Signs And Symptoms Of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- Megan Maysie
- Jun 11, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 17
Trauma is deeply personal. Two people can live through the same event and emerge with very different wounds.
After a traumatic experience, many people feel shaken, anxious, irritable, or unable to sleep for a while. Those reactions are often part of the mind and body trying to make sense of what happened.
But PTSD is different. PTSD develops when the nervous system continues reacting as though the danger is still present long after the event has ended. The body stays on alert, the past keeps intruding into the present, and ordinary life becomes increasingly difficult to inhabit.
The good news is that recognizing the signs is often the first step toward healing.
What is PTSD?
PTSD is clinically diagnosed, but as the name, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, suggests, at its core is trauma.
What is Trauma?
Trauma happens anywhere and almost everywhere. A ubiquitous issue, trauma is exposure to a specific incident or series of events that are life-threatening or emotionally distressing, and that negatively impacts the individual's functioning. This includes effects on physical, mental, emotional, social, and/or spiritual well-being, and may arise from serious accidents, terrorist acts, war or combat, natural disasters, bullying, rape or sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and historical trauma.
Trauma is more than what war veterans returning home have experienced, and PTSD can happen to anyone.
What PTSD Is
Known as shell shock during WWI and combat fatigue after WWII, PTSD is prevalent in combat veterans, but by no means limited to them. It can happen to anyone who has experienced or witnessed trauma- emotionally, physically, or as life-threatening, resulting in a negative impact on physical, mental, social, and/or spiritual well-being.
It can occur at any age, and people often carry their trauma with them for years, finding ways to numb the pain that eventually spills over into other areas of life. As this happens, seeking help for what happened to you is often avoided through self-blame, compounded by a feeling that there is something inherently wrong with you. There isn’t- the self-blame and stigma are two of the cruelest, least understood, and most debilitating effects of trauma that slow healing.
Exploring the possibility that PTSD is a factor takes establishing whether the things that are preventing you from living your best life can be linked to the traumatic incident or events- and/or the coping mechanisms that mask the underlying issue.
What PTSD Symptoms Feel Like
Many people become experts at coping. They go to work, raise children, pay bills, and appear functional while carrying a private war inside themselves. PTSD is not always loud. Sometimes it is the constant scanning for danger, the exhaustion of never fully relaxing, or the quiet belief that something terrible is about to happen.
Continuing for longer than a month after the traumatic event, or after the danger is removed, the stress of carrying the burden of trauma slowly permeates different aspects of life, morphing into PTSD.
Intense, disturbing thoughts and feelings related to the experience are ruminated on long after the traumatic event has ended, and flashbacks and nightmares become prevalent. Feelings of sadness, fear, or anger appear as some start feeling detached or estranged from other people, avoiding any reminder of the traumatic event. A loud noise or an accidental touch can elicit strong negative reactions.
Soon, things start happening that go beyond just pulling yourself together and putting on a temporary happy face like armour to protect yourself from the world. Coping is a strategy, healing is a roadmap to a happy, productive life.
But people's reactions to a traumatic event, or even sustained trauma, differ. Some feel detached from the experience, feeling like an outsider to the event, looking in. This is a natural reaction, and PTSD symptoms can vary in intensity over time. When you're stressed in general, or when you come across things that remind you of what you went through, you can be triggered into a negative headspace by feeling overcome by memories of your own similar event.
How The Stress of Trauma Manifests
Chipping away at the fabric of life, trauma at any age has debilitating long-term effects, especially on children's developing brains. Being exposed to trauma in childhood is common across all sectors of society and is sometimes referred to as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). The signs and symptoms of PTSD often only emerge many years later.
An Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine in May 1998 found that these behaviours were more likely to be present in people who experienced childhood trauma:
| Increased Likelihood |
Smoke | 2 x |
Have Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) | 2 ½ x |
Develop Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease | 4 x |
Consider themselves an alcoholic | 7 x |
Inject street drugs | 10 x |
Attempt suicide | 12 x |
The data is sobering, but it serves as a wake-up call to the reality of how these impacts ripple into adulthood. As trauma turns inward, the pain that the child carries to adulthood- unless it's been processed through the right guidance, support, and treatment, festers. Behaviours listed indicate a tendency to self-destruct.
It's not that different when trauma arises in adulthood, and some feel an added responsibility to have the strength to handle the situation, while it quietly metastasizes like cancer, creating immense stress and difficulty in coping with day-to-day activities or relationships.
This may be a good time to ask yourself some pertinent questions:
Am I doing this because I’m a terrible person, or because of what happened to me?
Could it be time to heal the past so I can move towards a better future?
What can I do, and where can I get help?
Signs And Symptoms Of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): The Four Symptom Clusters
Presenting themselves mostly within three months of a traumatic event, the symptoms of PTSD can emerge at any time, even years later, and sometimes completely out of the blue, other times, when triggered by something that happens.
For a clinical diagnosis, symptoms of PTSD must be present for more than a month and be severe enough to interfere with work, relationships, and other parts of daily life for a formal diagnosis, but should not be related to medication, substance use, or other illnesses. Importantly, co-occurring conditions that do present themselves with PTSD do include depression, substance use, or one or more anxiety disorders. It's not one or the other, and more often than not, these issues are related.
The Four Symptom Clusters
Re-experiencing
The trauma keeps returning through intrusive memories, nightmares, flashbacks, or intense emotional and physical reactions to reminders that trigger thoughts of the event.
Avoidance
Putting the event out of sight and out of mind, and trying to stop thinking or talking about it, are things that many people do to cope. What often follows is avoiding people, places, and/or activities that are a reminder of the traumatic event.
Hyperarousal
The fight-or-flight-or-fawn-or-freeze response stays stuck on, and the nervous system stays activated: hypervigilance, sleep problems, irritability, exaggerated startle response, and difficulty relaxing. Underlying this is sometimes an overwhelming feeling of guilt or shame.
Hyperarousal can affect far more than sleep and anxiety. PTSD hyperarousal also drastically affects your sex life. The constant fight-or-flight overloads your sympathetic nervous system, making it almost impossible to relax, feel safe, or be mentally present during intimacy.
Mood and cognition changes
Negative thoughts about self or the world, emotional numbness, hopelessness, memory gaps, and feeling disconnected from others become your new normal. Being comfortably numb may sound like a solution, but it doesn’t address the underlying issues, which continue to negatively affect daily life.
How the Signs of PTSD Spiral (When symptoms may indicate PTSD rather than a temporary reaction)
The American Psychiatric Association also linked physical symptoms, including fatigue, increased blood pressure and heart rate, nausea, muscle tension, headaches, backaches, joint pain, or other types of pain, to PTSD. For those with chronic pain, the pain itself could be a reminder of the traumatic event, intensifying PTSD symptoms, even though the person in pain may not realize the connection between the event and the pain.
Chronic pain paired with PTSD often leads to depression and alcohol and prescription medication abuse or misuse, and has been shown to increase the risk of having several health issues, decreasing life expectancy.
The effects arise from a single traumatic event, whereas in Complex PTSD (C-PTSD), the trauma is long-term, repeated trauma.
The Difference Between PTSD And A Normal Reaction To A Traumatic Event
People react differently to trauma. Sadness, irritability, and confusion are often experienced in the immediate aftermath of a major traumatic event, and mostly, people report feeling stressed, having difficulty sleeping, concentrating, or interacting with others.
If these symptoms worsen, affecting social and work functioning, and persist longer than a month, PTSD is something to consider, especially if you or a loved one is struggling to cope with the effects, and it helps to reach out to others and to seek professional help.
When To Seek Help For PTSD
When to seek help for PTSD: Today. If you are reading this article, you're ready to reach out for help. Often, people closest to you are your strongest support structure, but can easily become your emotional dumping ground. Not only do they not necessarily have the skills to help, but you risk alienating the people who love you, and sincerely want the best for you.
Post-trauma, the human mind often vacillates between dense fog and intense rumination, trying to make sense of what happened, of life, and the meaning of it all. These are normal questions, but they are intensified to a level that distracts from productive steps to move forward. Steps like finding a path to healing.
Reaching out for help is not admitting defeat. It's often the first decision that begins changing everything. PTSD is not the end of your story. It may simply be the point where healing begins.
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