Yahoo Sport 
'I Have PTSD and Playing Tennis Saved My Life'
'I don't have a wound you can see – but I still have a condition.'
Robyn Moore, a 43-year-old post traumatic disorder (PTSD) survivor, is speaking to WH about her experience of the psychological injury, which was triggered as a result of sexual assault. After a period of internal struggle, she was formally diagnosed in 2016.
'I pretty much had a nervous breakdown,' she details. 'My brain had reached its limits and I had been covering a lot up as well as and dealing with flashbacks, which are horrendous.'
She was unable to work, and began seeing a psychologist for weekly sessions. One ask they had was that she coax herself into physical activity, using a sport that she loved.
Sport for PTSD: how tennis helped me in my recovery
Having been a former school champion, she knew that tennis was the one for her. She swiftly began batting balls using a machine, before getting involved in the wider tennis community and playing matches.
The impact cannot be overstated.
'I'm totally different now to how I was three years ago – and that's because sport saved my life,' she explains. 'Staying active is the best kind of free therapy out there.'
Being on a court has proved so transformative that she spent 30 consecutive days hitting furry green balls for eight to ten hours a day this summer, as part of a challenge she's calling Breakpoint 2019.
The idea was to whack 200,000 shots in order to raise £100,00 for the charity Bright Ideas for Tennis. This cash will allow them to provide free lessons to people with learning disabilities or mental health conditions – in the hope that the game can prove as transformative for them as it has for Robyn.
To keep track of all of those shots, rather than asking some poor soul to stand and watch with a clicker, Robyn is using an app named Swing, on her Apple Watch.
Her major piece of advice to someone else in the grip of the condition? 'Do not shy away from it. I wasted years of my life by not dealing with the problem,' she says.
'It will never go away and I still have bad days and flashbacks. But getting involved in a sport has helped.'
As to the biggest thing she's learnt, from this journey?
'That I am brave. I haven't given up and I won't give up.'
What is PTSD?
Post traumatic stress syndrome is a remarkably debilitating issue, ignited by going through or exposure to a traumatic event. Seventy per cent of rape survivors will go through it, as will two out of three prisoners of war and 40% of people who experience the sudden death of someone close to them.
It's understood to be a psychological injury, as opposed to a mental health condition, according to the charity PTSD UK.
It occurs in the heat of trauma as your body suspends normal processing to focus on trying to get you out of the situation.
As such, the event isn't filed as a memory as usual and, once you're out of danger and your brain goes back to attempt processing, the memory is felt as a flashback – that the traumatic experience is happening right now.
Changes to the amygdala and hippocampus areas of your brain can also cause short term memory loss, in emotions being hard to control and you being in a perpetual state of fear.
Now that you know about sport for PTSD, read about what quitting social media can do for your mental health.
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