Healing Through Humour

Healing Through Humour is a series of capsules depicting the life of a character living with PTSD, anxiety and depression. Inspired by a serious reality, it is an exaggerated and fun caricature to help understand and digest. My goal is to raise awareness about this ”affliction” which grips more people than we may know. There is no judgement here, only caring. And it is all based on my own experiences.

I would first like to take a moment and explain what is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in my own words, as someone who, not has studied it, but has lived and is still living it.

PTSD is a manic and obsessive debilitating effect of trauma, causing one to be in a constant state of reaction from a past traumatic experience. It includes intrusive flashbacks of the trauma from simple ”triggers” such as intonation, words, phrasing, emotions, dreams, etc, and this occurs often and continuously if the mind doesn’t protect itself from things that can remind it of the trauma. The triggers will occur at random and cannot necessarily be foreseen. So then the mind creates avoidance patterns as a protection in order not to think about the trauma. Panic symptoms (feeling panicky as much as a downright panic attack) can occur when one undergoes physiological stimuli to traumatic cues. A trauma, such as abuse, can make the victim feel ”shattered” inside, or even defeated and powerless. The victim will then develop the assumption that they are too vulnerable, feel little personal worth, and will pretty much feel that life is not fair. They may develop fears or phobias to constantly check their environment and monitor others to make sure that everything is safe and that they are not being, or going to be, mistreated. Some of the most common symptoms of PTSD are anxiety, panic-attacks, outbursts of rage (also known as a rage-attack), chronic depression, borderline disorder, self-punishment and social withdrawal.

This is a bit heavy and it puts a lot into perspective. But it does not express or explain ALL that one may experience. This is why I have been inspired for these humourous capsules. To explain in more depth and show some examples, in a lighter way. I hope this helps you understand better what you or someone you know might be going through. No matter the cause of the trauma. PTSD is still PTSD. So… Let’s all heal together!

Featured Capsule

Healing Through Humour – Capsule 11 Celinka Serre – Binky Productions – Binky Ink

Capsules in Chronological Order

Return for more capsules, 3 every week, from July 6th to August 28th 2015.

If you are an organisation/newspaper/magazine/reader’s digest and you wish to include Healing Through Humour capsules in your paper or on your website, please reference this web page and provide copyright information as written on each capsule. If you wish to include more information, please contact us via celinka.serre@protonmail.com. Thank you.