Specialization
What is PTSD?
It’s exactly as it sounds post - after traumatic event a stress disorder that continues on ...
PTSD can be diagnosed to anyone over the age of 6, and all that needs to happen is that we have been in a situation that made us feel like our life was in danger. A lot of people may experience trauma differently, and it can be life threatening.
Symptoms:
Having flashbacks also dissociative reactions. Next would be persistence avoidance of stimuli associated with the traumatic events. Like (i.e.) let’s say people witness somebody killing themselves jumping off a bridge, they won’t go on any bridge or that particular bridge for the longest time. Because it reminds them of the traumatic event. It’s very stressful and can also trigger some flashbacks.
There are also negative alterations in cognitions, and mood associated with the traumatic event, like they won’t be able to remember specifics. A lot of people struggle to remember what really happened. The duration has to be at least one month. And all disorders have this, clinically significant distress or impairment, in social or occupational or important areas of functioning.
The treatment is just like any other stress disorder, or any anxiety disorder. But there is a trauma focused cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
With PTSD, they gradually expose you to thoughts, feelings, and situations that remind you of the trauma.
There's also family therapy which i need to emphasize in general. PTSD or any mental illness does not just affect you but for family to know that you're going through and working what you’re working on, and them to be working on things too, can create a much better and more healthy and communicative family situation.
Also - Medication can be prescribed for those who suffer with PTSD, because they also suffer from anxiety and depression on top of the PTSD symptoms. PTSD leads to a lot of other issues and so medications can help.
And EMDR - eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. Processes to kind of reprogram the way that your brain thinks about the event that happened and help you heal from the trauma.
So if you think you're struggling with PTSD, if you think you've been in a traumatic situation, please see a professional and get properly diagnosed. And know that there are many treatment options.
You are not alone; this is something that you can overcome with help. Do not underestimate your strength.
How is it different from PTSD?
This is something to think, because if we're in repeated trauma versus one trauma situation how does our mind process it differently?
Why is it different? Why do we need a new diagnosis? Well i am not the one for a lot of diagnosis, but veteran's administration (VA) and the Centre for PTSD lobbed to get this diagnosis but the APA did not agree.
Now the first is emotion regulation.
So people suffering with complex - PTSD may feel extremely overwhelmed with emotions all of a sudden, really quickly. All of sudden they're very angry and aggressive.
There is consciousness.
They completely blackout or forget the traumatic events and then many times it will switch over and then they'll be reliving them as if they're right back there. A lot of people dissociate, which is also component of regular PTSD. But the complete blackouts, the forgetting, isn't as common.
Another is self-perception.
They'll feel hopeless. They're embarrassed. They have so much shame about the fact that they're struggling, that they feel like they cant incorporate back into life. They dont know how to have relationships, communicate with people, connect with people.
The difference with complex is that they work a lot on interpersonal difficulties.
The distrust, the focus potentially on revenge is high.
We work a lot on that. And how the treatment differs. There's a lot of relation work. Theres a lot of couples or family work that's integrated in to this, because when someone has repeated trauma it can be really hard for them and the love to get back into their relationships that they had before the trauma started happening.
So, why does this happen? What is this? What do we do? Whats the treatment like?
Its pretty much the same as PTSD where we do alot of reintegration into situations that may be triggering. That may trigger any kind of flashbacks or dissociation. We ground ourselves. Its a progressive treatment. We do it little by little and dont let you fix this and figure it out by ur selves.
Its a progressive therapy and we need to understand about complex-PTSD and how different is it from regular PTSD, because its important for people to feel understood
What is TRAUMA
Trauma is defined, not in the event, but a person's response after an event. And it could be one big event or a small event that overwhelms a person's capacity to cope. So we might be traumatize, for one person it might not necessarily be traumatizing to another.
Why and how? What is that overwhelm really about?
Because sometimes people think something is wrong with them that they were overwhelmed and then there's a lot of blame, guilt, and embarrassment and all sort of stuff that can go...
So when you are in that SDMHCC zone your system might feel the change associated with having to meet the challenge of your day.
The change would be like being stimulated. Stressed.
There's a certain level of stress,(eg) its stressful to get to work on time. There's a certain amount of stress that activates our system to meet the challenges of the day, and then which is part of that change, but then our system balances it out with some relaxation / restoration. So we see this wave of change and discharge that would be called our SDMHCC zone.
What is trauma therapy? What is SDMHCC and more importantly, what is the goal of trauma therapy?
Trauma is when we are bumped out of our resilient zone. Which means we do not have the tools to calm ourselves back down.
The whole goal of trauma therapy is to practice bringing our self out of fight, flight or freeze and back into the resilient zone.
The better we get at it, the longer our resilient zone gets. Then we are able to handle more and more stress without getting thrown off our resilient zone.
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