Post Traumatic Stress

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychological and physical condition that may occur after being involved in an extremely frightening or distressing event. It’s a common condition that can affect anyone and can happen at any age, including childhood. Symptoms usually develop immediately or within a few months of a traumatic event. Sometimes, however, they do not begin until years later.

What are the symptoms of PTSD

Someone suffering from PTSD may frequently relive their traumatic experience through nightmares and flashbacks. They may also feel detached and isolated from life, and experience difficulty concentrating and sleeping. The symptoms can be long lasting and may be severe enough to significantly affect daily life.

Following a traumatic event, most people experience at least some of the symptoms of PTSD. It’s very common to have distressing dreams, feel fearful or numb, and find it difficult to stop thinking about what happened. But these symptoms usually only last for several days or a few weeks, and gradually lift.

But with full-scale post-traumatic stress disorder, the symptoms don’t diminish. Rather than feeling a little better each day, the sufferer may instead start to progressively worse. In other cases, the symptoms come and go over time, sometimes appearing quite suddenly and unexpectedly. In these cases, the trigger may be something that provokes a memory of the original traumatic event, such as a noise, an odour, an image or certain words.

There are three main types of PTSD symptoms:

Reliving the trauma

• Vivid, upsetting memories of the traumatic event
• Flashbacks that make it seem as if the event is happening again
• Nightmares of the event or of other frightening things
• Feelings of intense distress when reminded of the trauma
• Intense physical reactions to reminders of the event, such as a pounding heart, rapid breathing, nausea, muscle tension, sweating

Avoidance and emotional numbness

• Avoidance of activities, places, thoughts or feelings that recall the trauma
• Inability to remember important aspects of the trauma
• Loss of interest in activities and life in general
• Feeling emotionally numb, and detached from other people
• Sensing a limited future: not expecting to have a career, get married or live a normal life span

Increased agitation

• Difficulty in falling or staying asleep
• Difficulty concentrating
• Being constantly on ‘red alert’ (hyper-vigilance)
• Feeling jumpy and easily startled
• Irritability or outbursts of anger
PTSD sufferers may experience guilt, shame or self-blame, and perhaps feelings of mistrust or betrayal. Depression and hopelessness may lead to substance abuse or suicidal thoughts. They may suffer from headaches, stomach problems or chest pain.

What causes PTSD

Any situation involving extreme fear, horror or helplessness can result in Post-traumatic stress disorder, including:
• military combat
• a natural disaster
• a serious accident
• a terrorist attack
• violent death
• personal assault, such as rape

When is it right to seek help

Recovery from PTSD is a gradual, ongoing process, and memories of the trauma may never completely disappear. But there are many things that can be done aid recovery.

Reach out to others for support

PTSD can make you feel disconnected from others, and you may be tempted to withdraw from social activities and your loved ones. But it’s important to stay connected to life and those who care about you, so it is beneficial to ask close friends and family members for their help during this tough time. Consider joining a support group for survivors of the same type of trauma you went through, as this can help you to feel less isolated. A support group can also provide invaluable information on how to cope with symptoms and work towards recovery.

Avoid alcohol and drugs

You may be tempted to ease your suffering with alcohol or drugs. But while these substances may make you feel better temporarily, they will make your PTSD worse in the long term, and may lead to relationship issues, emotional numbness, social isolation, anger and depression.

What treatments are available for PTSD

Treatments normally work on helping you to deal with the trauma you’ve experienced, so you will probably be encouraged to recall and process the emotions and sensations you felt during the original event. As well as offering an outlet for your suppressed emotions, this approach helps to restore your sense of control.

There are four key approaches:

Trauma-focused cognitive-behavioural therapy
Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) for PTSD involves carefully and gradually ‘exposing’ yourself to thoughts, feelings and situations that remind you of the trauma. The therapy identifies upsetting thoughts about the traumatic event – especially those that are distorted and irrational – and replaces them with more rational thought patterns.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR incorporates elements of CBT with eye movements or other forms of rhythmic, left-right stimulation, such as hand taps or sounds. Eye movements and other bilateral forms of stimulation are thought to work by ‘unfreezing’ the brain’s information processing system, which is interrupted under extreme stress, leaving only ‘frozen’ emotional fragments that retain their original intensity. Once EMDR frees these fragments of the trauma, they can be dealt with.
Family therapy
Since PTSD affects both you and those close to you, family therapy can be especially productive. It can help your family understand what you’re going through and enable everyone to communicate better and work through relationship problems. ?
Medication.
Although medication is sometimes prescribed to relieve the secondary symptoms of depression or anxiety, it does not treat the causes of PTSD.