What is PTSD?
What is PTSD?
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a serious condition that negatively affects people’s lives in important ways. After a traumatic event, most people experience some of the symptoms of PTSD in the immediate aftermath. For many people, these symptoms resolve over the next few weeks. A person is considered to have PTSD when these symptoms have continued to affect them strongly for quite some time after certain traumatic experiences.
What is Trauma?
Trauma is not only what happened to you… It’s also your thoughts, feelings, and physiological reactions to what occurred. What is traumatic for one person may not be considered traumatic for another, and that’s important to recognize because everyone has their own unique perceptions, expectations, genetic predispositions, and historical background.
Traumatic experiences are perceived as life-threatening or harmful either physically or emotionally, and can include major single-incident events, such as a motor vehicle accident, a natural disaster, physical or sexual assault, or war. Traumatic experiences can also include ongoing, hurtful interpersonal experiences such as verbal abuse, growing up in a chaotic environment, persistent invalidation of your emotions, childhood physical or emotional neglect, racism, sexism, ableism, and other forms of discrimination.
Trauma doesn’t have to be “big enough” to be valid, or to benefit from treatment. If your experience was shocking, harmful, overwhelming and extremely upsetting to you, then it was likely traumatic for you.
What are the signs and symptoms of PTSD?
There are several different groups of symptoms of PTSD, which we have described below in greater detail.
Intrusion Experiences
Upsetting memories that come back again and again, when you don’t want them to, and it feels like you can’t control or prevent them
Nightmares (Either directly about the trauma or involving feelings that were evoked by the trauma)
Flashbacks (Suddenly feeling or acting as if the trauma is happening again)
Feeling extreme distress or having strong physiological reactions (ex: Increased heart rate, blood pressure, sweating) when reminded* of the trauma
*Reminders can include external events (seeing someone who looks like the perpetrator) or internal events (having a memory of the traumatic event)
Negative Changes in Mood and Thinking
Difficulty remembering important aspects of what happened
Negative beliefs about oneself or others (ex: “I’ll never feel safe again,” or, “All people are bad/untrustworthy.”)
Beliefs about the cause of the event that lead to inaccurate degrees of self-blame (ex: “It was my fault; I should have stopped it.”)
Consistently negative emotional state (angry/irritable, fearful/anxious, feeling ashamed)
Less interest or engagement with important aspects of life, or previously enjoyed activities.
Feeling distant or detached from others.
Difficulty regularly experiencing positive emotions (love, joy)
Changes in Reactivity
Difficulty concentrating
Difficulty sleeping (e.g. Falling or staying asleep)
Irritable mood or angry outbursts (often out of proportion to the prompting event)
Hypervigilance (extra alert, searching for potential threats)
Exaggerated startle response
Avoidance Experiences
-Regularly avoiding internal reminders of what happened (memories, thoughts, feelings)
-Often avoiding external reminders of the trauma (certain activities, places, objects)
Trauma and PTSD have wide-ranging effects, but it's important to have hope and know that there are specialized therapy approaches that have been shown to be really beneficial. If you’d like individualized support in overcoming trauma, we’d be honored to help you. Please reach out via our “Contact” page and we’ll be in touch as soon as we’re able.