Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress

Most of us will have had something scary or distressing happen to us at some point in our lives. You might have been in a car accident, or been threatened by someone. It’s normal to feel a bit more on edge for a while after something frightening happens. You might find that you don’t want to get in a car again for the first few days. When you do get back in a car you might find that your heart is beating more quickly, and you ask other people to reassure you that it’s safe. Pretty soon, you find that you are singing along to the radio in the car again and not even thinking about the accident. This is a normal, healthy reaction to a distressing event.

What is post-traumatic stress?

Sometimes the thing that happens to someone is so frightening and upsetting that, even after a month, they find they can’t bounce back to feeling how they did before it happened. This is what we call post-traumatic stress. Not everyone who goes through a distressing experience will go on to have post-traumatic stress, it depends on a lot of things. For example, it’s more likely that someone will have post-traumatic stress if the trauma was caused by another person. Symptoms of post-traumatic stress don’t always start straight away.

If someone you know has post-traumatic stress, they might find that distressing memories of what happened to them pop into their mind when they don’t want them too.  These memories can be pictures, like a short video clip, smells, sounds, body sensations, or bad dreams.  Other common symptoms of post-traumatic stress are:

• being tense and ‘on edge’
• staying away from things and places that remind you of the trauma
• trying not to think about the trauma, or to let yourself have feelings about it
• difficulty sleeping
• being irritable
• Feeling like you aren’t safe, or can’t trust other people

If the trauma was something that happened to them a number of times, or over a long period of time, it can lead to complex post-traumatic stress disorder, sometimes called c-PTSD.

If the person is struggling to feel okay again after something distressing that happened to them, or you think that they might have post-traumatic stress, encourage them to talk to you about how they’re feeling.  If they are ready, support them to talk to their doctor, or Get Help here.

This video from MIND explains a bit more about PTSD:

Find out about the psychology of PTSD from Joelle Rabow Maletis: