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@evelyn and @andrew Thanks for coming on and commenting anyways!

@seekjustice Wow, thank you so much! I was not expecting this! I will definitely look up those articles, thank you.

Currently planning, she does have dreams, but more abstract dreams, and I focus more on the emotions, the fears that are brought up, not specifically dreams about certain horrible things. I haven’t figured out her triggers yet, if she’s going to have some specific ones… I did read an article by someone who said their sister had PTSD from the military, but they could never figure out what set her off. It was all in her head, and random. There were no connecting factors, or things that set her off that they could influence or keep from happening, so it was all her, her thoughts, that set her off to have panic attacks.

@wordsmith Thanks for the advice! The angle I’m trying to go for is that she is alone. Her family was taken from her, and to her, they were the only people she could depend upon, they were the only people that made her feel like she was worth something. So, besides the fact that there is trauma from seeing your family dead, she’s struggling with feeling a worth or purpose anymore. Which is why, further on in the story, she rashly starts dating this guy who is not a Christian, or a ‘good guy’ in general, because she just needs to feel ‘loved’ somehow. He ends up dumping her and she realizes that finding the happiness and fulfillment in life is not going to come from people, but from God. Anyways, so there’s that double aspect I’m trying to get, the horror from what happened, and now the affect that she is lonely and depressed because of the results of what happened.

Also, does anyone have any thoughts on how… well, how large of a traumatic experience something has to be for someone to have PTSD? I mean… how far back can you take it? One of the most difficult nights of my life was when I was in the hospital waiting room by myself and was told that my mom had almost died and my sister was born with DS and couldn’t breathe properly… can you have PTSD from something that… not monumentally dramatic? I mean, I didn’t hear about it until it was over. Can you have PTSD from… seeing your brother drown? Can you have PTSD from being at the hospital with your grandfather when he dies? Can you have PTSD from breaking a leg? What qualifies as ‘traumatic stress’? Does having a nightmare about falling out of a tree after you fell out of a tree and broke your arm qualify as PTSD? (I’d say no, but I can’t spell out the boundaries of what counts) Thoughts?