Trauma
Domestic abuse, bullying at school or at work, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, difficult experiences during childhood.
Trauma
Trauma is the reaction to a very distressing and frightening event that overwhelms emotional resources that a person has for coping with difficult situations in life and interferes with different areas of people’s life.
Traumatic events can happen to anybody anytime. The longer we live the higher the possibility that we can experience trauma.
Trauma is not necessarily connected to only one event, sometimes it could be a number of small events that happen very close to each other and the time between each other did not allow the person to recover from a previous event when they then had to deal with a new situation.
A traumatic experience is not necessarily a situation that you were involved with. It could also be that you witness a situation, which you heard about in the news, or you heard about something very frightening from somebody you know, or somebody close to you has been affected by a traumatic experience, or you live in a traumatic environment. These can all lead to trauma.
Reaction to trauma varies from one person to another. Symptoms, how they develop and the length of time that they are present for also change between individuals.
Sometimes symptoms develop straight after the traumatic event but sometimes symptoms could develop years later.
Trauma can only be defined by the person who is experiencing it. Only you know if you are distressed, frightened and if you can not deal with the situation that you are experiencing.
As trauma could be experienced quite differently for every person, it is hard to point symptoms or criteria to diagnose trauma in general, the most common symptoms described by people who have experienced trauma are:
- Felling low
- Distress
- Feeling anxious
- Irritable
- Anger
- Denial of what they are experiencing
- Feeling overwhelmed
- Physical symptoms like nausea, dizziness, headaches
- Change in appetite
Ignoring symptoms of trauma could generate more difficult problems later in life therefore it is important to get help on time. Sometimes trauma evolves to a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and sometimes the experience of a traumatic situation could directly generate symptoms of PTSD, some of the symptoms are:
- Unexpected and reoccurring intrusive memories of the traumatic event.
- Dreams and nightmares related to the event
- Flashbacks
- Feeling that the situation is happening again even if you rationally know that it is not happening.
- Avoiding people, places, thoughts, emotions, or psychical sensations that remind you of the traumatic event
- Feeling guilty and responsible for the traumatic situation.
- Inability to feel positive emotions
- Irritability
- Sleeping problems
- Feeling constantly alert as if something bad is about to happen
Trauma or PTSD are both treatable and symptoms could be managed with therapy.
If you are experiencing PTSD or trauma it is important to get help as soon as possible to avoid symptoms getting worse and generate other mental health presentations like depression and anxiety.
Psychologists are trained to identify if what you are experiencing is trauma or PTSD and provide treatment.
Usually treatment helps people to function well again.
If you think that you are experiencing trauma, fill in the contact form to arrange an initial and free 10 minutes telephone conversation to discuss it further.
