A Brief Note
This essay is part of a series about mental health under prolonged instability and war. While many examples come from Afghanistan, particularly from 2001 to 2021, the experiences described are not unique to any one place or people.
They reflect what happens to the human mind when danger becomes ongoing, unpredictable, and unresolved.
These essays are not memoirs, though brief sections marked From Memory draw on personal experience.
This series is not a clinical guide. The language of psychology is used carefully, not to pathologize, but to give form to experiences that were often normalized, misunderstood, or endured without words.
Throughout the series, the word "we" appears often. Sometimes it refers to Afghans. Sometimes to civilians. Sometimes, to people shaped by trauma more broadly. The meaning shifts; take what fits, and leave what doesn’t.
You will come across references to trauma, grief, and coping. If you need to pause while reading, do. Come back when you’re ready.
This is a story about people who didn’t always get help or therapy, and still found ways to keep going.
This writing can’t speak for everyone, but if something here feels familiar, you’re not being diagnosed. You’re being recognized.
The individuals named in this essay are composites, drawn from multiple real experiences. Their names and identifying details do not refer to any single person.
If you’d like more context, Essay 0 sits at the beginning of the series.
This essay is part of a series about mental health under prolonged instability and war. While many examples come from Afghanistan, particularly from 2001 to 2021, the experiences described are not unique to any one place or people.
They reflect what happens to the human mind when danger becomes ongoing, unpredictable, and unresolved.
These essays are not memoirs, though brief sections marked From Memory draw on personal experience.
This series is not a clinical guide. The language of psychology is used carefully, not to pathologize, but to give form to experiences that were often normalized, misunderstood, or endured without words.
Throughout the series, the word "we" appears often. Sometimes it refers to Afghans. Sometimes to civilians. Sometimes, to people shaped by trauma more broadly. The meaning shifts; take what fits, and leave what doesn’t.
You will come across references to trauma, grief, and coping. If you need to pause while reading, do. Come back when you’re ready.
This is a story about people who didn’t always get help or therapy, and still found ways to keep going.
This writing can’t speak for everyone, but if something here feels familiar, you’re not being diagnosed. You’re being recognized.
The individuals named in this essay are composites, drawn from multiple real experiences. Their names and identifying details do not refer to any single person.
If you’d like more context, Essay 0 sits at the beginning of the series.
When the World Breaks Its Rules
Living inside danger changes a person slowly.
But, shock is abrupt. It interrupts.
It overtakes the body before the mind can follow.
Not every wound comes with blood.
Some arrive in an instant, without warning or ceremony. Before there are words. Before there is meaning. Before anyone knows what to call what just happened.
Something breaks the rules of the world you were just living in. A sound too loud to understand. A moment that doesn’t fit into before or after. The sense that time has tilted, even if only slightly.
This is the first wound.
It doesn’t announce itself as trauma. It doesn’t feel symbolic or psychological. It feels physical. Immediate. As if the body has been thrown forward while the mind is still catching up.
Before we ever had language for shock or stress responses, our bodies already knew what to do.
They still do.
Living inside danger changes a person slowly.
But, shock is abrupt. It interrupts.
It overtakes the body before the mind can follow.
Not every wound comes with blood.
Some arrive in an instant, without warning or ceremony. Before there are words. Before there is meaning. Before anyone knows what to call what just happened.
Something breaks the rules of the world you were just living in. A sound too loud to understand. A moment that doesn’t fit into before or after. The sense that time has tilted, even if only slightly.
This is the first wound.
It doesn’t announce itself as trauma. It doesn’t feel symbolic or psychological. It feels physical. Immediate. As if the body has been thrown forward while the mind is still catching up.
Before we ever had language for shock or stress responses, our bodies already knew what to do.
They still do.
When the Body Takes Over
Shahla was walking through a crowded Kabul market, groceries in hand, pausing near a stall of cherries, when everything changed.
A blast.
The sound arrived first – raw, deafening – louder than thought, louder than fear. For a split second, there was no meaning attached to it, only impact. Then came smoke, shouting, the sharp metallic taste in her mouth, and a pressure in her chest that made it hard to breathe.
Her bags were on the ground. She couldn’t remember dropping them. Red cherries had spilled and rolled across the dust, bright and intact, as if nothing had happened.
She stood still, waiting to feel pain. She looked down at her arms, her legs, searching for blood. There was none. Or maybe she just couldn’t see it yet. Her hands were shaking so badly she had to clench them into fists. Her legs felt distant, unreliable, as if they no longer belonged to her.
Her heart was beating too fast, too hard, each thud loud enough to drown out everything else.
The world had narrowed. Sounds came from far away, stretched and distorted. People were moving, running, screaming, but it took a moment to understand that she was still standing in the middle of it.
Then her body decided.
She ran.
She didn’t cry.
Not then. Not because she wasn’t afraid, but because fear had already moved somewhere else.
A blast.
The sound arrived first – raw, deafening – louder than thought, louder than fear. For a split second, there was no meaning attached to it, only impact. Then came smoke, shouting, the sharp metallic taste in her mouth, and a pressure in her chest that made it hard to breathe.
Her bags were on the ground. She couldn’t remember dropping them. Red cherries had spilled and rolled across the dust, bright and intact, as if nothing had happened.
She stood still, waiting to feel pain. She looked down at her arms, her legs, searching for blood. There was none. Or maybe she just couldn’t see it yet. Her hands were shaking so badly she had to clench them into fists. Her legs felt distant, unreliable, as if they no longer belonged to her.
Her heart was beating too fast, too hard, each thud loud enough to drown out everything else.
The world had narrowed. Sounds came from far away, stretched and distorted. People were moving, running, screaming, but it took a moment to understand that she was still standing in the middle of it.
Then her body decided.
She ran.
She didn’t cry.
Not then. Not because she wasn’t afraid, but because fear had already moved somewhere else.
In moments like this, the body takes over before the mind has time to form a thought. Muscles tense. Breathing shortens. Vision narrows or blurs. Time stretches or collapses. The world becomes too loud, too bright, too much, or suddenly very far away.
This is not panic.
It is survival.
The nervous system shifts into an emergency setting. Fight. Flight. Freeze. Sometimes fawn.
The choice is not conscious. The body does not ask what is polite, rational, or socially acceptable.
It asks only one question:
How do I get through this alive?
Here, the body is not malfunctioning.
It is switching systems.
Blood is redirected to muscles. Digestion pauses. Pain dulls or sharpens. Memory stops recording events in sequence and begins collecting fragments instead; sound without image, image without order.
This is why people later say:
“I don’t remember how I got home.”
“I know I was there, but it feels unreal.”
The body was prioritizing survival, not storytelling.
This is not panic.
It is survival.
The nervous system shifts into an emergency setting. Fight. Flight. Freeze. Sometimes fawn.
The choice is not conscious. The body does not ask what is polite, rational, or socially acceptable.
It asks only one question:
How do I get through this alive?
Here, the body is not malfunctioning.
It is switching systems.
Blood is redirected to muscles. Digestion pauses. Pain dulls or sharpens. Memory stops recording events in sequence and begins collecting fragments instead; sound without image, image without order.
This is why people later say:
“I don’t remember how I got home.”
“I know I was there, but it feels unreal.”
The body was prioritizing survival, not storytelling.
The Strange After
Waliullah returned home two days after the raid.
The house looked unfamiliar, as if it belonged to someone else. Drawers were pulled out and left gaping. Doors hung crooked on their hinges. Shoes lay where they had been kicked aside. Papers and clothes were scattered across the floor, stepped on, forgotten.
He stood in the doorway longer than necessary, taking it in without really seeing it. Then he walked inside, flattened a cushion on the mattress, sat down, and lit a cigarette.
His hands were steady.
His face was not.
He smoked in silence, staring at nothing in particular. The room felt too quiet, the kind of quiet that presses against the ears. He noticed small details instead of the whole: a broken latch, dust on the low windowsill beneath the glass, the edge of the curtain torn from the railing and hanging loose.
He didn’t speak.
Later, when his wife brought him tea, he snapped at her for not adding sugar. The sharpness in his voice startled them both. He hadn’t meant to raise it. The irritation rose fast and hot, then drained just as quickly, leaving him hollowed out and confused.
He pushed the cup away and walked out of the house.
The house looked unfamiliar, as if it belonged to someone else. Drawers were pulled out and left gaping. Doors hung crooked on their hinges. Shoes lay where they had been kicked aside. Papers and clothes were scattered across the floor, stepped on, forgotten.
He stood in the doorway longer than necessary, taking it in without really seeing it. Then he walked inside, flattened a cushion on the mattress, sat down, and lit a cigarette.
His hands were steady.
His face was not.
He smoked in silence, staring at nothing in particular. The room felt too quiet, the kind of quiet that presses against the ears. He noticed small details instead of the whole: a broken latch, dust on the low windowsill beneath the glass, the edge of the curtain torn from the railing and hanging loose.
He didn’t speak.
Later, when his wife brought him tea, he snapped at her for not adding sugar. The sharpness in his voice startled them both. He hadn’t meant to raise it. The irritation rose fast and hot, then drained just as quickly, leaving him hollowed out and confused.
He pushed the cup away and walked out of the house.
What looked like anger was something else entirely. His system was still flooded with adrenaline, his body holding the tension of threat without knowing where to put it. Nothing was happening now, and that was the problem. There was nowhere for the energy to go.
In the first hours and days after a terrifying event, people often feel unlike themselves. Restless or numb. Irritable or detached. Over-alert one moment, exhausted the next. Sleep disappears or becomes shallow. Appetite shifts. Thoughts feel foggy or painfully sharp.
These reactions are often mistaken for personality changes or emotional failure.
They are neither.
They are signs that the body is still braced, still listening for danger that has already passed.
Shock does not end when the noise stops.
It loosens unevenly, lagging behind safety, releasing its grip in fragments rather than all at once.
In the first hours and days after a terrifying event, people often feel unlike themselves. Restless or numb. Irritable or detached. Over-alert one moment, exhausted the next. Sleep disappears or becomes shallow. Appetite shifts. Thoughts feel foggy or painfully sharp.
These reactions are often mistaken for personality changes or emotional failure.
They are neither.
They are signs that the body is still braced, still listening for danger that has already passed.
Shock does not end when the noise stops.
It loosens unevenly, lagging behind safety, releasing its grip in fragments rather than all at once.
Children and Shock
Children respond too, often without words.
Jamal was a young boy in Jalalabad when he watched a car slow down at the edge of the street. He didn’t know why he noticed it. He was standing a few steps behind his uncle, distracted by dust, by the sound of his own shoes on the ground.
The gunshots came suddenly. Sharp. Too loud. Too close.
People scattered. Someone shouted his name. Someone pulled him back.
When the street emptied, Jamal saw one of his uncle’s shoes lying in the dust, turned on its side, as if it had been dropped by mistake. There was blood on it. Dark, soaking into the dirt. The other shoe was still on his uncle’s foot.
That was the part that stayed with him.
His uncle did not come home.
After that, Jamal stopped speaking. He flinched at every sudden sound. He wet the bed. He followed his mother from room to room, his small hand always finding the edge of her chadar (a large scarf worn over the head and shoulders by women), afraid to let her out of his sight.
Jamal was a young boy in Jalalabad when he watched a car slow down at the edge of the street. He didn’t know why he noticed it. He was standing a few steps behind his uncle, distracted by dust, by the sound of his own shoes on the ground.
The gunshots came suddenly. Sharp. Too loud. Too close.
People scattered. Someone shouted his name. Someone pulled him back.
When the street emptied, Jamal saw one of his uncle’s shoes lying in the dust, turned on its side, as if it had been dropped by mistake. There was blood on it. Dark, soaking into the dirt. The other shoe was still on his uncle’s foot.
That was the part that stayed with him.
His uncle did not come home.
After that, Jamal stopped speaking. He flinched at every sudden sound. He wet the bed. He followed his mother from room to room, his small hand always finding the edge of her chadar (a large scarf worn over the head and shoulders by women), afraid to let her out of his sight.
Children don’t explain shock.
They show it.
Clinging, silence, regression, fear of separation, sudden startle responses – these are common in the immediate aftermath of terror. A child’s nervous system is asking the same question an adult’s is, only more plainly: Am I safe?
In war zones, children often have no language for what they witness. They cannot place it in time or meaning. But their bodies remember quickly. Long before memory becomes a story, it often remains sensation.
They show it.
Clinging, silence, regression, fear of separation, sudden startle responses – these are common in the immediate aftermath of terror. A child’s nervous system is asking the same question an adult’s is, only more plainly: Am I safe?
In war zones, children often have no language for what they witness. They cannot place it in time or meaning. But their bodies remember quickly. Long before memory becomes a story, it often remains sensation.
What Shock Is Not
Shock is often mistaken for panic, weakness, or collapse.
It is none of those.
Panic implies fear without control. Shock is fear with direction.
Collapse is often read as failure. Shock is effort.
People in shock may look calm, flat, angry, or strangely focused. Some speak too much. Others go silent. Some cry. Some feel nothing at all.
Others may seem distant, unreal, or not fully present.
These differences do not reflect character.
They reflect nervous systems choosing different exits from the same fire.
Shock is often mistaken for panic, weakness, or collapse.
It is none of those.
Panic implies fear without control. Shock is fear with direction.
Collapse is often read as failure. Shock is effort.
People in shock may look calm, flat, angry, or strangely focused. Some speak too much. Others go silent. Some cry. Some feel nothing at all.
Others may seem distant, unreal, or not fully present.
These differences do not reflect character.
They reflect nervous systems choosing different exits from the same fire.
Before We Had Words
What Shahla, Waliullah, and Jamal experienced has a name.
Acute shock is the body’s first response to overwhelming danger. It is not a disorder. It is not a failure. It is not a sign of weakness or poor coping.
It is information.
It tells us that something too much, too fast, too threatening just happened.
It is the nervous system recording danger in real time.
In many cases, this initial response settles on its own as the body recalibrates, especially when safety and support are present. But the first hours and days matter; not because people need therapy immediately, but because they need steadiness.
Someone to say:
You’re safe now.
What you’re feeling makes sense.
You’re not losing your mind.
In Afghanistan, we didn’t have clinical language for this. But we understood it instinctively.
Tea was poured. Doors were closed. Children were held close. Someone stayed awake so others could sleep.
Care arrived before explanation.
What Shahla, Waliullah, and Jamal experienced has a name.
Acute shock is the body’s first response to overwhelming danger. It is not a disorder. It is not a failure. It is not a sign of weakness or poor coping.
It is information.
It tells us that something too much, too fast, too threatening just happened.
It is the nervous system recording danger in real time.
In many cases, this initial response settles on its own as the body recalibrates, especially when safety and support are present. But the first hours and days matter; not because people need therapy immediately, but because they need steadiness.
Someone to say:
You’re safe now.
What you’re feeling makes sense.
You’re not losing your mind.
In Afghanistan, we didn’t have clinical language for this. But we understood it instinctively.
Tea was poured. Doors were closed. Children were held close. Someone stayed awake so others could sleep.
Care arrived before explanation.
A Narrow Window
There is a brief window after shock when the nervous system is still open, raw, but responsive.
This window does not guarantee anything. It does not determine the future. But it offers something fragile and important: the chance for the body to stand down.
When that chance is missed – when shock is ignored, dismissed, or buried – the body may carry elements of the emergency forward.
But that is a later story.
For now, it is enough to say this:
Shock is not the injury.
It is the body’s first language of survival.
This window does not decide who will later struggle or who will be “fine.”
There is a brief window after shock when the nervous system is still open, raw, but responsive.
This window does not guarantee anything. It does not determine the future. But it offers something fragile and important: the chance for the body to stand down.
When that chance is missed – when shock is ignored, dismissed, or buried – the body may carry elements of the emergency forward.
But that is a later story.
For now, it is enough to say this:
Shock is not the injury.
It is the body’s first language of survival.
This window does not decide who will later struggle or who will be “fine.”
When Shock Becomes Something Else
It may help to pause here and draw a line, because many experiences that feel similar are often spoken about as if they were the same.
What we circled around in this essay can be called acute shock: the body’s immediate response to overwhelming danger. It happens in moments and hours, sometimes days. It is fast, physical, and largely automatic.
This is not the same as living under continuous traumatic stress, where danger does not end, and the nervous system stays activated because staying alert is necessary. In those conditions, the body isn’t failing to recover. It is adapting to a reality that keeps demanding readiness.
And it is not the same as post-traumatic stress disorder.
PTSD can develop later, when the danger has passed, but the body continues to respond as if it has not. The environment may be safe, yet the nervous system keeps reacting to memory, sensation, or reminder as though the threat were still present.
These are different responses to different conditions.
They are not stages.
They are not guarantees.
And one does not automatically turn into the other.
Many people experience shock and recover without lasting injury. Others live for years under continuous threat without space to process what happened. Some develop PTSD later, sometimes only once safety finally arrives.
Context matters.
Timing matters.
And so does whether the body ever receives a clear signal that it is allowed to stand down.
What often gets mistaken for “weakness” or “not coping well” is, in reality, a nervous system responding exactly as it was shaped to respond under the conditions it faced.
It may help to pause here and draw a line, because many experiences that feel similar are often spoken about as if they were the same.
What we circled around in this essay can be called acute shock: the body’s immediate response to overwhelming danger. It happens in moments and hours, sometimes days. It is fast, physical, and largely automatic.
This is not the same as living under continuous traumatic stress, where danger does not end, and the nervous system stays activated because staying alert is necessary. In those conditions, the body isn’t failing to recover. It is adapting to a reality that keeps demanding readiness.
And it is not the same as post-traumatic stress disorder.
PTSD can develop later, when the danger has passed, but the body continues to respond as if it has not. The environment may be safe, yet the nervous system keeps reacting to memory, sensation, or reminder as though the threat were still present.
These are different responses to different conditions.
They are not stages.
They are not guarantees.
And one does not automatically turn into the other.
Many people experience shock and recover without lasting injury. Others live for years under continuous threat without space to process what happened. Some develop PTSD later, sometimes only once safety finally arrives.
Context matters.
Timing matters.
And so does whether the body ever receives a clear signal that it is allowed to stand down.
What often gets mistaken for “weakness” or “not coping well” is, in reality, a nervous system responding exactly as it was shaped to respond under the conditions it faced.
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If this essay reminded you of a moment when your body reacted before you could think – freezing, shaking, snapping, going quiet – you were not broken.
You were responding to danger.
Terms like acute stress response exist to describe what many lived through without words. They help separate what happened in the moment from what may come later.
If no one told you that what you felt made sense, let this say it now:
Your body did what it was built to do.
You were responding to danger.
Terms like acute stress response exist to describe what many lived through without words. They help separate what happened in the moment from what may come later.
If no one told you that what you felt made sense, let this say it now:
Your body did what it was built to do.
By Sadia Fatimie
Find her on Instagram and Twitter (X).