When Christina Piljavec was taken back to her childhood by a flashback a few weeks ago, she was in a kebab shop.

Actually, it was a nice evening and nothing indicated that she could be reminded of her childhood trauma, the experience of domestic violence.

The trigger for the flashback was probably something as small as a facial expression.

"In Hollywood, the war veteran usually gets a flashback the moment he finds the button of his former comrade," says Piljavec, "followed by quick cuts and scene changes." Her own flashbacks, on the other hand, are the epitome of slowness: they feel like a mist or a wave rolling in from the sea.

Your body falls into lethargy and suddenly has no more energy available.

Piljavec then sees repressed moments from her past that appear to be present and imminent.

Until the hallucination clears up, she suffers through the past one more time.

Without being a war veteran, the 28-year-old has post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and to this day has not shed many of the symptoms associated with it.

Psychologists explain PTSD as a memory disorder.

In the part that stores one's own life experiences, there is then a simultaneous too much and too little of memory.

This can manifest itself in amnesia on the one hand, and flashbacks on the other.

Until she left her parents' house, Christina Piljavec could not even remember that she was exposed to domestic violence as a child;

a violence directed against her mother and herself.

The flashbacks started in the first semester of her German studies when she first moved to Erlangen.

Suddenly the memory of the trauma was everywhere.

Despite her trauma, Piljavec became a high-performing student.

She explains it like this: The feeling of guilt at having abandoned her mother in the violent situations soon spread to all areas of life.

At some point she no longer allowed herself to call it a day or even take up a hobby after a long day of learning.

Her fears and depression led her to believe that she didn't deserve anything good in life.

Working was her only reason for being, and her grades had to be as impeccable as her body or her clothes.

Piljavec was looked at at a loss when she first showed up at a student therapy group, apparently with no cause for complaint.

The other ten participants in the group feared grades and deadlines, they only feared the feeling

In her stories, she recaptures memories

At the bottom of every to-do list, there seemed to be one big, important accomplishment, but she had no idea what that might be.

At one point, Piljavec dropped out of college to return to her homeland to look after her younger sister, who continued to live in the threatening home with their father.

Her subsequent teacher training course in German was intended to enable Piljavec to support young people and intervene if necessary if they had problems similar to hers.

In her own school days, this was neglected by the teachers.

"I have a broader perspective and am more sensitive to domestic violence through my own experience," says Piljavec, "at the same time you have to be careful how you go about it: As a teacher, you mustn't become overbearing or partial in the matter."

A civil servant would have been difficult with her medical record. Before starting her now four-year therapy, she had been warned by her university's counseling center that this could be the price for her mental health. Student teachers in particular often forgo therapy for this reason. Christina Piljavec has never regretted getting help, that alone saved her life. As part of the replacement program of the so-called "lessons supply", she is currently employed as a German teacher for a limited period and can continue to study literature at the same time; then she would like to work in the literature business. She also attends two psychoanalytic therapy sessions per week,thanks to which she has become much calmer and can better understand her symptoms.

In German classes, her students like to talk about the short stories that Piljavec writes on all sorts of topics, which have already been published in anthologies, as part of creative writing units.

But there is also one topic that she would never bring into the classroom.

The flashback at the kebab shop was recently the occasion to deal with her childhood trauma in literary form.

"I'm being dragged out of the diner.

Welcome back,” she writes toward the beginning of the story.

In the lyrics, her present-day self takes over, reclaims her memory and ensures that the night of yesteryear has a better ending.

This written processing and correction of one's own trauma is similar to a recognized therapy method against PTSD - "Imagery Rescripting" -,

Victor Sattler

(23 years old) studies psychology and sociology at the University of Munich.

But he gained real knowledge of human nature more as a waiter, bartender, tutor or at the theater.