Trauma is often pictured as one catastrophic event. Aaron Baty, a retired military officer, describes something different. For him, trauma was years of stressful experiences that never got processed.
The rucksack that never gets emptied
Aaron explained that when he sat with VA clinicians, they wanted to bring him back to one event. His experience did not fit that frame. He said it was years and years of stressful things happening, and finding that he could not process them in stride.
He used a military image. In his words, “You’re always putting things in the rucksack because you’ll get to it later.” The pack gets heavier. Nobody stops to unpack it, because the next task is already waiting.
Aaron also pointed to childhood. Moving often, having no hometown, and carrying early experiences that were never addressed all added to the load. Later stress landed on top of what was already there. I mentioned that a majority of people report some adverse childhood experience, and Aaron’s story shows how those early layers can shape what comes after.
Why the single-event frame can miss the point
If trauma is one event, treatment aims at that event. Aaron’s difficulty was broader. He felt detached from his wife and peers. He drank more and slept poorly. He told himself it was a slow posting or missing his team. He went quiet and handled it alone.
What shifted things for him was information. During an inpatient stay, clinicians explained what TBI and PTSD do to the body. Instead of hearing that he was overreacting, he heard why he felt anxious and angry in ordinary places like a car or a grocery store. He said that made him think there was something to it. The explanation took away the story that he was weak.
Aaron also described the weight of keeping things inside. Over time he found that saying a long-held burden out loud, to family or to himself, loosened its hold. He called it therapeutic.
He also made a point about language. He prefers reintegration to recovery, because he does not see himself as broken. In his view the work is noticing old habits that creep back and building healthier ones, and it goes on after any single treatment ends.
None of this is medical advice, and Aaron speaks only for his own experience. His account is a useful way to think about how stress adds up.
Here is one practical thing to try. Take ten minutes this week and write down the stressful things you moved past without stopping. Do not rank them or fix them. Then say one of them out loud to someone you trust, or to yourself. Notice what it is like to set something down that you have been carrying.
From the episode: How Psychedelic Therapy Helped Aaron Baty Reclaim His Life, with Aaron Baty. Read the full transcript.