PTSD

We who have been abused, can relate to PTSD. Some more than others.

“When humans freeze or dissociate, we are deluged with the same hormones as animals under attack. Once the danger has passed, we can sometimes use the same natural recovery mechanisms. We can shake, move, cry, yell, and breathe deeply, processes that sometimes help eliminate the chemicals our bodies have produced, just as animals do. And when we have the support of a caring person or community, we can receive comfort, thus meeting our need for understanding and connection.

But when children are sexually abused, they are rarely in a situation with optimum conditions for recovery. Instead, silence, secrecy, and isolation are the norm. Sometimes children are prevented even from crying out. And far too often the abuse is a recurring event, without time for recovery before the next assault.

In the weeks and months after a traumatic event, trauma survivors often experience an cute stress reaction that can incorporate an array of troubling symptoms, including nightmares, flashbacks, trouble concentrating, intrusive thoughts, insomnia, and increased startle reflex, panic, depression, numbness, mental confusion, sudden explosions of rage, and alienation. The world no longer feels like a safe place.

For many people, these reactions last a few weeks or months and then gradually subside. But for others, the symptoms persist, eventually developing into post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Survivors of child sexual abuse-especially incest-are at increased risk because they experienced many of the dynamics that make long-term PTSD more likely: the trauma (or threat of trauma) was repeated and of long duration, they were children when the abuse occurred, they experienced great helplessness and betrayal, they believed the abuse was their fault, and, most significantly, they used dissociation as a way to escape. Although dissociation is an important protection, it is a factor that is correlated with the later development of PTSD.

Post traumatic symptoms can grow stronger and become more entrenched over time. Or they can go underground and reemerge years, or even decades, later at a time of increased vulnerability-when a life event acts as a stimulus and triggers the post-traumatic reaction.” (The Courage to Heal)