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Impacts of traumatic events
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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.
PTSD is a battle for everyone who is diagnosed and for the people close to them. The only way to fight and win a battle is to understand what one is fighting. One must understand PTSD if he or she hopes to be cured of it. According to the help guide, “A positive way to cope with PTSD is to learn about trauma and PTSD”(Smith and Segal). When a person knows what is going on in his or her body, it could give them better control over their condition. One the many symptoms of PTSD is the feeling of helplessness, yet, knowing the symptoms might give someone a better sense of understanding. Being in the driver’s seat of the disorder, can help recognize and avoid triggers. Triggers could be a smell, an image, a sound, or anything that could cause an individual to have a flashback of the intimidating event. Furthermore, knowing symptoms of PTSD could, as well, help one in recovering from the syndrome. For instance, a person could be getting wor...
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,
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
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
Trauma is an incident that leads to a great suffering of body or mind. It is a severe torture to the body and breaks the body’s natural equilibrium. It is defined as an emotional wound causing a psychological injury. American Psychological Association, defined trauma as an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape or natural disaster. Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical. Longer term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks and strained relationships. J. Laplanche and J. B. Pontalis assert, “Trauma is an event in the subject life defined by its intensity by the subject’s incapacity to respond adequately to it, and by the upheaval and long lasting effects that it brings about in the psychical organization” (qtd. by Hwangbo 1).
... middle of paper ... ... Retrieved from Senia: http://www.senia.com/2007/09/24/5-specific-techniques-from-positive-psychology-more-productive-more-successful-happier/. Retrieved on 10/20/13. Network, F. R. (2010-2013). Trauma Abuse Treatment -.
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
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.
Emotions are (in part) for survival, and the more complex the emotion, the more complex the system to process it must be (both in theory and in context). If an emotion or mood is as simple as fight or flight, then this is something that is instilled in reptiles, mammals, and humans alike. These emotions are more easily figured out in the human brain, and seem to be easier to experiment with as well as find out about. There has been a large amount of research on the amygdala and fight or flight response, which as was stated above, is a basic emotion that reptiles, mammals, and humans all seem to have alike. The mor...
‘An adequate hypothesis of fear must utilize physiological concepts of cerebral action in addition to psychological terminology. The hypothesis proposes that "fear originates in the disruption of temporally and spatially organized cerebral activities; that fear are distinct from other emotions by the nature of the processes tending to restore equilibrium." The sources of fear involve conflict, sensory deficit, or constitutional change. ‘
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...
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
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
Emotions and feelings are some of the driving forces in our lives and essentially control our reactions, ideas, and choices. Emotions allow us to form connections with others, make decisions about the world around us, and provide us with the motivation to accomplish various tasks. However, emotions generally come with a lot of confusion and variability due to how differently people utilize and deal with them. One common emotion I feel that all people deal with, and handle differently is anxiety. Anxiety can be an extreme motivator, or the complete opposite, depending on how a person reacts to the feeling. Overall, anxiety is a complex emotion that, in extremes, can disrupt a person’s daily life, or more commonly, make a person feel upset