(Faure - "Pavane")
Understanding your reactions will help to reduce your sense of isolation, of being alone with your experience. You are not alone! Recurrent research data suggests that, over the course of a lifetime, as many as 25 percent of people exposed to any type of catastrophic and highly stressful event will develop reactions that can be classified as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The percentage is higher still for rape and assault victims, combat veterans and those who have directly experienced community disasters.
When you are traumatized by a life event, your feelings of extreme fear, horror or helplessness can sometimes lead to a pattern of reactions which is constantly repeated and can be very disruptive to your everyday life. This, in turn, affects your ability to cope and function so that at times you may even wonder if you are losing your mind.
Reactions following trauma can be divided into three main symptom groups:
1. Re-experiencing the event (Intrusive reactions)
A feeling that you are experiencing the original event all over again, through memories intruding into your waking or sleeping life.
2. Arousal reactions
You feel persistently aroused in a nervous, agitated sense, anxious, tense, unable to settle or concentrate, over reacting very sharply to small things and, especially, have trouble sleeping.
3. Avoidance reactions
You make frantic efforts to avoid anything that could remind you of the trauma, or cause you to think or talk about it in any way. You may shut down your feelings about other people and things you normally care about and keep to yourself. You may feel unusually withdrawn and emotionally numb.
While it is likely that many of these responses will be present immediately following a traumatic incident, for most people they usually subside during the next few days or weeks. If your reactions don't subside, but instead recur over and over again, you may begin to despair that you will never be like your old self again. Your thought patterns, your attitude toward yourself begins to shift as well - you might begin to believe that you have been permanently changed or damaged. You tell yourself that you should be coping more efficiently. You might be bothered by feelings of shame or guilt or extreme grief.
People close to you may be expecting you to get back to normal fairly quickly, and may pressure you with statements like: 'You've changed!' or 'You're not the person you were before!'. While they may mean well, these statements serve to underscore your sense of feeling different and helpless. You may react by being snappy and irritable, very jumpy and easily startled (even by the smallest unexpected noises) or secretive and closed off. Or you might just keep it all to yourself, refusing to talk things over and avoiding friends or social gatherings.
The important thing to remember is that the very fact that these are unusual responses for you and an extreme change from your earlier personality or style of being suggests that they are indications of a traumatic stress reaction. Even if you are not experiencing all the symptoms mentioned here, you will recognize some and you may find that your own responses 'cluster' in certain areas. The intensity of your symptoms, the severity of interference to your normal functioning and the duration of your reactions will help you and your medical practitioner determine if further professional treatment is needed. It is important that you begin to understand what is happening to you, and that you resolve to get whatever help is needed to assist you in becoming yourself again.
(Faure - "Pavane")