Release PTSD
PTSD is the shortage of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. And yes you can heal from PTSD.
With PTSD you do not necessarily remember your traumas exactly, but you continue to behave like you are in danger. Memory loss is part of the criteria for PTSD. When people have PTSD, the body continues to defend against a threat that is in the past. Also, people with PTSD usually feel safer in their trauma memories than in the present moment, because the trauma memories give them a feeling of being alive, something that is almost impossible for them in the present moment. Healing from PTSD means being able to terminate this continued stress and leading your body back to feeling safe.
Ideally our stress hormone system should provide a lightning-fast-response to threat, but then quickly return us to equilibrium. In PTSD patients the stress hormone system fails, the response to threat is no longer short and goes back to normal, people with PTSD stay in their fight or flight or freeze mode even after the danger is over. Staying in stress mode can be expressed as panic, and in long term, weakens the people’s health. PTSD happens when you already have a baggage you are carrying around. PTSD is not the first baggage, it is a reaction to an earlier baggage. Find this earlier baggage and you can work on releasing the origin of your PTSD.
How the mind works with PTSD
“Numerous studies have found that people with PTSD have more general problems with focused attention and with learning new information.” - Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal
Gabor Maté cites a study in his book The Myth of Normal that is very interesting. I leave it here stand alone, think about it and let me know what you think. I am happy to talk with you about it.
“Dealing with traumatic memories is, however, just the beginning of treatment. Numerous studies have found that people with PTSD have more general problems with focused attention and with learning new information. Alexander McFarlane did a simple test: He asked a group of people to name as many words beginning with the letter B as they could in one minute. Normal subjects averaged fifteen words; those with PTSD averaged three or four. Normal subjects hesitated when they saw threatening words like “blood,” “wound,” or rape”; McFarlane’s PTSD subjects reacted just as hesitantly to ordinary words like “wool,” “ice cream,” and “bicycle.”
After a while most people with PTSD don’t spend a great deal of time or effort on dealing with the past – their problem is simply making it through the day. Even traumatized patients who are making real contributions in teaching, business, medicine, or the arts and who are successfully raising their children expend a lot more energy on the everyday tasks of living than do ordinary mortals.”
Yes, your brain changes when you have PTSD. That’s why the only thing you can do with PTSD is to work on your brain and find your way back to your body.
Symptoms of PTSD in adults
PTSD in adults can show in various ways. It can be that an adult with PTSD is feeling emotionally numb, has difficulty to feel positive emotions. It can almost feel like a depression too, however, the root of it is the PTSD and the underlying trauma.
Sleep difficulty, anger or rage, difficulty concentrating or self-destructive behavior like cutting or substance abuse are all symptoms of PTSD.
You can only get PTSD when you have been traumatized earlier already. There can be subtle small t-traumas I described under trauma that happen in childhood that make you the person you are and that make you an easy victim for another traumatic event that leads to PTSD.
There are many ways PTSD can show. If you see yourself in one of the symptoms, please talk to someone. If you want I am here for you.
