today we're going to be talking about five things to do and five things to avoid
in the aftermath of a traumatic stress hi everyone in today's video we're going to be talking about
ways of coping with traumatic stress so uh things to do and things to avoid in the days and weeks
following a traumatic stressor in order to help speed up the recovery process
and the healing process but before i get into that just a couple of disclaimers to go over
i'm a registered psychologist in the province of british columbia canada and this video is for
informational purposes only it is not intended as a substitute or replacement for advice from your
doctor or mental health professional now with those things out of the way let's start talking
about coping with trauma so as i talked about in a previous video there can be a number of
psychological and emotional reactions in the days and weeks following a traumatic event so
these symptoms can look very similar to what you might see in ptsd but they're not ptsd in fact
they're actually really normal emotional responses that occur following a trauma
and that these emotional responses and these symptoms are just part of your body's and mind's
process of healing essentially processing the psychological trauma or psychological impacts
of the trauma and allowing you to heal to move on but there are some things that you can do
to help speed up the healing process or at the least not interfere with the healing process
so let's start talking about five dues five things that really can help
speed up or promote healthy healing in response to a traumatic stressor and the first is to
re-establish a regular routine as soon as possible following the traumatic event so get back to
your regular exercise routine socializing work household activities those types of things even
if you don't feel like it the key here is you want to try to return to a sense of normalcy
as soon as possible even if it doesn't feel normal that's okay but behaviorally you want to return to
life as it was before the traumatic stressor like i said as soon as as that's possible now
what this can do is it minimizes the the impact of the traumatic stress it can also reduce a sense of
anxiety and sense of helplessness that's really common following these traumatic stressors so
as much as you can get back to just doing the things that you did prior to the trauma
like i said even if you don't feel about feel like it and that's something that i'm going to
be coming to again and again is doing these things even if you don't feel like doing them um second
thing you want to do is to try to minimize your media exposure limit how much news you're watching
now this is particularly relevant particularly important if the traumatic event was something
that was newsworthy or something that there is some news coverage about you probably want
to avoid reading or reviewing any of that news coverage you also want to avoid any news coverage
associated with related traumas at least for a few days and weeks until the psychological symptoms
from the traumatic stress ease and then you can gradually get back into uh watching news and
consuming news what you want to do is just try and go on a bit of a media diet following
the traumatic stress because you don't need these constant reminders of it because
you're probably being reminded of it in other ways and so allow your mind to process those
reminders as opposed to doing lots and lots of media consumption and news consumption
a third thing to certainly get back to doing as quickly as possible is engaging in exercise
exercise uh has huge benefits in reducing stress by physically reducing tension that people will
experience so following a traumatic stressor people physically can experience a lot of
tension because physiologically they're just they're ramped up following the trauma and so
physical activity can help reduce the impact of these physical sensations it can also help with
assisting with sleep and exercise can also help build energy and motivation following a traumatic
event and so exercise is a really really effective tool that you can use following a traumatic event
to get back to feeling better another thing you want to do is to reach out to other people
social support is hugely important and having that social support can really help buffer
against the effects of the traumatic stress now the key is you don't have to
have all of your social interactions focused on talking about the traumatic experience in
fact it's better if you're not going over it with your friends over and over and over again
the idea of this social contact and the social support isn't to debrief what happened it's to
just be around other people now obviously if you feel like you want to talk to people about it
and want to get some of the things off of your chest by all means but the focus of your
interactions shouldn't just be on the traumatic event try to focus on normal topics the key is
being around other people is important just having that social contact is really important
even if you don't feel like it again going back to that sense of doing these things
even if you don't feel like you want to do these things that's especially important
to be doing because following a traumatic event the the psychological distress the anxiety
the sense of helplessness it'll want you to do things like avoid and withdraw from other people
that's where you want to fight those urges and get back to doing those social contacts even
if that's not what you feel like doing and the fifth uh thing to do the fifth thing to focus on
following a traumatic stress is focus on self-care ensuring that you're taking care
of yourself through things like eating well eating regular meals again even if you don't feel like it
trying to establish a regular sleep pattern what you don't want to be doing is having your sleep
pattern go out the window so going to bed at three in the morning and sleeping in until
11 o'clock in the morning or noon you want to try and keep your sleep routine as regular as possible
again going back to that notion of having a regular routine or getting back to your regular
routine as soon as possible you want to make sure that you're showering getting dressed each day
getting ready for each day as you typically would and again even if you don't feel like it getting
back into hobbies or recreational activities doing things for enjoyment or reward even if you don't
feel like it because those hobbies and those recreational activities are part of your normal
routine so it's really important to get back to doing some of those things because eventually
you'll start to enjoy those things again and they'll start to put sort of motivation and energy
back into your life so those are some things that you really want to focus on doing
so let's talk about five things that you want to try and avoid doing following a traumatic stressor
now the first is don't tell yourself how you should be feeling right there's no right or
wrong way to feel or to respond in these types of situations following a traumatic stressor
some traumatic stressors may be more upsetting to you than to other people just by the nature
of the stressor or um your own sort of situation so what you don't want to do is compare yourself
to other people and oh this doesn't seem to be bothering them why is it bothering me
so much well it might be bothering you so much because you're in a different place
or it affected you in a different way i'll often see this when i'm working with some of my police
officers where some officers can manage files that deal with children and it doesn't bother
them as much or they don't they're not it doesn't bring up as much psychological distress for them
and part of the reason for that is you know maybe they don't have children
whereas for another officer who has a child maybe around the same age as the child that
they're working on this file with and it brings up uh emotions and feelings associated because
the officer can relate to the parents or relate to the child in a different way than the officer
who doesn't have children so the key is don't compare yourself to other people and don't uh
expect yourself to feel a certain way um and this leads to the next thing to avoid doing which is
don't ignore your feelings it can be really tempting to want to avoid unpleasant feelings
or unpleasant thoughts about that come up after the traumatic event through things like thought
distraction or thought suppression trying not to think about it trying to distract yourself
all this really does is it slows the recovery process you need to allow yourself to feel
what you feel what you're feeling you need to allow your your mind to help to start to process
those memories and those thoughts and if you're trying not to think about it if you're trying to
suppress those thoughts it interferes in that that psychological and emotional processing
another thing you want to avoid is relying on alcohol or drugs to medicate emotional distress
it can be really tempting to want to have a drink or to smoke a joint to help reduce some of the
some of the stress or the unpleasant emotions or feelings that you might have
but all this really does is it it helps in the short term but it can really delay recovery from
the traumatic stress and lead to significant problems down the road if you always have to
rely on drugs or alcohol to manage or self-medicate negative emotional
states essentially you don't learn ways of coping that don't involve those substances
another thing you wanted you want to avoid another thing you another don't is don't intentionally
dwell on the traumatic event now there's a big difference between
uh you know in avoiding intrusive thoughts or trying to suppress intrusive thoughts
and like i said you want to allow those thoughts to come into your mind try not to fight them let
them be there but there's a big difference between that and intentionally dwelling or ruminating
on what happened uh dwelling and ruminating on it is just going to cause a lot of
distress and usually bring up a lot of unpleasant emotions that are unnecessary things like anger or
guilt or frustration or shame and so let the thoughts that pop into your head be there
but don't intentionally sort of seek out or dwell on some of those thoughts
and the fifth thing to avoid is don't make major life decisions right away in the aftermath of
a traumatic event don't make decisions like i'm going to move or i'm going to change my job or i'm
going to end this relationship wait until you're more emotionally balanced when you're thinking
more clearly to make some of these decisions additionally some of these
major life decisions come with significant stress and you don't want to add significant
stress to the traumatic stress that you're dealing with in the aftermath of a trauma
so those are some things to do those are some things to avoid doing to help you recover and
cope in the aftermath of a traumatic stressor i hope that makes sense and hopefully you can
use some of these skills if you experience a traumatic stressor to promote the recovery process
and to help ensure that you cope and recover in a healthy way so uh i'd love to hear your
thoughts and questions about this so please leave me some comments in the comment section down below
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thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video and i will see you in the next one