Don’t you just love it when physical trauma results in psychological trauma?
I spent over a decade working as a contractor for the Department of Defense. Whether you are working in a healthcare setting or not, it is hard to spend time around soldiers and not learn a fair share about post-traumatic stress disorder, a mental health condition that affects those who have experienced or even witnessed an extremely stressful or scary event.
Symptoms fall into four categories: intrusive memories, avoidance, negative impacts to thought patterns and mood, and both physical and emotional changes to how you handle certain situations. As with many psychological conditions, they can compound without you realizing it, and suddenly the life you have worked so hard to build feels like it is falling out of your reach.
While it may be a given for many of those who have been deployed to a war zone, it can also apply to crime victims, people who have been in natural disasters, and . . . patients (and caregivers).
Raise your hand if you have felt extreme stress or fear when receiving a new diagnosis, going in for a procedure, dealing with a clinician who belittles or dismisses you, or even having the insurance company reject a treatment. Do those experiences affect how you interact with the healthcare system? How’s that essential-for-optimal-care trust factor feeling right about now?
Why does it matter?
Because, if left unaddressed or unrecognized, it can compound itself, showing up in higher levels of depression and anxiety, as well as poor self-esteem, heightened anger, memory issues, and even chronic pain. These are all barriers to effective courses of treatment on top of all the usual barriers – financial, accessibility, cultural, etc. We don’t need that.
And then there is the little fact that, for people with medical PTSD, our triggers are often our own bodies or the conditions themselves. As much as we would like to sometimes, we can’t walk away from our physical selves, so there is no safe space away from the trauma.
If you think you are experiencing medical PTSD, please raise it with a clinician you trust or, if you don’t have one, look for resources that will help you cope. Find a therapist near you who specializes in PTSD (there are lots) or explore online therapy services BetterHelp and TalkSpace. If you’re not ready for that yet, at least share with someone in your support network – a significant other, parent, (adult) child, or close friend – so they know and can provide a little extra attention right now.
Like any form PTSD, there are treatments, mainly centered on altering how you process your trauma. Most of them are pretty well proven. Cognitive behavioral therapy, cognitive processing therapy, and exposure therapy (there is a virtual reality version of this) have been around forever, and can be quite effective. Some people have also been trying Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and brainspotting, which are newer but has promise.
The caveat, of course, is cost. If your insurance plan has a mental health benefit, then treatment should be at least partially covered. If not, there are other sources of support.
· Employee Assistance Programs
· Community mental health centers
· Peer support groups
· Online communities, apps, and podcasts
PTSD is hard, and finding treatment that fits is complicated. But it’s the same as every condition, whether physical or psychological: the longer it goes untreated, the more impact it will have on your life and the harder it becomes to pull yourself out.
But you know you can. So, do it for yourself and the life you want to lead.