Getting Help with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PSTD) is a natural emotional response towards fear, stress, anxiety, or distressing events that cause serious harm to oneself or others. During PTSD, people feel a continuous sense of danger and past painful memories.
The most common reason that triggers Post-traumatic Stress Disorder in a person is a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. It is also mostly associated with those individuals who have personally experienced or witnesses disastrous or life threatening events such as car accidents, natural disasters, or sexual assault.
The symptoms of PTSD usually appear within three months of the event, and the person feels insomnia and many other diseases. In this condition, the patients immediately seek medical counselling because it is the best way to conquer the inside fear.
PTSD is a challenging mental health disorder to treat because it is stored in the entire brain. Evergreen Rehab & Wellness emphasizes the importance and priority of providing client-adjusted therapies as critical to successful treatments.
Want to book an appointment at Evergreen Rehab and Wellness Clinic? Call us at 604-449-5859 to find the best solution. We will help you make positive changes in your life.
What is PTSD (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder)?
When a person experiences any traumatic event (death of loved ones or sexual assault), it's normal to feel sad, anxious, and frightened. But if the feeling of sadness and anxiety doesn't fade after some days, there might be a chance that you have posttraumatic stress disorder. PTSD can be triggered by any event which develops a fear for your safety.
People who don't experience the traumatic event have way fewer chances of getting PTSD than those personally experienced. Whenever a person faces a traumatic situation, its nervous system reacts with fight and flight response. In response, your heartbeat increases, your blood pressure rises, your reaction speed boost, and your muscles tighten. When the situation ends, the nervous system calms your body by lowering the heartbeat rate, blood pressure, and relaxing muscles.
Sometimes people get so much stress during the event that their nervous system is confusing when the event ends and becomes unable to return your body mechanism to normal condition. This condition is known as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. The recovery process of PTSD consists of helping your nervous system come back to a normal state to control your body mechanics.
Four Types of PTSD symptoms
In most cases, PTSD appears in those who personally experienced the shocking, scary, and dangerous event. However, it can also occur in a person who has a relationship with a patient who has PTSD. Being a witness of a disastrous event is also a key to trigger PTSD in a person. Each person has different experiences and symptoms, although the following are four significant symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
- Re-experiencing Symptoms
Re-experiencing events are those in which the patient feels that he is reliving or facing that event. The most common examples of Re-experiencing symptoms are nightmares, bad memories, and flashbacks of the event. These symptoms can be seen from patients’ physical condition, especially in flashbacks condition, the patient can face heart attack and sweating. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, “Words, situations, or objects that are reminders of the event can also trigger re-experiencing symptoms.” - Cognitive Symptoms
Cognitive symptoms refer to negative thoughts about the world or oneself. These people don’t trust easily and are always doubtful about any person. According to the National Center for PTSD, “those experiencing cognitive symptoms may have difficulty trusting people and may find it hard to feel happy.” They feel guilt and blame for an event when they recall the situation. - Avoidance Symptoms
Avoidance symptoms are based on avoiding the person, place, or situation that may trigger PTSD in a patient. People with these symptoms try to avoid thinking or discussing the disastrous event and may change habits for this reason. He may change his friend’s company or any other thing which recalls the event in his mind. - Hyperarousal Symptoms
Hyperarousal symptoms are also known as reactivity symptoms; in these symptoms, the particular person is not triggered by a place, person, or situation; instead, the symptoms remain constant. The person can feel stress or anxiety and get angry quickly. People who face hyperarousal symptoms have difficulty sleeping and concentrating. There are chances that the person may be involved in unhealthy behaviours such as drinking alcohol or smoking.
How does Counselling Help in PTSD?
Counselling is an effective treatment for mental illness without any side effects and helps us feel satisfied with the medications. It helps people deal with their daily life problems and get their solutions without taking stress. Many studies and research revealed that counselling is a powerful and impressive treatment for trauma. It helps people deal with their fear problem and motivates people to develop confidence.
There are several benefits of counselling. It helps people to ease stress and give them a positive perspective to deal with problems. Counselling helps the people to disarm the fear gently to come over the feelings of trauma and threat. It impacts on your confidence level and allows you to become an extrovert.
Treatment
The treatment for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder is essential because if it is not treated on time, it can become scary and destabilize chaos. The following are some of the common treatments for PTSD.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a type of counselling and focuses on our way of thinking about how we look at the world and ourselves. Cognitive means how our negative thoughts contribute to our mind's fear level, and behavioral means how we behave in a situation that creates trauma. Cognitive Behavioral therapy treats feelings of a person such as anger, fear, and guilt. The therapist first analyzes your negative thoughts and teaches you how to deal with them and then replace them with real thoughts.
Exposure therapy
Exposure therapy means the therapist will expose the fear to you, and you will learn that there is no sensitivity in that fear. It helps to reduce fear and anxiety response. It is also known as systematic desensitization. In the therapy, the therapist will teach you about fear and then mildly expose those situations. You will conquer those challenges step by step and will learn how to relax in such conditions.
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing
It is a three-month treatment period in which your goal will be positive thinking. After this weekly session treatment, you will be able to think positively in the anxiety situation. It will help you to concentrate on the thing while watching or listening.
Want to book an appointment at Evergreen Rehab and Wellness Clinic? Call us at 604-449-5859 to find the best solution. We will help you make positive changes in your life.