It’s not just soldiers who get post-traumatic stress disorder – divorce brought mine on

The flashbacks played on my biggest weakness: my children. Every time I closed my eyes I would see, in HD-like clarity, my three-year-old daughter sobbing, pleading with me not to go as my marriage to her mum ended

I’d fought battles at the family courts throughout my divorce, but I hadn’t fought for my country (Getty/iStock)

The bags under my eyes were a giveaway – dark crevices pulling on my face under the weight of many sleepless nights. I was a zombie. But still nobody knew.

It was easy to explain away those fitful nights: my downstairs neighbours’ late-night TV; the rat-run road outside my window; the nearby A&E department with its whir of ambulance sirens. I could fool everyone. Everyone but myself, that is.

For the real culprit was something more sinister, which haunted me every time I closed my eyes. I was having flashbacks. The cause of my bedtime nemesis? Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

So I’m a war hero, right? A Navy veteran? No, I've got no such valiant act to blame. I’m simply a guy who went through a divorce.

To many that might be a surprise. After all, this is a mental illness linked to military conflict, isn’t it? PTSD or “shell shock” came into the public psyche during the First World War. Thousands upon thousands of soldiers have suffered with the disorder, tortured by the horrific scenes they’ve witnessed in battle.

Yet, in 1980, PTSD gained official recognition as a mental health condition. No longer just a consequence of war, but a common anxiety disorder – so common that the NHS estimates it affects one in every three people who have a traumatic experience.

In my case, the flashbacks played on my biggest weakness: my children. Every time I closed my eyes I would see, in HD-like clarity, my three-year-old daughter sobbing, pleading with me not to go as my marriage to her mum ended. Night after night for three months, that same scene – with me its protagonist – acted out its denouement in my head, replaying until I opened my eyes.

I was too scared to tell anybody. Even with all the other signs of PTSD – the depression, the guilt, my ever-growing moments of irritability – I still didn’t dare to think that this is what I was suffering from. As with all mental illness, admitting I had a problem was the hardest step.

Nobody can prepare you for a disorder you don’t know you can get. I’d fought battles at the family courts throughout my divorce, but I hadn’t fought for my country. I’d done something deemed by society as wrong – broken apart a family, sticking two fingers up at the institution of marriage. I hadn’t done something good, I wasn’t the hero, so why should I be allowed to claim I had PTSD and warrant pity? That’s not how I thought it worked.

It seemed inconceivable that the trauma of everyday life could somehow compare with the horrors of war. Soldiers see things nobody should have to witness; I saw things that were all my own doing. There was no way I could be affected in the same way as them.

Yet, as I discovered, trauma is trauma. Whatever the scale of it, the mental scars can be far-reaching.

It is ok to say you have post-traumatic stress without feeling you’ve had to earn that label and the support it needs. With growing pressure on the Chancellor to up funding for mental health in this week’s budget, I can only hope that both society and the Government are waking up to how widespread a problem this truly is.

Nobody deserves to have PTSD. Maybe now suffering from it simply through living life is a little more socially acceptable.

As for me, almost two years on, a course of antidepressants and several months of counselling later, I’ve conquered my nemesis. And it’s made me a stronger person. A person ready to wage war on mental illness if it dares to strike again.