Trauma and PTSD

Trauma happens when the body including its organs try to make sense of an event that has taken place in the person that has resulted in a shift in its paradigm. Basically the person has suffered an assault to itself mentally, emotionally, or physically. All or some of this may lead to a psychological stress in coping with the assault and if the body cannot cope with it, may lead to PTSD. This is a delayed reaction to the assault.

Our bodies act as our servant and security against the outside environment and function effectively in protecting us from any kind of stress. How we deal with stress depends on our age,background and training. 

A normal civilian may deal with stress differently, from a trained soldier and a person of faith may deal with stress differently than a one with non. Dealing with stress depends on the person's willingness to learn and overcome every situation that they can possibly face, but nothing can prepare one for the different levels of atrocities that one may be exposed to during the course of existence in this world.

Our body, mind and spirit have been created to cope with stress to some degree and if we train each area, it increases its capacity to deal with stresses of varying degrees. There are countless therapies and training offered around the world to discipline our body, soul and spirit  to avoid them breaking down under tremendous stress. These are all admirable. However no one knows their limit or as the saying goes "which straw will break the camel's back"and what it might take to break us. It could be a simple thing or a great atrocity but break down happens and that is what is termed as a traumatic event.

So my definition of a traumatic event is anything that happens to you that causes you to never be able to function in the same way again before it happened to you. A personality changing event. A life transforming situation for the worse. So a really loving young man may go to war and have to kill people and he is blown up by a bomb and looses his limbs. He comes back home with no job and hates his family and becomes aggressive and angry. Or a beautiful happy go lucky girl is raped by a family member and she becomes withdrawn with occasional outbursts of anger or completely rebellious. Or a wonderful boy is constantly bullied in school and he develops a personality disorder. Or a woman who is constantly criticised when young becomes a controlling wife and mother.Or a girl who is teased about her weight becomes anorexic.

These things just don't happen. Usually the body will try to figure things out and when it does not succeed in the conventional reasoning, it will develop a coping mechanism or personality change to deal with the stress. A grown woman may act like a child to blank out a sexual assault. A grown man may become a socio-path to blank out the hurt of bullying. 

Anyone and everyone experiences a traumatic situation but cope differently. Some coping mechanisms are so hidden that the person does not exhibit any abnormal behaviour until another similar incident threatens to happen and then they loose it.

Our body, mind and spirit were created to be at peace at all times to promote excellent health and well-being. We live in a world were we are being assaulted by social media, religious bigotry and extremism and all many of human rights and ideologies. We are not protected as we think we should and how we cope in this jungle is down to our psychological, physical and emotional health.

Our perception of everything will affect these three factors. We can change our mindset but it takes willingness and effort form our part.

Peace is our original default state just like a calm lake. When you throw a stone in it it ripples . It will hit anything it comes across as it does so. Similarly when we are traumatised knowingly or not we affect everything around us. We colour everything we see by our trauma and behave likewise. 

People can sense sometimes when some one is dealing with something.

We call it issues.

Everyone has issues and some people love having issues and drama in their lives but the majority of people wish that their issues will go away and that they can experience true inner peace.

Jesus said, "My peace I give to you let not your heart be troubled neither let it be afraid" Why? Because no matter who you are in this world, there is a bit of troubling of heart and fear going on beneath the surface.

There is one thing someone giving you peace there is totally another thing receiving that peace. It will take more than a verbal acknowledgement of receiving of that peace to deal with a serious traumatic situation. You need healing, so does your mind, body and soul and it will take every inch of bravery, effort and determination to gain it. It is written "seek peace and pursue it". Well it takes seeking and pursuing. It means that peace is not readily visible and can be fleeting so you must seek and pursue. 

I feel dead without peace so I seek and pursue daily. Without peace I feel like I have lost the centre of my being so I am not myself. So I need to do some soul searching to get it back. Sometimes when the trauma is physical such as head trauma or loss of a body part not only is there physical therapy but emotional, occupational and psychological therapy essential to get back to your peace. Traumas change us but we can choose whether it is for the better or for the worse. Next time we will look at some situations that can lead to a need for inner healing and getting our mojo back.