Anxiety and PTSD
Explore your issues with me and we will find a solution.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
It is inevitable that throughout our lives we will all experience our fair share of stresses, strains and difficult situations. For most of us, recovery from these events will be a natural process which occurs over time, without the need for further help. For others however, certain traumatic and frightening events can trigger a reaction which can last for a period of months, or even years.
This reaction is known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a condition which manifests both physically and psychologically and is thought to occur in approximately 30% of individuals who experience traumatic events.
The term PTSD is used to describe a range of symptoms, which occur following an involvement in a traumatic event. These events are considered to be both beyond our control, and outside of our normal human experiences. The event itself could be anything from witnessing a road traffic accident, natural disaster or terrorist attack, through to being the victim of a mugging, or witnessing harrowing scenes whilst serving in the armed forces.
Whether you are present during a traumatic event, as a witness, or a direct victim, the intense distress and helplessness you felt in the midst of that situation can have a deep and long lasting psychological effect and can trigger a series of symptoms that can seriously impact on your life.
For some PTSD makes life itself a living nightmare…..often with nightmares stripping away restful sleep, flashbacks eroding happiness and self-confidence.
PTSD is fundamentally dealing with an emotion, the trigger often being an association, thought or experience. The traumatizing event means the brain has learnt something and learnt it well.
Conventional treatments for trauma are often, at best, unreliable and uncomfortable, at worst, cruel and painful. One part of the brain, the amygdala, is deeply involved with memory processing, emotions and decision making, but not logic. When anything vaguely reminds the brain of the original trauma, fight or flight kicks in, and the amygdala is activated, primarily as a survival tool.
PTSD has often been treated by forcing sufferers to confront their nightmarish memories, head on. This treatment, which aims to reduce the effect of painful memories, can actually increase their power. Re-living the event can increase and reinforce the original trauma.
I treat PTSD and Trauma with amazing results. It involves three key techniques, which enable rapid trauma relief.
Clients report “the trauma now feels distant”, “I’m free” and “the terrible feelings have gone”.
Now, when they think of the past trauma the feelings are “calm” and “it no longer matters”.
Often, when a client is de-traumatized, they enter a period of growth, where they consider what has been learned from the experience of the trauma itself, and their immense achievement in overcoming it.
This work is immensely rewarding for you, the client, and is hugely empowering, enabling you to rise to the further challenges life may present.
Make the changes to your life that you desire,
you can start today.
– Stuart Downing
Real Life, David’s Story
You can and will recover!
You will free yourself from your addiction.
You will regain control.
– Stuart Downing
Anxiety is a normal, if unpleasant,part of life, and it can affect us all in different ways and at different times and is something that we all have to deal with from time to time.
A degree of anxiety is a natural part of living and nothing to be really worry about, something to be factored into the experience of life itself. Most of us can cope with average amounts of anxiety and still lead perfectly healthy, normal lives.
Whereas stress is something that will come and go as the external factor causing it (be it a work, relationship or money problems, etc.) comes and goes, anxiety is something that can persist whether or not the cause is clear to the sufferer.
Anxiety can make a person imagine that things in their life are worse than they really are, and prevent them from confronting their fears. Often they will think they are going mad, or that some psychological imbalance is at the heart of their issue.Anxiety is almost always present with addictions and subsequent cravings.
If your general anxiety (GAD) has taken you to the doctor, you probably already know the medical response. It is so often to simply prescribe tranquillizers, beta-blockers, antidepressants and other anti-anxiety medication in an attempt to disguise and drug away the symptoms.Often clients present with a long term use of anti depressants when they should be used short term to allow the client to cope and therapy identify the route causes .
Anxiety is predominantly fear or, to be more exact, the fear of fear, or the fear of losing control, of being overwhelmed by circumstances or by life itself. The fear is often unfounded and your mind is working against you, leading you into eventualities that exist mainly in your imagination, telling you that something bad is going to happen.At Harley Street Addiction Specialist we will work therapeutically with the emotion of fear to reduce its impact on our clients welfare and health .
In fact, all anxiety is based on two little words: ‘What if?’
What if that should happen?’ or What if this happens?”What if he/she does that?’ ‘What if I can’t do this?” What if… What if…’
It Is almost if some part of the mind believes that something terrible is lurking, is waiting to happen and so it’s making you overly sensitive, mind constantly working overtime, filling you with tension and forcing you to live on your nerves.
Anxiety symptoms exist for a reason. They are the subconscious mind‘s way of alerting us that something inside needs fixing. Those anxious, panicky feelings are only the symptoms—though they make us feel awful, they are not ‘the’ problem. Once the real problem is uncovered and properly dealt with, then the symptoms can simply fade away, permanently