Many people with PTSD struggle to understand why they fly off the handle at such little things, ie. the toilet roll is around the wrong way, someone walked in front of you, that stranger looked at you, etc etc. The reason is actually quite simple, and easier to show than often explain, why those with PTSD tend to get angry quicker, easily and faster than others at little stupid things.



Let me explain this little image above, and you will better understand the difference to those with PTSD, and those without.

Cup 1

Whether you realise it or not, everybody has this thing called "good stress" in their life, which consists of such things as getting out of bed, day to day tasks, going to work, cooking dinner, etc etc. No problems with that one.

Cup 2

The obvious, when something goes wrong, or is really hindering you, its generally classified as "bad stress", which consists such things as paying bills, money, relationships, getting fired from your job, etc etc etc. Everybody gets bad stress at some stage within their day, it just depends on the amount, and the person themself.

Now, as you can see, Cup 2 represents a normal person, and with both good and bad stress, they still have lots of room in their cup without overflowing (exploding, rage, anger, etc etc). A normal person can take a lot of stress within their daily life, before being pushed over the edge.

Cup 3 (PTSD Sufferers)

Now whilst we still have both good and bad stress, there is now this thing called "PTSD" in our cup. The problem with that, is that we still have the same amount of good and bad stress as everyone else, though we also have this big chunk of PTSD which contains our traumas and more.

As you can see from this cup, with good stress and PTSD, you really don't have much room for anything else. You can see by the "bad stress" representation at the top of the cup, it is quite small compared to Cup 2, thus this is why something so small and insignificant can make someone with PTSD fly of the handle so quickly (anger). A little "bad stress" for a person with PTSD, and they overflow quite quicly compared to anyone else.