Understanding PTSD: Causes, Symptoms, and Your Treatment Options

When you hear the term “post-traumatic stress disorder,” you likely think of military veterans. While you are 100% accurate in relating the two, it’s not only veterans who struggle with PTSD. Understanding PTSD means genuinely grasping how and why the debilitating mental health concern affects so many.

Approximately 12 million U.S. adults deal with PTSD in any given year. That’s about 3.5% of the country’s population. With that many people struggling with such a challenging mental health disorder, it’s crucial to know what to look for so you can look into treating post-traumatic stress disorder if needed. 

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What is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and What Causes It?

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder that may occur due to being involved in or witnessing a traumatic event. Of course, this includes dangerous military operations, but PTSD can also occur after witnessing or experiencing:   

• rape or sexual assault
• serious accidents
• natural disasters
• extramarital affairs
• historical trauma
• assault
• loss of a child
• parental divorce
• life-threatening situations

Understanding PTSD and who it can impact can be difficult. You can’t put whether or not a circumstance will lead to PTSD. It’s a highly challenging mental health disorder that knows no lines, and it certainly doesn’t discriminate. No matter your age, sex, race, or religion, you can experience the unfortunate symptoms of PTSD.

What Are the Most Common Symptoms of PTSD?

There are several symptoms of PTSD to keep an eye out for. Some are more challenging to pinpoint than others. What makes understanding PTSD so you can act on treating post-traumatic stress disorder quickly is the fact that symptoms don’t always occur immediately after a traumatic event. Sometimes they do, but typically, symptoms of PTSD develop within three months after the traumatic incident.

But that’s not all. Sometimes, PTSD symptoms can manifest years after a traumatic event. That’s right – years! So if you aren’t aware of what to look for, you could miss PTSD symptoms entirely.

There are four types of PTSD symptoms you should know about. And to receive an actual PTSD diagnosis, you must experience life-altering symptoms for longer than one month.

• Re-experiencing Symptoms
  • feeling as if you are reliving traumatic events
  • flashbacks
  • nightmares
  • bad memories

Words, objects, and specific situations reminding you of traumatic events could trigger these types of symptoms. You may also experience sweating and heart palpitations.

• Avoidance Symptoms
  • avoiding people, places, and situations that trigger challenging memories
  • avoiding thinking or talking about a traumatic event

• Cognition and Mood Symptoms
  • negative thoughts about yourself and the world around you
  • difficulty trusting people
  • finding it almost impossible to feel happy
  • difficulty recalling certain aspects of traumatic events, leading to guilt, shame, and blaming yourself

• Hyperarousal and Reactivity Symptoms
  • jumpy/startled easily
  • difficulty falling and staying asleep
  • feeling on edge all the time
  • frequent irritability
  • participating in risky activities and behaviors like drinking alcohol, smoking, etc.
  • feeling stressed
  • inability to concentrate

Unlike being triggered into encountering re-experiencing symptoms, when you are hyper-aroused, you experience these challenging symptoms all the time. As you can imagine, constantly feeling stressed, on edge, and irritable can make life less enjoyable and negatively impact work and school performance, not to mention relationships.

Treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Find a PTSD Specialist

If you experience PTSD, you may put off getting professional help for several reasons. Perhaps you feel like you’ll be judged if someone knows you have PTSD. (Nobody except your therapist needs to know if this is your concern.) Or maybe you think talking about it will evoke horrific memories and extremely uncomfortable mental and physical symptoms. Or, perhaps you associate PTSD solely with veterans and active military members, and that’s not you. So you shrug it off and think, “Eh, I’m just a little anxious.”

The fact is, if you’ve gone through a traumatic event and have experienced any of the above symptoms for over a month, you likely have PTSD. And remember, there are no laws of definition for a traumatic event – if it was traumatic to you, then it’s a trauma.

The good news is that treating post-traumatic stress disorder isn’t an impossible feat. PTSD is treatable. You just need the right PTSD specialist and the will and desire to commit to feeling better. Also, working with a PTSD specialist has never been easier, thanks to the modern advances in telehealth technology. 

Partner With Nexus of Hope for PTSD Treatment

Here at Nexus of Hope, we provide highly-effective in-person and online PTSD treatment in Minnesota. Whether you come into our warm and welcoming Burnsville, MN office or you meet with one of our experienced Nurse Practitioners online, we’re ready to meet you where you are and collaborate with you to curate the best treatment plan for you. 

Two of the most common evidence-based treatment options for treating post-traumatic stress disorder include:

• Psychotherapy – Discussing your symptoms and issues surrounding a traumatic event or event has been proven highly beneficial if you deal with PTSD. Several therapeutic approaches have been proven effective, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Exposure Therapy (ET), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), and more. 

 

• Medication Management – While not everyone dealing with PTSD will benefit from medication management, it has been proven highly effective in relieving symptoms of PTSD. The most common medications for PTSD are SSRIs and SNRIs. They can be used alone but are even more effective when combined with therapy.

You can also make several lifestyle changes to help alleviate your PTSD symptoms. At Nexus of Hope, our clinicians can help determine which ones may be optimal in your treatment plan. They include the following:

• yoga and meditation
• a healthy exercise regimen
• animal-assisted therapy
• mindfulness exercises
• stress management exercises

At Nexus of Hope Psychiatry and Mental Health Wellness, we offer therapy and medication management, either alone or in conjunction with one another, to help you overcome your PTSD symptoms. Through our PTSD treatment in Minnesota, we’ll address the internal and external factors negatively impacting your life. With our help, you can work through your symptoms and move on to live a happier, more fulfilling life.

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