Trauma
Online Counselling for Trauma
Why should we reprocess traumatic experience? Can one time trauma develop into post-traumatic stress disorder? What is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)?
People might think post-traumatic disorder develops only in soldiers or war survivors. As a matter of fact, traumatic experiences affect everyone and they can develop post-traumatic disorder. So what is a traumatic experience?
It can be experiencing or witnessing extreme, tragic or terrifying situations that cause significant psychological disturbance. It is an event or events that leave an unprepared person with frightening memories, persistent thoughts and emotional distress.
An example of one time traumatic event might be surviving a car accident, being attacked by a robber or being raped. Traumatic events for instance are having a violent father, being harassed, living with an abusive partner. Traumatic stress response is reaction to those events. Traumatic stress response is triggered when a person unexpectedly and abruptly loses security, becomes vulnerable and intensively perceives “dangerous world”.
Not naturally recovering from trauma
Any person experiences traumatic stress response and as time passes people naturally recover. However, recovery sometimes might take few months under normal circumstances. Some people might have pre-trauma conditions and they don’t recover naturally from a traumatic event. They experience terrifying memories or flash backs. The red flags of not naturally recovering from trauma can be irrational avoidance, apprehension, panic attacks, sleepless nights and nightmares, and a range of physiological symptoms such inability to focus or remember. They develop a sense of constant danger, disconnection from people or inability to trust. These are the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.
How to recover from trauma
Some factors that prevent recovery from trauma relate to beliefs, ways of thinking, behavioural reactions to re-experiencing, and copying mechanism. People might refuse to talk about traumatic experience because of blame, shame or humiliation.These feelings can multiply and repeat and people who don’t recover naturally notice changes in themselves and in relationships. Other aspects of their life can be affected es well. For instance they might feel unworthy, even feeling guilty of living if they witnessed or experience event with death such as soldiers or accident survivors. Other psychological and biological factors critically impact a course of recovery or development of PTSD.
We should remember that physical harm, bodily injury, also triggers traumatic stress response including emotional reactions. People have various psychological conditions that help to recover from trauma easily or develop PTSD. We should know ourselves and be aware what traumatizing events we experienced. Online counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy are effective non-medical treatments for trauma.