Traumatic events can be very difficult to come to terms with but confronting your feelings and seeking professional help is often the only way of effectively treating PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)
It is possible for PTSD to be successfully treated many years after the traumatic event or events occurred, which means it is never too late to seek help.
What is traumatic for one person is not for another. After the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017, people that were the together, when spoken to, all had a different perspective of what had happened.
At the time, the fear is there to protect us, to keep us safe. It is very natural for people to be still dealing with the event for a period afterwards, for some people that is not the case and the symptoms continue to persist, this is where PTSD starts.
Watchful Waiting – This is the first step if the event has just occurred, for the first month after the person is asked to self-monitor. This is having an awareness of the symptoms that they are experiencing and if they are subsiding over time. Generally, it is not until after that first month that any formal treatment would be used.
Trauma can occur from many different situations in life, these are just some examples of situations that a person can experience that can be traumatic.
- Abuse (Sexual, Domestic, Psychological)
- Violence
- Burglaries
- Death and loss
- Accidents
- Disasters
- Military Combat
Some people with PTSD experience long periods when their symptoms are less noticeable, followed by periods where they get worse. Other people have constant severe symptoms.
The specific symptoms of PTSD can vary widely between individuals, the more common ones are
- vivid flashbacks (feeling like the trauma is happening right now)
- intrusive thoughts or images
- being triggered by things that were present at the actual event.
- physical sensations such as pain, sweating, nausea, or trembling
- mood swings
- extreme alertness, also sometimes called 'hypervigilance'
- disturbed sleep or a lack of sleep
- irritability or aggressive behaviour
- finding it hard to concentrate – including on simple or everyday tasks
- other symptoms of anxiety
"I feel like I'm straddling a timeline where the past is pulling me in one direction and the present another. I see flashes of images and noises that burst through, fear comes out of nowhere. My heart races, my breathing is loud, and I no longer know where I am."
Complex PTSD is when a person experiences several different traumas, it can be long periods of domestic abuse, or it could be military personnel that has a serious car accident when on leave.
As each person’s experience is different, the approaches used can also differ. Using hypnotherapy, we can neutralise the events causing the distress lessens, the memories will still be there, but they will not trigger the unwanted response, giving the person some inner peace.
One of the main benefits of using hypnotherapy is that you know what happened, you experienced it, we do not have to talk in any great depth about the event prior to the hypnotherapy, that is purely to save you from re-experiencing it.