Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that can develop after a person experiences or witnesses a deeply traumatic event. It is not weakness. It is not "drama". It is not "just being upset about something that happened." It is a recognised medical condition described in both the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association) and the ICD-11 (World Health Organization), studied in tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers.
The trauma at the heart of PTSD usually involves:
Actual or threatened death
Serious injury
Sexual violence
Witnessing one of the above happening to someone else
Learning that one of the above happened to a close loved one
The Four Main Symptom Clusters
The DSM-5 organises PTSD symptoms into four groups:
1. Intrusion symptoms — the trauma keeps coming back uninvited:
Flashbacks (feeling as if it is happening again)
Distressing nightmares
Intrusive memories
Strong emotional or physical reactions to reminders
2. Avoidance — trying to stay away from anything connected to the trauma:
Avoiding people, places, conversations, or activities that bring it up
Pushing away thoughts or feelings related to it
3. Negative changes in thinking and mood:
Feeling detached or numb
Persistent negative beliefs about oneself, others, or the world
Difficulty remembering parts of the trauma
Strong feelings of fear, anger, guilt, or shame
Loss of interest in things that used to bring joy
4. Changes in arousal and reactivity:
Hypervigilance (constantly scanning for danger)
Being easily startled
Difficulty sleeping
Difficulty concentrating
Irritability or angry outbursts
For a diagnosis of PTSD, these symptoms must have lasted more than one month and must cause real difficulty in daily life.
How Common Is It?
Around 5–10% of women will develop PTSD at some point in their lives — almost twice the rate seen in men. Women are more likely to develop PTSD partly because they are more likely to experience certain kinds of trauma — particularly sexual violence — and partly because of how women's bodies and minds process traumatic stress.
About 9–18% of people exposed to a traumatic event develop PTSD. This means most trauma survivors do not develop PTSD — but for those who do, the condition is real and needs care.
The Inner Experience
Sisters with PTSD often describe their inner world with these recurring themes:
A nervous system that never quite rests
Memories that arrive without permission
The feeling that danger could come at any moment, even in safe places
Strong emotions that come from "nowhere" — but actually come from somewhere very specific
A sense of being changed by what happened, sometimes in ways that feel hard to explain
Exhaustion — because hypervigilance is exhausting
A Soft Word
If anything in this reflection feels familiar, please know: what you are experiencing makes sense given what you survived. Your symptoms are not signs of weakness — they are signs of a nervous system that did its job of keeping you alive, and is now still on high alert because it has not yet been told that the danger has passed.
The good news is that PTSD is highly treatable. With evidence-based therapy and support, many sisters fully recover, bidhnillah.
You are not alone. May Allah grant ease and healing to every sister who carries this, aameen.
Sources & Further Reading
American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed., Text Revision). 2022.
World Health Organization. International Classification of Diseases (11th Revision). 2022.