Traumatic Stress

Trauma can be experienced when:

• • A person goes through a traumatic event.
  • A person sees someone go through a traumatic event or learns about a traumatic event from someone else.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is diagnosis given to someone who experiences trauma and develops symptoms that make it difficult to function in their daily lives.

Post-traumatic stress can cause symptoms such as:

• • Experiencing the trauma over again through flashbacks, nightmares, or upsetting thoughts.
  • Avoiding places, events, people, objects, thoughts, and feelings that are reminders of the traumatic experience.
  • Feeling tense or easily startled.
  • Being overly aware of yourself or surroundings.
  • Trouble with sleeping.
  • Getting easily upset, having outbursts, feeling irritable or grumpy.
  • Feeling guilt or blame.
  • Loss of interest in doing things you once liked or enjoyed.
  • Thinking bad thoughts that won’t go away about people, the world, or yourself.

Trauma affects everyone differently. Not everyone that experiences trauma will be diagnosed with PTSD.

If you experience a traumatic event, you could have all, some, or none of the symptoms of PTSD.