Ptsd And Trauma Treatment In Tennessee
At Cumberland Heights, weve been changing lives since 1966. We understand the connection between trauma, mental illness and addiction. It is our mission to help people to fully recover for life thats why weve created a curriculum rooted in proven, evidence-based modalities. Contact us for more information about our approach to trauma treatment.
The Effects Of Trauma On The Brain
People often talk about how the effects of childhood trauma can carry over into adulthood, and it is true.
Traumatic events and experiences can have a lasting impact on people. For some people, effects will include the development of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms that can vary in severity and sometimes hinder their lives, especially if they never receive formal PTSD treatment. For others, trauma can lead to more subtle changes in their behavior, actions, or thinking. Either way, trauma can impact people in more ways than they may realize.
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Gateway Foundation Offers Trauma Therapy To Help Heal The Brain
Identifying the core source of trauma is often essential for getting on the path toward healing. However, understanding PTSD and the brain is only the first step to recovery. Gateway Foundation offers trauma therapy and dual-diagnosis treatment programs for people with co-occurring disorders, such as PTSD and substance use disorder. Our program will help you heal from trauma while you work to overcome substance addiction. To learn more about our treatment and therapy options, contact us today.
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What Is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Posttraumatic stress disorder is a psychiatric disorder that may occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event such as a natural disaster, a serious accident, a terrorist act, war/combat, or rape or who have been threatened with death, sexual violence or serious injury.
PTSD has been known by many names in the past, such as shell shock during the years of World War I and combat fatigue after World War II, but PTSD does not just happen to combat veterans. PTSD can occur in all people, of any ethnicity, nationality or culture, and at any age. PTSD affects approximately 3.5 percent of U.S. adults every year, and an estimated one in 11 people will be diagnosed with PTSD in their lifetime. Women are twice as likely as men to have PTSD. Three ethnic groups U.S. Latinos, African Americans, and American Indians are disproportionately affected and have higher rates of PTSD than non-Latino whites.
People with PTSD have intense, disturbing thoughts and feelings related to their experience that last long after the traumatic event has ended. They may relive the event through flashbacks or nightmares they may feel sadness, fear or anger and they may feel detached or estranged from other people. People with PTSD may avoid situations or people that remind them of the traumatic event, and they may have strong negative reactions to something as ordinary as a loud noise or an accidental touch.
What Parts Of The Brain Are Involved In Ptsd
We believe that the amygdala is involved in perceiving something as threatening and that this activation initiates activity in other parts of the brain such as the hippocampus and the orbital frontal cortex .
When a person suffers from PTSD, the normal systems that balance the amygdala activation become impaired. Because the amygdala is activated, more stimuli and less threatening stimuli, are seen as threatening and produce a fearful reaction.
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The Science Behind Ptsd Symptoms: How Trauma Changes The Brain
By Michele Rosenthal
After any type of trauma , the brain and body change. Every cell records memories and every embedded, trauma-related neuropathway has the opportunity to repeatedly reactivate.
Sometimes the alterations these imprints create are transitory, the small glitch of disruptive dreams and moods that subside in a few weeks. In other situations the changes evolve into readily apparent symptoms that impair function and present in ways that interfere with jobs, friendships and relationships.
One of the most difficult aspects for survivors in the aftermath of trauma is understanding the changes that occur, plus integrating what they mean, how they affect a life and what can be done to ameliorate them. Launching the recovery process begins with normalizing post-trauma symptoms by investigating how trauma affects that brain and what symptoms these effects create.
Therapy At Highland Springs
Another common treatment to help survivors who are recovering from emotional trauma is therapy. There are many different types of therapy, but the main goal is to change the thought process of the victim. This may involve talking, exercises, or other types of treatment.
Here at Highland Springs Specialty Clinic, we have a PTSD Treatment Center to help victims of trauma heal and overcome their PTSD. Our therapists and clinicians are experienced in PTSD and emotional trauma. They have specialized training and high-level expertise that allow them to customize trauma treatment options according to individuals.
At Highland Springs Specialty Clinic, we combine cognitive behavioral therapy and desensitization therapy. Our cognitive behavioral therapy helps our therapists and patients identify the root of the trauma and triggers that bring fear and agitation to the surface.
Once these triggers are identified, the therapist and client work together to replace these emotions with more rational, neutral emotions and overcome emotional trauma.
Desensitization therapy will then help the client heal by verbalizing the trauma that occurred in the past. This allows them to release emotions connected with the event and decrease flashbacks and other symptoms. Desensitization is all about acceptance and moving on.
The client will be able to leave their trauma in the past and learn to live a more healthy lifestyle free from PTSD symptoms.
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Neuroscience Explains The Anxiety And Hypervigilance Of People With Ptsd
About 10 percent of women and 4 percent of men will develop Post-TraumaticStress Disorder over their lifetimes. Men and women who have experienced sexual trauma are at increased risk, especially if the trauma occurred at a young age or was repeated.
PTSD is a mental health condition that may involve disturbances in threat perception, threat sensitivity, self-image, and emotional functioning. It can cause serious disruption in the ability to have healthy, satisfying relationships or tolerate lifes uncertainties, failures, and rejections without excess distress. It can also cause phobias, sleep disturbance, negative mood, anxiety, and attention/concentration difficulties that interfere with academic or career success. Research in neuroscience suggests impaired functioning in brain areas responsible for threat detection/response and emotion regulation account for many PTSD symptoms.
Ending Our Time Together
Traumatic events cause many chemical reactions and initiate the fight/flight/freeze response, but for some, these chemicals never return to baseline, causing damage to some regions of the brain.
60% of men and 50% of women will experience one or more traumatic events in their lifetime. These statistics mean that more research must happen to increase our knowledge and thus treatments for PTSD.
The brain areas affected by PTSD control memory, reasoning, and thought, causing the victim to experience difficulties remembering events, thinking, and learning new information.
Epigenetics, a new kid on the block of neuro-research about PTSD, has found that a persons genes are changed by trauma and that these changes can be passed to their progeny.
The next stage of research and learning about post-traumatic stress disorder will involve those who formed PTSD due to the COVID-19 pandemic as people emerge from isolation and face a new world.
Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated, the silent screams continue internally heard only by the one held captive. When someone enters the pain and hears the screams, healing can begin. ~ Danielle Bernock
References
Bremner JD. Alterations in brain structure and function associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. Semin Clin Neuropsychiatry. 1999 Oct 4:249-55. DOI: 10.153/SCNP00400249. PMID: 10553030.
Epigenetics. Wikipedia. Retrieved from:
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Childhood Trauma And The Developing Brain
Many people experience trauma early on in life while their brain is still developing. Children with post-traumatic stress will have variations in the volume and surface area of the insula. The insula is a region of the brain buried deep in the cerebral cortex that is crucial for self-awareness and reactions to sensory information.
Children may be more impacted by trauma than adults but providing them treatment early on can minimize the effects of PTSD. Young children need to learn how to cope with stress and process the traumatic event in a way that can prevent long-term damage to their mental health. Fortunately, with treatment children can also bounce back from trauma and improve their brain functioning.
Although trauma can be devastating to a persons mental health and has a serious impact on crucial aspects of their functioning, recovery is possible. Treatment methods that focus on emotional regulation and building back volume in the brain can be most effective for patients dealing with PTSD or any type of past trauma.
Emotion Trauma And The Prefrontal Cortex
The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is a part of the brain that regulates emotions. This emotion-regulating center is often affected after trauma and becomes vulnerable to other parts of the brain.
Normally, the amygdala will sense a negative emotion, such as fear, and the prefrontal cortex will rationally react to this emotion. After trauma though, this rationality might be overridden and your prefrontal cortex will have a hard time regulating fear and other emotions.
So, these three parts of the brain- the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the prefrontal cortex- are the most-affected areas of the brain from trauma.
They can make a trauma survivor constantly fearful, especially when triggered by events and situations that remind them of their past trauma.
Overcoming emotional trauma is a long process, but it is possible. If you are suffering from after-effects of emotional trauma or PTSD, know that recovering from your trauma is possible.
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How Ptsd Impairs Learning And Memory
Most people associate post- traumatic stress disorder with anxiety, anger, and, at its worst, suicide. But one of the most pervasive symptoms of PTSD is not directly related to emotions at all: individuals suffering from a stress-related disorder experience cognitive difficulties ranging from memory loss to an impaired ability to learn new things.
One of the most crucial cognitive deficits of PTSD involves how we handle new experiences and fold them into the fabric of memory. Its called pattern separationliterally, the brains way of separating similar experiences, places, and events.
Even though I may remember 9/11, when I see an airplane over New York City, I am able to recognize that its a different situation and process it accordingly. Someone in the same situation who has PTSD may re-experience the traumatic events of 9/11 and have a panic attack, said Rene Hen, a Columbia University Medical Center researcher. Dr. Hen recently led a study showing that boosting the number of neurons in the adult mouse brain led to improved pattern separation.
The area of the brain that Hen targeted in his studythe hippocampusmay be where the seemingly disparate areas of learning and mood come together. Both Hens research and a new study led by Dr. Andrew R Marks may contribute to potential treatment for PTSD and related anxiety disorders.
How Does Ptsd Affect The Brain
PTSD is a disordered relationship to stress originally triggered by an overwhelmingly stressful event in the past. And stress is a physical and chemical response that happens automatically in the face of certain triggers. In an original biological sense, our heightened state under stress is a positive coping mechanism when we are in danger and need to protect ourselves. When personal protection is on the line, surges in the hormones cortisol and norepinephrine can give us a survival edge. But were not meant to have the stress-related regions of our brain firing overtime on a regular, daily basis. This can lead to serious neurochemical and biological dysregulation.
On top of the general levels of pain and suffering that happen under so much stress, a person with post-traumatic stress disorder may also experience other psychological disturbances, including:
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Therapy Can Help You Overcome Flashbacks
Understanding whats happening in your brain during a PTSD flashback can help you learn strategies to cope. You can work with a therapist to identify triggers for your flashbacks, such as certain objects, people, or places. Then, you can work with them to identify ways to respond calmly to these triggers through relaxation techniques as well as exposure and cognitive behavioral therapies..While PTSD can be a debilitating condition in some cases taking years for the survivor to be stable and healthy enough to process the trauma with appropriate treatment it can be successfully overcome.
Severe Ptsd Damages Children’s Brains Stanford/packard Study Shows
STANFORD, Calif. – Severe stress can damage a child’s brain, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. The researchers found that children with post-traumatic stress disorder and high levels of the stress hormone cortisol were likely to experience a decrease in the size of the hippocampus – a brain structure important in memory processing and emotion.
Although similar effects have been seen in animal studies, this is the first time the findings have been replicated in children. The researchers focused on kids in extreme situations to better understand how stress affects brain development.
“We’re not talking about the stress of doing your homework or fighting with your dad,” said Packard Children’s child psychiatrist Victor Carrion, MD. “We’re talking about traumatic stress. These kids feel like they’re stuck in the middle of a street with a truck barreling down at them.”
Carrion, assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the medical school and director of Stanford’s early life stress research program, and his collaborators speculate that cognitive deficits arising from stress hormones interfere with psychiatric therapy and prolong symptoms.
Carrion and his colleagues are now using an imaging technique known as functional MRI to visualize whether and how the children’s brains differ when performing emotional and cognitive tasks.
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What Are The Common Symptoms Following A Tbi
Symptoms that result from TBI are known as post-concussion syndrome . Few people will have all of the symptoms, but even one or two of the symptoms can be unpleasant. PCS makes it hard to work, get along at home, or relax. In the days, weeks, and months following a TBI the most common symptoms are:
Physical
- Feeling bothered by noise and light
Cognitive
- Poor judgment and acting without thinking
- Being slowed down
- Trouble putting thoughts into words
Emotional
- Anger outbursts and quick to anger
- Personality changes
These symptoms are part of the normal process of getting better. They are not signs of lasting brain damage. These symptoms are to be expected and are not a cause for concern or worry. More serious symptoms include severe forms of those listed above, decreased response to standard treatments, and seizures.
What Happens To Different Parts Of The Brain
Memory is a complex process that involves many parts of your brain, but to keep it simple, well focus on two of the key players: the amygdala and the hippocampus. The amygdala is associated with emotional memory especially the formation of fear-related memories. It evolved to ensure your survival by strongly encoding memories of past dangers youve experienced so that you recognize and respond to those threats if you see them again.The hippocampus, the other region of your brain heavily involved in memory, acts like the brains historian. It catalogs all the different details of an experience who was there, where it happened, and what time of day it was into one cohesive event you can consciously recollect as a memory. In your typical, day-to-day life, your amygdala and hippocampus work together to turn your experiences into distinct long-term memories.However, during a traumatic event this system works a bit differently. Because you are in danger, your bodys built in fight-or-flight mechanism takes over and your amygdala is over-activated while the hippocampus is suppressed. From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense: the processes involved in building a cohesive memory are deprioritized in favor of paying attention to the immediate danger. As a result, your memory becomes jumbled.
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Experience Hope And Healing From Ptsd At The Raleigh House
At the Raleigh House, we know how difficult it can be to go through the experience of PTSD when others around you dont understand. Thats why we offer an east to west approach to treatment that implements both evidence-based techniques and experiential therapies. With a combination of individual and group therapy, equine therapy and physical exercise, we can help you work through your trauma and regain confidence in yourself and the world around you.
There is hope for recovery and you can reclaim your health and well-being following a traumatic experience. Contact our admissions team at The Raleigh House today to learn how you can get started.
Relationship Between Ptsd And Tbi
PTSD and TBI are often addressed together for two reasons. First, the symptoms may be similar, so it is difficult to distinguish between the two injuries. Second, many people with TBI also have PTSD.
Although PTSD is a biological/psychological injury and TBI is a neurological trauma, the symptoms of the two injuries have some parallel features. In both injuries, the symptoms may show up months after someone has returned from war, and in both injuries, the veteran may self medicate and present as someone with a substance abuse problem. Overlapping symptoms include sleep disturbances, irritability, physical restlessness, difficulty concentrating, and some memory disturbances. While there are similarities, there are also significant differences. For example, with PTSD individuals may have trouble remembering the traumatic event, but otherwise their memory and ability to learn is intact. With TBI the individual has preserved older memories, but may have difficulty retaining new memories and new learning.
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