What Are the Signs and Symptoms of PTSD? How Is PTSD Diagnosed?

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can consume every facet of your daily life. From your happy thoughts and memories to your trust and connections with others. While you try to go about your days as usual, you’re having overwhelming flashbacks of a painful event.

Feeling unable to move on from the past can be exhausting. But you don’t have to be in this state forever — there is a way out. Before you get the support you need and deserve, it is important to understand PTSD. This includes its symptoms, and its diagnosis by a mental health professional is essential.

What Is PTSD?

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a physical and mental health condition. The causes of PTSD are from experiencing or witnessing a traumatic, scary, or dangerous event. It can affect your mental, physical, and emotional well-being and impact your livelihood, future experiences, and relationships.

There are many examples of stressful or traumatic events that can cause PTSD.  Some include car accidents, minor and violent crimes, and physical assault . These occurrences can trigger different post-traumatic stress symptoms in people. It’s important to note that not everyone who experiences a frightening situation will develop PTSD.

What Are the 17 Symptoms of PTSD?

PTSD is a complex condition that can affect everyone differently. Some people might suffer from PTSD symptoms like mood changes and magnified physical symptoms. Others can experience dissociative behaviors and self-isolation. PTSD includes these 17 common signs and symptoms you might participate in:

1. Intrusive Memories

You might experience unexpected intrusive thoughts or memories of a traumatic event. While you have no desire to act on these thoughts, they can happen recurringly.

2. Avoidance

Traumatic experiences can be challenging to think or talk about. This can lead you to avoid anything like people, places, and objects that remind you of the event. You might also develop dissociative behaviors. This is a coping mechanism or way of escaping negative feelings and thoughts related to a traumatic experience.

3. Flashbacks

Flashbacks are one of the most common symptoms of PTSD. They can appear as vivid images, smells, sounds, sensations, and emotions that remind you of a challenging experience. Flashbacks can make you feel as if you’re reliving a traumatic event. They can be intense and sometimes exhausting.

4. Irritability and Anger

Going through a traumatic event can make you feel on edge or extremely cautious. This anxiousness can make you feel irritable, agitated, and angry, causing emotional and unstoppable outbursts.

5. Anhedonia

You may experience anhedonia or loss of interest or enjoyment in pleasurable activities. This feeling can lead you to distance yourself from others and lose the desire to do things that once made you happy.

6. Guilt and Casting Blame

You may experience feelings of guilt for not being able to predict or prevent a traumatic experience. You might also blame others as a way of coping and taking control over your experience. Unjust guilt and blame casting can weigh heavily on you and make you feel stuck in past trauma.

7. Hypervigilance

Hypervigilance or arousal can be a normal flight-or-fight stress response to keep you alert. Because of your traumatic experience, this stress response is growing stronger. This makes you feel more alert or anxious about surroundings, people, sensations, and sounds, whether they cause alarm or not. Signs of hypervigilance can include:

• Feeling jittery.
• Being overly skeptical of other people.
• Constantly observing and scanning your surroundings for danger.
• Always being guard or alert.
• Having difficulty paying attention to conversation and are easy to distract.
• Unable to be objective.

8. Troubling Beliefs and Feelings

You experience difficult feelings and beliefs that make you see the world and people differently. These beliefs can include:

• Overwhelming distrust of others.
• Feeling threatened and like nowhere is safe.
• Intense feelings of guilt, anger, and shame.
• Feeling like no one understands you.

9. Emotion Numbing

You have difficulty confronting or dealing with feelings and experiences from a traumatic event. This may lead you to avoid positive or happy emotions or not feeling anything.

10. Memory Loss

 

You might suffer from memory loss and have difficulty recalling parts of a past event. Fragmented or impaired memory can be a common PTSD symptom. Severe stress from trauma can alter the areas of the brain related to stress and memory.

11. Intense Cynicism

PTSD can lead you to have more negative or cynical thoughts about yourself, others, and the world. This cynicism can be overwhelming and make it challenging to notice anything positive. These thoughts can also trigger or exacerbate other symptoms like increased guilt, self-blaming, and shame.

12. Nightmares

People with PTSD might have nightmares or terrifying dreams about past traumatic events. Nightmares combined with anxiety can lead to fears about going to sleep. You might sleep with the lights on, experience broken sleep, or avoid going to bed altogether, leading to insomnia.

13. Insomnia

Sleep disturbance or fears can lead to staying awake, or sleeping a few hours a day.  It can lead to higher alertness when sleeping, being unable to relax, and being easy to agitate from sounds.

14. Easily Startled and Upset

You have a heightened sense of alertness and your body is unable to relax. You may be easy to frighten by sudden movements and sounds. It may happen when someone walks by you, touches you, or if you are in a noisy environment. Your response to these occurrences can be overwhelming, leading to fainting, muscle stiffness, and jerking.

15. Self-Isolation

You isolate or distance yourself from others to avoid event triggers and possible reminders. You might feel detached and lose emotional and social connection with loved ones.

16. Difficulty Concentrating

You have a combination of insomnia, your stress response, and flashbacks. This can cause difficulty focusing or concentrating on conversation and other daily activities. It can be easy to distract you or for you to seem apart from reality.  This can impact your relationships, work, and other tasks.

17. Harmful and Worrying Behavior

Dealing with PTSD symptoms can be overwhelming. You might resort to life-threatening or self-harming coping mechanisms, including:

• Drug and alcohol use.
• Self-harm and suicidal thoughts.
• Alcohol misuse.
• Reckless driving.
• Eating disorders.
• Impulsive behaviors.

How Is PTSD Diagnosed?

You can diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder through a medical, physical examination. A professional psychologist can also evaluate possible events that can cause PTSD. They can diagnose signs and symptoms of the condition during confidential treatment sessions. Some PTSD diagnostic criteria can include:

1. You have direct or indirect exposure to death, trauma, or violent and life-threatening events.
2. You struggle with reoccurring or re-experienced trauma. It may be in the form of nightmares, flashbacks, upsetting and unwanted memories, and physical and emotional distress.
3. You avoid trauma-related thoughts, feelings, sounds, and other reminders.
4. Worsening negative thoughts and feelings post-trauma include feeling estranged and isolated, unable to discuss or remember the trauma. They can also include magnified self-blaming and guilt, and negative assumptions about oneself.
5. Trauma-related arousal worsened after an event, including hyperarousal, concentration issues, insomnia and other sleep disturbances, testiness and aggression, and harmful behaviors.
6. Trauma symptoms remain persistent.
7. Symptoms impair your functional abilities and impact social interactions, work, and other daily activities.
8. The symptoms are not from medication, illness, or substance harm.

FAQs About PTSD

Here are some answers to frequently asked questions about PTSD:

1. How do I know if I have PTSD? Experiencing flashbacks, overwhelming emotions, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, insomnia, and hypervigilance can be signs you have PTSD.
2. What happens if PTSD goes undiagnosed? Without professional diagnoses and treatment, PTSD can lead to worsening mental and physical health. It can impact your livelihood and relationships with others. PTSD symptoms can become overwhelming, leading to harmful and detrimental coping mechanisms.
3. How can you help someone with PTSD? You can help someone with PTSD by listening to their thoughts and feelings while being patient and understanding. It’s also essential that someone with PTSD feels support and love. You can suggest and help someone through professional treatment.

Get Support and Treatment At Sana

Ready to get support for posttraumatic stress disorder and return to a life you enjoy and love? At Sana, we understand the importance of caring and compassionate support for treating PTSD.

We offer individualized and holistic treatment for PTSD and substance use disorders in a healing and serene environment. Our facility in a picturesque mountain location is private and tranquil. It offers you a unique space to learn coping mechanisms, reflect on your feelings and thoughts, and recover at your own pace.

Our experienced staff commits to your treatment process and supports you throughout your recovery.

Reach out today to learn more about our sanctuary and start your recovery process.