willseed and creek-- a house exploded. 46o, creek and blainsfield is a shambles. some events are so enormous, so life-threatening, that we would expect anyone to react to them with sizable stress. i called the insurance company. he said, "so sorry. everything's excluded. you have no coverage whatsoever," so here's over $1oo,ooo, and we're just about wiped out. i don't know what i'll do. sometimes reactions to natural or man-made disasters go beyond temporary heightened stress. some people react with persistent anxiety, long-term nightmares, recurrent memories of the disaster, or, conversely, a numbing loss of any feelings at all. this is the syndrome of postraumatic stress disorder. dr. mardi horowitz is a psychiatrist at the university of california medical school at san francisco and an authority on post-traumatic stress disorder. post-traumatic stress disorder has three important elements-- one is that there has been a trauma, experience that's usually extraordinary for the person and shocking very frequently, often terrifying or having a death anxiety or a big