Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD - is a condition in which a
person goes through a terrible experience and is then plagued by
memory 'flashbacks', anxiety, panic, depression, sleeplessness and
hyper-vigilance. The stereotype case is the Vietnam Vet - John Rambo -
played by Sylvester Stallone in First Blood.
He is a disturbed loner who as withdrawn from society because he is
close to a nervous breakdown. The more he remembers his war-time
traumas, the more disturbed he gets.
Here are the most common myths about Trauma:
- You never really get over it
- The trauma is stored in the Unconscious mind
- The problem needs long term therapy
- Treatment involves working through 'irrational' emotions
- The cure arrives when the individual learns to control irrational emotions with the 'rational mind'.
And here are some facts about it:
- It's fairly uncommon - only about 20% of people who go through a traumatic event actually get PTSD.
- Young children almost never get it (although they may develop it later as adults)
- Some types of therapy can make the problem worse rather than better if they focus on reliving the trauma
- It is not caused by out of control emotions
- It is caused by the over-attentive conscious mind
- it is relatively simple to eliminate traumatic memories and the symptoms that come with them
Next up, I will writing about how why PTSD can be easy to treat.
