Can Retrauma Increase Anxiety?

[DharmaGirl]

I'm with you, for me it is just like another trauma and builds on the symptoms I have. They can believe what they want, we know better, lol.

 

[littlestar]

same thing happened to me. Retraumatization crippled me and ended me up on meds after I was functioning relatively well. My family said something like, you seem to not deal with things the same way other people do. Uh, yea, PTSD is like that. Thanks for posting.

 

[Friday]

. I was just trying to confirm my own beliefs that my medical and mental health team seem to think is simply impossible.

Even without new trauma it's very possible for symptoms to increase & functionality to decrease.

As reactive as PTSD is to stress, stressors, & trauma... It's very normal/expected. Although it is usually temporary. Whether that's temporary & things get better or temporary and things get worse is something of a crapshoot. Not totally random, there are things we can do to help ourselves, and things we can do that are guaranteed to make shit worse, but...? There just usually happen to be a lot of different factors in play. So it's rarely as simple as do this and get better, do that and get worse.

 

[Friday]

One thing that may be a miscommunication... Speaking as someone with a comorbid disorder... PTSD isn't static. It's not like whatever level you're at, is what you'll be dealing with forever.

It took me a long time to wrap my head around that, as my other disorder IS static. There are 10,000 coping mechanisms, so it doesn't affect my life so severely, but the symptoms & expressions are here to stay. I just have to work my way around them.

So it's not like quadrupled anxiety & paralyzed nonfunctionality = your new normal forever that you will just have to work around.

PTSD symptoms WILL lessen over time. & Increase/Decrease in response to things. It's not a permanent thing, this level you've gotten to. It's just one of the levels PTSD goes to. That you may be hanging out there for awhile? Doesn't mean that you won't back off this level onto the level it was at before new trauma, nor that it won't back off to being virtually asymptomatic.

So that may be what your providers are talking about when they're saying it's impossible? If you're talking perm & they're saying THATS impossible?

 

[BuckarooBanzai]

The short answer is "yes". However, I have found that I will come down slowly and eventually hit my baseline anxiety level. The speed at which this 'return' occurs is dependent upon the severity of the retraumatization and my level of support at the time of trauma.

 

[Panda Bear]

New trauma and re trauma can cause and increase in symptoms. Sometimes symptoms change regardless.

Sometimes processing of the trauma can leave us feeling a bit re traumatized. And processing alone can increase symptoms.

 

[DharmaGirl]

I don't seem to have a baseline. It's like a circle, and as I move along the circle, the circle also moves up and down.