Herman’s (1997) depiction of the process to name and define the parameters of PTSD is important for three reasons. First, it illustrates the enactionist arguments about how difficult it is to shift cultural cognitions and values. Second, it underscores the importance of subjective assessment about traumatic events, especially with regard to how the event outcome reflects upon the individual’s execution of social roles. Last, it demonstrates how vital the well-organized efforts of diverse social groups were to capturing public support for expanded application of the diagnosis and sustained scientific investigation into the parameters and treatment of the disorder. In addition, Herman demonstrated that three major cognitions had to change to garner social support for PTSD: people had to believe that even courageous men could develop PTSD; people had to relinquish Freud’s misogynist views about women who claimed to have been abused; and people had to see that even those who had no conceivable secondary gain from the diagnosis could develop PTSD. These cognitive shifts must occur not only in theory, but also in the daily practices of those who must work with survivors of abuse, especially their teachers.

To women in Center for Nonviolence support groups, being able to name their experience as posttraumatic stress disorder provides many benefits. Knowing that how they feel, the alternating numbness and agitation, has been experienced by others such as combat veterans, helps women to reframe their feelings and experiences not only as private and individual, but also as shared by many others experiencing the same type of fear, horror, and helplessness in very dissimilar but traumatic circumstances. Knowing their feelings are shared can help women to see the feelings as symptomatic and as a call to action. They can begin to reframe what appears to be an apparently overwhelming, unrelenting, hopeless situation as a situation in which they have some power to respond. Individual women can experience a cognitive shift that might prompt them to create a life with far less abuse and no violence.