Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a serious mental health problem. Over 250 million people have experienced this problem worldwide. Traumatic events like war, accidents, sexual assault, natural disasters, recovery from serious illness, and sudden emotional events may cause PTSD. These events have triggered our minds and shown several symptoms. The symptoms are flashbacks, intense feelings of fear and anxiety, or nightmares.
It’s challenging to live with these triggers. Because they spontaneously affect our minds and make it intolerable. So, it’s important to know about coping strategies with triggers.
Classification of PTSD triggers:
There are two types of PTSD triggers. They are:
Internal triggers
External triggers
Internal Triggers:
It includes our bodily functions. Such as:
Anxiety
Feeling isolated
Loneliness
Vulnerability
Frustration and low feelings
Muscle tension
Sorrow
Palpitation
External Triggers:
It includes events, places, or people that you experienced throughout the day. Such as-
Painful arguments
Memorable anniversary
Smells of something
Sorrow events
Related news, movies, documentaries, and articles about traumatic events
Common person
Eye witness
Coping with PTSD triggers:
Though avoiding the triggers is the most effective way to experience PTSD, it’s impossible to do with your internal triggers. Because you can’t avoid your emotions, thoughts, and other sensations. These are impossible to control actively.
You can avoid your external triggers by controlling your movement and environment. For example, you can avoid certain locations or smells. But, it’s not a practical way to cope with PTSD. Because you can’t control everything. You can experience some triggers in movies, new articles, documentaries, or any unexpected place.
It’s important to learn effective coping strategies for reducing the impact of triggers.
Effective strategies for coping with PTSD:
There are some techniques to cope with PTSD and other related anxiety and stressful events. These are-
Deep breathing:
It’s a groundbreaking technique to calm your body and mind. You need to inhale air by your nose and after some moments exhale by your mouth. This easy technique may instantly calm down your brain, and body functions.
Mindfulness:
It’s a self-awareness technique. By practicing Mindfulness, you will learn about staying in the present neither in the past nor the future. When you feel anxious and stressed, just practice Mindfulness. This will relax your soul.
Elaborative Writing:
You can write about the causal factors and thoughts about PTSD, and your emotions, or feelings. That will keep you focused on the present and help you to find the causes of your problem.
Also self-soothing and social support is very much important to cope with the triggers of PTSD.
Therapeutic support:
As post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a serious mental issue, so psychotherapy is a lifesaver against it. There are so many therapies that professional psychotherapists are following.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy(CBT):
Cognitive-behavioral therapy or CBT is the most frequently used psychotherapy technique that helps to mark the negative thoughts that create painful emotions.
Exposure therapy:
Psychotherapists follow a controlled manner to give exposure to the triggering stimulus. It’s so important to fade the reaction to certain events or stimuli.
Also, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) and cognitive process therapy are used in psychotherapy.
Writer
Shadman Shakib
Student and Researcher
Department of Psychology
University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh