|
|
The traumatic event can be experienced in many ways:
- Recurrent and intrusive recollection of the event
- Recurrent distressing dreams during which the event can be replayed
- Flashbacks-Experience of dissociative states from few seconds to several hours, or even days, during which components of the event are relived and the person behaves as though experiencing the event at that moment
- Also associated with prolonged distress and heightened arousal
- Lack of support from family and/or community
- Triggering events that resemble or symbolize an aspect of the traumatic event (e.g. anniversaries of trauma, entering elevator for a woman who was raped in a elevator)
- Avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma
- Deliberate efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations about the trauma event
- Avoidance of activities, situations, or people who arouse recollections of the event
- Amnesia for an important aspect of the traumatic event
- Psychic numbing or emotional anesthesia-Diminished responsiveness to the external world (begins soon after the event)
- Markedly diminished interest or participation in previously enjoyed activities
- Feeling detached or estranged from other people
- Having markedly reduced ability to feel emotions (especially those associated with intimacy, tenderness, and sexuality)
- Sense of a foreshortened future (e.g., not expecting to have career, marriage, children, or normal life span
|
|
