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PTSD Symptoms
When you experience or witness a traumatic event, it can have a huge impact on you. This can lead to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD symptoms can greatly disrupt your daily life. Want to know more or symptoms of PTSD? Read more on this page.
What are the symptoms of PTSD?
How PTSD manifests itself varies from person to person. Some people experience the same symptoms for months or even years at a time, while others hide the event away and try to turn off their emotions completely. However, many symptoms are recognizable and are broken down into emotional and physical factors.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is fortunately treatable with the right therapies. U-center can help you take the first steps toward recovery.
Emotional PTSD symptoms
PTSD is accompanied by frequent unexpected flashbacks or irritability. You may have difficulty controlling your emotions or, on the contrary, feel completely numb. But there are other emotional symptoms that can be part of PTSD without you knowing it.
1. Intrusive symptoms
Involuntary and unwanted intrusive memories are a common emotional symptom of PTSD. Flashbacks can make you feel like the traumatic event is happening all over again, nightmares can keep you from a good night's sleep or something in your environment can trigger a severe emotional reaction because it reminds you of the traumatic event.
The following can cause an emotional response to trauma:
- Seeing images of the event, whether they are only partial images or a full image
• Some tastes, smells or sounds you associate with the traumatic event
• Physical sensations (pain, pressure, a certain type of touch...)
• Feeling the emotions you felt during the traumatic event.
2. Denial or avoidance
3. Negative changes in mood or cognition
Guilt or shame
You may suffer from symptoms other than flashbacks. You may also suffer from overwhelming feelings of guilt and shame. For example, when you blame yourself for the traumatic event and feel you could have done something to prevent it.
Depressed feelings
PTSD is a complex mental illness and can cause many emotional symptoms related to other mental illnesses. Symptoms include feelings of depression or sadness. You may have certain symptoms commonly associated with depression, such as a negative image of yourself or your surroundings, no longer being interested in activities you used to enjoy and having difficulty experiencing positive emotion.
Feeling numb
For some people with PTSD, the symptoms are too overwhelming. They may try not to feel anything at all, also called emotional numbing.
4. Hyperarousal or feeling on edge
Anxiety and difficulty relaxing can also be a symptom of PTSD. You may suffer from this if you are hyperalert and easily startled by unexpected stimuli. This can cause not only irritability or anger, but also insomnia and difficulty concentrating.
Some of the ways you may experience these PTSD symptoms are:
- Feeling an overwhelming panic when reminded of the traumatic event
• Hyperalertness
• Sleeping less or not at all
• Difficulty concentrating
Anxiety and stress
PTSD, for you, can cause you to be easily frightened because you always expect danger (this can happen in your subconscious mind). For example, your fears may cause a fight or flight response, or you may experience extreme stress because you feel you are in danger.
Irritation or anger
Perhaps you feel frustrated, angry or even aggressive. If you notice that you often argue, yell or slam doors, this may be due to a state of hyperalertness caused by PTSD. But your anger doesn't have to be so obvious. You may also notice it by tightened muscles or your heart beating faster. Or you may notice that you are experiencing more aggression in your thinking without expressing it directly.
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Physical PTSD symptoms
Natural responses & patterns.
PTSD alters your natural responses and biological patterns, causing extreme reactions similar to those during the traumatic event, even when there is no longer an actual threat. This hypervigilance causes you to overanalyze your environment, which in turn makes it difficult to decide whether you are actually in danger or not.
It is possible that this is caused by the cortisol and adrenaline that are released when we feel emotionally stressed. This is the body's automatic way of preparing to respond to a threat, also called the "fight, flight or freeze" response.
Studies have shown that a person with PTSD continues to produce these hormones even when the danger has passed, which could explain some of the symptoms, such as extreme alertness and easily startled.
Anxiety (response to triggers)
You may feel constantly anxious or stressed, which leads you to assume that danger is everywhere. Not only does this make you more susceptible to triggers, but it also results in other symptoms typically associated with anxiety. For example, increased heart rate and sweating.
Fatigue
Pain
The high cortisol levels caused by the stress in PTSD can make you more sensitive to pain in the long run. This does not mean that you can no longer endure pain, but that you experience pain more intensely than before.
In addition, stress and hypervigilance can cause you to be more tense, which in turn impacts your muscles and joints.
U-center offers help
These symptoms are very troublesome and they can keep you from leading a normal and healthy life. But this situation does not have to be permanent. Together we can help you overcome these symptoms and get you on the road to a normal and even happy life.
Intensity of PTSD symptoms
Not treating the risks of PTSD
Survivors of trauma can suffer from the physical and mental effects of the traumatic event for years to come. Want to learn more about the long-term effects of PTSD and the importance of PTSD treatment? Our treatment page has all the information you need.
Recovery at U-center
U-center treats PTSD with various therapies in a 7-week inpatient treatment program. We always treat your diagnosis in combination with underlying factors. We focus on you as a person and take all other issues into account when tailoring your personalized treatment program.
Want to learn more about how U-center guides you on the road to recovery?