FAQs

PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) is a condition that can develop after you have been through a trauma. After the event, you may feel afraid and nervous. You may have upsetting thoughts, memories, or nightmares of the event. You may feel numb or cut off from other people. You may also avoid things that remind you of the event. These symptoms can disrupt your life, making it hard to continue with your daily activities. If these feelings or experiences don't go away over time or they get worse, you may have PTSD.

PTSD Coach Online has tools for coping with sadness, anxiety, and other symptoms that people who have been through trauma can develop. Some tools are brief and can help you relax when you feel stressed, or improve your mood, for example. Longer tools teach you how to tackle difficult problems, change thinking patterns, and take steps to achieve your goals.

PTSD Coach Online is for anyone who needs help with upsetting symptoms like depression, anger, or trouble sleeping. We created PTSD Coach Online with trauma survivors and their loved ones in mind, but anyone who is looking for help coping with these symptoms can turn to PTSD Coach Online.

If you have PTSD, your best chance of getting better is by working with a mental health or medical provider. Good treatments are available that have been shown to help all kinds of people. If you’ve tried the tools in PTSD Coach Online and continue to experience distress, see a mental health or medical provider. Your primary care provider is a good place to start.

Yes, it is. Many of the tools in PTSD Coach Online use session variables so that the words you enter into worksheets are available to you as you move through those tools. Once you have closed the tool, this information is all deleted. That's why we give you the option to print out worksheets. None of the information you enter will be stored or shared.

Some anonymous information is collected automatically, however. For example, the date and time of your visit, the operating system you used to access the site, and the Internet domain from which you connected to PTSD Coach Online are all collected automatically. This data is only used to help us make the site better for visitors. It is not used to identify you personally. Please see the VA privacy policy for a list of information that is collected automatically.

It is not the same. PTSD Coach Online was inspired by the award-winning PTSD Coach app. Some of the briefer tools that you will find here are quite similar to the app. The main difference is that PTSD Coach Online can also help you look at “big picture” issues---like understanding your values and goals or problem solving. And because PTSD Coach Online is used on a computer, rather than a mobile device, we can offer tools that involve writing.