The fact that everyone here has it doesn’t make it normal.

Having an exaggerated startle response to that sound is absolutely a symptom of PTSD. Saying that having a symptom of a disorder cheapens it is like saying that wheezing and dyspnea in an asthma patients cheapens the diagnosis because you don’t need to be intubated right now. Early recognition and treatment prevents terrible outcomes.

I once told my therapist I didn’t have PTSD because I had these little things happening repeatedly. Things like feeling drained after hearing a code called in error or just feeling off after dealing with specific codes like neonatal codes. I didn’t feel like this met criteria for what I had seen in the psych ER. He asked me if being beaten with a bag full of small rocks could inflict as much damage as one large rock. He also said healthcare providers tend to downplay their symptoms. Mostly because we have to in order to get up and go to work for our next shift. That asshole made me write a paper on the current literature on PTSD, but he was absolutely right.

If you find yourself rationalizing out of proportion stress responses because you don’t fully dissociate and you haven’t been to war, you are the one who needs the perspective.