Sea: Dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

I hate to be a downer here, but there’s nothing really warm and fuzzy about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which is pivotal to Heidi R. Kling’s Sea. However, it’s definitely worth learning about because it can happen to anyone — just think of Sept. 11, 2001, Hurricane Katrina and the Columbine High School shootings.

Sienna’s trauma psychologist father and his partners travel to post-tsunami Indonesia to help children at an orphanage who are suffering from PTSD. Many have nightmares and flashbacks. Some are withdrawn. Others just want their families back.

Here are the typical symptoms of PTSD:

Flashbacks—reliving the trauma over and over, including physical symptoms like a racing heart or sweating

Bad dreams

Frightening thoughts

Staying away from places, events, or objects that are reminders of the experience

Feeling emotionally numb

Feeling strong guilt, depression, or worry

Losing interest in activities that were enjoyable in the past

Having trouble remembering the dangerous event

Being easily startled

Feeling tense or “on edge”

Having difficulty sleeping, and/or having angry outbursts

Although Sienna is only there for two weeks, she helps Elli and the other little girls overcome some of these problems just by being there, sharing her own grief and entertaining them with her foreignness. Deni and Sienna form a bond when they realize they each have trauma-related nightmares, both revolving around their mothers and the water that took them.

In one of my favorite scenes, Sienna and Deni talk about what happened and how they each reacted to the trauma, and how the ocean is now an “unhappy place” because of what it represents (typical for PTSD). But there’s always hope. He says,