Highest Standards, Nationally Recognized:
Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a condition of persistent mental and emotional stress that results from injury or severe psychological shock.
When individuals have PTSD, they typically experience sleep disturbance and constant vivid flashbacks of an experience. They suffer from a lack of feeling and dulled response to other people and events and the outside world in general.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is caused by a traumatic event that’s usually life changing. These events usually occur on a personal level and can be heard or seen.
When a traumatic event occurs, the person experiencing it usually does not expect it to happen. There is a feeling of danger and fear involved with a loss of control. Stress-related reactions after a traumatic event are normal occurrences, and not everyone will arrive at a PTSD diagnosis. PTSD is disruptive to a person’s everyday life. The family may even be affected by PTSD if the reactions to the traumatic event do not go away over time. PTSD treatment would be the best option when diagnosed with this disorder.
When a traumatic event takes place in people’s lives, they tend to instigate coping mechanisms initially. They may have nightmares and trouble sleeping. They may change their eating habits. They may become unhappy and begin drinking alcohol or taking drugs to self-medicate. Most people who go through a traumatic event will reveal symptoms in the beginning.
Individuals who have PTSD may also suffer from feelings of hopelessness, shame, despair, depression, anxiety, chronic pain, employment problems, and relationship issues.
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Sometimes, post-traumatic stress disorder may not be recognized at the onset. Symptoms will usually manifest over a period of time. They may fluctuate over the years and vary in levels of impact. When symptoms last over one month and cause distress, or interfere with work or home life, the evidence supports a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Re-experiencing symptoms: This occurs when bad memories and nightmares surface. Often people with these symptoms feel as if they are reliving the traumatic event.
Avoidance: Avoiding situations that bring a familiarity to the traumatic event. Individuals may completely avoid talking or thinking about the event or situations or places that remind them of the event.
Adverse changes occur: These can be thoughts of self-loathing, fear, shame, guilt, etc. They may withdraw from others and activities they previously loved.
Anxious state of being: When an individual is constantly alert and on edge, looking out for trouble or danger, while having trouble concentrating and sleeping, this is called hyperarousal. This symptom is a serious negative indicator for PTSD.
At Avalon Malibu, we treat the entire person and awaken the mind, body, and spirit, using a holistic treatment approach. When our clients arrive at the Grand House for post-traumatic stress disorder treatment, we teach coping skills using psychotherapy (sometimes called counseling) and sometimes prescribe medication.
Clients meet one-on-one with a licensed therapist three times per week while they stay in our safe and nurturing environment. We impart cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for PTSD, where clients learn skills to understand how trauma affected them.
We strive to help individuals face and change their thoughts and feelings in our Avalon Sanctuary Model. This PTSD treatment approach allows adults to have the opportunity to reflect on education and mindfulness training while gaining insight into these scientific and evidence-based therapies.
Mindfulness and psychoeducation allow PTSD clients to exit the loop of anxiety and to re-experience, fostering change through deepening awareness of conditioned and nearly automatic fear responses. By simply experiencing the moment, mindfulness meditation detaches clients from the assumptions, emotional reactions and impulses that can occur when psychological tensions become triggered.
Acting merely as a mediator to thought and experience, mindfulness meditation diffuses emotional tensions. Mindfulness meditation allows clients to slow down while investigating emotional situations and reaching empowered decisions. Through the creation of a dedicated and peaceful inner space, clients can allow pivotal issues surrounding trauma to emerge and resolve.
Therapies like neurofeedback and somatic experiencing help to rewire alterations in neural pathways and brain chemistry that occur when trauma activates the body’s “fight or flight” response. Our clinical team works with clients to uncover and heal traumatic memories that have been buried, repressed or “stuck,” due to their inherent emotional pain and psychological distress.
Therapists help clients to resolve underlying traumas to free clients from PTSD symptoms and negative belief structures.
As they face the engulfing effects of trauma, people living with PTSD often develop addictions as they seek to self-medicate with alcohol and drug use. They may also experience continued dependency on prescriptions aimed at alleviating anxiety. In fact, studies show that individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder experience drug and alcohol addictions at double the rate of their non-traumatized peers.
Our PTSD treatment program balances professional, on-site detoxification with symptom management, psychoeducation and in-depth therapy, while consciously avoiding overmedication that can mask trauma symptoms or place clients at risk for addiction.
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