Recognizing and making sense of the signs of abuse and trauma in students’ communications might be easier were there a handy checklist for educators. However, such a list—as the diagnostic criteria for PTSD suggest—could not begin to capture the complexity of traumatic responses possible. Therefore, to illustrate the concomitantly evolving patterns of physiological response and shame associated with processing trauma, I am going to narrate, as succinctly as possible, two traumatic experiences of which I have first hand knowledge. The first involves a car accident I had that left me quite shaken, and the second involves the loss of employment by a close friend who has given permission to discuss both the event and the ensuing posttraumatic stress disorder. I have deliberately chosen examples of trauma that occurred in the public domain (with documents to substantiate the details included here) to minimize as much as possible making claims that cannot be corroborated in any way with empirical evidenceEndnote 11. In addition, though I strongly argue that domestic abuse as well as domestic violence can lead to PTSD, the narratives of women familiar to me tend to show the effects of domestic abuse, especially prolonged domestic abuse preceded by abuse during childhood, more gradually accumulating to a threshold level before the constellation of PTSD symptoms ensues, making it difficult to see the direct link between event and disorder (Herman, 1997). Even though the trauma narratives included here do not depict reactions to domestic abuse, they do illustrate many important physiological responses and the cognitions that accompany them. Reflected even in these straightforward examples, trauma can be seen to develop nonlinearly and be resisted.