Trauma and PTSD
What is PTSD, and How Do You Treat It?
Pregnancy announcements. Fireworks. Champagne toasts.
For many people, these words signify happy times and celebration. They usually indicate a positive event, holiday, or milestone.
However, for many others, these things elicit feelings of trauma. They may even trigger symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, such as flashbacks or panic attacks.
In that case, what are you supposed to do?
What is PTSD?
Anyone can experience post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. The most common example used involves soldiers returning from war and having unresolved trauma from their time on the battlefield. Veterans, especially of older wars, often have trouble sleeping, trouble socializing, issues with loud noises, and recurrent episodes stemming from their internal trauma and fear when presented with similar stimuli.
Car horns. Burning smells. A man yelling. These are common enough in everyday life that you may experience them daily, tuning them out when they occur. However, like the examples above, for many people, these stimuli induce traumatic flashbacks or severe anxiety episodes.
Our senses are very powerful. Any smell, sound, texture, flavor, or sight is capable of transporting you back to the best or worst moments in your life.
What Triggers PTSD?
PTSD is triggered by stimuli that remind you of your trauma, causing you to relive the traumatic event or time period repeatedly. This can be very hard or impossible to control, and can cause intense fear, anxiety, and it may even exacerbate health conditions like heart and blood pressure problems.
People with PTSD have to be mindful of their triggers in everything they do and experience, and still can’t prevent everything. TV shows and movies often show fictionalized sexual assaults, child abuse, domestic violence, murders, and more.
For the average viewer, this is normal for their entertainment choices. However, for those who have experienced something similar, these scenes can cause panic attacks, sleepless nights, flashbacks, and so much worse.
How Do You Treat PTSD?
Treatment for trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder involves trauma therapy and PTSD therapy. Sometimes, it may also require medication, and for many, it requires a bit of time.
Your brain does heal after trauma, though it can take a while, and it’s important to implement trauma therapy and mindfulness to ensure it heals correctly. This means that your brain must learn to overcome the memory, rather than pushing it down where it may fester into other conditions.
Some PTSD therapy (like EMDR) focuses on processing traumatic memories and reworking them into something manageable. Regardless of the specific strategy your therapist uses, it’s vital that you seek help and don’t postpone your mental healthcare.
A personal story from our Practice Manager, Kyndal Sims
For me, music has always been a trigger. As a music lover, I’m always listening to music, and I pride myself on the ability to remember where I was the first time I heard or resonated with a song — listening to it again always transports me back to those moments.
Unfortunately, there are now so many albums I can’t listen to anymore, because the time period I associate with listening to them was traumatic. A song will come on in the car and I will be transported back to those sick and painful feelings. I will relive the hard things I thought I had moved past.
This has prevented me from seeing some of my favorite artists in concert. It’s caused me to block some of my favorite songs from my phone, and to stop listening to artists that I used to love completely.
I’m very sound-oriented, so of course, my trauma is attached to audio.
Additionally, I have a friend who has to block from her social media anything related to pregnancy due to a traumatic event that she experienced. She’s never spiteful of the people who are celebrating a pregnancy, and she’s always happy for them whenever she’s around them.
However, due to a personal loss, she doesn’t want to be reminded every time she hops onto her phone. She’s even had to unfriend people for a while, and this has caused her to be anxious that they’ll take it the wrong way.
She isn’t jealous or hateful, just hurting. We all have things we don’t like to think about, and things we would rather not see. Treat everyone with kindness and understanding, and in turn, you’ll receive the same.
Treat Your Trauma with PTSD & Trauma Therapy from Birch Psychology
Overall, it’s important to be mindful that some of the things that are happy and positive for you can be the exact opposite for others. Instead of being angry about negative or strange responses, try to understand that they could have something else going on, and they may be unable to prevent their reactions.
Don’t let wounds from a traumatic event fester into something worse. And don’t carry the burden of your PTSD alone.
The experts at Birch Psychology are compassionate, caring, and understanding — in fact, many of us are in a better position to understand your feelings than you may realize. To start your journey towards mental wellness, schedule a consultation for trauma therapy or PTSD therapy today.
Kyndal Sims
Birch Psychology