7 Symptoms that PTSD Survivors Endure
Even though trauma might sound familiar it is still a new field in psychology. PTSD appears from going through different trauma moments that stick with you for the rest of your life.
The impact of trauma leaves a mark on any person that goes through it. If we experience ongoing trauma this means our brain will go through some changes. It changes the way we see the world in a profound way. In the following article, we are going to see the symptoms that survivors of complex PTSD go through.
Strong fear of trust
People that go through abuse from important people in their lives end up having a strong and understandable fear of trusting people. If parents are the ones that brought the abuse, then the fear intensifies.
Their brain learns to fear and distrust people because it becomes the way the brain can cope with any further potential abuse. Trauma survivors find it hard to trust people and it doesn’t take a lot to destroy any kind of trust built. This fear consumes a lot of energy and it shows how easy the ones that we love the most can hurt us so much.
Being alone the entire time
PTSD survivors feel little connection with people most of the time. They are constantly in a state of aloneness, even when close people are around them. They feel an inner world that nobody can enter and they feel like nobody can connect with them.
Besides this, feeling broken is always something that haunts them. They always feel different from other people and this makes it even harder when they try to create relationships.
Emotional Balance
Strong emotions are common with people suffering from PTSD. It can be understood that trauma comes with plenty of different intense emotions. For them, it is normal to go daily through many different emotions.
Understanding how to manage and regulate emotions is important in order to manage all the other symptoms.
Flashbacks
All PTSD survivors have flashbacks. There are three main ones that appear depending on the trauma they have been through.
Visual Flashbacks - The mind is sent back to the trauma by visual elements and people feel like they are reliving it.
Somatic Flashbacks - The person feels pain in different zones of the body. The pain can’t be linked to any health issues and is triggered by something that makes the body go through the trauma again.
Emotional Flashbacks - The hardest to understand are the flashbacks that relate to emotions. Still, this is the one that people with PTSD experience the most. It happens when emotions from the past are triggered without the understanding of the person experiencing it. They simply can’t understand why these emotions appear as flashbacks. The tricky part about them is that they can appear in any situation without being linked to it. They are actually emotions that were felt during the trauma and that get back to the present moment.
Hypervigilance with People
A lot of people with PTSD have hypervigilance. This means they are always on the offense scanning everything that happens around them. People that have gone through complex trauma have a deep need to understand people. They pay attention to the body language, to the tone of voice, and to the words that other people use.
Doing this can take a lot of energy and it can create a deep unhealthy habit.
Losing faith
Having PTSD means people have a bigger chance of losing their faith. This can mean a lot of things from losing faith in people, in the world being a good place, in religion or other values.
Trauma survivors see the entire world as a dangerous place. This for sure can be understandable when people have endured ongoing severe abuse. We can’t judge people that do this, instead, we should show compassion.
Searching for a rescuer
Subconsciously, people suffering from PTSD are looking for someone to rescue them. The survivor can feel many times the need of having somebody that just takes the pain away and makes their lives better. Unfortunately, this leads the survivor to seek out the type of people who do more damage instead of helping.
