Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- Joséphine Hengstwerth
- Apr 15, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Apr 16, 2020
“PTSD is essentially a memory filing error caused by a traumatic event.” (https://www.ptsduk.org/what-is-ptsd/)
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder caused by very stressful, frightening or distressing events. (https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/)
While being exposed to an intense situation (like physical assault, bullying, military combat, terrorist attacks and similar) the body is put in a state of “fight or flight” where all normal operations of the mind are reduced to solely surviving. The mind does not produce a memory of such a frightful event until the danger passes which leads to memories of emotions and sensations coming up later on in the form of nightmares and flashbacks.
While this is very distressing and can lead to serious anxiety, PTSD sufferers try to avoid anything linked to the trauma. Although the brain is programmed to process positive as well as negative memories, the avoidance of it will transform it into a big cycle of nightmares and flashbacks with the symptoms of PTSD intensifying.
“It’s like a filing cabinet at work. You’ve been too busy to complete all your filing one day, so you drop it in your bottom drawer. Each day, you’re still too busy to go back to that filing, but the bulging drawer reminds you need done, and it makes you anxious. When you finally try to do the filing, you realise there’re no reference numbers, you don’t who to ask for help, and you can’t read the documents to know where they should go, so you drop it back into your bottom drawer. This cycle will continue until you ask someone for help. Someone who can understand the documents and knows where they should be filed, or at the very least can help you find out what you need to know, in order to file them.” (https://www.ptsduk.org/what-is-ptsd/)
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