Unpacking PTSD
Therapy can help you file painful memories in the right cupboard of your mind.
Posted May 11, 2026 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
Roughly 3-4 percent of the world’s population struggles with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder ( PTSD ); the rate is certainly higher in certain parts of the world. But we also know that not everyone who experiences a trauma develops PTSD and that people who do struggle it with may have very different symptoms from each other. So why does this happen with PTSD?
Imagine that you were at home and you got a call saying that an important guest or the landlord is on their way over. You look around your kitchen and you can see that it’s a bit of a mess. Now if you had enough time you could organise your kitchen the way you like it, and put everything in the right place. But there’s no time for that, so instead you just grab everything that’s on a bench and throw it into any old cupboard. Within a few minutes, you have a kitchen that looks organised; there is nothing visible that is out of place and you get through the visit without anyone commenting on the state of the room. But later on, when you’re looking in the pots-and-pan cupboard for a saucepan, you find a tin of beans. And when you’re looking for the salt, you find some dirty coffee cups and a jar of peanut butter, but the salt is nowhere to be seen. It doesn’t take long before going into your kitchen cupboards feels stressful and confusing because you don’t know what you’ll find, so you keep them closed as much as possible, replace the essentials and keep them in a separate place.
This experience is obviously very superficial when compared to trauma, but is a helpful metaphor to explain PTSD. At the time of a trauma, we do the best we can as we do what we need to do to get through the situation. But because we’re in a state of stress and fear , we’re not organising the events in our mind in a helpful way. The part that worries we’re about to die doesn’t get filed away next to the part that notices we actually survived and got away. The terrified part of us might get thrown into the wrong cupboard so we don’t feel sure what is safe and what is dangerous anymore. Soon we lose the ability to know which memories and thoughts are safe or when a big emotion might show up, so we try control or avoid all memories and thoughts. Instead, we find ourselves living a smaller life than we’d like, jumping at any sound and waiting for dangers to occur at any moment, even though the actual danger has long passed. For lots of people with PTSD, this may present as flashbacks, nightmares, heightened startle response, or poor sleep. There might be lots of overthinking about the event but without all the information (because it’s in the wrong cupboards) so there is lots of self-blame, regrets, and if-onlys.
For people who have experienced multiple traumas, their cupboards can be so mixed up that they struggle to ever make sense of what happened, who they are or where and when they are safe.
To deal with the stressful kitchen, you would need to wait until you were feeling calm and had time, then slowly empty out the cupboards and sort each item back into its right place. This is what therapy does. There are a number of evidence-based trauma therapies, including Prolonged Exposure, Written Exposure Therapy and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR). There are differences between each, but they all involve helping people safely open up cupboards they had been avoiding, and look at what is in there. As you revisit the trauma you notice that you did the best you could given the situation and the information and skills you had at the time, and that the event had a beginning, middle and end. You’ll find words for the range of emotions and body sensations that you experience as you look at the traumatic event, and re-attribute responsibility where it belongs. Trauma therapy cannot delete a memory , but it can help all aspects of the trauma be safely filed in one cupboard, rather than falling off any shelf at any time.
Put another way, trauma therapy can help you feel about the trauma the way you would feel about it if it had happened to someone else you care about, rather than to you. So that you let go of the cycle of self-blame, rumination, avoidance or feeling like it is still happening.
I hope that if you are holding onto a trauma and if it’s still impacting your life, you’re able to find a therapist and therapy that allows you to feel safe enough to process your experience and file the memory in the right cupboard in your mind.
To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory .
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Ben Sedley is a writer and a clinical psychologist. His latest book is Holding the Heavy Stuff: Making Space for Critical Thoughts and Painful Emotions .
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.