Exclusive Criminal Minds Sneak Peek: JJ Opens Up to Reid About Her PTSD — and Her Big Secret

It's been one year since JJ (A.J. Cook) was abducted on Criminal Minds and on Wednesday's episode, she'll finally deal with the old wounds.

"It's just been a long time of her living in denial, repressing it and not facing her demons," Cook tells TVGuide.com. "Unfortunately, when you've been through something so crazy like that, you can only do it for so long. It works for a little bit, but you start to fall apart. We kind of get to see her dealing with it in her own way, but her way seems to be a little self-destructive."
Quite literally. JJ takes her turmoil out on a locker after a training session in the opening minutes of the episode. "She's trying to cope away from the team. She doesn't want the team to see what she's up to," Cook says. "Thank goodness for her dear friend Spencer Reid [Matthew Gray Gubler]. He calls her on it. He's got some experience with the whole PTSD thing. Reid, in his very matter-of-fact way, starts to spew this information about PTSD and she sort of breaks it down for him, and for the first time, we see him not have any words, not have any answers. He really struggles with that."

As seen in the exclusive sneak peek below, JJ tearfully confides to Reid about the aftereffects of last year's ordeal that saw her tortured at the hands of her one-time partner-turned-double-agent Tivon (Farah Tahir). "Give me a word," she tells him. "A term, a label, something that explains what I have because it is bigger than PTSD, and right now that word is Tivon. ... I didn't know he was [a double agent]."

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"You cannot blame yourself for that," Reid says, revealing that he has read the case file. But there is one thing that's not in the case file: her miscarriage.
JJ's subsequent confession is a poignant reminder of the two's close relationship that were sort of a hallmark of Season 1. "We haven't touched on their friendship in a very long time. It's nice to remember that. These two are best friends," Cook says. "And it's a very big moment for her to tell him something like that. It's nice to see that sincere care for each other. It was so much fun to do those scenes. Fun's not the right word, but it was refreshing and so much to get to these types of stories that's different from our usual episodes. ... It's a really great episode for Matthew as well. I'm excited for people to see it."

Check out the clip below. Criminal Minds airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on CBS.

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