You experienced painful emotional or physical trauma in your family growing up. You’ve suffered emotional or physical trauma in one or more of your relationships. There has been an event in your life in which you’ve been threatened with such serious physical or emotional harm that it would be out of the range of what we consider normal life experience. Some examples might be living through war, witnessing an accident with loss of life or limb, experiencing rape or incest, or seeing your children suffer abuse. Whatever the trauma you’ve experienced, you tend to have “repeat performances” of this painful pattern in one relationship after another, one job after another, and so on.
- You have thought patterns of terror, fright, panic, and edginess.
- You have a feeling that you might be hurt or harmed, or that someone might reject or criticize you.
- You believe you won’t get the help you need.
- You feel you’re incompetent to change the situation.
- You feel like you’re going crazy.
Body Symptoms of PTSD
In addition to the symptoms in the previous section, you may have these:
- Trembling and shaking
- Hot flashes and cold chills
- Numbness and tingling
- Nausea or a sick feeling in your stomach
- Pressure in your chest
- A pounding heart
- Cold sweats
- Shortness of breath
- A lump in your throat
- Dizziness and vertigo
- Feeling like you’re “out of your body”
- Feeling like you’re dying
You’ll find that trauma can rewire the brain, and if the above descriptions sound familiar to you, contact me. You will have a whole host of solutions you can use with your health care team to create and maintain physical relief and emotional serenity. Trauma recovery involves mindfulness, self-compassion, caring for your spiritual self, using cultural practices, wellness healing practices, building a support system and supporting family and friends affected by trauma.