Stress and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Stress is a result of extreme trauma in one’s life. Many people experience trauma but that doesn’t mean that they will develop a stress disorder. Other factors in a person’s life add to the mixture of the trauma and could create the development of a stress disorder. Some of these factors could include the biological, genetic, personality of the person, childhood experiences, their quality of social support, and the extent of their trauma can contribute to the possibility of developing a stress disorder.

Anxiety and depression can stay with people after a stressful situation and they can develop post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. This disorder develops when a stressful situation occurs. The person experiences actual or perceived threats of serious harm to themselves, family, or friends. If the symptoms continue longer than one month after the first four weeks, or years after the diagnosis of PTSD is given. The person demonstrates a variety of symptoms that can be both biological, and psychological in nature.

PTSD can extends into additional experiences such as flashbacks, reliving the experience again and avoidance of any thought provoking activity that reminds them of the trauma, or reduced responsiveness, which is dissociation. Dissociation is when a person may feel a degree of psychological separation from their environment. The person can also experience an extreme startled response, trouble concentrating, sleep difficulties, and feel guilt that they survived or guilty about what they had to do to survive.

There are several modalities of treatment used to relieve or lessen PTSD. This treatment could include drugs, behavioral exposure techniques, psychological debriefing, insight therapy, family therapy or group/rap therapy.

Antianxiety drugs help to control the tension that people experience. Drugs can reduce the occurrence of nightmares, panic attacks, flashbacks, and depression.

Exposure therapy is the most helpful intervention for stress disorders. Flooding, relaxation techniques, and eye movement desensitization techniques are used in exposure therapy. In eye movement desensitization people move their eyes from side to side while flooding their minds with images and objects that have caused extreme stress and they focus on these images or objects that they usually avoid.

A type of group therapy that a person can experience is rap therapy. Rap therapy is when people meet others like themselves and share experiences and feelings. A major issue that rap therapy addresses is the feelings of guilt. Talking about traumatic experiences can reduce the anxiety and tension.

Insight therapy treatments PTSD by attempting to uncover the deep causes of the person’s issues and than help that person eliminate defense mechanisms.

Family therapy attempts to help the traumatized person with what they are experiencing, what the family is experiencing being around them and then addresses issues to help pave the way for healing.
Group therapy of working together helps a person find that the discussion of past and present problems will improve the person’s health and psychological functioning.

Psychological debriefing helps victims of trauma by talking extensively about their feelings and reactions about the event. These sessions prevent and reduce stress. They are performed in groups. The counselors guide them to describe the details of the trauma and the actions at the event. The counselors clarify that their reactions are completely normal, provide stress management tips, and refer them to long term counseling.

Any combination of these treatments can and maybe needed to address PTSD. People who have experienced extreme trauma need the help of a trained counselor utilizing some of these techniques to help them improve the quality of their life after life altering experiences.

A combination of the therapies helps to relieve the PTSD symptoms. Anxiety, depression, and anger can make people sick. To reduce these negative emotions many times the person will undergo insight therapy, or support groups. Research suggests that that the discussion of past and present upsets will help improve the person’s health, and psychological functioning.