Trauma & PTSD

The term trauma can be understood as a ‘personal experience or event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury, or other threat to one’s integrity or also the witnessing of this happening for another. When your sense of safety and trust are shattered, it’s normal to feel like you are loosing your mind,to feel disconnected or numb, most people do. The only difference between people who go on to develop PTSD and those who don’t is how they cope with the trauma.

Symptoms can include intrusive and upsetting memories of the event, also known as flashbacks, nightmares, feelings of intense distress when reminded of the trauma, paranoia and an ongoing sense of feeling threatened and intense physical reactions to reminders of the event, e.g. heart palpitations, rapid, shallow breathing, nausea, muscle tension and sweating, outburst of anger out of proportion to the situation. Compared to most peoples experience of trauma, those with PTSD and the symptoms associated with it do not experience a decrease in their symptoms as is normallty the case for most.