The most common reason I see clients is for PTSD, trauma and anxiety. When you’ve had bad things happen in life, you might be struggling with the why, feelings of guilt, anxiety and anger. I have a lot of people come in wanting to try Brainspotting to get better.
For clients that experienced trauma on the job, I often hear, “I was trained to do this so why does it bug me so much?” My Veteran clients sometimes struggle with survivor’s guilt or think “if I tell anyone what I did over there, they’re going to think I’m a really messed up person.”
Maybe you went through something really bad and now you can’t trust anyone. You probably feel out of control or unsafe even in places you know are ok-like your house.
Many people with PTSD have a really hard time trusting other people and feel disconnected. They often build walls or lash out in anger. They look at the world through different lenses than everyone else because they’ve seen and been through some crap.
Often times, people experiencing PTSD come to me because their spouse said "get counseling or we're getting a divorce!"
Some common symptoms of PTSD are: You were exposed to a serious trauma like death, threatened death, actual or threatened serious injury, or actual or threatened sexual violence. This exposure could have been direct, as a witness, learning of it from a close friend or relative or indirect such as in your line of work hearing traumas over and over.
Sometimes it feels like you’re almost reliving it through:
Unwanted upsetting memories
Nightmares
Flashbacks
You probably avoid people, places or things that remind you of it. After it happened you probably had negative thoughts and feelings that felt a lot like depression. You probably also feel irritable, aggressive, never safe and always on edge looking for threats, have a hard time concentrating, fatigue and cruddy sleep.
One Step Forward Counseling, INC | Indianapolis, Indiana | 317-775-8797