Episode 8: Minesweeping through triggers, healing through help and confrontation

*The series is based on the real-life experience of Kim Nam-young, a JoongAng Ilbo reporter currently living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The following articles are written from Kim’s first-person perspective.

To Readers

I have PTSD.

As a reporter on the social affairs desk, I covered the Itaewon disaster on Oct. 29, 2022. Since November of the following year, I have been receiving treatment regularly. I attend psychiatric counseling sessions and take medication every day.

I am only revealing the illness now, more than two years later, not because I have overcome it. This is not a story about recovery, but a record of living through the illness. To be honest, I still do not know when, or if, I will overcome it.

Instead, I want to talk about the time I have spent living alongside PTSD. Even now, I continue to work as a policy and social affairs reporter while exercising, traveling and getting on with daily life.

If someone is hesitating to see a doctor, I hope this piece can help. I also hope we can become a society where people do not feel forced to hide emotional pain and trauma.

When I was young, there was an old computer game called Minesweeper.

It was simple. Players clicked squares one by one while trying to avoid hidden mines. The tension came from not knowing where the mines might be; you could spend minutes carefully navigating the board, only for a single thoughtless click to bring everything crashing down.

My life after PTSD became much like that game. But unlike the game, there were no warning signs of latent mines.

On the surface, it looked like any other ordinary day. But lived never knowing when or where I might step on a hidden mine. No matter how careful I was, they appeared where I least expected them.

A scene I would normally pass without a second thought or an object I once considered insignificant could suddenly turn my world upside down. In an instant, I would find myself back in the past.

For people with PTSD, these everyday mines are called triggers. A trigger is anything that brings a traumatic memory rushing back and makes a person relive it. Triggers are deeply personal. What seems insignificant to people can be overwhelming for someone living with PTSD.

I also had to confront my own triggers. From shoes appearing in films to the Jeju Air disaster, certain reminders were impossible to avoid, pulling me back and forth between the present and the past.

There were times when I felt overwhelmed by the fear that I was being dragged back to the very beginning of the Itaewon disaster all over again.

The switch that sends me back to the past

A trigger can be anything from a single object to a whole situation.

For someone who survived a car accident, items inside a vehicle may become triggers. For a person assaulted by a drunk attacker, the smell of alcohol can serve as a trigger.

Sometimes, a person can have more than one trigger. I certainly did.

One of them was a pile of shoes left behind.

I did not realize it until I watched "The Zone of Interest” (2023). The film portrays the everyday lives of a German officer's family living next to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

For most of the film, I was fine. The German officer, the concentration camp and even the glimpses of World War II in the background didn't affect me much.

Then came the final scene: a museum display filled with shoes once worn by Jewish prisoners who had entered the "bathhouse" used for mass killings.

Long after leaving the theater, I could not erase the image from my mind.

While covering the Itaewon disaster, I saw countless piles of shoes. The shoes were left behind after the ambulances and fire trucks had gone, and were piled up like discarded trash before eventually being taken to a lost-and-found center.

The two images merged together in my mind. My breathing quickened. I felt dizzy.

Fortunately, the PTSD symptoms did not fully hit until I returned home, where I was able to calm myself through deep breathing.

People, both directly and indirectly connected to the Itaewon disaster, also became triggers for me.

Former Interior Minister Lee Sang-min, who wrote that "every moment was truly happy" and former President Yoon Suk Yeol, who did not attend memorial events for the victims, were among them.

Whenever I encountered people connected to the nightmare that refused to fade, memories of the disaster flooded back and left me distressed.

Death was another trigger.

I avoided not only news articles about fatal accidents and crimes but also movies and television dramas in which people died.

I once bought a guideline on reporting ethics titled "The Society of Spectating Suffering" (translated, 2023) for studying purposes. I barely got through a few pages before closing it.

Simply reading about death made me nauseous.

Then came a moment when death arrived all at once. On Dec. 29, 2024, Jeju Air Flight 2216 crashed and claimed 179 lives.

Once again, I was dragged back into the past, whether I wanted to be or not — back to Itaewon.

The powerful trigger of the Jeju Air crash

By October 2024, I felt like I was finally getting better.

The anniversary of the Itaewon disaster in October 2024 felt very different from the first anniversary a year earlier. I had begun to believe that recovery was within reach and that there might finally be an end to it all.

Then the Jeju Air crash happened.

By a twist of fate, Dec. 29 was also my birthday.

I had been sleeping in because I was off work. When I woke up, my phone was filled not with birthday messages but with reports of a plane crash.

I tried to avoid watching the footage. My partner, who knows my history well, did everything possible to keep me away from the news. I did my best to avoid it, too. But I ended up seeing it anyway. There was no escaping it.

Before I saw the footage, the disaster didn't feel entirely real. Once I did, all I could do was stare in disbelief.

I heard that a friend of a friend had been on the flight. Even though I knew it was probably meaningless, I found myself telling the friend, “If their body hasn't been found yet, maybe they're still alive.”

Friends and acquaintances in my hometown of Gwangju said the city felt like a giant funeral. Many of the passengers had ties to the region.

The next day, when I returned to work, the newsroom system was flooded with stories about the crash. Even a glance at the headlines was enough to tell that every one of them carried devastating news.

Though the articles I was writing had nothing to do with the disaster, tears kept streaming down my face. I felt emotionally overwhelmed and unable to focus.

If triggers cannot be avoided, what can we do?

① See a professional

When the Jeju Air disaster caused my symptoms to worsen, I realized I needed to see my psychiatrist as soon as possible.

The moment I realized I was getting worse, I called the clinic and rescheduled my appointment for the earliest available date.

I told my doctor exactly what I had been feeling and thinking.

My doctor temporarily increased my medication, and over time, my condition began to improve.

When a trigger is too powerful to handle alone, seeking professional help as quickly as possible can make a significant difference.

② Know your triggers

The more often you encounter triggers, the easier it becomes to recognize them. Knowing what your triggers are gives you a chance to prepare yourself.

My psychiatrist told me it is generally better to face triggers in situations where I feel safe. Even when watching a film involving death, being at home, in a familiar environment with plenty of light, can make the experience feel less overwhelming.

③ Face the trigger

Once you've made some progress in treatment, confronting a trigger directly can also help.

During treatment, I decided to challenge myself by returning to reading "The Society of Spectating Suffering." Even if I had to stop reading or felt nauseated, I knew I could not spend the rest of my life avoiding every reminder of death.

Earlier this year, I finally read the entire book from beginning to end. After that, I found myself able to read books about social disasters and other tragedies as well.

That was only possible because I was already well into the healing process.

My psychiatrist emphasized the importance of doing this in a "safe place."

A safe place is not simply a physical location. It is an environment where I feel in control and know I can stop whenever I need to. Bright lighting, familiar surroundings and the knowledge that I can walk away all make confronting triggers less overwhelming.

Most importantly, the goal is not to endure everything at once.

The key is to start with what you can handle.

This approach is known as prolonged exposure.

Stopping partway through is not failure. It's a way of taking care of yourself.

Over time, I have learned little by little how to avoid triggers and how to endure them.

Yet whenever another unexpected tragedy occurs, it can undo years of progress in an instant.

No matter how much I prepared myself, if similar tragedies and horrific scenes kept repeating themselves, I had no choice but to be pulled back to that day.

Then I realized something.

What I was experiencing wasn't simply the result of memories from the past. In many major disasters, years can pass without clear answers about why they happened or who should be held accountable.

As long as the facts remain unclear and questions of responsibility linger, it is difficult to say that such tragedies are truly over.

Whenever those unfinished tragedies return to the present, the triggers return with them.

And so the questions remain.

Why can't I let this disaster end? Why can't we let this disaster end?

The story continues to the ninth episode.

BY KIM NAM-YOUNG [[email protected]]