Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has a wide number of disruptive mental health consequences, including many that can impact the people closest to the trauma survivor. In this way, PTSD can begin to affect far more than the individual with the disorder alone and have a ripple effect throughout friends, family, and communities.

If you or a loved one is living with a suspected PTSD diagnosis, finding effective treatment options may be the best way to start the path to healing from symptoms, repairing relationships, and restoring a higher quality of mental health and well-being.

Understanding PTSD

PTSD is a complex mental health condition that can have a number of different causes and symptoms. In the most basic terms, PTSD is a lasting reaction to traumatic events that shapes how people view and approach the world in a negative way.

Not everyone who goes through traumatic events will develop PTSD. The source of PTSD isn’t the event itself, but rather how people respond and react to these events. As a result, two people who undergo the same traumatic experience can have vastly different outlooks in the weeks, months, and years afterward.

Prevalence of PTSD

PTSD is more common than many people realize. While the exact number of people living with PTSD is unknown, estimates from the National Center for PTSD suggest that 6% of people in the United States will experience PTSD in their lifetime and that 5% of people will experience an active PTSD diagnosis in any given year.

Certain groups are at higher risk of developing PTSD than others. Women are more likely to develop PTSD than men, for instance, and veterans have higher rates of PTSD than the general population.

Causes of PTSD

One of the first defining criteria of PTSD is experiencing a traumatic event. Trauma is an internal phenomenon involving a person’s response to a certain event. This is important in considering the causes of PTSD, as what may not seem traumatic to you can be intensely traumatic to someone with a different set of life experiences.

Still, there are several types of situations that frequently lead to a trauma response and the development of PTSD. This includes events such as:

  • The unexpected death of a loved one
  • Threatened death or serious injury to yourself or a loved one
  • Violent crime
  • Sexual assault or rape
  • Torture
  • Kidnapping
  • Catastrophic natural events, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, or tsunamis
  • Military combat experience
  • Sex trafficking

The vast majority of people who encounter one of these severe events will show signs of shock, denial, dissociation, or emotional duress in the days and weeks following. For many people, these symptoms will subside within a couple of weeks, while for others, the symptoms will remain and potentially worsen, leading to a probable diagnosis of PTSD.

Symptoms of PTSD

In order to diagnose PTSD, mental health professionals look for several different symptoms and criteria to determine whether the disorder is truly present. This includes ensuring that your symptoms Are not better explained by a different mental health condition, have lasted for at least a month, and cause impairment in daily life. The symptoms must also be in response to a specific traumatic event.

With those qualifications in place, there are four main categories of PTSD symptoms.

Intrusion Symptoms

Intrusion symptoms are sudden and distressing experiences that are typically outside of your control. They can include symptoms such as:

  • Flashbacks
  • Recurring memories of the event
  • Distress when reminded of the event
  • Physiological reactions in response to reminders about the event
  • Nightmares

These intrusions can be incredibly difficult to deal with and can substantially negatively affect your mood.

Avoidance Symptoms

People who live with a PTSD diagnosis often go to great lengths to avoid situations that remind them of the traumatic event. This could include avoiding certain locations or certain people, or repressing memories or experiences that bring the traumatic event to mind.

These avoidance symptoms often play a significant part in PTSD and relationships. If a close friend or family member is somehow associated with the traumatic event, even if they are not responsible for it, then they may be avoided entirely to keep other distressing PTSD symptoms at bay.

Changes in Mood and Cognition

When people develop PTSD, they will frequently experience sudden shifts in mood and cognition. Some of the most common symptoms people develop include:

  • Loss of interest in hobbies or activities
  • Feeling estranged or detached from others
  • An almost constant negative emotional state
  • Exaggerated negative beliefs about themselves
  • Inability to remember parts of the traumatic event
  • Excessive self-blame
  • Inability to experience positive emotions

These symptoms typically begin at the traumatic event and may worsen over time if PTSD is left untreated. For PTSD and relationships, the implications are clear: people can feel detached from those they are closest to, be wracked with negative emotionality, and may lose interest in spending time with their loved ones.

Reactivity Symptoms

The final set of symptoms is referred to as reactivity symptoms. This typically includes experiences such as:

  • Hypervigilance, or constantly looking out for potential danger
  • Being easily startled
  • Difficulty focusing or concentrating
  • Angry outbursts or irritable behavior
  • Increased risk-taking or self-destructive behavior
  • Difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or having restless sleep

Each of these symptoms can play a key role in your loved one’s capacity for maintaining healthy relationships and can cause immense distress and disruption in daily life.

How PTSD Affects Relationships

When considering the symptoms and causes of PTSD, you can see how people with this diagnosis may be suffering. However, the connection between PTSD and relationships is not always easy to understand.

Essentially, the weight of these symptoms will often lead to people with PTSD having a number of challenges in relationships with their friends, family members, or relationships. This is because PTSD can impact a person’s mood, their ability to communicate, and the degree of closeness they feel.

For some people, the effects of PTSD on relationships are much more direct. This tends to happen when the traumatic event that a person experienced is caused by another person, such as with violent crime, sexual assault, or domestic violence.

This category of events is often referred to as a “man-made” trauma, which can directly lead to difficulties in the relationships of people with PTSD.

Why Trauma Caused by People Impacts Relationships More

Exploring how PTSD and relationships are interconnected means thinking about the development of PTSD as a form of learning. People who live through traumatic events learn that there is danger in the world, and their bodies and minds adjust to account for this new danger.

For people who develop PTSD, this learning process goes past healthy limits to interfere with daily life. People can start to see danger even when there isn’t any current threat, or start to fear people, places, or things that wouldn’t bother other people.

But in the case of people who have gone through a traumatic experience caused by other people, this learning process can quickly extend into nearly every social relationship. In this situation, it’s exceptionally common for people with PTSD to lose trust in people, to view people as potentially dangerous, and to withdraw from social contact to a significant extent.

This can make it incredibly difficult for the family and loved ones of a person with PTSD to maintain healthy and supportive relationships. Even though they weren’t the source of the trauma, the effects of the trauma change the way that people with PTSD see others.

How to Help a Loved One With PTSD

PTSD can be a debilitating mental health condition, causing a number of physical and psychological symptoms. The best way to support your loved one with PTSD is to encourage them to seek out professional mental health treatment options, which can vastly reduce their symptoms and help them get back to feeling their best.

There is an abundance of evidence-based trauma treatment options available to help. Some of the most effective options include talk therapy, psychiatry and medication management, and ketamine-assisted healing.

Talk Therapy Approaches

In-person or virtual therapy can help with both PTSD and relationships. There are a number of different therapeutic modalities that have been proven time and time again to help people overcome the symptoms of PTSD, including:

  • Cognitive behavioral therapy
  • Prolonged exposure therapy
  • Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing

For those struggling with PTSD and relationships, talk therapy may be an effective choice since it tackles both challenges at once.

Working with an individual therapist can provide you or your loved one with actionable tools to help manage their symptoms, behavioral strategies to help with communication and socialization, and healthy coping mechanisms to alleviate the symptoms of this mental health disorder.

While talk therapy takes time, it provides tangible results that can often prove life-changing.

Psychiatry and Medication Management

Psychiatry is another approach for helping PTSD and relationships improve side by side. Psychiatry is a medical practice typically focused on providing targeted medications to reduce mental health symptoms.

Medication management takes this a step further. Instead of simply writing a prescription, a psychiatrist in medication management helps you determine what medication seems like the right fit, monitors your progress over time, and makes adjustments or changes to your treatment plan in line with your progress and feedback.

Medication management can also be combined with other treatment interventions, such as talk therapy, to provide even stronger and faster results.

Ketamine-Assisted Healing

Ketamine-assisted healing is a newer approach to treating PTSD. Ketamine is a medication that belongs to a class of drugs known as dissociative psychedelics. This means it can help people disconnect from their active mental health symptoms and start to think in new ways about what they need in order to reach recovery.

In PTSD treatment, this can be an incredibly valuable tool. Many people with PTSD are resistant to traditional styles of talk therapy, as it can conjure up distressing memories of the traumatic event. It may also be difficult for them to connect with new therapists due to their PTSD symptoms.

With ketamine-assisted healing, many of these barriers are removed from the therapeutic process. By taking this unique medication, people can find it easier to open up with their therapist, make meaningful changes, and ultimately recover from the symptoms of PTSD that are interfering with everyday life.

Start PTSD Treatment at Plus by APN Today

Plus by APN offers a wide range of effective tools to help clients repair their relationships, work past PTSD symptoms, and start living better and healthier lives in recovery. Our comprehensive mental health treatment options include both the best in traditional interventions as well as exciting new techniques and modalities, ensuring that our clients have every tool they need for success.

To get started with treatment, call 424.644.6486, connect with us via live chat, or fill out our confidential online contact form to speak to one of our representatives about your treatment options today.

References

  • “How Common Is PTSD in Adults?” Va.Gov: Veterans Affairs, 13 Sept. 2018, www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/common/common_adults.asp.