Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and its Effects on Family
Introduction
A. Traumatic situations vary individually, and numerous different life-threatening or harmful events may cause someone to develop PTSD. PTSD is the most debilitating and frequent psychological disorder occurring after traumatic disasters and events. As the people living with PTSD suffer through events like nightmares, distress, hypervigilance, and irritability, their family members also go through heightened stress in feeling helpless on how to deal, cope, and help their loved ones.
B. Although some people do pick up the pieces and get back to normal life after traumatic events, for some, life changes irrevocably and they feel stuck, unable to move forward. In turn, family members may feel helpless, confused or angry that the people living with PTSD not “moving on” or “getting over it.” Although most studies are available in helping people with PTSD, most overlook the difficulties experienced by the family and friends of the people with PTSD.
C. Thesis statement: The family members that support people living with PTSD get affected in various ways and may suffer secondary traumatic stress in the process among other problems.
Emotional Unavailability
A. There occurs emotional distance between the PTSD victim and family due to higher levels of fear of intimacy experienced by the person with PTSD and their partners compared to couples that have not dealt with PTSD (Riggs 2014).
1. The individual may struggle with expressing and experiencing positive emotions and becomes unavailable to his/her family and unable to meet their emotional needs. It is because they are preoccupied with managing mental stress.
2. People living with PTSD often isolate themselves from family. As a result, their family feels like they are a world apart and this loss of intimacy can be devastating. Although a family member can regularly avail himself or herself to the victim, most feel it as a one-way street. This detachment makes the intimate relationship of the family suffer.
B. Studies show that victims living with PTSD have difficulty in emotional expression (Calhoun & Tedeschi 2014; Perlick et al. 2017) self-disclosure, and creating intimacy, partly due to the emotional numbing common in PTSD (Riggs 2014).
1. The people with PTSD are often unwilling or reluctant to share feelings with their children and partners. In turn, the family members may feel lonely or rejected, blaming themselves for their loved one’s emotional needs.
2. As people with PTSD isolate themselves, they can gradually shrink the worlds of those who care about them. It primarily occurs to those living with the victims whereby the isolation of the person with PTSD results in isolation of the other family members
Anger and Volatility
A. People living with PTSD to protect themselves against painful memories, thoughts, and feelings use anger as a weapon. Victims of PTSD and their partners have higher levels of physical violence compared to families with no PTSD (Pill, Day & Mildred 2017). Such negative interactions damage the cohesion and trust within the family.
1. Anger functions as a barrier that further isolates them, as family members pull away from the frightening rage and hostility. Family members are at a higher risk of being exposed to physical abuse (e.g., aggression and throwing things) and verbal abuse (e.g., name-calling and yelling).
2. The difficulty of controlling one’s anger causes the family to live in an atmosphere of constant chaos-such a lack of physical and emotional safety damages the mental health and development of all family members.
B. Children gain maladaptive patterns for the expression of anger. The research involved with children of people with PTSD reveals that children of people living with PTSD are more prone to behavioral problems compared to children with parents that do not have PTSD (Van der Kolk 2017). People with PTSD have poorer family adjustment and more parenting problems.
1. The ability to engage with children on a daily basis decreases due to the numbing, avoidance, and detachment of the person with PTSD (Malizia 2016). The parent’s emotional numbing is the strongest predictor of parent-child relationship problems.
2. The family members become torn between protecting the children from the volatility and caring for the acting-out victim.
Social Anxiety
A. The family becomes anxious as they limit social activities because of the PTSD victim’s isolation (Pergamin-Hight et al. 2015)
1. People living with PTSD often directly or indirectly pressure family members in staying home, which narrows the social contacts, and limits the ability to obtain support.
2. Family members often feel frustrated and guilty while doing independent activities while their loved ones are isolated and alone at home.
Conclusion
A. The family members that support people living with PTSD get affected in various ways.
B. These problems include emotional unavailability, anger and volatility, and social anxiety.
C. As the people with PTSD suffer, their family members also go through heightened stress in feeling helpless on how to deal, cope, and help their loved ones.
References
Calhoun, L. G., & Tedeschi, R. G. (2014). The foundations of posttraumatic growth: An expanded framework. In Handbook of posttraumatic growth (pp. 17-37). Routledge.
Malizia, N. (2016). The Psychological Trauma in Children and Adolescents: Scientific and Sociological Profiles. Sociology Mind, 7(01), 11.
Pergamin-Hight, L., Naim, R., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Bar-Haim, Y. (2015). Content specificity of attention bias to threat in anxiety disorders: a meta-analysis. Clinical psychology review, 35, 10-18.
Perlick, D. A., Sautter, F. J., Becker-Cretu, J. J., Schultz, D., Grier, S. C., Libin, A. V., & Glynn, S. M. (2017). The incorporation of emotion-regulation skills into couple-and family-based treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder. Military Medical Research, 4(1), 21.
Pill, N., Day, A., & Mildred, H. (2017). Trauma responses to intimate partner violence: A review of current knowledge. Aggression and violent behavior, 34, 178-184.
Riggs, D. S. (2014). Traumatized relationships: Symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder fear of intimacy, and marital adjustment in dual trauma couples. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 6(3), 201.
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2017). Developmental Trauma Disorder: Toward a rational diagnosis for children with complex trauma histories. Psychiatric annals, 35(5), 401-408.
