An estimated 10% of people exposed to overwhelming anxiety, abuse, neglect or trauma; go on to develop stress disorders (PTSD), and may experience panic attacks, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, depression, grief and thoughts of self-harm . They may have difficulty with impulsive or risky behaviour, or fly into a rage easily .

These are normal reactions to abnormal events (ie bullying, abuse, neglect or trauma), and can be understood as the brain's way of integrating traumatic memories memories, and/or preparing that individual for danger as part of a fight, flight, freeze response.  

People often say, "I feel like I'm going crazy", and may feel ashamed about not being "normal." Confused about their feelings of sadness, fear or anxiety, people either blame themselves; those in authority; or whoever is close-by at the time.   Exposure to neglect, trauma, abuse or frightening events, can set in motion patterns of affect (emotional response), behaviour, cognitions and consequent identity structures.

The opportunities for individuals and families to learn about the effects of traumatic memories can provide great relief, and help support their relationships.

I offer therapies which can provide lasting relief from emotions, depression, anxiety, grief and reactivity associated with memories of past events. For information on traumatic memories and how EMDR works, see: 'Resolving Trauma with EMDR', download article below.

Excerpts from: 'The Body Keeps The Score' by Prof van der Kolk (see article download below)

- The loss of affective modulation that is so central in PTSD may help explain the observation that traumatized people lose the capacity to utilise affect states as signals. Instead of using feelings as cues to attend to incoming information, in people with PTSD arousal is likely to precipitate flight or fight reactions. Thus, they are prone to go immediately from stimulus to response without making the necessary psychological assessment of the meaning of what is going on. This makes them prone to freeze, or, alternatively, to overreact and intimidate others in response to minor provocations

- In an apparent attempt to compensate for chronic hyperarousal, traumatized people seem to shut down: on a behavioural level, by avoiding stimuli reminiscent of the trauma; on a psychobiological level, by emotional numbing, which extends to both trauma-related, and everyday experience. Thus, people with chronic PTSD tend to suffer from numbing of responsiveness to the environment, punctuated by intermittent hyperarousal in response to conditional traumatic stimuli.

- Thus, the inability of people with PTSD to properly integrate memories of the trauma and, instead, to get mired in a continuous reliving of the past, is mirrored physiologically in the misinterpretation of innocuous stimuli as potential threats .

Click to download a Word file about:
Resolving Trauma with EMDR
The Body Keeps The Score
Boundaries

Further information:
Risk and protective factors that influence resilience
Self-Defense Mechanisms

Links to other sites:
http://www.trauma-pages.com
http://www.traumacenter.org
http://www.emdr.com
http://www.emdr-europe.org