description and in the comments. Go over there and subscribe to her channel like this will help you educate yourself about PTSD. But Kaleila is awesome. Like she talks a lot about PTSD, she has a service animal and things like that. And she's also a musician. One of her most recent videos was actually a ukulele cover and I absolutely loved it. So go over to her channel and say yo Kaleila when you're gonna drop that EP on Spotify. You know what I'm saying? But anyways, I asked Kaleila for some help. I said yo, I don't know much about PTSD. People need to learn how to help you with PTSD. Can you hook me up with some information that you'd like to get out there? So she hooked me up, alright? So we're gonna talk about five different things that you should know when it comes to helping somebody with PTSD. The first one is educate yourself. Educate yourself about what PTSD is, alright? It's much more than just bad memories. So one of the first things that you can do and something that I do is go over to Kaleila's channel. She is somebody who struggles with PTSD and she's overcoming it day by day. She works with a therapist. She has a service animal and she puts a lot of information out there. So like just watch some of her videos. Now I do know a little bit about PTSD. One of the books that really helped me understand PTSD and just trauma responses in general was a book called Un**** Your Brain, alright? And I did a whole book review on it by Dr. Faith Harper. I will put a link in the info card to the video I did about this book. Like go get this book. Go get this book right now. Pause the video. Go get the book and then read it, okay? It's a very short, simple book but it talks a lot about rewiring your brain and how to work through it and trauma responses, where anxiety comes from and all that kind of stuff. So what happens is, and here's just like a very brief overview of PTSD. So the brain is always trying to protect you, okay? So when you go through a traumatic event and traumatic is relative, okay? Was traumatic for one person? Might not be traumatic for another person. But what happens is the brain stores that memory in a part of the brain called the hippocampus, which is tied into the amygdala. The amygdala is your fight, fight or freeze mechanism. So PTSD can be triggered by a wide range of things based on your different senses. So it can be different sounds, different smells. It can also include memories. It can be certain tastes. Anything that was happening in that moment can trigger PTSD and the brain freaks out because of things that it needs to protect itself. So that's kind of a brief overview. But again, there's a ton of symptoms and Kaleila talks a lot about this, so go check her channel out. Number two, the second one is, it's like, man, don't be a jerk. If somebody in your life struggles with PTSD and they tell you about some of their triggers, like, don't mess with them about it. Don't joke with them about it, like, trust me. I'm a big jokester. I'm a prankster. I have a ton of dad jokes and things like that. But I have a lot of people in my life who struggle with PTSD and that is just off limits. Like, it's rude. It's terrible. So don't go around jump-scaring them. Don't know about some of their triggers and set them up or anything like that. It seems like common sense, but there are people out there who are like, what, what, babe? I was just trying to be funny. Like, it's just that's not funny, you know? And like I said, I have a very crude sense of humor. Some of my favorite comedians are like, really, really crude, right? But this is something where it's just like common decency. We don't do that. Number three, don't try to get somebody with PTSD to talk about their trauma, OK? Like I mentioned, I have a lot of people in my life who struggle with PTSD. And I try to be very mindful of that. Be very mindful of different topics and stuff like that. Like certain people in my life, I know a little bit about it, but I haven't like tried to get them to open up all the way if they're not comfortable with it. Here's the thing, and this is also going to tie into tip number four. But here's the thing, like, as permission, as permission, like, if this is like, you know, a girlfriend or boyfriend or husband or wife or someone, you know, like, ask them, say, do you want to talk about it? OK? Like, this is what they do in talk therapy, too. Or do some motivational interviewing. Like, have you ever thought about getting therapy? Do you think therapy might help you with your symptoms or struggles with PTSD? You know what I'm saying? Because maybe you're not the right person for them to talk to about it, but maybe somebody else did like a licensed professional. And I will provide some resources down below. But don't try to force somebody to talk about it. Like, here's the thing, people get so offended. Like, I always say this and some people get offended when I say this, but I'm sorry to explain neuroscience to you, but we're naturally selfish people. We are naturally selfish and self-centered. We have to work to not be so selfish and self-centered. If your significant other or your friend or family member or co-worker doesn't want to talk to you about their PTSD and the traumatic event, that is not something to get offended by, OK? This doesn't mean they love you any less. It doesn't mean they don't trust you, right? This is something that is very, very sensitive to certain people. And they don't have to tell you jack squat. Number four, like, if somebody tells you that they're struggling with PTSD or they're struggling with some of the symptoms that are popping up or they're going through, like, an anxious moment because of their PTSD, just lend an ear. And again, always ask permission. Like, we have to just say, like, do you want to talk about it? Like, do you want to talk about what you're going through? This is a little bit different than asking what happened. Like, do you want to talk about what's happening right now? Like, let's say maybe you're out in public or something like that and a loud noise goes off or, you know, whatever it is and it might trigger them, right? Do you want to talk about it? Because like I mentioned in my last video about people who struggle with anxiety, sometimes just talking about what their experience is in that moment, like it helps the brain calm down. But like I also mentioned in the last video about how to help somebody with anxiety, if they don't want to talk about it, leave them alone. Sometimes people just have their own coping skills that they use and you don't need to be a part of it, okay? Remember, like the number one thing I could suggest to anybody who has friends, family members, anybody who struggles with mental illness, you don't have to fix them, okay? Some people just need to be left alone and they can calm down themselves. And number five, please try not to perpetuate the misconception that the only people with PTSD are war veterans. This is so far beyond the truth. Like statistically, like statistically, women are far more likely to have PTSD than men. And this is because women are far more likely to be the victims of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, okay? Now this doesn't mean that men can't be the victim of those things too. But statistically, women are more likely to. So, like it's not one of those things where you're just like, oh, hey, you know, you weren't in war, how do you have PTSD? Like, don't even go there, don't even go there. Like you don't know their past, you don't know their struggles. And when talking about like educating yourself about PTSD, like this can come from a car accident, okay? This can come from the loss of a loved one. This can come from being bitten by an animal. This can come from almost drowning. Like this can come from any type of situation where a person's life felt threatened, all right? So don't think that it only happens to war veterans. And on top of that, when it comes to helping somebody, like don't say these little things, like we don't say to anybody with mental illness, like just snap out of it, don't think about it, calm down, think on the bright side, all these things, they just don't help at all. But anyways, that's all I got for you. If you struggle with PTSD, if you have any tips or advice that you would like to offer to other people about what helps you with your PTSD or what you would like people to know, please leave it down in the comments below, all right? But again, thank you so much, Kalayla, for being so amazing and helping me out with this video. I'm going to link her YouTube channel as well as her social media accounts down in the description below. So make sure you go over there, follow her, subscribe, tell her I sent you over to this amazing woman. And one of these days, Kalayla's gonna come over here and do a guest video for me, all right? But she's a busy gal, so I don't bug her too much about it, all right? But that's all I got for you. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. And if you are new here, I'm always making videos to help you out with your mental and emotional wellbeing. So go ahead and click that little round subscribe button and a big thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon, all right? If you're bored and you wanna check out some more videos, you can click or tap on one of those thumbnails right there. All right, thanks so much for watching. Help someone with PTSD today, and I'll see you next time.