It is useful to try to understand how your body responds to stress. Recognizing that your symptoms are continuing reactions to the overpowering stress you have experienced, and therefore quite normal, is the first step in containing them and feeling more in control.

Stress was defined by Hans Selye in 1946 as a demand on the human system - mental, physical or emotional. According to this model, overwhelming traumatic stress would be perceived as an extreme demand, a threat to existence, to which the body responds by automatically mobilizing all its coping mechanisms to provide the necessary energy for survival - the fight, flight or freeze reactions. What actually happens is that massive amounts of the hormone adrenaline and other internal chemicals are produced b the body and circulated to the muscles, enabling the body to move more quickly, be stronger and more tolerant to pain. The breathing changes, the muscles are tense in anticipation of action and all the physical reactions are swift.

Post-Traumatic Stress Reactions of high arousal have sometimes been described as 'the system getting stuck on red alert, the emergency response fails to shut off and the body is prone to surges of adrenaline, which send messages to the brain to the effect that everything in the environment continues to be dangerous and potentially threatening - just as the trauma was. In other words, traumatized individuals 'over-react' to everything. The smallest reminder of something remotely associated with the event (a slight sound, a flash of colour, a smell) can set off a dramatic response. For example, a car backfires or there is a loud 'bang' in the street, etc. and you find yourself diving to the floor without thinking, as if your body has been 'programmed' to expect danger and to react to the slightest diversion from the ordinary as if it were life threatening. Such behaviour could also be triggered by memory flashbacks to the actual traumatic event, or the experience of a 'replay' of all or part of the trauma before your eyes.

What seems so real to the post-trauma sufferer may not be at all apparent to companions or onlookers. It is disconcerting, and at times embarrassing, when these dramatic over-reactions occur in public or even in front of the family. Diving under a table in a restaurant in response to a dish being dropped and smashing behind you is hard to explain, even to close friends. As a result, you may become very anxious about being in public, or in social gatherings where you feel 'exposed'. You may begin to avoid such situations or to feel panicky if they are unavoidable. Your ability to predict how you will react decreases and your confidence in your coping ability suffers as a result.

It should gradually be becoming clear that the symptoms of post-traumatic stress reactions can interact with each other in a kind of 'vicious circle' of responses which keep the cycle going.

(C.Herbert & A.Wetmore "Overcoming Traumatic Stress")

(Faure - "Pavane")