How Weight Lifting Helped One Writer Work Through Her PTSD

When personal trainer and former competitive weight lifter Laura Khoudari experienced a traumatic incident that left her with PTSD, her response was to get back to the gym and train as hard as possible. She was participating in three sports, sometimes going to two training sessions per day.

"When I was living with trauma, I was using [training] as a coping skill but in a non-healthy way. I was training all the time like I was preparing for battle because I wanted to be invincible against an invisible threat," Khoudari recalls

From the outside, it seemed like Khoudari was just crushing it, but she was actually having a pretty normal post-traumatic stress disorder response: hyper arousal of the body and brain. "I wasn't resting. It was a compulsion," she says. Her body finally caught up with her. She severely injured her back overtraining and couldn't go near a barbell for months.

Finally, desperate to heal her mind and body, Khoudari started her own research into how trauma impacts the body and how strength training could be a healing practice for people who've experienced trauma. The result is her forthcoming book, a memoir combined with practical guidance, Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time.