Medical PTSD Is Real — And It Doesn’t Always Look Like Panic Attacks

There’s a version of medical trauma people tend to expect. They think of full-blown panic in a waiting room. Shaking hands. Rapid breathing. Someone crying as they try to explain their symptoms for the fifth time. But that’s not what it looks like for me. My version is quieter. Slower. Deeper. It doesn’t spike and vanish—it settles in, like exhaustion that reaches all the way to the bone.

Sometimes I go months in a dark place. A place where my body and mind barely hold together, where everything is survival and nothing feels like it’ll change. Then I find something that helps—like a new med. And suddenly the fog starts to lift. I start functioning again. I’m grateful, I really am. But somewhere along the line, that old hope creeps back in: 

“Maybe I’m better now. Maybe I could ease off the meds. Maybe I don’t need as much as I thought.”

And then something small happens—like running out of a prescription or a delay at the pharmacy—and I feel the weight of it all come crashing back in. The symptoms return. The fog presses in again. And I realize: this is my life now. It’s not what I imagined. It’s not how it used to be. And it’s something I’ll be managing for a long time.

It doesn’t feel like panic. It feels like grief. Like burnout. Like learning to carry something heavy and invisible every day—and doing it anyway.

What Is Medical PTSD (And Why It’s So Easy to Miss)?

Medical PTSD isn’t always loud. It doesn’t always show up as flashbacks or full shutdowns.

Sometimes it looks like dragging yourself to another appointment because you know you need to go, but every cell in your body resists. Sometimes it’s feeling nothing at all—just flatness, because you’ve had to advocate so hard and for so long that there’s nothing left to feel. Sometimes it’s the way your chest tightens when a provider cuts you off mid-sentence. Or how fast your mind starts scanning for the right way to explain your symptoms so you’ll be taken seriously this time.

Medical PTSD is what happens when the very place you're supposed to go for help becomes a place where you've had to fight, mask, or shrink yourself to be heard.

What It Looks Like for Me

Not Panic—But Reluctance, Resistance, and Emotional Dragging

I don’t get panic attacks before appointments. But I do have to drag myself there. I feel the weight of it—emotionally and physically. I show up because I know it’s part of keeping myself alive. But that doesn’t mean it feels neutral.

It often feels like walking into a place that reminds me of every moment I wasn’t believed. Every time I had to explain something personal, vulnerable, and painful—only to have it minimized or dismissed.

And still, I show up. Because healing takes work. But I’m tired of always having to prove I’m in pain first.

I Don’t Distrust Providers—But I’m So, So Tired of Having to Explain

I’m not anti-doctor. I don’t walk in expecting the worst. But I do walk in knowing that I’ll probably need to do the emotional labor of “packaging” my symptoms correctly to be heard. That I may need to stay calm even when I feel like crying. That I’ll have to measure my tone, my eye contact, my story—for someone else’s comfort, not mine.

I’m not there to be dramatic. I’m there to survive. But surviving shouldn’t take this much effort.

Shutdown and Numbness

This part is hard to talk about. Not because it’s intense—but because it’s so quiet.

When things get heavy, I go quiet. I stop replying to messages. I don’t reach out. I don’t have the energy to say, “Hey, I’m just in a rough place.” I don’t even know how to explain it most of the time. And the longer it lasts, the heavier the guilt gets. I know I’m not a bad friend. I know I’m not lazy. But sometimes my mind just goes still. My emotions mute themselves.

And I hide—not because I want to, but because I can’t always connect.

Avoiding Care—Or Just Needing to Recover From It

There are times I don’t make an appointment because I just don’t have the capacity to deal with it. It’s not that I don’t care about my health—it’s that managing my health already takes so much energy.

Even when I do go, I need recovery time. Time to decompress. To feel my feelings. To rest. Because no matter how kind the provider is, I still leave carrying the invisible weight of everything I had to say—and everything I couldn’t.

Being Dismissed Is a Trigger

Not in a crazy, storming-out kind of way. But in a soul-tired, please-not-this-again kind of way. I’ve worked so hard to understand my own body. I’ve paid attention. I’ve tracked symptoms. I’ve advocated. So when someone brushes that aside—or worse, talks over me—it hits hard.

It makes me want to shut down completely. It makes me feel like healing is impossible inside a system that doesn’t listen.

What Has Actually Helped Me (And What Still Does)

Healing from medical trauma is slow. There’s no “fixed” moment. But here are a few things that have helped me keep going, even on the hard days:

Naming It For What It Is

It’s not being dramatic. It’s not being sensitive. It’s trauma. And saying that out loud gave me permission to stop minimizing what I was feeling.

Writing Without Judgment

II don’t journal every day. But when I do, it helps. I let myself write what I’m actually feeling—not what sounds neat or wise. Sometimes it’s just “I’m tired. I’m scared. I want this to be easier.” And that’s enough.

Bringing Someone With Me—or Letting Someone Know I Went

Even if they can’t come, having someone who checks in after helps me feel less alone in the process. It reminds me that this is still a thing. That it takes energy. That it matters.

Building in Recovery Time (On Purpose)

If I know I have an appointment, I don’t plan anything else for that day. I let myself rest. Even if it “wasn’t that bad,” I still let myself treat it like emotional labor—because that’s exactly what it is.

Finding the Right Provider (Even If It Takes Time)

Not every provider is the same. Some do listen. Some make space. Some see you without needing to be convinced. And finding even one of those can make a world of difference.

Letting This Be What It Is