What is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)?

Some people who experience trauma do not automatically process their traumatic experiences and are at risk of developing PTSD. This can manifest itself through several symptoms such as flashbacks, nightmares, reliving the event, avoidance, etc. CBT has been shown to be an effective form of treatment for people with PTSD. In this diagnosis, the person takes on both internal and external avoidance, which perpetuates the trauma because processing is not allowed to happen. In the treatment, the client lists their avoidances and then exposes themselves to past events by, among other things, talking about what has happened so that the events become less charged and thus processed. The person may also challenge their external avoidance, as this is also helpful for processing. Trauma can affect a person's sense of safety, trust, self-esteem, security and intimacy. The trauma affects how the person views themselves, the world, the future and life. The person then often adopts new patterns of behavior in the form of avoidance, such as keeping their surroundings at a distance, avoiding certain places, etc. c. By exposing themselves safely over and over again based on a gradually structured exposure hierarchy, the person can have a new learning experience, i.e. see that these new assumptions and life rules that have arisen after the trauma do not necessarily have to be true. The brain likes to generalize and these generalizations can be adaptive, i.e. effective for survival purposes, but they do not have to be true.

For example, a person who is robbed by someone wearing a red jacket does not benefit from being beaten up and avoiding all people wearing red clothes. Unfortunately, the brain can draw such wrong conclusions after a trauma and then the person needs to expose themselves and see that the wrong assumption was not true. The brain is quick to draw conclusions. It is fast but not always correct. This has benefited humans in the past and therefore we have this feature. For example, a person walking in the forest may see a stick and think it is a snake. The person has time to jump away and get scared, which is functional if there had actually been a snake there. The brain is fast because it is better to jump away once too often than to be bitten by a poisonous snake. Treating post-traumatic stress disorder can be scary because the person has to go back to the old traumas. It is important to remember that memories and feelings are harmless and that when you sit and tell the psychologist, you are completely safe. When the person is allowed to return to the memories from a safe place, it slowly but surely becomes less and less difficult to expose oneself and thus the processing takes place.