In this revealing episode of "Healing Our Hidden Wounds," Evan, our resident mental health and addiction therapist, offers an in-depth breakdown of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), from its historical roots to the modern criteria defined in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). He elucidates the evolution of PTSD understanding and diagnosis, detailing the symptoms and criteria that mental health professionals use to identify and treat this complex condition. Join Evan as he unpacks the history, symptoms, and clinical perspectives of PTSD, providing valuable insights into this profound and challenging mental health issue.
Post traumatic stress disorder is the core of how mental health professionals understand trauma. A great way of understanding our modern view of PTSD and how it's diagnosed is through five separate symptom categories. With more insight and more education, we become more ready to address it and move forward and heal.
In order to understand how trauma impacts us, it's crucial to understand PTSD. Post traumatic stress disorder is the core of how we mental health professionals understand trauma and stressor related disorders. I'm Evan, your resident mental health and addiction therapist, and this is my trauma series. Healing our hidden wounds. Having its roots in combat veterans returning from World War one, we needed a way to classify, to categorize what they were experiencing, how their lives were totally uprooted and turned upside down.
And this was crucial for setting the stage of our understanding for PTSD and the effects of severe trauma. In many ways, it's like having an earthquake go off in your life where the aftershocks last indefinitely. So a great way of understanding our modern view of PTSD and how it's diagnosed is through five separate symptom categories. So let me break those down for you in the most simple terms possible. Before jumping into the main symptoms, one of the categories is actually experiencing the trauma.
For example, a near death experience, ongoing abuse, anything that causes such a fear response that it overwhelms your system. The first is what we call intrusive symptoms. And you could think about these as forced reminders from our past. We don't want to think about these experiences, yet they find us. They enter into our minds. It's like being in a theater, in this movie, playing in on repeat. It happens in our dreams. It happens as we're triggered throughout our day to day. We desperately do not want them, yet they continue to come.
So category number two is all about escape. We call those avoidant symptoms because when you have all these different triggers and intrusive thoughts and feelings, obviously you don't want to experience that distress. So you avoid these different areas in your life, these reminders, so you don't have to feel it. The problem with doing that is the more you avoid, the less you face those fears, the more interruptions you have on your life, the less you're allowed to do, and the more your world becomes confined.
Category number three is all about changing the way we think. It's alterations in the mind, in our thoughts, the way we view ourselves, the way we view the world, persistently feeling down, feeling guilty, shame about the experience. These are intrusive thoughts in and of themselves. It could even change the way we experience memories, forgetting anything about the past, our minds shutting those things off. And the last category is how severe trauma affects our bodies, our emotions, being hyper vigilant, being in a constant state of fear, anxiety, even feeling feelings of depression.
Also the necessity to escape. For example, using substances or harmful behaviors, just so you don't have to feel those unpleasant feelings. So to have a better understanding about how severe trauma and PTSD impacts all these different areas of our life, it's a great first step to moving forward on the healing process. With more insight and more education, we become more ready to address it and move forward and heal.
