Better Mental Health.net
. . . Because You Can Feel Better

PTSD - Why Human Beings are Trauma Based

One day when we are little and curious, we stick our finger on the hot stove.  Yee Ouch!  Never do that again!

The emotional intensity and memory of that moment will stick with us forever.  Twenty years later, you might be cooking, see the burner and instantly remember that moment and the distress.  Maybe you'll even feel the desire to stay away from the stove?  "Trauma" like this is self-preserving.  If we didn't learn what was dangerous in our environment and avoid that danger later on, we might not have survived way back in the wild.  The conditioned response of see the stove - feel scared - want to be safe - decide to stay away from the stove, is an important lesson for our body to learn.  But what if the response when we see the stove is near panic?

Okay, most of us will never get diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress (PTSD) from the stove.  It will typically come from much more significant moments.  When humans experience a life and death or perceived life and death ordeal, or if we witness someone else experiencing these moments, this can imprint in our memory and create a lasting impression that leads to what may seem like a dysfunctional response.  In survival terms, when our body through sight, touch, taste, smell, or hear is reminded of a dangerous moment, our nervous system will shift into a flight or fight mode.  As far as your body is concerned, it is far better to overreact and live than to not react and die.

The problem is that sometimes our body will become hyper vigilant and generate a response that is problematic.  Symptoms of PTSD might be nausea, flashbacks, nightmares, numbing out, avoiding something that may remind you of the trauma and more. When this happens, your life is now curtailed because the symptoms take over.

There is a new unofficial version of PTSD called "Complex PTSD".  In this scenario the sufferer has experience trauma on a chronic basis, such as abuse.

Treating PTSD

This can sometimes include gentle exposure to the traumatic experience, often through talking about what happened.  Getting emotional and then having a counselor reframe what happened or have you see it differently can be helpful.  However there are some who believe that since your nervous system's response is a physiological response, talking and talking and re experiencing the emotions will only strengthen the mental, physical and emotional connection with the event.  This is why deeper work such as Emotional Freedom Technique and/or Lifespan Integration Therapy are gentler and often more powerful than talking.

How can you treat PTSD?

Anxiety is all about your thoughts.  Since a thoughts does not always equal reality (sometimes a thought is just a thought), anxiety can be beat when you can change your thinking.  PTSD is a deeper problem that medication can sometimes help.  However, working to strengthen your ability to calm yourself is a very useful technique and can eventually lead to significantly lower symptoms. 

This parallels some of the work you might do for anxiety.  Learning to question what you are witnessing and then learning to calm and soother yourself.  Yoga, meditation, changing your thoughts are good first steps.  About.com has a good resource page on treating PTSD. Any mindful work you do will most likely begin to decrease your symptoms.  The more aware you are of what is happening for you, the better you can manage your response.