Four Notable Characteristics of Traumatic Stress Help Clarify What Causes Panic Attacks for Some

Panic sufferers know that one of the sources of their profound sense of vulnerability is a sense of mental confusion. Posttraumatic stress can set the stage for this confusion due to at least four characteristics that contrast with the common stress experienced by everyone:

1. FROZEN SCREEN: Traumatic memories seem to be stored in our brains in a disjointed fashion instead of in the fluid way that we remember most things. Normal memories about our activities last week involve a continuous narrative, i.e., we can tell the story and how it relates to other things. Traumatic memories feel like they are frozen and fragmented. 

2. THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS DISCONNECTED: Traumatic memories are sometimes disconnected from some or all of the feelings that match the original traumatic event. A woman speaks in a matter-of-fact voice about her car accident with little emotion. Meanwhile, she has panic attacks at odd, unpredictable times. 

3. EMOTIONAL INDIGESTION: Nightmares, flashbacks and obsessive thoughts can often be the brain’s way of getting stuck while trying to digest or metabolize the memories. 

4. SWINGING PENDULUM BETWEEN AVOICANCE AND REEXPERIENCEING.

  Posttraumatic Stress Reactions Often Include a Distorted Sense of Responsibility

One of the most difficult tangles of trauma recovery is a distorted sense of responsibility. A woman who was molested as a child might still blame herself for being at the wrong place at the wrong time when she was a young girl. A traumatized soldier may blame himself for not saving the life of a friend, even if there was nothing he could have done. A child who has been in a car accident may blame himself for the accident because he was fighting with his sister at the time of the crash. A teenage girl may blame herself for her parents’ divorce.

Events that overwhelm our capacity to cope often leave us with an irrational, but deeply felt sense of self-blame. “I know it was not my fault, but it feels like it was,” someone might say. It is a powerfully freeing experience when a trauma survivor can reprocess the memories so that what he feels becomes aligned with what he knows.

More...But responsibility can also become distorted in the opposite direction. We are not responsible for the hand of cards that traumatic events deal us when there is nothing else we can do. But we are responsible for how we play that hand of cards. Gaining insight into our own lives means that we come to understand which cards are in our hands and what they mean for our potential.

Taking responsibility for ourselves means we:

(1) open our eyes and look at our hand of cards;

(2) reorganize our hand to see the possibilities; and

(3) accept the fact that this is the hand we have (however it came to us).

By the way, accepting the fact of trauma does not mean you think it is a good thing. One of the symptoms of posttraumatic stress is avoidance of conversations and thoughts that remind the person of the original traumatic experience.

Here is the dilemma: how can I open my eyes to see the cards in my hand if the very idea of it is disturbing enough to make me want to avoid it? The answer to this can be complex. Sometimes people have to suffer nightmares, flashbacks and emotional numbing before they decide it would be less trouble to bite the bullet and resolve the memories.

Sometimes a person just has to mature into the moral courage to face her personal dragons. Often, I find that people are ready to resolve traumas, but just don’t know how or where to start. If we have a supportive friend or family member we can sometimes muster the courage to face a problem. It might just start with opening one eye to see a few of the cards in our hand.

For many people the decision to involve someone else in helping them is the first step for taking responsibility for traumatic memories. “Taking responsibility” does not mean that we assume all the blame for something. It means that we stand in front of the mirror and say, “this is my life and I have to decide if I am going to do something constructive about what happened to me.”

But you may ask, “What can I do that is constructive?” The first step of taking responsibility is simply to begin learning about the effects of trauma and the time-tested steps for healing. For milder traumas, this step might take the form of reading something about trauma such as the article you are reading now (Consider this: you may be taking the first step at this moment).

For more severe traumas, taking responsibility probably means seeing a trauma specialist to evaluate your situation. To find a therapist trained in EMDR go to www.emdria.org. If you wish to read more, I recommend reading Dr. Shapiro’s book on EMDR (see the book review). The book also provides additional information on how to select a therapist who is trained to work with the aftermath of trauma.