Can you identify the symptoms of posttraumatic stress?

Also known as PTSD, it is the result of traumatic experiences that develop pathological structures of fear and generate great suffering in people, as they are haunted by intrusive memories and feel in constant threat.

The main signs of PTSD are perceived in behavioral lack of control and are divided into 3 areas. The first is traumatic reexperience , that is, souvenirs, flashbacks , nightmares, triggers, smells, people or situations. The second is the dodge or social isolation and the third we realize from physical symptoms, such as tachycardia, sweating, dizziness, headaches, difficulty concentration, irritability, hypervigilance and hyperexcitation. Also happens the experience of intense emotions that can lead to dissociation.

To deal with the PTSD, patients, usually treated by DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy), can be involved in high -risk and self -destructive behaviors, as these short -term behaviors generate some kind of relief, although suffering appears to long term. Their lives become restrictive and disconnected, due to the great effort to deal with all these signs generated by the trauma experience. Therefore, my goal when writing about this is to draw the attention of therapists and people in general, to this critical moment we are living in Rio Grande do Sul due to floods and their consequences. Many of our customers, family members, friends may mean what happened and lived as a PTS and, therefore, it would be interesting to indicate or perform effective treatment, such as DBT's prolonged exposure protocol for posttraumatic stress disorder (DBT-PE ), which focuses on the treatment that aims to habit and exposure to feared stimuli, occurring in vivo and in an imaginary way . Using mindfulness behavioral skills, emotional regulation, tolerance to malaise and interpersonal effectiveness can also be quite effective. Telephone contacts with the therapist are also useful to the aid of generalizing these skills in crisis situations.

With repeated exposure to stimuli feared in the absence of negative consequences, fear will eventually decrease, occurring the process of extinction or “habituation”, and the PTS will improve. Using the DBT-PE protocol, developed by Melanie Harned, is, in my view, a safe and careful way of emotional exposure, having a high rate of efficacy in research conducted.

Want to know more or make exchanges on the subject?  We offer a study group on this theme and also have trained professionals for these specific services. Contact us!

references:

Harned Melanie S. Treating trauma with dialectical behavioral therapy: prolonged exposure protocol in DBT . Technical Translation by Stove Nicoletti and Vinícius Guimarães Dornelles - Novo Hamburgo: Sinopsys Editora, 2023.