Do you have PTSD?

If you witnessed or experienced an intense traumatic experience, such as an assault, natural disaster, combat, or car accident, you may be at risk for developing PTSD. It’s important to recognize early and address the symptoms of PTSD, so you can come to terms with a traumatic experience, begin the healing process, and get your life back on track.

How to recognize PTSD?

The most common symptoms of PTSD include anxiety and depression. However, they are by no means the whole picture. Along with anxiety and depression, you may re-experience the trauma through flashbacks and nightmares, have difficulty sleeping and concentrating, experience impulsive or self-destructive behavior, and become easily irritated.

However, sometimes the signs and symptoms of PTSD can be subtle and difficult to recognize. This can lead to you being misdiagnosed and not receiving proper treatment while experiencing symptoms you don’t understand and suffering on your own.

Emotional withdrawal and social anxiety as less obvious PTSD symptoms

Your fear of coming into contact with anything that reminds you of trauma can result in difficulties communicating and interacting with people. Also, feelings of detachment from others, social withdrawal, and isolation can be a sign of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Other atypical signs of PTSD can include drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, rapid weight loss, and severe migraines.

These symptoms do not have to occur immediately after you have survived the trauma. Sometimes people develop PTSD symptoms weeks or even months after a traumatic experience.

PTSD treatment

The main goal of PTSD therapy is to improve your symptoms, teach you coping skills, and restore your self-esteem. Most likely, a combination of medication and psychological therapies will be used to treat your PTSD. Most PTSD treatment options stem from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), with the goal of changing disturbing thought patterns that disrupt your everyday life.

The most common CBT practices used to treat PTSD include prolonged exposure therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), cognitive processing therapy, and stress inoculation training. EMDR therapy must be administered by someone who has received proper training in this type of treatment. This is a more specialized treatment method and can be highly effective.

Severe trauma can stay with you for your entire life. It’s like having your brain scarred by the event. Like most scars we suffer from, we learn to live with them and eventually ignore them and sometimes forget we have them. Proper treatment puts the traumatic event where it belongs…in the past, so you’re not constantly dealing with it in the present. This allows the individual to live a more normal, healthy and productive life.