Have you experienced a traumatic event? Are you suffering from lingering fear and anxiety? Do you feel like you have less control over how you think, feel, and behave?
Posttraumatic stress disorder - also known as PTSD - is a mental health challenge that may occur in individuals who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event such as a natural disaster, a terrorist act, an act of war, a serious accident, sexual assault, or any other violent personal assault.
It is believed that PTSD affects nearly four percent of the U.S. adult population. While it is usually linked with veterans who’ve experienced combat, PTSD occurs in all people regardless of military involvement, age, race, nationality, or culture. Women are twice as likely to experience PTSD than men.
What are the Symptoms of PTSD?
People with PTSD often experience intense thoughts and feelings related to their traumatic experiences. These can last for a long time after the initial event. Many people with PTSD also relive the event through reminders in their everyday environments, flashbacks and nightmares.
People with PTSD often feel intense emotions such as fear, anger, sadness, and detachment from themselves, friends, family, and community. They often avoid people and situations that remind them of the traumatic event. Ordinary sounds or incidents such as a door banging or accidental touch in a crowd may cause a strong and uncontrollable reaction.
How Can Treatment Help?
Treatment can help a great deal. EMDR consistently demonstrates research-based evidence of effectiveness in successfully treating PTSD
- EMDR – EMDR stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. This technique uses bilateral sensory input such as side-to-side eye movements to stimulate the brain to process difficult thoughts, memories, and emotions. This modality focuses on how a person perceives a traumatic event and processes it in their thoughts, attitudes, emotions, body, and brain neural networks. A therapist can help their client work through stuck points, which are certain thoughts related to the trauma that prevents the person from recovering.
If you or a loved one suffer from PTSD and would like to explore treatment options, please reach out to us. Recovery and coming back to an empowered sense of self in your life is possible!