How to overcome PTSD from an Austin Trauma Therapist
PTSD makes you feel alone, like your watching your life instead of participating in it. You world gets smaller and smaller. Working with an Austin trauma therapist can help you ease back into your life and feel like yourself again.
Jane was at a party with friends on a Friday night. Someone had created a Spotify playlist that was being blasted through a Bluetooth speaker. A popular song came on and Jane, who just moments before had been enjoying herself, visibly changed. Seemingly out of nowhere, Jane stopped talking. She looked like a statue. She abruptly left the party without explanation, leaving her friends thoroughly confused.
Jim hits the floor every time he hears a loud noise.
Sally can’t stand to be touched. By anyone. A stranger brushes against her accidentally in the grocery store and she practically jumps out of her skin.
What is going on with these people? Are they just crazy? Or weird?
All of the above-mentioned behaviors could indicate Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Although this condition makes its sufferers feel incredibly isolated, an estimated 8 million adults have PTSD in any given year (National Center for PTSD, 2020.)
What does PTSD look like?
The first criterion of a PTSD diagnosis is the event itself. The event is defined as one or more of the following: exposure to actual or threatened death, exposure to actual or threatened serious injury, or sexual violence. A person can directly experience the event, see it happen to another person, learn that it happened to a loved one, or be repeatedly exposed in the line of work (police officers, reporters, etc.)
Most people who experience trauma will have some PTSD symptoms following the event. If the symptoms are lingering after a month, a PTSD diagnosis may be warranted.
PTSD symptoms are so troublesome that eventually people stop doing anything that triggers the symptoms. Avoidance is a way to achieve this but comes at a cost.
The symptoms fall into four clusters:
Intrusive symptoms: reliving the experience in the form of flashbacks, nightmares, or intrusive thoughts. These symptoms intensify when a person is bored, trying to relax, or trying to fall asleep.
Arousal symptoms: intense emotions, distractibility, reckless behavior, and an exaggerated startle response.
Impact on mood and outlook: Shame, guilt, blaming oneself for what happened, and feeling hopeless about the future.
Avoidance: Doing everything possible to not think about what happened. This can take the form of substance abuse, never leaving the house, or staying so busy there is never any time to relax and experience the other symptoms.
Avoidance makes sense and can be highly adaptive. It also keeps a person stuck in PTSD.
Is PTSD a new thing?
PTSD as a clinical diagnosis came onto the scene in 1980 in DSM-III. However, it seems PTSD has been impacting humans for millennia.
The earliest documented appearance of something resembling PTSD appears in Vedic literature dating back to 5000 BCE. In Ramayana, a man hit and nearly killed by an arrow displays symptoms of hyperarousal, re-experiencing the event, and avoidance. Some have also speculated that Achilles in Homer's Iliad and Job in The Bible were suffering from PTSD as well.
In modern times, many soldiers returned home from fighting in the US Civil War and drank heavily or attempted suicide. These soldiers were said at the time to be suffering from "soldiers heart" or "irritable heart" but today would probably receive a PTSD diagnosis. WWI brought us the term "shell-shocked" and WWII "combat fatigue." The ailment of hysteria as described by Freud and Pierre Janet in the 19th century was almost assuredly PTSD.
In the realm of fiction, Slaughterhouse-Five, with its main character who gets unstuck in time, might have been influenced by Kurt Vonnegut's own experience as a German POW. In The Lion King, Simba witnesses the death of his father and blames himself for most of his life. He displays avoidance by running away from the Prideland and convinces himself he is over it. It isn’t until he is forced to return and face his Uncle Scar that he truly gets his life back. In Frozen, where Elsa inadvertently harms her sister, Anna, she reacts by concealing rather than feeling.
What are Common Misconceptions about PTSD?
There are many misconceptions about PTSD. An Austin trauma therapist sheds some light on the topic.
1) PTSD is only seen in combat veterans.
PTSD was first identified in this group but, eventually, professionals started noticing similar traits in clients who had never seen war. It makes sense if one considers the similarities between a violent household and a war zone: unpredictability, lack of control, and constant fear of bodily injury or death.
2) Everyone who experiences trauma gets PTSD.
Just about everyone who experiences a traumatic event will experience some PTSD symptoms right after and for a short amount of time, especially intrusive symptoms and hypervigilance. Many of these people will recover naturally and need no treatment at all. Only some will go on to develop PTSD.
3) If a person develops PTSD, they are weak or broken.
Debunking the #2 myth seems to then invite this one. Someone might think "if PTSD doesn't happen to everyone, then it must mean I am weak because I did develop it." Experts are still learning why some develop PTSD and others don't but most likely it is not because some are just broken or weak. Early-life adversity seems to have more of an impact than adversity later in life because it happens to a developing brain. Being in an invalidating environment (an environment where you are told your feelings are bad or wrong) makes recovery very difficult. There may be brain differences between groups (one example is a variation in the length of alleles of a gene that regulates serotonin, with shorter versions making someone more susceptible to depression and PTSD.)
4) Everyone with PTSD is violent.
This myth applies pretty broadly to other mental illnesses as well, not just to PTSD. The condition is characterized by the most extreme cases. Some people will think they can't have PTSD because they are functioning in society and not constantly, say, fighting or damaging property. PTSD is characterized by avoidance. Avoidance may take the form of being more "out of control" like drinking or self-injuring but can also look more socially acceptable, in the cases of hyper-performing at work or care-taking others to the exclusion of one’s own needs.
5) If a person's trauma seems comparatively less than another person's, the first person should not have PTSD.
This belief comes up when PTSD is treated in a group format. Frequently, at least one person will wonder if they really need or deserve to be in a treatment program for PTSD because their trauma "just wasn't as bad as others." I typically respond by asking that person what the optimal amount of lifetime trauma is, to which they usually reply "none." I then ask if they have had more than "none" trauma in their lifetime. I also highlight the inaneness of trying to create a rubric to measure "badness of trauma.”
6) A person must experience trauma directly to get PTSD.
Direct experience is one way to get PTSD but it is not the only route. A person can also get PTSD if he or she witnesses an event (seeing one person harm another person), learns about an event (finding out a friend committed suicide), or is repeatedly exposed to trauma and cannot look away (a war reporter would count, a person who chose to binge-watch war coverage would not.)
Is PTSD just something a person has to live with?
My clients say, again and again, that they feel lighter after this work is done. Work with an Austin trauma therapist to unload the burden of your PTSD.
Absolutely not! PTSD is highly treatable. The two most evidence-based treatments for PTSD are Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Prolonged Exposure (PE). I offer Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) which usually runs 12 sessions. This type of therapy is well-suited to people with high levels of shame, blame, and guilt regarding trauma. It primarily challenges that person’s faulty cognitions about why trauma happened and how the person views themselves, others, and the world. Beliefs tend to become polarized after trauma and CPT helps find more flexibility and a middle path. For example, a person may believe they have to trust everybody with everything or trust nobody with nothing. A goal for this person might be finding ways to trust some people with some things and other people with other things. As the self-blame is challenged, shame and guilt can drop precipitously.
An Austin trauma therapist
If you are looking for an Austin trauma therapist, I offer CPT. Click here to learn more.