Trauma effects at least half of all men and women, yet many people battling with addiction never receive treatment for trauma. Before we can answer if treatment centers help PTSD symptoms, we must first show what PTSD is and its symptoms.
What is Trauma?
Trauma is an event that is shocking. One feels as if his or her, or another person’s life is in danger. He or she feels out of control. Sometimes the person has been harmed or witness another being harmed. Natural disasters, physical and emotional abuse, and psychological affliction can induce trauma and cause PTSD.
What is PTSD?
PTSD is short for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD is an anxiety disorder where one’s life becomes unmanageable due to reliving the traumatic event repeatedly. Sleeping, eating, school or work becomes impossible to complete. Even relationships become difficult to manage. Many suffering from PTSD will become isolated and avoid people or situations which trigger the memory of the traumatic event.
Symptoms Of PTSD
Everyone deals with stress differently and can tolerate different amounts of stress. But PTSD usually develops within hours or days of the traumatic event. PTSD has developed weeks, months, and years later. This is because some people avoid their emotions until their central nervous system can no longer withstand the stress. Then the disorder will show up in the person’s behaviors.
Some of those behaviors include:
- Anger and irritability
- Depression and hopelessness
- Difficulty concentrating
- Flashbacks, memories, and nightmares
- Guilt and shame for having survived
- Hypervigilance
- Isolation and avoiding people, places, and events
- Nausea, increased heart rate, and sweating
- No longer interested in life
- Physical pain
- Sense of doom or limited future
- Substance abuse as escapism
Symptoms of PTSD in Children
Children will show many of the same symptoms as adults. But they also show signs that may not be easily recognizable as stress from trauma. Those symptoms are:
- Aggressive behavior
- Complaining about aches and pains without clear cause
- Fear of losing or being separated from a parent
- Loss of skills such as potty training
- New fears and anxieties such as fear of bugs or monsters
- Playing out traumatic events during playtime, or through stories and art
Do Trauma Treatment Centers Help with PTSD Symptoms?
Trauma Treatment Centers can help relieve symptoms of PTSD by helping the person recall and process emotions felt during the original traumatic event. By processing those emotions, the event will no longer control one’s life.
Trauma treatment centers will help the person suffering with PTSD learn how to cope with flashbacks, memories, and nightmares. With proper treatment, those symptoms may decrease or end.
Treatment will also help the person rebuild his or her life and relationships that have suffered. These improvements can be aided by cognitive-behavioral therapy, family therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT).
Interested in Attending Trauma Treatment Centers?
Northlake Recovery has incorporated the Station House First Responders program specifically for anyone suffering the effects of trauma. If you are a first-responder, we have assisted others who have experienced similar trauma from responding to emergency situations.
Call Northlake Recovery at (561)-770-6616 to learn more about trauma treatment centers.
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