It’s normal to experience intense fear, anxiety, and sadness during and after a traumatic experience. For some people, these feelings eventually subside on their own.
It’s normal to experience intense fear, anxiety, and sadness during and after a traumatic experience. For some people, these feelings eventually subside on their own. For others, however, living through such experiences can lead to ongoing mental health challenges that interfere with day-to-day life. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that some individuals develop after exposure to a traumatic event.
Symptoms of PTSD include intrusive re-experiencing of traumatic events, avoidance of trauma reminders, and arousal symptoms, such as hyper-vigilance. PTSD requires specialized and knowledgeable treatment from a practitioner providing evidence-based therapy. Common and effective therapies include eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), prolonged exposure therapy, or cognitive processing therapy (CPT). In therapy, the initial focus is often learning strategies for grounding, coping, and anxiety management. Later on, some therapy types involve gradual and careful exposure to reminders of the traumatic experience, though this is not always a necessary component of treatment. In each treatment, the aim is to help individuals recover and live a full and meaningful life.
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