PTSD From Emotional Abuse Symptoms
Intrusion: Intrusive thoughts, such as reliving a memory of a traumatic experience over and over again, distressing dreams, or flashbacks of the event. Avoidance: Avoiding anything that could remind you of the traumatic event, such as people, places, activities, or situations.
Emotional abuse can lead to C-PTSD, a type of PTSD that involves ongoing trauma. C-PTSD shows many of the same symptoms as PTSD, although its symptoms and causes can differ. Treatment should be tailored to the situation to address the ongoing trauma the person experienced from emotional abuse.
Recurrent, unwanted distressing memories of the traumatic event. Reliving the traumatic event as if it were happening again (flashbacks) Upsetting dreams or nightmares about the traumatic event. Severe emotional distress or physical reactions to something that reminds you of the traumatic event.
You may experience feelings of confusion, anxiety, shame, guilt, frequent crying, over-compliance, powerlessness, and more. You may stay in the relationship and try to bargain with the abuser or try to change the abuser's behavior, often placing blame on yourself, even though you are not at fault.
The symptomatology of the trauma response
They experience a mixture of numbness, withdrawal, confusion, shock, and speechless terror. Some victims try to cope by taking action, while others dissociate.
Emotional Trauma Symptoms
Psychological Concerns: Anxiety and panic attacks, fear, anger, irritability, obsessions and compulsions, shock and disbelief, emotional numbing and detachment, depression, shame and guilt (especially if the person dealing with the trauma survived while others didn't)
Symptoms of PTSD
A person with PTSD has four main types of difficulties: Re-living the traumatic event through unwanted and recurring memories, flashbacks or vivid nightmares. There may be intense emotional or physical reactions when reminded of the event including sweating, heart palpitations, anxiety or panic.
Emotional abuse of child or young person can increase the risk of: mental health problems, including depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. eating disorders. self-harm.
Women with PTSD may be more likely than men with PTSD to: Be easily startled. Have more trouble feeling emotions or feel numb. Avoid things that remind them of the trauma.
For some, reactions continue and are severe. PTSD symptoms usually appear soon after trauma. For most people, these symptoms go away on their own within the first few weeks and months after the trauma. For some, the symptoms can last for many years, especially if they go untreated.
If you're in a toxic relationship, the trauma can have immediate and lasting effects on your emotional well-being. In some cases, people in these types of relationships develop relationship post-traumatic stress disorder, or relationship PTSD.
For those who have experienced multiple emotional traumas, it can feel impossible to carry on in life, as if nothing ever happened. They may show signs of hypervigilance, and extreme worry that something bad is going to happen to them.
Initial reactions to trauma can include exhaustion, confusion, sadness, anxiety, agitation, numbness, dissociation, confusion, physical arousal, and blunted affect. Most responses are normal in that they affect most survivors and are socially acceptable, psychologically effective, and self-limited.
Often, stimuli can trigger overactivity in the amygdala if somehow connected to the traumatic event a person suffered from. How emotional trauma affects the brain might lead to chronic stress, heightened fear, and increased irritation. This might also make it harder for those suffering to calm down or even sleep.
Triggers can include sights, sounds, smells, or thoughts that remind you of the traumatic event in some way. Some PTSD triggers are obvious, such as seeing a news report of an assault. Others are less clear. For example, if you were attacked on a sunny day, seeing a bright blue sky might make you upset.
The symptoms of PTSD can even lead to job loss, substance abuse, and other problems that affect the whole family. It's hard not to take the symptoms of PTSD personally, but it's important to remember that a person with PTSD may not always have control over their behavior.
Types of events that can lead to PTSD include: serious accidents. physical or sexual assault. abuse, including childhood or domestic abuse.
Examples include intimidation, coercion, ridiculing, harassment, treating an adult like a child, isolating an adult from family, friends, or regular activity, use of silence to control behavior, and yelling or swearing which results in mental distress. Signs of emotional abuse.
Mental abuse is gaslighting, silence, manipulation, and victimization. Verbal abuse is screaming, bullying, name calling, berating, and blaming. Sexual abuse is jealous rages, coercion, sexual withdraw, rape, and degrading acts.