|
||
The symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder usually occur within three months of the traumatic event, although sometimes the disorder does not develop until several years after the initial trauma. Once the symptoms start, they may fade away again within one to six months. However, the symptoms may continue for much longer, and in some cases, the problem may become chronic.
On of the most troubling symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder is the development of flashbacks that cause the survivor to relive a traumatic event. Flashbacks can be triggered by sounds, smells, feelings, or images. During a flashback, the sufferer may completely lose touch with reality, believing that the traumatic event is occurring all over again. Flashbacks can last for minutes or even hours.
People who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder also often experience avoidance and arousal symptoms. Avoidance symptoms include an inability to remember the event, a conscious desire to avoid discussing the event, an inability to feel or express emotions, or an impending sense of doom. Arousal symptoms involve difficulty concentrating, over active startle reactions, moodiness, tendency towards violence, ad memory problems.
Other common symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder include hyper alertness, fear and anxiety, nightmares, anger and irritability, guilt, depression, increased substance abuse, pessimistic outlook, and decreased sexual activity.
In addition to the above symptoms, children with post traumatic stress disorder may experience learning disabilities and memory or attention problems. They may also become more dependent, anxious, or even self-abusing.
Diagnosing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
The diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder involves the presence avoidance and arousal symptoms as well as at least one of the following intrusive symptoms:
1. Flashbacks
2. Sleep Disorders: Difficulty sleeping, nightmares, night terrors
3. Intense anxiety triggered by events associated with the trauma
Treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Emergency Care: For those who have just been exposed to a traumatic event, immediate intervention is necessary to ensure their mental and physical survival. Protection from further danger, treatment of physical injuries, food, shelter, water, clothing, and reconnection with loved ones or an immediate social network can help survivors recover from a traumatic event.
Relaxation Techniques: Learn how to relax by practicing meditation and breathing techniques. This can help you manage flashbacks and clear the mind of disturbing images associated with post traumatic stress disorder.
Get Connected: Although the tendency may be to withdraw, it is important to stay connected with friends and family members as you recover from post traumatic stress disorder. Also, consider joining a support group where you can meet other people who have been involved in traumatic experiences and learn new methods for handling your condition.
Drama Therapy: Re-enacting the event through drama therapy may be an effective way for survivors of post traumatic stress disorders to work through the emotions and triggers of the traumatic event.
Therapy: There are several types of therapy that may be useful in the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder.
Cognitive Therapy: This method focuses on the repetitive review of traumatic events and identification of negative behaviors and thoughts. In theory, cognitive therapy allows sufferers to change their reactions to stresses and relieve the symptoms of stress.
Group Therapy: Group therapy allows survivors of a traumatic event such as war or childhood abuse to reconnect with a social network. It may be helpful in decreasing psychological distress, depression, and anxiety among post traumatic stress disorder sufferers.
Natural Medicine: Some well known natural remedies for PTSD:
~ Lithium Orotate ~ Sam-E ~ Oxy-Powder ~ DMAE ~ MACA ~ Rhodiola ~
Can be special ordered through http://www.ghchealth.com.
Coping With Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
For many survivors of a traumatic event, the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder will never completely go away. They will diminish, allowing the survivor to resume daily activities and enjoy life again, but a trigger of the traumatic event may cause some of the symptoms to reoccur. Recovery may lead to fewer reactions and reactions that are less intense. But it is important for sufferers of post traumatic stress disorder to learn how to cope with these reactions so that they can get past more quickly and effectively. Coping methods include talking about the traumatic event and finding ways to distract yourself from stressful triggers.
Talk It Out: Strengthen your social network of close family and friends so that you will have people to turn to if you feel stress coming on. Also, connect with other survivors that can empathize and offer suggestions for help.
Distraction: Learn what activities can distract you from stress if you know a situation is likely to trigger a stressful response.
Learn more about stress, anxiety, depression and the newest natural remedies at .
When it happens that the heart, mind, and body become overloaded with negative impressions concerning events that they are subject to while in a state of helplessness or necessary conformity to the circumstances at hand, then conditions are ripe for the inner disorder that has come to be known as 'post traumatic stress disorder' (PTSD).
PTSD is not primarily a disorder of the mind, though it may appear as such, but rather a disorder of the heart that no longer feels capable of dealing with the helplessness that it has had no way of preventing. This helplessness, while in a state of moderate intensity, can produce a numbing of all the emotions of heart and body so that one can live through the experience. But when conditions change and the external situation is no longer present or no longer as stressful, or, when numbing is no longer effective, then the release of what has been encapsulated can occur without any warning, and suddenly, what was a successful way of coping with distress, becomes unsuccessful.
PTSD is not a disease of the body. Nor is it a disease of the mind. Rather, it is a symptom of the limitation of a heart that has been stretched to its limit in order to regulate the emotions of fear, confusion, rage, and helplessness brought about by a circumstance or circumstances that it could not prevent. Under normal conditions, the heart has a way of taking instruction from the mind so that it receives guidelines about what to believe about such circumstances and how to hold them in a way that gives them believability and credibility. But under the circumstance of severe and ongoing trauma or of a single traumatic incident of great intensity, the heart no longer believes that there is any explanation that is credible for what it is feeling or perceiving, and no longer knows how it will survive the need to continue enduring what cannot be explained. This is a perception of the heart rather than the mind, for the mind may hold explanations, but these do not appear to make a difference to the heart.
Often, one who has experienced severe trauma - whether on a battlefield, in a violent or cruel relationship, as a victim of sudden brutality, terror, or horror, or, as a witness of severe violence done to others - first becomes numb to these circumstances as a way of turning down the volume of nervous system overload that is a result of the situation. However, when numbing is not possible, either because the situation continues without let-up at the same high level of intensity and the body's fear responses are continuously activated, or, because the sense of disbelief and shock have already taken hold, and one has already begun to feel that nothing makes sense, symptoms of PTSD can begin to be observed.
The violence and horror that are the general precursors to PTSD can occur in many forms. They can occur through one's own being the subject of cruelty, abuse, or horror, or they can occur through witnessing someone else or a group of others in this role. The heart, having come to the end of its capacity to tolerate the pain of its own experience, begins to look for ways to compensate for the amount of distress it is feeling so that its very survival can continue.
The spiritual context in which PTSD develops is an outgrowth of the emotional, for the powerful emotional resonance of PTSD produces a separation of the lower emotional body from the higher, so that an infusion of light from the higher Self which might otherwise transform the situation and make it more bearable, becomes difficult or impossible. For many who experience traumatic situations, the experience, in retrospect, is one in which the individual does not know how they got through it, feeling that something unknown took over that made survival possible. This 'something' is often a transfusion of spiritual energy from the higher energy bodies into the heart center so that more capacity exists to deal with the present circumstances. Such a transfusion of light occurs in many instances of difficulty for individuals, for each soul who is severely challenged in life is being helped from the soul level of their being as well as by other beings of light who may be assisting. Nevertheless, where the heart has become enveloped with its own pattern of resonance with energies of terror, despair, confusion, anger or helplessness, it can happen that the higher bodies cannot gain access to the level of the physical self in order to further self-healing. As a result, the physical self who experiences the results of trauma can come to feel that there is no way to relieve it.
There are many forms of treatment that have been refined, today, for post traumatic stress disorder, and also many who are in need of this help. The spiritual incorporation of greater light into the body and heart would add to these, the possibility for creating a bridge of light and healing so that the woundedness of the heart could be held in a different energy than the one it is presently resonating with. This practice of alignment with the higher levels of oneself, carried out regularly, can serve the purposes of healing, enabling many more to find their way back from traumatic situations than can occur at the present time. It is also true that in a future in which such separation of energy bodies might take place, there would be enough transmitted light so that the seamless reconstruction of the pathways between upper and lower bodies could take place as a normal part of the maintenance processes of the entire spiritual-physical being.
For now, both the current ways of addressing PTSD and the incorporation of light from the spiritual dimension are effective means of addressing the healing needs of PTSD, the latter by increasing the joining of the physical self with the self-of-light so that a new energy can enter the picture and alter the disabling conditions from within. Until such time as changes on the world scene make this disorder a thing of the past, 'post traumatic stress disorder' will best be viewed as a spiritual-emotional disorder related to the time we are in, with dire consequences for the many who are suffering greatly from its effects.