Top 7 myths about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is often misunderstood. By covering these common PTSD myths, Lehigh Valley Counseling hopes to correct and improve the understanding of this condition and encourage more people to seek help. We also hope to increase understanding, empathy, and care for those suffering from PTSD by challenging some of these misconceptions.
MYTH:
Trauma and conditions like PTSD only impact people who have had a near-death experience.
FACT:
Trauma is defined as someone experiencing actual or threatened death, serious injury or sexual violence to themselves or someone else.
Everyone perceives incidents in their own unique ways. Trauma can range from a natural disaster, accidents, abuse, or having a sick child. Trauma can happen wherever someone feels as though they are in a life threatening situation, or a person feels a loss of control followed by a fear for their ability to be safe following the experience.
When we are in a stressful situation, our brains engage to try and protect us automatically without giving us time to determine if the threat is life threatening or not. Trauma does not discriminate between age, race, living conditions, physical ability, or life experience.
MYTH:
Post-traumatic stress disorder only impacts soldiers.
FACT:
Everyone can experience PTSD
Because all humans have similar brain structures and capabilities, anyone may be at risk of PTSD after a particularly distressing and uncontrolled event. PTSD can impact anyone from your friends and neighbors to military personnel or political leaders. However, veterans who return from active duty military service are at a slightly higher risk of developing PTSD.
In a very broad sense, we all have similar brain structure and capabilities. Having these similarities puts everyone at risk for developing PTSD after a particularly distressing and uncontrolled event. PTSD can impact anyone from your friends, children and family members to military personnel and first responders. Data shows that those who return from active duty military service are at a high risk for developing PTSD.
MYTH
Strong people can deal with trauma on their own and don’t need help.
FACT
PTSD and other trauma reactions have nothing to do with mental strength, character or background.
This all stems from the stigma that surrounds many other mental health conditions. The truth is that anyone can experience trauma after a terrifying incident.
MYTH
Anyone who experiences a trauma will eventually have post-traumatic stress disorder.
FACT
Not everyone will go on to develop PTSD following a traumatic event.
Those who are struggling with PTSD or Acute Stress Disorder will go on to re-live and re-experience the trauma repeatedly through nightmares or flashbacks, have strong negative feelings about the trauma, try to avoid all of the negative emotions and people or things related to the trauma.
MYTH
Trauma reactions last forever and are incurable.
FACT
Although it may feel that way; PTSD is treatable.
Indeed, some traumas may feel so severe and insurmountable that it seems impossible to move forward and get better. Thankfully, there are many treatments that have been shown to be effective in treating PTSD.
One analogy that can be helpful in understanding the treatment and recovery of trauma is looking at the trauma as a very heavy two hundred pound backpack. When PTSD is untreated, this backpack may feel so heavy that it is hard to even take a step. Over time and by utilizing some of these treatments, that backpack becomes a heavy duffle bag, then a purse, and eventually a wallet. We are aware of the wallet’s existence but it doesn’t impact our ability to make it through the day the same way carrying around the heavy backpack would.
If you have experienced a trauma and are having a difficult time shaking that trauma out of your mind and your life, you are not alone. Supportive groups, informative books and helping professionals that truly care are available. It is possible to heal.
MYTH
People with PTSD are violent.
FACT
People with PTSD are not usually violent.
PTSD can be extremely distressing, as people may experience flashbacks and nightmares causing them to relive the most traumatic events in their lives frequently. Everyone deals with these symptoms in different ways but commonly people may withdraw, be easily startled, hypervigilant, and some may act violently. However, it is a misconception that people with PTSD are violent and/or dangerous. Research has shown that there is little to no evidence that PTSD is related to higher rates of violent crime.
MYTH
PTSD occurs immediately after a traumatic event.
FACT
Symptoms of PTSD can take months or years to appear.
Often times others may assume that if they are going to have symptoms of PTSD, the signs will present quickly after the event. However, this is not always true, and in some cases, people may not show symptoms of PTSD for years. Which, in the DSM5 is known as delayed onset PTSD.
When someone experiences a stressful situation (trauma) this can impact the way memories are stored, making them less accessible to conscious thought. Think of your memory as a filing cabinet (although we may need to update that analogy)...lets go with a google drive! If someone asks you where you went for your birthday last year, you’d be able to search through your memory archives and deliberately bring to mind the memory of that trip or event. This is because each memory is time stamped, in a general sense, by the hippocampus. When the amygdala triggers the fight or flight response, the hippocampus does not function properly and memories are filed without a time or place stamp. Which is often why those who experience trauma can feel as though the trauma is happening again when they have those memories.
Resources
Support Groups/Crisis/General Resource and referral information: NAMI of the Lehigh Valley
PTSD and Veterans: U.S Department of Veterans Affairs
PTSD Hospitalization resources: Lehigh Valley Hospital