Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Awareness 2021 28-06-2021
By: Margie Sánchez
June 27 is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Awareness Day, which helps recognize some of the symptoms, signs, and treatment options for this mental health disorder.
PTSD can affect anyone who experiences or witnesses a traumatic event. When a person develops PTSD, the event is persistently reexperienced in the form of intrusive memories, flashbacks or nightmares), the stimuli associated with trauma are avoided, there is dulling of the general reactivity and increased physiological activation (hypervigilance or startle reactions). The alterations cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of the person's functioning. Its prevalence in the general population is from 1 to 14% and increases to 58% in risk groups that are usually associated with other psychiatric disorders (Reyes, 2008).
It is important to highlight, as González (2010) argues, that there is a "post-traumatic spectrum" to refer to a continuum of disorders associated with trauma. Acute stress disorder (ASD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are located at one end of this continuum and at the other end of the continuum is dissociative identity disorder (IDD) from the lowest to the highest degree of dissociation and severity. Both include somatic disorders, other dissociative disorders, borderline personality disorder (BPD), and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (complex PTSD) or Extreme Stress Disorder (desnos). Complex PTSD will be included in the ICD (International Classification of Diseases) in its new edition, ICD-11, although it does not yet exist in the DSM.
On certain occasions, the traumatic experience is severe and/or continuous over time, of an interpersonal nature (sexual abuse, physical abuse, abandonment or emotional neglect) and usually suffered from an early age, in such a way that prolonged exposure to trauma conditions the development of the individual's personality. In these cases, complex PTSD may develop.
In addition to the typical symptoms of PTSD, alterations in 6 functional domains are linked: alterations in the regulation of affections and impulses (fear, sadness, anger and self-destructive behaviors), alterations in attention and consciousness (amnesia and dissociative episodes and de-personalization), alterations in self-perception (such as a chronic feeling of guilt, responsibility and feelings of shame chronic), alterations in the relationship with others (revictimization and difficulty in intimating), somatization and/or medical problems, as well as alterations in the system of meanings (hopelessness) (Herveia et al., 2017).
Trauma causes a rupture in emotional regulation systems, one part avoids traumatic memories and performs the functions of daily living, while another part reexperiences trauma and leads to defensive responses in response to specific memories of the traumatic event and in response to intense but neutral stimuli, such as loud noises (Van der Hart et al., 2006).
Van der Kolk (2016) emphasizes that trauma is not only an event that occurred at some point in the past; it is also the imprint left by an experience in the mind, brain and body. This imprint has consequences on the way in which the human organism manages to survive in the present, which usually hinders intimate relationships, desensitization towards itself and others, changes perception, hinders the ability to imagine, deregulation with the feeling that will never end.
As Navarro Góngora (2012) points out, traumatic experiences mark a message about people, about values, about certain aspects of life and about life in general. This message is nuanced by the circumstances of the crisis and the subject. The interesting thing about the message is that it may not be conscious on the one hand and, on the other, it is projected as a script on the subsequent life of the person that hinders the perception and relationship with oneself and with others.
However, as highlighted in the newly released film "The Wisdom of Trauma", underneath the traumatized person is a healthy individual who has not found a way to express himself.
In short, reprocessing trauma is the gateway to a more intimate and genuine way of life, in the recognition and acceptance of who we truly are and of everything that prevents us from becoming so (Hervías et al., 2017).
In this way, the approach has to do with helping people with PTSD to recover the feeling of being in charge of their lives, to reconnect with the forgotten story, accompanying and containing how painful it can be to face reality, but above all reconnect with the encapsulated identity, prey to pain. The body must learn that danger has already passed and live in the reality of the present. And from there, to feel your own body as a safe space to inhabit and be.
If you feel identified with any of these approaches, we are at your disposal to accompany you in the process of finding a safe space within you.
References:
- González Vázquez, A. (2010). Dissociative Disorders. Diagnosis and Treatment. Pleiades
- Hervías Higueras, P., Maroto Martín, L. and Benítez Alonso, M. (2017). Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder XVIII International Virtual Congress of Psychiatry. https://psiquiatria.com/trabajos/usr_1021907375208.pdf
- Navarro Góngora, J. (2012). Crisis intervention: concepts and procedures. Facultad de Psicología de Salamanca
- Reyes Ticas, J.A. (2008) Neurobiology of post-traumatic stress disorder. Journal of the Faculty of Medical Sciences, 5(2), 53-60. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras
- Van der Kolk, B. (2016). The body keeps track: brain, mind and body in overcoming trauma. ELEFTHERIA.
- Van der Hart, O., Nijenhuis, E.R.S. and Steele, K. (2006). The tormented self: structural dissociation and the treatment of chronic traumatization. Descleé de Brouwer.
