ABSTRACT
Clients can sacrifice all rewards to avoid what they perceive as imminent threat. In PTSD, the sacrifice is at its most extensive, and they in effect live life in a ‘bunker’ located in a ‘war zone’. But their behaviour makes little sense to significant others, contacts are often fraught, with the client nursing a desire, to be in an idyllic setting without people. In this chapter, it is suggested that the PTSD client views their world through ‘warzone glasses’, reacting to everyday hassles, such as a queue in a shop, much more negatively than they would have done prior to the trauma, wearing their ‘pre-trauma specs’. These metaphors comprise a framework within which the client can easily relate their experiences. Treatment then involves monitoring and swapping the ‘specs’ in use. Regaining their former sense of self by as far as possible, gradually behaving as they did previously – relinquishing the ‘bunker’.
