Understanding PTSD

-

This post is based on the book Overcoming Trauma and PTSD: A Workbook Integrating Skills from ACT, DBT and CBT by Sheela Raja and Susan M. Orsillo. Images are from the same book.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a common reaction to experiencing something traumatic. Reactions to traumatic events usually involves intense fear, helplessness or horror. In addition, after the trauma, you experience one or more of these other types of symptoms:
  1. Re-experiencing
    Bad dreams
    Distressing memories     Feeling that the trauma is happening over and over again. 
  2. Avoidance
    Going to great lengths to avoid any reminders.
    Avoid certain places or people that remind you of the incident.
    Unable to remember important aspects of the traumatic event.
    Lack interest in life - disconnecting from people
    Emotionally numb
  3. Feeling constantly anxious or on edge
    Difficulty sleeping and concentrating 
    Difficulty managing anger 
    Feeling irritable
    Being "on guard", always scanning your environment for possible threats
    Easily startled or reactive to noises or unexpected changes in your environment.  

Trauma changes your pre-existing beliefs about the world and yourself. Trauma memories are highly emotionally charged and go against our beliefs about how the world works. 

E.g.: of those beliefs include:
  • The world is a safe place 
  • Life is predictable 
  • Horrible things don't happen to good people 
  • Really bad things happen to other people, not me. 
Replaying a trauma memory may occur because you are trying to understand how it could have happened to you - trying to fit it into your belief system.* When you're unable to understand it, it can cause anxiety, depression, shame and guilt.** They may also be stored in a different part of the brain and coded differently from regular memories.*** 

Only 8% men and 25% women who are exposed to traumatic events develop full blown PTSD.****

And the truly good news is, people are incredibly resilient and have the ability to heal from even the most difficult of trauma, if they have the right tools, support and circumstances. 

* Cahill and Foa, 2007
** Janoff-Bulman, 2002
*** LeDoux, 1992
**** Kimerling, Ouimette and Wolfe, 2002 

Comments

Post a Comment

Leave an opinion!

Popular posts from this blog

Throwback: Waltzing to the Tune of Rhetoric

-
Written September 7, 2010 A dark series of squiggles make their way down and across the page, in that order. Cheap poetry and lame jokes are the order of the day. For once the silence has retreated and is content to watch from the top row of the bleachers. For once there's no raining on the court while the ball's in play. There's a rose that lies at the back of my locker, wilted and fading away. It's a rose I don't expect to see in bloom again. It's a rose I've put aside, but one I cannot bear to throw away. Perhaps I should consign it to the bonfire I've made in my backyard, out of all the relics from the past. Perhaps keeping it in my locker is dangerous, for it might bloom again. Roses such as this one have been known to bloom more beautiful than before, long long after they withered away into nothing more than thin brown sticks and faded and detached petals. And in my excitement, I might just reach out and grab it again, forgetting th
Read more

Sweet Summer Child: A Love Letter

-
Image
Photo by  Petr Ovralov  on  Unsplash Written December 9, 2016 I am not a gifting person. Years ago, someone suggested I write them something about love as a gift instead. I made many starts, completed nothing. Perhaps happiness doesn't inspire me the way sorrow does. Then last year came the first and only love letter I've ever written. Does it mean more if you write letters? May I? Dearest. When I met you, the only taste I remembered any more was the taste of ashes in my mouth. When I met you, the sun had cracked open, and loss was everywhere.  When I met you, you were a shadow, hidden among shadows, a nervous joke whispered on the winds of my thoughts.  When I met you, I was looking for a friend.  Then I met you, and the sun rose again, whole and healthier than before.  I met you, and the joke turned to undying laughter on my lips.  I met you, and I knew longing again, my soul unable to bear its weight.  I did not know you existed, and in the wee hours o
Read more

Review: Vampire Academy #2 - Frostbite

-
Image
Crossposting from Feminist Quill, written July 22, 2015 Book Title:  Frostbite Author:  Richelle Mead Year of Publication:  2008 Series:  Vampire Academy #:  2 Goodreads Rating (Avg.):  4.31 Goodreads Rating (Mine):  5 Plot Description:  The sequel to  Vampire Academy  picks up a few months after the first, showing a new stage in Rose's guardian training. Running away from the school for two years had meant that she spent the first book trying to catch up with her classmates, and  Frostbite  opens with her Qualifier exam - one which requires an external guardian to evaluate her progress. As her mentor, it seems Dimitri was able to get her an interview with one of the most legendary guardians around, and as a bonus, this means Rose gets to roadtrip alone with her crush. Her cute triumph at having scored ten hours of being alone with him soon dovetails neatly with tragedy - a Strigoi attack at their destination. And with that, Mead begins to unravel the clean cut rul
Read more