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Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
By
Karin Hiebert |
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“What Is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?”
“What treatment options are available?”
“Staying in the present”
“How P.T.S.D. affects our lives”
Stress And Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Stress disorders can take the form of acute stress disorder or posttraumatic stress disorder.
Acute Stress Disorder
Acute stress disorder is a brief period of intrusive recollections occurring very soon after a witnessed or experienced overwhelming traumatic event.
In acute stress disorder, the person has been through a traumatic event, has recurring recollections of the trauma, avoids stimuli that remind him of the trauma, and has increased arousal. Symptoms begin within 4 wk of the traumatic event and last a minimum of 2 days but, unlike posttraumatic stress disorder, last no more than 4 wk. A person with this disorder experiences 3 or more dissociative symptoms: a sense of numbing, detachment, or absence of emotional responsiveness; reduced awareness of surroundings (eg, being dazed); a feeling that things are not real; a feeling that he is not real; or amnesia for an important part of the trauma.
Many people recover once they are removed from the traumatic situation and shown understanding, empathy, and an opportunity to describe what happened and their reaction to it. Some experts recommend systematic debriefing to assist those who were involved in or witness to the traumatic event as they process what has happened and reflect on its effect. In one approach to debriefing, the event is referred to as the critical incident and the debriefing is referred to as critical incident stress debriefing (CISD). Other experts have expressed concern that CISD may be not be as helpful as supportive, empathic interviewing and may be quite distressful for some patients.
Drugs to assist sleep may help, but other drugs are generally not indicated.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Posttraumatic stress disorder is recurring, intrusive recollections of an overwhelming traumatic event. The pathophysiology of the disorder is incompletely understood.
Symptoms also include avoidance of stimuli associated with the traumatic event, nightmares, and flashbacks. Diagnosis is based on history. Treatment consists of exposure therapy and drug therapy.
When terrible things happen, many people are lastingly affected; in some, the effects are so persistent and severe that they are debilitating and constitute a disorder. Generally, events likely to evoke posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are those that invoke feelings of fear, helplessness, or horror.
These events might include experiencing serious injury or the threat of death or witnessing others being seriously injured, threatened with death, or actually dying.
Lifetime prevalence approaches 8%, with a 12-mo prevalence of about 5%.
Symptoms, Signs, and Diagnosis
Most commonly, patients have frequent, unwanted memories replaying the triggering event. Nightmares of the event are common. Much rarer are transient waking dissociative states in which events are relived as if happening (flashback), sometimes causing the patient to react as if in the original situation (eg, loud noises such as fireworks might trigger a flashback of being in combat, which in turn might cause a person to seek shelter or prostrate himself on the ground for protection).
The person avoids stimuli associated with the trauma and often feels emotionally numb and disinterested in daily activities. Sometimes the onset of symptoms is delayed, occurring many months or even years after the traumatic event. PTSD is considered chronic if present > 3 mo. Depression, other anxiety disorders, and substance abuse are common in people with chronic PTSD.
In addition to trauma-specific anxiety, patients may experience guilt because of their actions during the event or because they survived when others did not.
Diagnosis is clinical based on criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV).
Treatment
If untreated, chronic PTSD often diminishes in severity without disappearing, but some people remain severely handicapped. The primary form of psychotherapy used, exposure therapy, involves exposure to situations that the person avoids because they may trigger recollections of the trauma
I will speak on my experience with post trauma.
I have found that the best treatment options for me have not been the route of medications. Although they do help with sleep or when falling into a depression due to the overwhelming of thoughts and perhaps the depression caused by being unable to work or function some medications have been helpful.
However the biggest thing for me was to stay in the moment.
We all have the ability to become aware of our thoughts and shift our thoughts to the present moment, or on future goals, keeping our minds off of the incoming flashback, or invading memory.
The moment we are triggered and a flashback begins to occur one of the more useful coping skills is to stop the thought process and do a little “thought” shifting.
There are a number of ways to do this and I will mention a few,
One is to stop yourself and tell yourself, you are in the here and now.
That this is not occurring in the present, and the present is a good place to be. Look around you immediately and be grateful for people, places or things around you, even if it is to notice the toaster and be grateful for it.
By doing this a number of things will change.
The thought is interrupted and shifted onto something present and pleasant.
I used to have a flashback, a memory, and I would stare off into space “recalling” the traumatic event.
I would feel, see, smell, and be in “shock” at what else I would remember about the incident in which I was “thinking about”
Eventually I would “snap” out of it, although it often left me drained, depressed and unable to go about my day…often going to bed, crying for the little girl who was abused so horrifically, and realizing this was all happening to ME.
The realization of what I went thru kept me in a very depressed state, and at time it would take days or weeks to recover from the post trauma.
Of course lying in bed, “thinking” about it, only brought on more “thinking about it!”
I have learned from some outstanding therapy, and let me tell you I have had some very bad therapy in my past…that there are ways of thought shifting.
Sometimes it is as simple as walking over and lighting a candle, looking at a picture of my children or my grandchild.
This immediately puts me in the present.
This is by no way denying the abuse or the trauma, it is about understanding and knowing it is “not happening in the now” and the now is pleasant, and I am grateful for it!
The more I am grateful for things, or people in my life, the more comes into my life to be grateful for.
This gives me a whole lot more to think about, and to look forward to, rather than look backward at!
Hypnosis, medications, recalling and reliving the events, talking about it in therapy or group session, simply did not work for me. I spent years in that sort of “treatment” and believe me, it wasn’t working…at least not for me!
This new therapy, or treatment option, has worked so well that I cannot remember the last time I took to my bed in depression and was unable to function.
Having a project such as this one, helping others, creating a positive new life for myself and others in teaching, coaching, and moving in a forward direction is what has been working and still is.
I can sit here and type about it, and even thinking as I type, and share of my experience is not the least bit upsetting or triggering!
And if it did produce thoughts of my past, I would now know what to do to stop the thoughts from taking over my day, my week, or my life.
Share this with anyone you know who experiences post trauma.
This information is for all of us, no matter what trauma or “war” we were in, or exposed to, no matter how big or small our trauma was, this is valuable information!
If you have any questions, comments or concerns feel free to leave your comment or email me personally at karinhiebert@gmail.com
Here are a few helpful links which may also help…
http://www.karinhiebert.com/
http://www.freewebs.comtheprocessoflife/
http://www.myspace.com/karin4mykids
http://www.squidoo.com/karinhiebert
http://www.youtube.com/karinhiebert
Author's Bio
Karin Hiebert is a success skills expert, a life coach, and business trainer, as well as one of the worlds top rnowned hairstyists.
Karin has had and lived with post traumatic stress disorder, and dissociative disorder for most of her life.
The war she fought and lived with strated at the age of 6 and continued on into her late teens.
After years of treatment options, Karin, now a 49 year young mother, grandmother and life coach has learned and now teaches coping skills and coping tools to the many who suffer thru this horrific illness.
Using thought shifting, and the laws of attraction and quantum thinking, the tools Karin Shares are valuable and an important part of healing.
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