What is PTSD and how can if affect your life and relationships?
PTSD is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which can be caused by any situation that a person finds traumatic (the aftereffects of a traumatic experience). Common experiences that it is associated with are child abuse, road accidents, individuals from the army – who have experienced traumatic events, physical attacks (these are a very small number of examples).
PTSD must be diagnosed and should never just be assumed that someone is has it, as anyone who suffers from PTSD will tell you, it is not something that should be taken lightly. The effects of PTSD can manifest themselves in various ways, people can suffer from depression, avoidance of emotions, nightmares, anxiety and panic attacks, flashbacks (to name but a few). PTSD can also affect relationships with family, friends and partners, it can also affect your job as people may turn to alcohol or drugs to cope with the symptoms.
Talking with people if you are suffering is important, support groups are a good way for someone with PTSD to not feel isolated or alone, it is important that people suffering from PTSD do not isolate themselves or feel alone. Often people feel there is no way out or that there is no help for the way they are feeling. This is not the case. You do have someone/somewhere you can turn to. It may not be a family member or a friend as you feel they may not understand what you are going through as they haven’t experienced the trauma that you have, but there are others who have and there is a vast number of support groups around to help people, so no one should ever feel they have to suffer alone.
The current situation that we are all going through in the world is having an adverse effect on many people’s mental health. We have come to cope with the new normal and the thought of having to go back to old normal life again is causing major anxiety for so many people. The trauma of having our lives turned upside down, not knowing what was ahead of us or if we would make it through this has caused a lot of anxiety in people around the world. Many people have lost loved ones during the pandemic and not being able to say goodbye has left them feeling traumatized. This is understandable but there are ways to combat all of this, which is good news. There have been many different often conflicting stories reported around the world which have left us unsure what to believe. But, If we can listen to the media and tell ourselves negative things are going to happen, we can also do the opposite as this is also true. We can now start to tell ourselves positive things about the future.
What do we want to come out of all of this and what do we want for ourselves going forward? We can do this if we are suffering from trauma or not. We have choices to make for ourselves going forward, let’s start to decide what these are and what would we like to work towards? This is true of any situation. If you are suffering with the trauma of the last couple of years or if you are suffering from any other traumas or anxiety. Do you want to take this forward in your life, or would you like to work towards being free from this?
I have worked with clients suffering from PTSD and CBH is very effective for PTSD. Once again, it all starts with getting to know the client, what they want for themselves, what they want to set themselves free from and make a plan to start working together to help them achieve this. PTSD symptoms are often similar to other symptoms that people are suffering from, and they have also used CBH as a method to help achieve a lasting resolution. It is time for us all to start moving forward with our lives and deciding what we want for the future when this is all over. If we think about it really, it’s actually quite exciting. I know I am very excited about what the future holds when we all come through this.
It’s time for us to take our lives back and decide what we want for our future!
