Do You Have Post Traumatic Stress Or PTSD?

There is a lot of talk in the news these days about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Who gets PTSD? How do they get it? Why do some people have this disorder and some seem to “bounce back” from trauma? Is there a gene that pre-determines a person? Could it be hereditary? What is PTSD? What do you do about it? The questions and answers go on and on.

In trying to understand this issue, it is important to distinguish post traumatic stress from the disorder. Everyone who experiences trauma also experiences post traumatic stress symptoms. It is normal to be hyper vigilant, to have nightmares, to relive the event and to experience triggers that bring the trauma back to your mind. This is the brain’s natural way of dealing with trauma. In fact, it is such a natural response that if you don’t have at least one or two post traumatic stress symptoms, it wasn’t trauma.

Post traumatic stress becomes a disorder when the trauma is so severe that the brain can not process the event. Our bodies are so magnificently designed that the only thing that we cannot process is the threat and/or the sight of death coming at us. The natural symptoms that are a product of the brain coping with what has happened become magnified and overwhelming when no healing is taking place. The brain only knows one way to heal and will repeat these tactics with more and more severity in an attempt to process the trauma and move on.

Post traumatic stress symptoms are our natural Band-Aid. They are there to help you to deal with what has happened to you, so that you can move on with your life. If your arm is blown off a Band-Aid is not going to help you. So someone who has experienced a traumatic event, may have a few nights of nightmares and not being able to sleep but ultimately find that things to go back to normal. The disorder (PTSD) will cause someone to not sleep for weeks and months and years at a time.

Trauma symptoms will keep you vigilant, but gradually you will be able to relax. Having PTSD means that you’re always vigilant, night and day. It never turns off. Reliving the trauma and what you have experienced, in most cases, helps you to deal with it effectively so that you can move on with your life. Those who have PTSD relive their trauma 24 hours a day – day in and day out.

In essence, the DISORDER part of PTSD is like living with a broken record that repeats the same line over and over again. So post traumatic stress symptoms, which are normal and very necessary to the healing process, enable you to get past your experience. PTSD occurs when the trauma is so great, or when the groove in the record is so deep, that mentally there is no way to cross over to the other side or to move on.

If you’ve experienced a trauma and are having symptoms it is always best to get help if you can. It is very difficult to deal with trauma by yourself. If you’re experiencing symptoms that are so severe that they are consuming you, taking over your life, and your sanity; if you feel like you’ve become someone other than the person that you used to know, you may have PTSD.