Summary Of Wave By Sonali Deraniyagala

Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala did a phenomenal job portraying the symptoms of a person with PTSD. While on vacation with her husband, two sons and her parents, the author of this book was the only one in her family that survived a tsunami on the coast of Sri Lanka in a city called Yala in 2004. While this true story is somewhat haunting, it gives us a window into the struggles that come with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The textbook Psychopathology and Function defines PTSD as a disorder that appears after an event that causes serious stress in life (Bonder, 2015, p. 202). This disorder is often accompanied by feelings of terror and helplessness as well as the individual starting to avoid situations that stimulate memories of the situation or the people involved in the situation. Common symptoms included disturbed sleep, exaggerated start reflexes, poor concentration, extreme irritability, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, intrusive memories of the trauma, physiological reactions, decreased interest in activity and detachment from normal life (Bonder, 2015, p. 203).
Sonali experienced many of these symptoms but not quite all of them. Of these symptoms, there is evidence from her book that she experienced disturbed sleep, avoiding stimuli that trigger memories of her family or the event, irritability, substance abuse,
She went back to visit Yala where the tsunami happened and on the way there she says, “We had to stop often, so I could vomit” (Deraniyagala, 2013, p. 70). The anxiety over visiting the location where she lost her family was so overwhelming that she began vomiting. She also talks about feeling dizzy when she visits her old house in London and feeling that way because she was in total disbelief. She felt like she couldn’t hold herself up because she was in shock that she was back in London but without her family (Deraniyagala, 2013, p.