Yes Hellion, this is a symptom of PTSD. It is due to the Hyper Awareness that is there constantly. That is why sleeping can be so difficult too. It does leave the person feeling as though they ran a marathon where they are physically tired too. That is the cortisol that pumps into the body/muscles along with adreneline that is meant to prepare a person to "fight/flight". It is also why a person can become irritable too. And yes, it is harder to concentrate.

I remember when I was misdiagnosed and I had a hard time trying to figure out how to process all the loss I experienced. I did not get rest and grief counseling, that was "wrong" that I was not "helped". It is very important that a person be able to talk out their bad experience/trauma as much as they need to. We are designed to sound the alarm and we are also designed to seek comfort as that helps us calm down and feel safe.

When PTSD is formed from a big trauma, a person can also have a history of traumas where they did not get comforted or herd or helped to feel safe again. This has been called "complex" PTSD. There are a lot of members that interact in this forum that are challenged this way. Each member has shared how "unsupportive" their family has been to them and often still is "unsupportive, dismissive, and even threatening at times".

Establishing a relationship with a therapist that one can feel "safe" with is very important. Also, it is important that a person struggling also have others who can be a source of "support" to them while they finally work on whatever they have been challenged with that is a part of how they struggle to "regulate" emotionally/psychologically.

The truth is, a person needs to understand that "it is not their fault if they are just being HUMAN". It is ok to "cry, be angry, be afraid, and make mistakes too". Life is not really what your mother thinks it should be, what your father thought it should be for you, or siblings either, life is an experience that each person has, is theirs to have and explore.

It is "normal" to learn and grow all our lives and look back on different parts of our lives where we struggled and stressed and did not have enough "life experience" to know how to understand or react better in whatever was taking place at the time. Every person will look back from the now and see things they "should have" been helped with too. It is important to learn how to "make peace" with that "history", mourn it and slowly learn how to move forward "in spite" of that history.

One thing I did read that made sense to me is that with PTSD, the amydala with all it's very primitive human instincts hyjacks the brain which is why a person struggles. What "helps" a person regain their control is "learning" , even though it is challenging to concentrate and learn, as a person continues to work at it, they make gains on their sense of "control" again.