Keywords: Treating PTSD.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, by its very nature, is complex. When you have crossed a certain threshold, where you would have had sufficient resilience to gravitate back to health after trauma, your condition becomes toxic to body and mind.
PTSD is that psychosomatic toxicity. When you are stretched too much, you snap, resulting in a variety of signs and symptoms that can be very persistent, even while going through treatment for PTSD.
Symptoms depend on the severity of the ordeal(s) that you have already gone through, but the most common one is moving from a low to a high freeze response. Basically, this is where your nervous system still remains in the upsetting event or periods that have set off the post-trauma condition in the first place.
The Highs and the Lows of Treating PTSD and Its Symptoms
Your low will be marked by depression, lethargy, thoughts of suicide, unworthiness; your high will be marked by anxiety, hypervigilance, digestive issues, mistrust, and anger. When the high goes into overdrive at some point, dissociation or a freeze response will likely kick in, making you feel numb, disconnected, and indifferent.
When you have crossed a certain threshold, where you would have had sufficient resilience to gravitate back to health after trauma, your condition becomes toxic to body and mind.
All these different signs and symptoms of PTSD will repeat themselves cyclically and most often will be infused with memories, possibly without specific relation to the past, but projected and reenacted within one’s current life situation and/or relationships.
Effectively treating PTSD is challenging, both for the client and therapist. It is delicate and persistent work where vulnerability and boundaries must repeatedly be renegotiated and explored. Because most PTSD sufferers have strong ties to patterns that have been initiated in childhood, often related to neglect and abuse, the complexity in addressing the various signs and symptoms increases exponentially.
Choosing the Right Helper in Treating PTSD
It takes experience and insight on the part of the helper to safely guide the PTSD sufferer through the minefield of the “hurt” body and mind. Knowledge and education are certainly essential for professionals, but the cornerstone of success is in being able to hold the sufferer’s psychological space in the present without deviation, and having thoroughly put their own personal houses in order.
Trust and reentering relationships are big issues for the PTSD sufferer. Considering the variety of signs and symptoms of PTSD that there are, this makes a lot of sense. Your vulnerability and sense of safety and control are very likely to have been already compromised, hence the onset of your post-trauma condition.
[thrive_leads id=’12447′]It’s imperative, therefore, that you choose wisely; feel doubtful throughout, take your time; read and investigate what the best approaches are before you start treatment for your PTSD.
How is treating your PTSD going for you so far? Leave your comments below.
