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The Ability to T H R I V E is within you!

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder occurs from a number of different situations, and is expressed by individuals according to the trauma (single event) itself, or if there are a number of traumas occurring concurrently or as a string of events. Oftentimes people who grow up in families where there is addiction, abuse, mental illness and chaos are so often traumatized it dramatically affects how their brain develops. How PTSD develops varies with the individual's personal make up and what experiences they have had. 

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  1. PTSD is not cured.

  2. PTSD is helped with time, therapy, maturity and learning.

  3. Stressors through out this person’s lifetime may elicit or exacerbate PTSD symptoms such as hypervigilance, dreaming of past traumas, panic, or sudden remembrances of past traumatic events.

  4. Which stressors elicit PTSD symptoms depends on the individual.

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Type I & Type II PTSD

Based on Lenore Terr MD’s research (1991) there are two types of trauma. Type I is a single-incident trauma. It might be a car accident, witnessing a trauma, or even a cultural event. The memories are “burned” into memory and therefore the traumatized individual has full detailed memories of the event.  There is a lower risk of PTSD in comparison to Type II.  Children sometimes develop “omens” about the trauma. Omens are a mistaken idea later that they had a warning about an impending trauma. This is an attempt to develop some mastery over the trauma. At times misperceptions develop also. Type II trauma involves more than one, or many traumas (poly-victimization). It occurs in war and occurs in domestic violence as well. Domestically Type II traumatization affects as many as 1 in 7 children. Type II trauma has a dramatically significant affect in every area of the child’s life, emotionally, physically, learning, development, growth and prognosis for disease and addiction.

"Some people thrive under pressure, but pressure can also ruin your performance, it can push you down angles which you don't want to go."  ~ Henry Cavill
 

Childhood-Originating PTSD and Your Health 

Trauma Is Not All That Uncommon

 

Did you know that 1 in 30 Americans have Post Traumatic Stress (PTS)? 

Further, childhood originating Post Traumatic Stress is associated with adverse health outcomes across the life span?

 

Emotional Trauma Dramatically Adversely Effects Health

According to a study by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in conjunciton with Kaiser Permanente there is a hightened risk for disease when you’ve experienced childhood adverse experiences. Childhood trauma affects brain development, the immune system, hormonal systems, and how DNA is read and transcribed. Research has shown a strong correlation between heightened risk for:

 

    COPD            2.5  times greater incidence

    Hepatitis         2.5  times greater incidence

    Depression      4.5  times greater incidence

    Suicide            12  times greater incidence of attempts 

    Lung Cancer       3  times greater incidence

    Heart Disease  3.5  times greater incidence  *

 

One method of caring for them, in conjunction with medical treatment, is helping people who have experienced trauma calm the excitation in their brain. 

 

Post Traumatic Stress occurs when a person, child or not, is exposed to physical abuse, violence to the self or witnessing violence, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, family members with mental illness or substance abuse all of these create a trauma response in the brain and body. It activates the stress response system of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis to survive—the fight, flight or freeze system. Chronic exposure to trauma reorganizes the brain to create hyperalertness to danger, hypervigilance for cues to associated with danger, a constant state of alarm in the brain. 

 

Because of neuroplasticity an individual can be taught techniques to calm their brains, to breakdown the reactivity to cues to distress, and to have reduced activation of the stress response system. 

 

Neuroplasticity and Calming the Brain

In psychotherapy specific to anxiety disorders and Post Traumatic Stress I use my clinical hypnosis training to teach patients how to hypnotize themselves. Hypnosis has been used for years to achieve positive results with persons with PTS, to get hypnotic analgesia for pain and even for dental treatment!  

 

The brain can be changed!  Research in neuroplasticity supports that. Research in the effectivness of hypnosis shows that.  Research in debriefing and exposure therapy supports that. It can achieve greater sense of calm by using certain techniques, such as:

 

    Hypnotherapy

    Mindfulness Meditation

    Thought Challenging

    Memory Processing

    Debriefing Negative Experiences

    Reducing Reactivity to Negative Cues

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