Emotional and Psychological Trauma - Assignment Example

? Trauma Introduction Trauma is defined as emotional response to an awful occasion such as accident, rape or any other terrible disaster. Shock and denial always follow every awful event. Trauma always has long term and short term reactions such as flashbacks and physical symptoms like headache. Trauma feelings look normal but many people find it hard moving with their lives. When a person encountered a trauma, psychologists provide support of finding a constructive way of managing the consequences. Emotional and psychological trauma comes as a result of unexpected bad event that shutter an individual security sense, and it will make an individual feel hopeless and susceptible to different attacks in the world. Sexual addiction is a progressive familiarity disorder that is characterized by desire to have sex or having sex thoughts. It is like all other addicts because it has a negative impact on an individual or family if it is allowed to progress. Trauma is classified according to the parts of the body it affects, this parts include, chest trauma, head injury, extremity trauma, soft tissue injury and many others. There are many causes of trauma such as sex addiction, drug abuse, violence such as domestic violence, intentional injury, and blasts. Sex addiction is one of the main causes of psychological damage and trauma and post traumatic stress disorder (Coop-Gordon & Baucom, 1998). Sex addiction trauma has nuanced symptoms like fear, panic, social isolation, shame and others. This article will analyze trauma in relation to sex addiction, types of trauma, its causes, reactions to sexual addiction trauma and how to treat it. Effects of trauma in the brain According to the medical information, the human brains are structured into 3 parts; the cortex which is the outer part of the brain where high level thinking skills originate from, this part includes the frontal cortex. The second part is the limbic stem, this is the middle part of the human brain where emotions evolve, and the last part is the brain stem, this part controls the basic survival functions. Following the evolution of brain scan technology, the medical practitioners can monitor the brain functioning without necessarily waiting for the autopsy. The modern scanning technologies have shown that trauma truly alters the structure and functions of the brain at the convergence point where the three parts of the brain meet. An important discovery from the scan in people with relationship, learning and social problems that have relationship with emotional intelligence shows the same structural and functioning problems similar to those of post trauma stressed disorder (PTSD). Types of trauma related to sex addiction Medical researchers have found that there are 2 types of trauma, development and event or shock trauma. Development trauma occurs when certain developments in a person are not attained or thwarted hence crucial development will not take place or take place in a skewed manner. Example of where development requirements are not attained is for example a situation where a young adult is ignored when undergoing sexual struggles during adolescence stage, the teenage will end up not developing healthy sexual development in a healthy direction. This normally occurs in situation where a parent is very repressive or very encouraging when it comes to matters sexuality such that normal sexual development is interfered with hence development will occur towards unhealthy direction or not occurring at all. The next type of trauma is event/shock trauma. This result from several events and one of it is sexual abuse; this trauma causes a state of shock in a victim. It ends up developing several problems in a victim such as poor sexual development, development of emotions that are not regulated, over stimulation and others. An example is when an individual is suffering from a shock trauma; he/she will be disadvantaged in dealing effectively with stress or healthy sexual development (Coop-Gordon & Baucom, 1998). The reason for this is that trauma interferes greatly with the normal development of human behavior. In many occasions, it disrupts an individual physical, emotional, and psychological body processes. Diagnosing trauma The first phase is physical examination, this will assist in recognize life threatening problems. After the primary examination is over, the clinician will start taking the secondary examination. This examination is carried out every where, no specific place is required. The secondary examination composed of systemic examination of all body parts to find out if there is any injury and later on a neurological examination is carried out. The aim of secondary assessment is to find out if there is any injury and if it is there they are treated. Imaging is another phase in diagnosing trauma; if a person is suffering from trauma, an X-ray of chest and pelvic should be taken and the pictures assessed through Focused assessment with sonography for trauma, this is an examination carried out to check out if there are internal bleeding (Hyer & Brandsma, 1997). CT scan is always encouraged in those victims who have stable heart beat, proper breathing, and blood pressure are in normal conditions. If a victim has suffered a major trauma as a result of sexual addiction, a complete body CT scan will improve the health conditions. Scanning is carried out by use of intravenous injection with no oral administration done. Medical experts have raised concerns about radiations resulting from CT scans. But routine scans have shown no side effects on the body organs. A full scan takes around 20 minutes and in United States over 15% of traumatized victims receives scanning in emergency rooms. Sexual addiction trauma consequences Sexual addiction trauma can result in several things such as trauma that is violent or not violent. It can also be a sequence of events that may shoot up over a period of time. Sexual addiction is normally characterized by pressure to get involved in sexual activity. Trauma resulting from sexual addiction is not violent as many people think, many sexual addiction do not contain violent behavior but it is an embarrassment of an individual thinking that what he/she is doing is contrary to the norms of the society. Sexual addiction becomes traumatic when an individual involved start developing a sense of fear and helplessness (Hyer & Brandsma, 1997). Reactions to sexual trauma normally changes as time goes. It is common for a human being to develop feelings of fear, grief, poor appetite, and sadness. When a body reacts to sexual addiction trauma, it can last for quite sometimes before the body regains normal conditions. If the trauma feelings last for a long time, a victim will end up suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression (Hyer & Brandsma, 1997). If trauma last for a long time, a victim should seek fro medical treatment. The common reactions to sexual trauma include poor concentration, confusion, difficulty in decision making, nausea, tremors, feeling abandoned, too much silence, irritability and others. Sex addiction causes an extensive psychological instability and both trauma and post trauma stress disorder (PTSD). A victim reality is distracted and foundation of identity and selflessness goes away. The safety of a victim psychology on the significant level is affected negatively. Sexual addiction trauma destroys ones trust in other people, selflessness, and the whole life is destroyed. Sex addicts in many occasions come up with an elaborative lies of explaining their behavior so as not to be condemned by the society. Doubting yourself and inside guilt of shame cemented by blaming other people can easily lead to trauma. According to the (John and Eric, 2000), people who experience negative consequences from having sex and they go on with the same behavior are categorized as sex addicts. The greatest issues on sex addiction are the consequences that always result in trauma. Trauma threatens education, relationships, health, and others in life. Trauma affects all types of people in the society, including parents, doctors, lawyers, traders, pastors and anybody else. According to the research conducted, sex addicts have a similar thing in common, that is over 90% of then had suffered trauma when they were children. It is believed that the bad experience of trauma at young age influences the type of a person you will be when you are an adult. How it affects families For married sex addicts’ partners, trauma will start when one realizes that he/she is living with somebody who has behaviors of illicit sex or obsessed by pornography and he/she is living secretive life outside the marriage. The trauma will escalate once they learn the other partners’ way and how he/she is lying in order to continue with addiction. If the relationship comes to an end or a partner suffering from addiction recover from the menace, the other partner posttraumatic stress disorder is hard to heal and it will present another challenge in a relationship. Mainly the woman of sex addicts doesn’t know what is real or what to trust in life; their life feel threatened all the time. It becomes hard for them to move on in life. If relationship is lost because of addiction, mainly woman are still expected to be mothers or a professional at work place. This has great disadvantages in life since you will not have off at work place to deal with the unfortunate situation. As a partner struggle with sex addiction trauma, many other costs will continue to accumulation in life. With trauma, many partners will find it hard working leading to loss of jobs and occupation. Getting time and space to take care of themselves when they are supposed to take care of several others is quite challenging for many partners especially female partners. Sex addicts trauma makes a partner loose focus, in a research that was conducted by Dr Steffens, when the traumatized partners was told to read, they get lost on the way, some even loose the capacity to focus fully to be in a position of read words to make sense on paper and brain (John and Eric, 2000). When Dr. Steffens was interviewing woman, those traumatized try to avoid sex at all cost claiming that ‘how can they she have sex with a man when there several other woman in the house’ (John and Eric, 2000). On top of emotional and occupation struggles prolonged trauma of PTSD mainly end up in physical illness. According to Steffens research, several woman who have gone through trauma because of sex addiction have developed a type of cancer, this cancers are normally breast cancer. He found that divorce will not remove the problem of trauma that a woman will have endured. Divorce is not an answer to trauma but it can only decrease future trauma (John and Eric, 2000). Trauma can last throughout a human life, there is hope if the victim get safety and support, it will assist in managing symptoms and a victim can fully recover. For women who are living with sex addicts, a husband change in behavior can easily trigger the memories that make the past experience as if it happening. If the husband continues to look upon the destruction of this behaviors or not taking the necessary steps towards restoring safety in marriage, the woman will remain in a traumatized state until she discovers a new way of coming up with self protection skills of managing the situation. Initial trauma exposure contributes to the woman vulnerability in the growth of clinically important distress because she will feels once more that the world is against her. A situation in which a partner is coming to know about sex addiction is traumatic and it will also trigger prior trauma. This situation will also assist women learn and develop an efficient and adaptive methods of handling trauma and put safety measures in her life to assist in protection against more injuries (Alexander, 2012). Managing trauma To control trauma, one of the best methods is through therapy, there are 4 forms of therapies that are always applied this are Somatic therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Internal Family Systems Theory (IFS). Somatic therapy is a kind of therapy that focuses directly on the state of trauma in a victim (Alexander, 2012). It works well in a trauma that affects the psychological of a person. The theory behind this therapy is that when a person experiences a traumatic shock, the psychological system that controls the proper psychological stability will be disrupted; this will affect the emotional and mental state of a person. This form of therapy has the ability of working with all the 3 states of psychology, emotion, and mental, many psychotherapy deals only with the emotional and mental part and they usually treat it well. If a person encountered a traumatic shock inside the body, the healing should also focus on the physiological level. To explain in another way, if a partner suffers a traumatic shock, he/she might end up doing traditional psychotherapy for many years but still it will have many problems resulting from disruption of its physiological system from trauma. If this occurs, Somatic therapy can provide a perfect solution to the problem of disrupted physiology. The second form of therapy is EMDR. This form of therapy was designed in order to bring solutions to traumas symptoms that come as a result of life trauma. The method works well with the past, present, and future features of trauma memories (Bergner & Bridges, 2002). The method also resolves problems resulting from encountering traumatic situations like rape or humiliation due to sex addiction. Medical trials have shown that EMDR is efficient in treating sex addiction trauma. This method is a form of integrated therapy that brings together elements of cognitive behavioral and psychodynamic therapies to treat trauma problems (Bergner & Bridges, 2002). Several researches conducted to examine the effects of eye movements found out that eye movements in EMDR reduce the bad emotions that are linked with autobiographical memories, improve the recovery of episodic thoughts and raise cognitive flexibility (Marotta, 2000). The third form of therapy is internal family systems theory. This method has the capability of working with different parts of human body. It is important in psychotherapy to work on one part or several parts on a victim that is wounded. Great healing will take place if a victim is given a chance to express himself/herself and provided with assistance from trauma. IFS are normally used in the part of a person that seems to have been cut off from the rest of the body and it is in stress or can result in bad behavior. The main focus in this theory is a part called self; this part is a spiritual part of a human being. If this part is deal with, it will assist in healing other parts of the body and assist in integrating all parts into one thing working as a whole. If a person learns about self it will assist an individual to start learning to integrate themselves into a stronger working whole. CBT brings together 2 effective forms of psychotherapy, cognitive and behavioral therapy. Behavioral therapy assists victims of trauma by weakening the connections between trouble thoughts and their way of reactions. Cognitive therapy educate victims on how some thinking patterns may be the cause of trouble by providing them with a bad picture and making them feel angry. When they are combined to form CRT, they provide a very powerful tool in managing trauma (Marotta, 2000). Another method of treating trauma is Hakomi method. This method was developed by Ron Kurtz and it is based on 5 therapeutic principles namely mindfulness, Organicity, non-violence, Mind-Body connection, and Unity (Marotta, 2000). The approach by this method is body-centered where the therapist assists the client practice with slight movements in gesture or other body movements, this will assist the therapist to see the difference occurring when the emotions of a person changes. Physical and emotional safety is also significant in controlling trauma. If a person is engaging in harmful behaviors like drug abuse or alcohol and prostitution, it is significant to seek for treatment from the health professionals before working on sexual addiction trauma. Dealing with trauma sometimes can be very challenging and if an individual feels that he/she can no longer take control over the situation or it is hurting, it is encouraged that the issues be dealt on at first before dealing with trauma. It is significant that if you are facing difficult times, it is good to be with friends or loved ones so that you can be encouraged to come out of the situation, isolation or hiding always worsened the trauma conditions. Try to participate in activities you like doing even if you don’t feel like engaging at that time (John and Eric, 2000). For example, if you like riding a bicycle, look for a friend to give you company and do the riding in the road even if you don’t feel like doing. If a person does the things he/she like doing most, it will eliminate boredom and boost morale. As an individual, make a list of what you like doing and try to do many of it in a week, even if you don’t feel like doing. It is encouraged that you force to get yourself out; being active and social will assist in making the brain feel better. Do not avoid things that you fear. For example, if you fear being in public, looking at a person straight at his eyes, or taking to men or women, try to get yourself out from there and try to do those things you fear doing. Try to practicing doing relaxation activities. Example is taking a warm bath, try to breath slowly or do imaginary exercise like picturing a clear scene in the mind at the same time relaxing the body and breathing slowly (John and Eric, 2000). Relaxing regularly is significant because it will make it easy when you are direly in need of it. Conclusion Trauma is a response to an awful event such as accident or addiction. It has long term and short term effects like flashbacks and physical symptoms like headache. There are two types of trauma that are well explained by medical experts, these are development and event or shock trauma. Development trauma occurs when certain developments in a person are not attained or thwarted hence crucial development will not take place or take place in a skewed manner. Event/shock trauma results from several events such as sexual abuse; this trauma causes a state of shock in a victim. Trauma is a disorder that can be diagnosed, this can be done in different phases, the first phase is examination, this will assist in recognize life threatening problems. After the primary examination is over, the clinician will start taking the secondary examination. Imaging is another phase in diagnosing trauma; if a person is suffering from trauma, an X-ray of chest and pelvic should be taken and the pictures assessed through Focused assessment with sonography for trauma. Sexual addiction trauma can result in trauma that is violent or not violent. Trauma resulting from sexual addiction is not violent as many people think, many sexual addiction do not contain violent behavior but it is an embarrassment of an individual thinking that what he/she is doing is contrary to the norms of the society. Reactions to sexual trauma normally changes as time goes. It is common for a human being to develop feelings of fear, grief, poor appetite, and sadness. When a body reacts to sexual addiction trauma, it can last for quite sometimes before the body regains normal conditions. For married sex addicts’ partners, trauma will start when one realizes that he/she is living with somebody who has behaviors of illicit sex or obsessed by pornography and he/she is living secretive life outside the marriage. There are several methods of managing trauma this are Somatic therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Internal Family Systems Theory (IFS). In treating trauma, it appears that the best form of psychotherapy to be used is the one that combines all the three levels of healing, namely emotional, mental, and physical. Somatic method is not the best method because it focuses mainly on one level that is physical and neglects other mental and emotional levels. At the same time, traditional therapy method also has its own weakness; the method focuses mainly on mental and emotional leaving out the physical level in total. EMDR is a treatment work which is efficient in treating trauma; it also benefits the physical and physiological levels. IFS method can work effectively on the three levels, physical, mental and emotional depending on how skillful a therapist is. References Alexander, J. (2012).Trauma: A Social Theory. New York: Polity Bergner, R., & Bridges, A. (2002). The significance of heavy pornography involvement for romantic partners: Research and clinical implications. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, Vol. 28, p. 193–206. Coop-Gordon, K., & Baucom, D. (1998). Understanding betrayals in marriage: A synthesized model of forgiveness. Family Process, Vol.37(4), p.425–449. Hyer, L., & Brandsma, J. M. (1997). EMDR minus eye movements equals good psychotherapy. Journal of Traumatic Stress, Vol. 10, p.515–522 John H. H and Eric D. M. (2000). Loss and trauma: general and close relationship perspectives. London: John H. Harvey. Krupnick, J. L. (2002). Brief psychodynamic theory and PTSD. Journal of Clinical Psychology, Vol. 58(8), p.919–932 Marotta, S. A. (2000). Best practices for counselors who treat posttraumatic stress disorder. Journal of Counseling & Development, Vol. 78(4), p.492–495 Read More