You might have heard about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and wondered what exactly it is. Knowing about this can help you see if you might be suffering from PTSD. This post explores five common myths about PTSD and helps you understand whether PTSD affects you or someone you love.
PTSD is a prolonged stress response to psychological wounding that used to be reserved only for severe trauma from military combat. Since it came about roughly 40 years ago as a diagnosis, it can now be applied to people with a variety of other wounding experiences as well, including sudden, unexpected loss, childhood sexual or physical abuse, intimate partner violence (aka Domestic Violence), and witnessing violence as well. There are so many different situations that can create post-traumatic stress, yet people don’t always develop PTSD from those events. In fact, that’s one of the common myths about PTSD.
Common Myths about PTSD
First myth: Everyone who experiences a traumatic incident develops PTSD.
It may surprise you to know that not everyone who goes through a traumatic event develops PTSD. In fact, about 6% of adults in the USA will develop PTSD at some point in their lives, according to the National Center for PTSD at the Dept. of Veterans’ Affairs. The incident is a little higher for adolescents 13-18 years old, at 8%. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 3.6% of US adults developed it in the past year. Female US citizens are more likely than males to develop it, and people in the LGBTQ+ community are much more impacted by PTSD, with up to 48% of LGB folx having it and 42% of transgender adults meeting criteria for PTSD. However, it’s not a foregone conclusion that if you experience a traumatic event, you’ll develop PTSD.
Second myth: PTSD looks the same in everyone who has it.
While there are common symptoms of PTSD, like avoidance of reminders of the trauma, numbing, intrusive thoughts, and changes in reactivity, there is also variability in how people experience PTSD. Some might show more irritability and be quick to argue or lash out, while others might be very fearful and avoid contact with others. It also looks different in people of different ages, with children and adolescents having different ways they manifest post-traumatic stress.
Additionally, PTSD does not encompass all the possible results from traumatic experiences. Some people have lasting depression based on their trauma, or anxiety disorders like Panic Disorder or Social Anxiety. Other folks have problems with memory and find they can’t remember large chunks of their childhoods. PTSD is one of the most noticeable and upsetting disorders to result from trauma, but there are other more subtle, lasting behavioral and emotional problems as well.
Third myth: PTSD develops immediately after a traumatic event.
While PTSD symptoms usually emerge by 3 months after the trauma, sometimes they take longer to show up. Symptoms may take a while to develop, and the onset of PTSD may be delayed from 6 months up to years after the event.
People often think that if a person doesn’t develop a traumatic reaction right afterwards, it means that the trauma didn’t affect them. That’s simply not true. In extremely stressful situations, memories get stored in a different way from everyday memories. The memories may be harder to access than regular ones, so it’s also harder to work through the effects of those memories.
Fourth myth: Time heals all wounds, including PTSD
Maybe you were raised to think that getting mental health treatment was only for “crazy” people or for people who weren’t strong enough to take life on the chin, so to speak. You might subscribe to the idea that time heals all wounds, but in the case of PTSD, that isn’t so.
Part of the reason that PTSD is so upsetting and potentially debilitating is that it can live on for years if left untreated and affect many parts of your life. You might believe that if you get treatment, it will make you feel worse because you’ll think more about the trauma. There are many reasons that people postpone or avoid mental health treatment for PTSD and trauma.
There are many problems with this approach, however. First, you may resort to unhealthy habits like alcohol or drug misuse, or overspending, to avoid experiencing your PTSD symptoms. That leads to greater problems later, because you can develop a dependency on that substance or activity that takes over. And unfortunately, medication and recreational drugs, or other distractors, don’t change the way the memory is stored in your mind, or how you experience the trauma. That is the root of the problem, and so therapy is needed to help you work through those traumatic incidents that haven’t resolved yet.
Fifth myth: PTSD is incurable.
Luckily, PTSD is treatable, and you can experience relief from the troubling symptoms through evidence-based therapies like EMDR therapy. The success rate depends on the therapy used, the extent of the impact of the trauma on you, personality characteristics, and other factors. EMDR therapy has been researched quite a bit since it started, and it has been found to be significantly more effective than placebo in studies. While EMDR therapy can be very effective in a short amount of time, preparation is involved and it's not usually a one-session wonder, as much as many would like it to be.
Complex trauma, which can result from multiple traumatic incidents and can affect one’s personality and self-esteem, can take longer to heal, especially if dissociation is involved. Nonetheless, many people have found great comfort and healing from being able to establish a trusting relationship with a skilled professional and learning that they are not what happened to them. They didn’t deserve to be mistreated or to have such a horrible thing happened, and they are not permanently damaged.
Healing Modalities for PTSD
In addition to EMDR therapy, there are other ways a person can heal from PTSD. These include clinical hypnotherapy, Solution Focused Brief Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Exposure Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and Cognitive Processing Therapy.
I also offer a self-help video program that goes more in depth about PTSD and how to heal from it, which you can access here.
If you would like more information about your symptoms after a traumatic incident and EMDR therapy to make your symptoms less upsetting, please call me or click the box below to contact me.
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