At Villa Kali Ma, we talk a lot about healing women’s trauma. Healing women’s trauma is central to our mission of helping women recover lives of joy and meaning.
Unhealed trauma is a root cause of severe addiction and mental illness. We know from our own stories, and from the lives of women we have helped to recover, how important it is to recognize and have respect for the powerful role of trauma in human life.
These days, many people have heard about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but did you know there is also a diagnosis called Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSS)? In this article, we will talk about the differences between these two kinds of trauma.
What Is Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSS)?
Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSS) refers to a normal, healthy, and short-term stress response. PTSS is characterized by the following symptoms:
- quickened heartbeat
- trembling
- sweating
- muscle tension
- agitation
- sense of danger
- a mental replay of events
PTSS is a form of acute, uncomfortable stress that can feel like impending doom. PTSS is triggered automatically, set off unconsciously by parts of the brain responsible for our physical survival.
PTSS is triggered when the body has perceived some kind of danger to its own survival, or the survival of another person. Perception of danger results in a cascade of neurotransmitters from the brain down into the rest of the body.
Neurotransmitters are the messengers in the body, and in this case, they tell the muscles, heart, and lungs to prepare the body for physical action. This is for the purpose of mobilizing the body to respond to the life-threatening event.
The acute stress response is also known as fight-flight-freeze. When we experience terrifying danger or shocking violence, the nervous system responds in a specific way, designed by nature to protect us and move us into instinctive, life-preserving action.
We can recognize the fight-flight-freeze response whenever our muscles have tensed up, we are breathing faster, and our heart is pounding. We may feel hot and sweaty, and feel like we need to move. We may notice tunnel vision and a strangely heightened awareness of specific details – fight-flight-freeze is a kind of altered state.
At the emotional level, it may register as fear, panic, dread, agitation, or rage. What’s going on is that the body has been primed for quick action, so that we can make a split-second decision to fight off an attacker or to move out of harm’s way, as may be necessary to protect ourselves or someone else.
A common source of PTSS is car accidents, injuries, surgeries, muggings, and similar kinds of experiences which can be perceived as harm or threat to our physiology.
PTSS is, generally speaking, a set of uncomfortable symptoms that are linked to something that happened very recently. With appropriate psychological processing of the experience, PTSS symptoms will fade and discharge out of the body within 30 days or so.
What is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a serious condition with heartbreaking effects on human life, can develop when fight-flight-freeze symptoms don’t get fully processed and released out of the body.
Symptoms of PTSD include:
- Hypervigilance
- Exaggerated startle response
- Easily frightened
- Easily agitated and irritated, low frustration tolerance
- Intrusive memories of a scary event
- Reliving a scary event as if it is happening again now
- Insomnia
- Nightmares
- Depression and anxiety
- Emotionally numb
- Rage
- Disconnected from people
- Avoidance of people, places, and things that remind you of a scary event
- Survivor guilt
- Shame, negative thoughts, and self-destructive tendencies
- Substance abuse
- Eating disorders and self-harm
Like PTSS, PTSD is a neurobiological disturbance, caused by people being exposed to shocking and life-threatening events. Combat, natural disasters, and horrific collective events, such as bombings or school shootings, are the types of events that often give rise to PTSD. It is also possible to develop PTSD in response to childhood abuse, sexual assault, bullying, neglect, poverty, and other kinds of chronic adversity.
Both PTSS and PTSD have to do with the biology of survival, with fight-flight-freeze. There is nothing wrong with fight-flight-freeze, it is a life-protecting state of activation. However, if this activation in the physical body doesn’t get released through the resolution of the issue (a full return to safety), the energy of being rattled and riled up can get stuck in the body, where the cascade of hormones and neurochemicals turns toxic.
Although it is life-preserving, stress is hard on the body’s other systems, such as our organs of digestion, and the parts of the body responsible for healing, immunity, and restoration of our energy levels.
During stress, the body decides to prioritize safety and survival, but at a cost that it will need to recuperate later. If “later” never comes, because we do not get the help we need to be able to understand and psychologically resolve what happened, then the body and psyche may get sick with PTSD.
PTSD is a nightmarish state of experiencing and re-experiencing the terror, dread, and horror of a psyche-shattering experience. This state of permanent or recurrent terror, dread, doom, and deep lack of safety is one of the hardest psychological experiences for a human being to endure.
What is the difference between PTSS and PTSD?
PTSD is a temporary traumatic stress reaction, whereas PTSD is chronic and recurrent.
It is normal to experience symptoms like shakes, heart pounding, and psychological disturbances after having been deeply shocked or scared by something. If your shock symptoms arise and fade within 30 days of a traumatic experience, you may be given a diagnosis of PTSS. PTSD does not fade after 30 days; it may still affect a person decades after the original shock.
It is normal to feel guilty, scared, angry, ashamed, numbed, and confused after a shocking event. It’s also natural to have some nightmares, ongoing dread, to feel that your life outlook has changed, or to have some obsessive thoughts of the event, as you figure out what happened, why it went the way it did, and so on.
If you get appropriate therapeutic support for these feelings and for the resolution process, the disturbance doesn’t have to stay with you over time. You may be able to heal the wound in a way that it doesn’t turn into a scar.
What doesn’t help is numbing feelings, avoiding the mind’s meaning-seeking questions, or inducing the nervous system to relax artificially with substances. That’s how people end up with a double diagnosis of PTSD together with SUD (substance use disorder).
Trauma can affect women in several ways
Trauma is surprisingly prevalent. The more research is done on the subject, the more it turns out that wide swaths of the population are getting by in life while enduring semi-nightmarish states of being.
Very many people do not recognize their own traumatized state, because it is hidden behind substance use, behavioral disorders like compulsive internet and phone use, spending, or overeating, and plain old denial. Since numbing is a symptom of trauma, people may feel disconnected or unimportant, and not realize that without their trauma, they would feel more alive and well.
Women in particular are prone to traumatization, due to many factors that make the mainstream culture unsafe for us at multiple levels. Childhood sexual abuse, early sexualization, objectification, harassment, assault, and other forms of subtle or dramatic violence that affect women disproportionately, are major sources of serious traumatization.
Women with substance abuse problems very often have underlying trauma as a root cause. The majority of women entering treatment for substance abuse will end up tracing the self-medication habit to a need to deal with a disturbed nervous system and psyche, engendered by early experiences of not feeling fully safe, loved, and valued in this world.
It’s important to understand that trauma is the underlying condition, but the outer expression can look quite different in each woman. We all have different ways of coping, but what we’re coping with is the traumatization itself. Depression, anxiety, perfectionism, obsessions, compulsions, self-sabotage, negative thinking, guilt, shame, self-harm, narcissism, and overeating are all adaptations to a damaged psyche.
For more about women and PTSD, we share more detailed information on the topic.
Villa Kali Ma addresses women’s PTSD
Here at Villa Kali Ma, we acknowledge the central role trauma plays in the lives of women. Since we are dedicated fully to healing women’s hearts, minds, and bodies, we address trauma as a top priority.
When core trauma is treated in parallel, lasting recovery from substance abuse is much more likely. When trauma is resolved, mental health symptoms are no longer fortified by the body and nervous system. The unholy trinity of trauma, psychological disorders, and substance abuse can be unraveled and removed.
We have a holistic approach that makes use of the most effective clinical treatments in combination with the ancient, soul-repairing practices found in yoga and other alternative modalities. Read more about how we help women recover from PTSD.
We are also very proud of our dedicated trauma treatment center, lovingly dubbed The Retreat – a pioneering trauma-healing facility for women. Read more about why we’re excited about The Retreat.
Whatever your story is, dear reader, we honor you and your path of recovering from harm and all its many implications and effects. We’re here, cheering you on.
