How Trauma Affects your Health: A Therapist Explains
And then it clicked. Why my successful, career driven, Oxbridge educated client's PTSD symptoms were not impacting on her day to day life. She was ticking all the boxes and acknowledging the presence of current trauma symptoms, all while living life without any apparent distress or impairment to her emotional coping. But suddenly, there it was. She had come to me because her consultant had recommended therapy to help her manage flare ups of her IBD and skin conditions to complement her medical treatment. Now it was all making sense. Perhaps her trauma symptoms were wreaking havoc on her physical health instead. To find out more about how trauma can show up in the body, keep reading...
PTSD and the Body's Stress Response
When you are exposed to events that personally or vicariously threaten your survival or cause extreme shock, helplessness, or horror, your brain quickly sends out a shot of cortisol and adrenaline to mobilise a quick response- this is often known as the “fight or flight response”. In modern day society, lots of things can elicit a stress response, such as work deadlines, public speaking, being late for an important meeting, coming face to face with a spider etc.
If you have experienced a series of traumatic events (instead of one traumatic event), such as childhood abuse or war, this stress response is activated for prolonged amounts of time. In these situations, cortisol may not be able to control inflammation levels in the body, which is why stress is often linked to inflammatory health conditions.
Research has also highlighted that people who have been diagnosed with PTSD show raised levels of certain inflammation markers in their blood, suggesting chronic low grade inflammation, which may then contribute to weaker immune systems.
Ways PTSD and Trauma Show up in the Body
The impact of trauma can sometimes show itself in different ways. Coming back to my client, although she was coping relatively well with daily life, the effects of sustained childhood trauma likely contributed to her physical health conditions, particularly because of the role that the stress response plays in inflammation in the body.
If you have experienced traumatic events in life that have not been fully dealt with, and have also been diagnosed with a chronic health condition that flares up from time to time, you may be experiencing the impact of this trauma in a very physical way. Research has also highlighted a particular link between people diagnosed with PTSD and the presence of autoimmune conditions.
Some examples of health problems that can be linked to PTSD:
- Chrohn’s disease
- Celiac disease
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Psoriasis
- Heart disease
- Diabetes
- Irritable Bowel Disease (IBD)
Therapist Approved Tips to Manage PTSD with Health Conditions
- Get therapy to treat your PTSD: trauma focused CBT or EMDR are two evidence based therapy approaches that can help you treat the underlying trauma that may be contributing to flare ups of your health condition
- Calm your Nervous System: incorporate daily breathing exercises, meditation, or muscle relaxation into your daily routine. Make sure you are making time for regular exercise, getting enough sleep, and making time for things you enjoy doing that help you to feel relaxed and calm
- Control your self critical thoughts: if you have been through traumatic life events, you may be more likely to experience judgemental or self critical thoughts about yourself when things don’t go to plan. Try to see if you can develop some compassion for yourself by catching any self critical thoughts and replacing them with supportive, kind thoughts toward yourself
- Have Healthy Emotional Outlets: learn to regulate your emotions by having healthy ways of dealing with them. Journaling thoughts and feelings, disengaging from unhelpful thoughts that are not serving you well, talking to friends or loved ones, or moving your body are a few examples.
- Ground Yourself and your Emotions: bring yourself back to the present moment quickly by focusing your attention on what you can see- choose one thing you can see to focus on deeply for 60 seconds. Notice all the colours, shapes, textures, and interesting features of this object.
If you think you may be struggling to cope with something traumatic or think you have PTSD and are ready for therapy, I would be very happy to hear from you. Take the first step today by emailing your inquiry on the contact page to arrange a free 15 minute phone consultation.
