Mental Health: Steps to heal from a trauma

The intensity of a trauma, the way it impacts an individual and the strength of overcoming it, in total, determine how one deals with it. Many among us are unfortunate and succumb to the pressures of the trauma and end up having post traumatic stress disorder.

The stress associated with a trauma is as ignored as every other aspect of mental health. Everybody experiences it at one phase of their life or the other, but nobody talks about it; either due to lack of awareness where the individual doesn't know what he or she is going through or else due to the fear of being ostracized as someone who is incapable of handling wordly pressures.

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If you notice you are being too seclusive from even your best friends, try to find out the reason behind it. Analyse the recent happenings in your life and find the changes that have started to happen within you.

Do you notice a change in the manner you talk to people? Has anyone recently told you about how rude you sounded over a trivial matter? Did your maid just inform you that you have been sitting absent minded and idle for the last 30 minutes? Did your partner tell you that certain groceries are missing from the pantry even after you had promised to bring them from the stores?

If these have been happening recently after a shocking incident then you should identify it and work towards stopping it. The main objective is to not let the effect of a trauma overpower your normal being.

Do not let a traumatic incident rule over the happy side of yours. Learn to deal with the trauma. Do not hesitate to take help. Talk about the incident, to your family and friends and seek their suggestion. You can also write down your experiences in a journal. It doesn't have to be about the incident; it can be anything like your daily habit, a short story you have in mind or even about your pet cat.

If this does not work, take help from experts. Find a therapist who you can go to frequently. Attend the sessions and get help.

The sooner you identify it, the stronger you deal with it, the quicker you will heal from it.

Learn about how to overcome stress. Do not let your life go mundane over an incident. Find mindfulness and body centered techniques to help you sail through the process. Remember everything is unattainable until tried, everything is attainable once it starts.

It's a bilateral brain stimulation in which unprocessed buried emotions in the brain are processed. "Unlike other treatments that focus on directly altering the emotions, thoughts and responses resulting from traumatic experiences, EMDR therapy focuses directly on the memory, and is intended to change the way that the memory is stored in the brain, thus reducing and eliminating the problematic symptoms," say experts at the American Psychological Association.

This is a body centered therapy where doctors stimulate acupressure points to help the patient deal with all sorts of stress. As per a study on clinical effect of EFT says that EFT is a brief intervention combining elements of exposure, cognitive therapy, and somatic stimulation of acupressure points on the face and body and found that during EFT physiological indicators of health such as RHR, BP, and cortisol significantly decreased, indicating improvement. Happiness levels increased as did immune system function.

Mind exercise can do wonders like none. However, it is difficult to put the mind into that when one’s dealing with a trauma. It's better to join yoga classes and practice mindfulness for an hour or two. Once you feel you can concentrate on it, you can do it at home. Various Yoga poses like Surya Namaskar have proven benefits for mental health and have been seen giving a boost to the brain’s functioning.