Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) & Healing
PTSD quote: “PTSD is not the person refusing to let go of the past, but the past refusing to let go of the person”.
A traumatic event is something no one is prepared to deal with. You may feel your mind and body are in a state of shock from the experience. You may have nightmares, or find yourself re-playing the event in your mind. You may even feel disconnected from the world around you. What happened was traumatic, and any person would feel shaken up. This is natural and human.
For people who have enough resilience, the intense state of alarm will go away over time. They can sort out their thoughts and feelings, process what happened, and move on. It may take days or weeks, but the symptoms gradually decrease.
With post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) the feelings don’t go away. People with PTSD don’t experience getting a little bit better every day. In fact, trying to cope with the after-effects of severe trauma can be very difficult. New brain research and the hard work of survivors provide important insights for treatment and hope.
PTSD can develop from any event that feels overwhelmingly threatening or scary to the person involved. It can happen to anyone, at any age, at home or anywhere.
Domestic violence, rape, child abuse and neglect, terrorist attacks, war natural disasters, car accidents, death— these are just a few of the traumas that can lead to PTSD.
It can also come from events that appear far less dramatic — such as ongoing bullying, humiliation at school, a playground accident, or a medical procedure during childhood even watching someone involved in a traumatic incident.
It is important to recognize the myth that only obviously life-threatening events carry the risk of PTSD. Rather, PTSD is the result of the reactions and/or perceptions of the person traumatized.
The difference between PTSD and other types of traumatic experiences is that unwanted symptoms stay; they keep returning and intruding on one’s present awareness.
Body Symptoms of PTSD
In addition to the traumas just mentioned, you may have these:
Trembling and shaking
Hot flashes and cold chills
Numbness and tingling
Nausea or a sick feeling in your stomach
Pressure in your chest
A pounding heart
Cold sweats
Shortness of breath
A lump in your throat
Dizziness and vertigo
Feeling like you’re “out of your body”
Feeling like you’re dying
You’ll find that trauma can rewire the brain. Do the above descriptions sound familiar to you?
However, if we’ve been threatened or someone close to us has been threatened with bodily harm or sexual violence, this can be considered PTSD if four basic symptoms continue longer than a month:
- You keep having reverberating memories of the event in the form of dreams, images, or body reactions.
- You go out of your way to avoid situations that remind you of the event. This might be avoiding a highway or highways around it after you’ve had a car accident, or avoiding the sounds of airports if you’ve seen a helicopter crash, and so on. You avoid situations where you hear, see, or sense reminders of the trauma.
- You have changes in how your thoughts work, your mood functions, and your body functions after the event. Your memory is like a fog. You can’t remember events. You may feel like you’re out of your body, you dissociate, and as a result you may have a distorted memory of events. You may either blame yourself or you blame the world. You may start to withdraw from activities. You may feel numb or detached from loved ones. And somehow, that overall dulling in your brain makes it hard for you to experience love, joy, and satisfaction.
4. Last but not least, your body remains keyed up after the trauma with norepinephrine, that adrenal gland stress hormone, which causes you to be jumpy, reactive, and hyper vigilant; your muscles will tighten, and you’ll get exhausted. This also makes it hard for you to focus, pay attention, and, yes, fall asleep. Your jumpiness and moodiness may make you more likely to have anger outbursts, causing problems with your relationships, your job, or you’re functioning as a whole.
Please seek medical treatment for your condition and Continue your medication as prescribed by your Doctors.
We ONLY provide alternative therapy that goes hand in hand with your medical treatment.
Meditation, creative visualization & soul work is offered to you by us. We hold safe space for our client as he/she journeys on to healing.
If you recognize any of these symptoms & want someone to walk with you on your journey, please contact us.