Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Post-traumatic stress disorder can occur after a person has been exposed to severe trauma such as violence or abuse that they are powerless to stop. Survivors of trauma often respond by mentally shutting down and avoiding their emotions as a way of avoiding their pain.
In this sense, avoidance is a short-term coping strategy that allows survivors to function. But over the long-run avoidance becomes an obstacle to healthy functioning, and turns post-traumatic stress into a disorder. The suppressed emotions have to come out somehow, and they often come out in the form of anxiety, depression, nightmares, and rage.
The chances of developing PTSD vary greatly depending on the person and the nature of the trauma. Approximately 9 percent of people exposed to significant trauma in an urban setting develop post-traumatic stress disorder.(1) On the other hand, approximately 20 to 45 percent of combat veterans experience PTSD at some point after war or peacekeeping operations.(2),(3)
Symptoms of PTSD
The main symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are the following:
- Reliving the trauma. Do you frequently re-experience the trauma in your dreams or flashbacks? Do you act or feel as if you're caught in the traumatic event again? Do you feel intense anxiety when you see people or places that symbolize the trauma? Do you feel anxiety when you hear about people or places that symbolize the trauma?
- Avoiding triggers. Do you work hard to avoid people, places, thoughts, feelings, conversations, or anything that can trigger memories of the trauma? Do you have difficulty remembering some important aspect of the trauma?
- Feeling on guard. Do you feel constantly on guard? For example do you have difficulty falling or staying asleep? Do you have difficulty concentrating? Are you irritable or hypervigilant? Do you startle easily?
- Feeling detached. Do you feel detached, numb, or estranged from others? Do you enjoy things less than you did before? Is your range of emotions flat?
- Diminished sense of the future. Are you less interested in the future than you were before? Do you think less about the future, or do you feel more hopeless about the future?
Do not attempt to diagnose yourself. If you feel you have some of these symptoms, you should speak to your doctor or a specialist about PTSD. Making the diagnosis of PTSD can be subtle, and can trigger memories that you may not able to handle on your own.
Things You Can Do
"The best way to get rid of your feelings is to feel them."(4) Seek professional help. Find a qualified professional or treatment program that has experience in dealing with PTSD.
Take care of yourself. Get enough rest, eat well, exercise, and take time to relax.
Don't self-medicate. Drugs and alcohol temporarily numb your feelings, but they're not healthy coping skills. Drugs and alcohol prevent you from doing the work you need to do to overcome your symptoms. Drugs and alcohol are also brain depressants, which leads to more problems down the road.
Talk to people. You don't have to talk about your trauma if you don't want to. Just reach out and spend time with your friends and family. Make it clear that you just want to keep it light and you'll talk when you're ready. Connecting with people is healing.
Join a support group. Ask your health care professional about PTSD groups. Look them up in your local phone book, or contact your community social services. A support group will help you feel that you're not alone. You'll also learn tips about how other people have dealt with this. (Reference: www.AnxietyDepressionHealth.org.)
Accumulated Traumatic Stress Disorder
It’s been my experience that some people develop post-traumatic stress disorder, not after one overwhelming trauma, but after many accumulated smaller traumas. If you don’t know how to let go of tension, many repeated traumas can have the same effect as one big trauma. This is supported by the fact that not everyone who is exposed to major trauma develops post-traumatic stress disorder.
Adults who develop post-traumatic stress disorder are usually the ones who have had painful or traumatic childhoods. In their case the final trauma is just the top layer of many accumulated traumas. Past traumas become interconnected so that one triggers another, and older traumas intensify newer ones.
Therefore, I prefer to think of post-traumatic stress as accumulated traumatic stress disorder. This emphasizes that the treatment is letting go of layers of trauma not just the last trauma. Letting go of the past is what sets you free.
Learn More
In the book "I Want to Change My Life" you'll learn:
- Factors that predispose you to PTSD
- How to deal with flashbacks
- The difference between short-term and long-term treatment of PTSD
- How to use mind-body relaxation techniques and cognitive therapy to overcome PTSD
Last Modified: December 2, 2009