Q: Dr. Katelyn, every fall I notice my symptoms get worse. I feel jumpier, more irritable, and sometimes even pulled back into old memories I thought I had worked through. As a veteran, I can’t help but wonder if this is a seasonal thing—or if I’m slipping backwards. Is it normal to feel more triggered in the fall?
A: You are not alone in this experience. What you’re describing is something many people—especially veterans—report during seasonal transitions. Fall carries unique cues that can stir the nervous system: the cooling of the air, changes in light, even the approach of certain anniversaries or holidays. For someone with trauma history, these cues can awaken the body’s implicit memory, what psychologists sometimes call a PTSD anniversary reaction. It’s not weakness, and it’s not regression—it’s your nervous system remembering.
Why Fall Brings Emotional Flashbacks
The body keeps time in ways the mind doesn’t always track. As leaves turn and daylight shortens, your physiology may connect these shifts with past seasons of hardship—deployment cycles, training schedules, or the anniversaries of difficult events. What emerges are not just thoughts, but emotional flashbacks in fall: sudden waves of feeling that seem to come from nowhere.
From a nondual perspective, we can see these flashbacks not as “intrusions” but as the psyche’s attempt to integrate what remains unprocessed. In coherence work, we don’t fight the memory; we invite the body into synchrony—slowing breath, calming heart rhythm, aligning mind and body so the trigger is metabolized rather than re-enacted.
Veteran Mental Health in Fall: You’re Not Broken
Many veterans fear that the return of triggers means they’ve failed at recovery. But I want to assure you: veteran mental health in fall is a landscape shaped by both biology and meaning. The seasons remind us of impermanence. They also remind us that healing is not linear. Just as the trees shed their leaves, your system may shed what is no longer needed—sometimes through discomfort, sometimes through stillness.
The real question is not “Why am I triggered?” but “What is this season asking me to notice?”
Seasonal Trauma Trigger Support: Tools That Help
At Quantum Clinic, we use modalities designed to meet the body where it is—without judgment, without force. Floatation REST paired with frequency technology creates an environment where the survival brain finally softens, giving space for repair. Biofeedback training in heart-brain coherence helps you track your own resilience in real time, showing you how the nervous system can shift out of hypervigilance and into regulation. And expressive arts integration offers a way to translate triggers into meaning, transforming pain into creative expression.
This is what we mean by seasonal trauma trigger support: not erasing the symptom, but creating a container where the body can remember safety, even in the midst of change.
Closing Reflection
So yes—it is normal to feel more triggered in the fall. But “normal” does not mean “permanent.” The triggers you experience are opportunities for coherence: moments to realign your system with the truth that you are here, now, safe. Healing doesn’t ask you to exile the past; it asks you to witness it, breathe with it, and allow it to transform.
When you step into the float tank or sit with the rhythm of your own heartbeat, you are practicing this transformation. You are teaching your nervous system that fall does not have to mean fear. It can mean letting go.
