People who have suffered from traumatic life experiences go through a wide range of emotions throughout their lives and the majority of these emotions are deleterious to the person’s mental and physical health. Specifically, these individuals go through fear via re-experiencing their traumatic life experience or sadness through the victimization process they are likely to undergo. Emotions have four major components including feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, and social-expressive. Recognizing these negative emotions will assist in alleviating the research participants’ aversive symptoms for the treatment of their trauma spectrum disorder. Fear and sadness can have both positive and negative consequences and managing these emotions is a challenging but worthwhile endeavor. The four basic components of fear and sadness include feelings, bodily arousal, sense of purpose, and social expressive components. The bodily arousal includes biological aspects such as neural circuits and hormonal responses to fear and sadness inducing situations. The amygdala and the prefrontal cortex of the brain heavily influence fear processing and people with damage to these areas of the brain have displayed marginalized or the absence of fear responses. Specifically, the neural pathway of fear occurs in the lateral amygdala, to the central nucleus of the amygdala, then to areas of the brain that process and control defensive behavior via the autonomic and endocrine responses. Colloquially called the fight or flight response, this enables a person to either engage in direct action to stop the fear inducing agent or removing one’s self from the agent. The sympathetic branch of the autonomic system becomes active during these situations causin... ... middle of paper ... ... about it, or by asking experienced swimmers about it. Simply learning simply about the emotion-inducing situation can at times assuage the severity of the emotional response. In summation, a person can overcome their aversive situation by breathing techniques or by reshaping their perception of the situation via learned information about it. People who experience traumatic life events have a broad spectrum of emotions, most notably fear and sadness. While, these two emotions are typically considered to be aversive they can also provide benefits to the person such as learning new coping methods for future success or enhanced creativity. Overall, there are four major components of fear and sadness, and if a person understands these components it is possible for them to more appropriately engage in corrective actions, when faced with fearful or sad situations.
Substantial research has demonstrated that PTSD portrays many emotions such as guilt, shame, and anger that are outside the range for fear/anxiety disorders. In the DSM-5 PTSD formed a new category named “Trauma and Stressor-related Disorders”. This category is unique in the requirement of exposure to a stressful event that then results in the condition. This category also includes adjustment disorder, reactive attachment disorder, disinhibited social engagement disorder, and acute stress disorder. Another unique quality about this category is that it is the only diagnostic category in the DSM-5 that is not grouped theoretically by the type of symptoms representative of the disorder in
The human brain weighs only 3lbs. Though it is the most fragile organ in the human body is the most complex. It has complete control over a person 's physical and psychological homeostasis. The brain plays a large role when it comes to emotions. The amygdala is a structure in the brain that recognizes the first response to an emotional event. It is a tiny almond shaped structure located deep within the brain. This tiny structure triggers a series of reactions within the brain and sends signals throughout the body that account for body language, facial expression, breathing and awareness. These emotions are important in social interactions and forming social connections. The awareness of one’s emotion is crucial to everyday decision making,
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder is defined by our book, Abnormal Psychology, as “an extreme response to a severe stressor, including increased anxiety, avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, and symptoms of increased arousal.” In the diagnosis of PTSD, a person must have experienced an serious trauma; including “actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violation.” In the DSM-5, symptoms for PTSD are grouped in four categories. First being intrusively reexperiencing the traumatic event. The person may have recurring memories of the event and may be intensely upset by reminders of the event. Secondly, avoidance of stimuli associated with the event, either internally or externally. Third, signs of mood and cognitive change after the trauma. This includes blaming the self or others for the event and feeling detached from others. The last category is symptoms of increased arousal and reactivity. The person may experience self-destructive behavior and sleep disturbance. The person must have 1 symptom from the first category, 1 from the second, at least 2 from the third, and at least 2 from the fourth. The symptoms began or worsened after the trauma(s) and continued for at least one
Clients who have experienced trauma are literally living in a world of pain which plays out in their challenging behaviors. Maltreated and abused individuals often experience a wide range of psychological and physical problems such as, emotional avoidance and negative post-traumatic cognitions. When an individual has experienced multiple, severe forms of trauma, the psychological results are often multiple and severe as well; a phenomenon sometimes referred to as complex posttraumatic disturbance. Complex trauma can be defined as a combination of early and late-onset, multiple, and sometimes highly invasive traumatic events, usually of an ongoing, interpersonal nature. In most cases, such trauma includes exposure to repetitive childhood sexual,
The definition of fear has proved to be an elusive mystery plaguing scientists. While there is much agreement as to the physiological effects of fear, the neural pathways and connections that bring upon these effects are not well understood. From the evolutionary standpoint, the theory is that fear is a neural circuit that has been designed to keep the organism alive in dangerous situations (1). How does it all work? Learning and responding to stimuli that warn of danger involves neural pathways that send information about the outside world to the amygdala, which in turn, determines the significance of the stimulus and triggers emotional responses like freezing or fleeing as well as changes in the inner workings of the body's organs and glands (1). There are important distinctions to make between emotions and feelings. Feelings are "red herrings", products of the conscious mind, labels given to unconscious emotions (2) whereas emotions are distinct patterns of behaviors of neurons. Emotions can exist of conscious experiencesas well as physiological and neurological reactions and voluntary and involuntary behaviors (3). But the components of fear goes beyond feelings and emotions. It is also the specific memory of the emotion. After a frightful experience, one can remember the logical reasons for the experience (e.g. the time and place) but one will also "feel" the memory, and his body will react as such (i.e. increased heart and respiration rate, sweating). In one recent case, after a near drowining incident, the victim could not only vividly remember each detail, but when doing so, his body reacted as though he were reliving the experience. These feelings of memory are stored in an ...
The focus of this literature review is on the patterns of amygdala activation and its role in attentional threat assessment, as well the effects of the neuropeptide oxytocin on the amygdala. The amygdala plays an important role in human threat assessment. In both humans and primates, the identification of facial expressions and their direction of gaze is a necessary aspect of social behavior, and the amygdala plays a large role in this function (Boll, Gamer, Kalisch, & Buchel, 2011, p. 299). From a medical standpoint, the study of the amygdala would help in understanding the neurological basis of many behavior disorders such as borderline personality disorder and post traumatic stress disorder. These studies make use of novel techniques with a combination of functional MRI and eye tracking based face perception tasks. More recent studies have involved more precise imaging in order to observe specific regions of the amygdala, rather than the amygdala as a whole structure. The amygdala is strongly influenced by fearful and angry faces, which stimulate feelings of threat. The amygdala also exhibits differential activation in different sexes, thus having extensive implications on tailoring drugs for mood disorders in the different sexes (Lischke et al., 2012, p. 1432).
Stapleton, J. A., Taylor, S., & Asmundson, G. G. (2006). Effects of three PTSD treatments on
Fear has become omnipresent in society generating conflicts such as anxiety. Professor of clinical psychiatry and director of the psychopharmacology clinic, Richard A. Friedman, in his article, “A Drug to Cure Fear”, argues that the elimination of pathological anxiety with the use of drugs is possible by altering painful emotional memories. He builds his credibility with reputable sources, citing statistics, researches and conveying his knowledge of the subject. He adopts an erudite tone in order to appear optimistic and informed about the possibility that a single drug could cure fear for individuals with fear or neuroscience specialist’s readers. Friedman’s purpose is to persuade and prove his claim through ethos, pathos and logos.
The weight of constantly listening to difficult, harrowing, and upsetting events in other people’s lives can have negative impacts on therapists, especially for those who are inadequately trained or who have poor coping mechanisms. While most therapists deal with this strain, it is particularly true of those who work consistently work with patients who have experienced trauma. Trauma refers to an individual's exposure to actual or threatened harm, fear of death or injury, or witnessing violence. Common forms of trauma seen in therapy environments are rape, abuse, victims of crimes, accidents, and disasters. Trauma work requires specialized training and support in order to be effective for the clients and to help to deal with, minimize, and
Fairbank, John A.; Brown, Timothy A. “Current Behavioral Approaches to the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.” The Behavior Therapist 10.3 (1987): 57–64. Print.
“There is nothing to fear but fear itself” (Roosevelt). “Fear is a chain reaction in the brain that starts with a stressful stimulus and ends with the release of chemicals that cause a racing heart, fast breathing and energized muscles, among other things, also known as the fight-or-flight response” (Layton). Fear affects the brain and can help people or make them in a worse situation than they were in the first place. Fear most motivates/influences people during times of crisis by clouding judgement and becoming a weapon of power.
Emotion is the “feeling” aspect of consciousness that includes physical, behavioral, and subjective (cognitive) elements. Emotion also contains three elements which are physical arousal, a certain behavior that can reveal outer feelings and inner feelings. One key part in the brain, the amygdala which is located within the limbic system on each side of the brain, plays a key role in emotional processing which causes emotions such as fear and pleasure to be involved with the human facial expressions.The common-sense theory of emotion states that an emotion is experienced first, leading to a physical reaction and then to a behavioral reaction.The James-Lange theory states that a stimulus creates a physiological response that then leads to the labeling of the emotion. The Cannon-Bard theory states that the physiological reaction and the emotion both use the thalamus to send sensory information to both the cortex of the brain and the organs of the sympathetic nervous system. The facial feedback hypothesis states that facial expressions provide feedback to the brain about the emotion being expressed on the face, increasing all the emotions. In Schachter and Singer’s cognitive arousal theory, also known as the two-factor theory, states both the physiological arousal and the actual arousal must occur before the emotion itself is experienced, based on cues from the environment. Lastly, in the cognitive-mediational theory
There are hundreds of different kinds of psychiatric disorders listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. (DSM-IV). One of them is called Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Based on the research, post-traumatic disorder usually occurs following the experience or witnessing of life-threatening events such as military combat, natural disasters, terrorist incidents, serious accidents, or violent personal assaults like rape (Harvard Women’s Health Watch, 2005). The purpose of this paper is to discuss the risk factors, pathophysiology, clinical manifestation, diagnostic criteria and tests, treatment, prognosis and future research and approaches to treat this psychiatric illness of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Trauma is a psychological reaction to sudden traumatic events and overwhelming issues from outside. Additionally, the exposure to activities that are outside the human’s normal experiences. Traumatic events become external and incorporate into the mind (Bloom, 1999, p. 2). Traumatization happens when the internal and external forces do not appropriately cope with the external threat. Furthermore, trauma causes problems because the client’s mind and body react in a different way and their response to social groups. The symptoms of trauma relate to irritability, intrusive thoughts, panic and anxiety, dissociation and trance-like states, and self-injurious behaviors (Bloom, 1999, p. 2). Childhood trauma happens when they live in fear for the lives of someone they love (Bloom, 1999, p. 2). Judith Herman’s trauma theory states that the idea of repressed memories relates to unconscious behavior. These repressed behaviors include those inhibited behaviors relate to memories of childhood abuse. From McNally’s point of view memories of trauma cannot be repressed especially those that are more violent (Suleiman, 2008, p. 279). In addition, one of the theories used to dealing with trauma includes the coping theory. With situations, people tend to use problem-solving and emotion-focused coping. Emotion-focused coping happens when people are dealing with stressors. When the stressors become more
We have several theories about fear like the fear appeal theory. Fear appeals are generally built upon fear. Fear is generally an unpleasant state of emotion characterized by expectation of great distress or pain and escorted by sharp autonomic activity particularly consist...