Septimus suffers from hallucinations. As read from the novel, examples of his hallucinations are when he sees an old woman’s head in the middle of a fern, and a dog become a man. Another example was when he sees his friend Evans in regents park, London who has long been killed in the war also appears to him in one of his hallucinations. All of septimus’s hallucinations can mostly be understood by scenes that he witnessed during his time in war. Virginia Woolf does not clearly mention what impactful event Septimus seen before his eyes. I would say this is because it is characteristic of “shell shock” where victims inhibit traumatic events. Septimus does not have the ability to understand the seriousness of his condition of shell shock.
His outbursts were first diagnoised to be Shell Shock because they were thought to be an effect of lesions or tiny hemorrhages on his brain. Even the soilders who were not around septimus and explosions, traumatic scenes and deafening noises were strangely experiencing symtoms of  “shell shock” like him. The symptoms of shell shock that are see through Septimus are flashbacks, a growing level of anxiety, isolation, hallucination, outbursts, nightmares, depression, misinterpretation, uncontrollable muscle tics, or sudden movements,
The video below is actual footage of a patients suffering from “shell shock.” The most obvious symptom of the first man is his extreme muscle rigidity. All of these effects were apart of septimus letting himself think horrible things. These hallucinations changed his life and made it hard for him to build strong relationships

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