(light music)
- Welcome to Ask A Therapist.
I'm that therapist, Jonathan Decker.
Today I'm gonna answer your burning questions.
We polled our Mended Light community,
what do you wanna pick my brain about?
And today's question is,
how do you know if you have trauma?
I would say first of all, I'm gonna make a slight tweak,
but it's an important one to the question.
We don't have trauma, we experience trauma.
And the reason that's important is,
trauma is something we experience
and traumatic stress or post-traumatic stress
is what we carry with us.
- I'll give you a weather prediction.
It's gonna be cold,
it's gonna be gray,
and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life.
- Let's talk about the difference.
So what is trauma?
Trauma is witnessing or experiencing
an event that is terrifying.
So this could be a death or a near-death experience.
It could be an assault or an attack.
It could be abuse, physical, verbal,
emotional, sexual, spiritual.
It could be living in a war zone.
It could be encountering violence on the streets.
And it's been discovered that betrayal trauma,
you experience many of the same reactions and symptoms
and feelings as you would if you had been
in a life or death experience.
The reason is, with betrayal trauma
and any other type of trauma,
you think that your world is safe.
Now maybe you have an understanding
that the world isn't a safe place,
but it feels safe to you, for you,
terrible things happen to others, not to you.
And then what happens is that's
(fingers snapping) ripped away.
You thought your world was safe and you discover
that it's not, whether it's your partner cheating on you,
whether it's an attack, whether it's witnessing someone die
right in front of you or going through
a near-death experience yourself.
(intense music)
(man crying)
Now before I move on,
I want to direct you, as soon as this video is done,
to another one,
what is the body's natural reaction to trauma,
so that you can look at indicators in yourself
to see if you are experiencing a trauma response.
Now, for some people,
they definitely have trouble adjusting and coping,
but with time and self-care, things get better.
For others, things do not,
and this is where post-traumatic stress kicks in,
post-traumatic stress disorder.
PTSD occurs when your reactions to trauma
start to impede your daily functioning,
your ability to connect, your ability to work,
your ability to live your life.
So one thing this looks like is intrusive memories.
This could be you hear a song or hear a sound
or smell a smell or see a sight
that reminds you of the traumatic event.
If you were in a car accident,
perhaps hearing a car horn coming by super fast
or the screeching of tires can trigger a memory
that invades and you don't want it there,
but it happens and all the emotions come flooding
in with it.
(dog barking)
(woman screaming)
These can be memories that you know for a fact are memories
and you're still aware of where and when you are.
This can also, in rare cases,
take the form of you actually believe,
you dissociate and you believe you are back when
and where the trauma occurred.
So naturally, avoidance kicks in.
Because we don't like to feel terrified,
because we don't like to feel overwhelmed,
because we don't like to feel sad and angry,
we begin to avoid people, places, things,
anything that could bring all of that up.
And of course, that impedes our life
because there are experiences we could be having
that we choose not to have out of fear.
We also experience negative changes in thinking or mood
in the case of PTSD, with thinking my world isn't safe,
people aren't trustworthy, I'm not prepared,
I can't protect myself.
With mood, you could get irritable or angry or fearful
or sad or overwhelmed or detached and feel nothing.
(intense music)
(man crying)
We experience changes in our physical
and emotional reactions when we have panic attacks,
where it feels like the world is closing in on us,
we can't breathe, our heart is pounding,
we're hypervigilant, always on alert,
we think that something bad could happen at any time.
These are responses to trauma.
And in the case of PTSD,
they go on for months, even years,
and keep us from doing the work we want to do,
connecting the way we want to connect,
having the experiences that we want to have.
- Lieutenant Dan, ice cream.
(helicopter whirring)
- So if any of this is happening to you,
you will benefit from a trauma program
with qualified individuals who are trained to help you.
And that is part of the purpose of Mended Light.
So I want to encourage you to go to mendedlight.com
and check out what we have to offer you.
Also, when it comes to dealing with trauma
or recognizing trauma symptoms,
I want to know about your experiences
and so does everybody else.
We can help each other, so in the comments below,
if you've been through something traumatic,
let us know what it's like for you.
Let us know what you learned that helps you
to manage the symptoms.
And if you have any questions that you would like
for me to answer in these Ask a Therapist segments,
please do so below.
If you enjoy what we're doing here,
we are relying on you to help spread the word.
Please like, subscribe, and share, click the bell
to make sure you get notified of our new videos.
And our whole purpose here at Mended Light
is to help you grow so you can be the best version
of yourself and so that your light can shine to the world.
Let it shine and we'll see you next time.
(light music)