Trauma PTSD
Both Trauma and PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) are what is known
as “anxiety disorders”. In PTSD in particular, the level of anxiety is much
more severe and longer lasting.
What Is Trauma?
At some point in our lives most of us will experience some type of a
severely distressing event.
Trauma results from exposure to an event or series of events that we
might find emotionally disturbing or life-threatening to us and we feel we
are unable or do not have the resources to cope with the threat. Trauma
has prolonged adverse effects on our emotional, mental, and physical
day to day functioning.
The event could be sudden or shocking and unexpected event some
threat or harm to a person’s or someone else’s life.
Some examples of events resulting in trauma are:
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Sudden death of a loved one
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Abuse- physical/ sexual/ emotional
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Vehicle accident
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Adverse Childhood experiences (ACEs)
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Sudden break up of a relationship or divorce
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Caring/living with someone with mental/physical health issues
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Assault
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Mugging/burglary
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Loss of job
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Serious illness/injury
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Witnessing a death or a crime
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Terrorism
There may be others because people respond to traumatic events
differently and such events may include experiences that make
you feel:
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Unsafe
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Scarred/Frightened
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Rejected/abandoned
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Trapped
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Hypervigilant -always alert
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Humiliated/ridiculed
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Powerless
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A treat/harm to your life
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Alone and unsupported
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Ashamed
The person may also intrusive thoughts. The distressing experience may
be an one off event, ongoing like domestic violence.
Unless the trauma is not addressed in a timely manner, it could develop
in to PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
If you have the symptoms listed above, you need to consult your
GP (general Practitioner) for a diagnosis as soon as possible,
which will enable you to seek help.
PTSD (Post traumatic stress disorder
Most of the symptoms listed above are also symptoms of PTSD,
but much more severe. PTSD often develops after experiencing
a traumatic event.
What is PTSD?
The emotion of fear is essential for our survival. To feel intense fear
is a normal reaction when we are facing a potentially life-threatening
situation and our inbuilt safety mechanism the flight or fight/freeze
gets activated.
Although people often experience many symptoms after a traumatic
event they often recover after a short period of time. However, in some
cases the symptoms continue with flashbacks, severe fear, intrusive
thoughts, nightmares, hypervigilance long after the event and begin to
interfere with the person’s daily life.
It is not known why some people develop PTSD after the traumatic
event, although PTSD can result immediately after a traumatic event
where you witness a threat to life or witness a threat to someone else’s
life as in a war. Another situation is rape, serious car accident
losing a limb etc.
What is Complex PTSD or CPTSD?
CPSTD is diagnosed in both children and adults where they have
repeatedly experienced traumatic events. Some examples of such
situations are physical neglect and abuse/sexual/emotional/mental
abuse (especially during a child’ formative years) or witnessing the
mother being abused for years.
With CPTSD in particular, the person will have serious trust issues,
feel lonely, emotionally, and socially distant, unable to have
relationships, self-sabotage, lack of self-worth, to name but a few.
They may relive the experience over and over again and make the
emotions stronger.
Formal Diagnosis by your doctor is an essential step forward.
It is now accepted that Clinical hypnosis is one of the effective
interventions for anxiety disorders. For PTSD and CPTSD I also
use a combination of therapeutic interventions such as Inner child
work, EMDR and energy healing depending on the client’s needs.
My own Intensive Therapy Breakthrough Session is structured to
address the issues such as Trauma, PTSD, CPTSD and Depression.
For more information email: marion@dynamic-perceptions.com