PTSD: Reclaiming Control

By: Robert ‘Bob’ Cuyler, PhD Psychologist and Trauma Expert

How our body reacts to trauma

Most of us think about PTSD as emotional and mental distress following a traumatic event or series of events, and yes, of course this is true. However, PTSD goes beyond just the mind. It also impacts our body in multiple ways.

It’s not only the mind that is hyper-vigilant, constantly on the lookout for danger. This feeling of being tense, wound up and scanning the world for possible danger goes hand in hand with floods of stress hormones that affect us physically.

Regular exercise will help rebuild a sense of competence, and feeling like you’re back in control will help calm the stress hormones. Recognizing and challenging this retreat from life – those avoidance behaviors – is very important. Even small steps can help us recognize that avoidance compounds our problems, it does not solve them.

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This bodily stress can have both immediate and longterm effects. Rapid heart rate, high blood pressure, musculoskeletal pain, digestive discomfort, and sleep disturbance are all common. Surges of anxiety can be intensely unpleasant, and can lead to unhealthy coping styles such as alcohol use, which backfire.

Research indicates that about 60% to 75% of veterans have panic symptoms or attacks as part of PTSD symptoms. Rapid breathing, chest tightness, racing heart, dizziness, nausea, and shakiness are key signals of panic, which tend to come on very rapidly. While many people with panic disorder have panic attacks that seem to come ‘out of the blue’, with PTSD the surges of bodily anxiety more often come with reminders of trauma.

Crowds, sudden loud noises, thoughts or images that remind us of our trauma, or a nightmare can provoke panic. The intensity of the feelings and the bodily distress in these situations understandably makes us want to avoid trauma reminders. Shutting down emotionally – what we call ‘numbing’ – isolation, limiting activities, use of intoxicants, and irritability are some of the behaviors that can creep into our daily life as reactions to trauma.

So it’s not surprising then, that these experiences also lead to a sense of being out of control, when even a reminder of a traumatic event can create such sudden terror. Finding ways, both mentally and physically, to regain that sense of self-control is a vital step in living more effectively with PTSD.

New treatments for panic symptoms are showing benefit for individuals with PTSD, and interestingly are doing so without the need to revisit traumatic memories, which can be a big hurdle for many who try therapy. Our research shows that tackling an important underlying physical factor in panic attacks and PTSD episodes - a hypersensitivity to carbon dioxide that triggers dysregulated breathing – can be effective in reducing symptoms by learning how to regulate breathing patterns and to build self-management skills during times of stress or symptom surge.

Wounds We Cannot See

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder does not always allow the affected to seek help. Lend a hand and provide them with methods of help, listen and be a friend.

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