Trauma, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a condition in which a person goes through a terrible experience (as we see in war veterans) and is then plagued by memory ‘flashbacks’, anxiety, panic, depression, sleeplessness and hyper-vigilance.
Here are the most common myths about Trauma:
- You never really get over it
- The trauma is stored in the Unconscious mind
- The problem needs long term therapy
- Treatment involves working through so-called ‘irrational’ emotions
- The cure arrives when the individual learns to control those ‘irrational’ emotions with the ‘rational mind’.
Some facts:
- The majority of people exposed to awful events do not develop trauma and many people with PTSD do recover
- There is no such thing as the ‘Unconscious Mind’
- EMDR therapy is extremely quick
- Successful treatment means getting rid of irrational ideas and reactions, not emotions
And here are some more facts:
- It’s fairly uncommon – only about 20% of people who go through a traumatic event actually develop a Traumatic reaction.
- Some types of therapy can make the problem worse rather than better if they focus on reliving the trauma
- It is not caused by out of control emotions
- It is caused by the over-attentive conscious mind
- Tt is relatively straightforward to eliminate traumatic memories and the symptoms that come with them
- Traumatic problems are best treated with EMDR.
