ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) — Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a life-altering diagnosis that many people deal with on a daily basis.

The month of Junes hopes to bring awareness to this difficult disorder, which one stateline veteran has. Jesse Olson said that just finding people who understands him is the most difficult part.

Many people do not know how PTSD affects someone, but June has allowed residents to tell those stories.

“You have your good days and you have your bad days, and when you have your bad days, people don’t seem to understand that,” Olson said.

Olson served in the Army for 10 years, spending time in Iraq as a combat medic. He has been diagnosed with PTSD, something he that he feels has separated him from the rest of society.

“Other than other veterans, like people here at the Vet Center, I don’t really connect with,” Olson said. “I mean, I’m twice divorced. The two women that I was married to, we connected for a little while, but then everything just fizzled out. I mean, they didn’t understand me at all.”

A lack of awareness within a community of what PTSD is can hurt those dealing with the disorder.

“None of us know what someone else is going through, right? And, so to assume that, ‘oh no, that doesn’t qualify as PTSD,’ or, ‘it could only be, this is PTSD,’ I don’t think that is fair,” said Kevin Polky, founder of KP Counseling.

“I was working in an operating room setting, and everything had to be sterile while I was trying to put on a pair of sterile gloves, and I just couldn’t get them on the correct way,” Olson added. “And it just got so frustrating to me that I just said, ‘you know what? Screw it, you just walked out.’ I ended up losing my job because of that.”

Members of the military may have PTSD, but it can also come from a natural disaster, an accident or traumatic childhood experiences. It is a clinical diagnosis given by a clinical professional.

“Could be a variety of different things that cause this type of, they’re exposed to a trauma, and then after a given amount of time, when you go through the normal healing and recovery of that trauma, they continue to have certain symptoms that are impacting them negatively,” Polky said.

There are plenty of support groups out there as well for those struggling with PTSD not from having served.