Dear Bloggers,
First of all let me begin I wish you a happy 2025.
New Year's Eve hasn't been much of a celebration for me for more than a decade now, because my partner has severe problems dealing with fireworks and this usually degenerates into a trip in the car to escape the light and noise. At some point it becomes too intense and we flee the village where we live.
Trauma, something that can be caused in an instant and with all its consequences. Trauma can be life-changing. But what exactly is this? What are its consequences and how does it relate to Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? In this article you will read what trauma means, the similarities and differences with PTSD and how trauma-related symptoms can be seen in relation to PTSD.
Trauma
The word “trauma” is often used to indicate that someone has experienced an event that has not yet been properly processed, causing someone to suffer from it in everyday life. Sometimes it is a single event, such as a fire, accident, death, rape or robbery. This is called single trauma. When there has been a series of traumatic events (for example, sexual abuse, assault, bullying, medical procedures) it is called multiple trauma.
A traumatic event can cause intense symptoms. Often the memory forces itself on you, while you are trying so hard not to think about it. This can take the form of nightmares or re-experiences, among other things. The memory brings intense anxiety and stress, which makes you try to avoid anything that might bring that memory back to the surface. Continuously elevated stress levels make you irritable, overly alert or startle easily. You have many complex thoughts and you no longer enjoy the things you used to enjoy. Because everywhere, someone is lurking on you who wants to harm you. Recurrent and intrusive memories, startle reactions, avoidance and intense emotions after a traumatic event are appropriate for post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
PTSD or Autism
Autism and PTSD are two completely different things, but there are several similarities in their manifestation. This makes there a risk of misdiagnosis (for example, PTSD instead of autism, or vice versa) or missing one of the diagnoses even though both are present.
One well-known commonality is stimulus sensitivity. Both people with autism and people with PTSD are extra sensitive to stimuli. Fear of loud noises or finding physical touch unpleasant are well-known hypersensitivities that occur frequently in both diagnoses.
Other similarities include rigidity and social withdrawal. Also, symptoms such as sleep problems, gloominess and anxiety are common in both diagnoses.
Some of the difference is in the nature of the symptoms. For example, sensitivity to stimuli in PTSD is often linked to stimuli reminiscent of the trauma, whereas in autism there is a more general sensitivity to stimuli. Another example is that sleep problems in autism are more likely to arise from overstimulation, difficulty with transition or a lack of structure, and in PTSD it is mainly from nightmares or fears. It is therefore incredibly important in diagnosis to look beyond the symptoms and have an eye for underlying processes.
Another difference can be seen in the duration of the symptoms. With autism we assume that it is congenital and symptoms can therefore already be seen in (early) childhood. PTSD you can develop at any time in your life, so a clear difference can usually be seen in functioning before and after the traumatic event. Unfortunately, there are also those who experienced (multiple) trauma in early childhood, making this difference more difficult to discern. Again, a careful diagnostic process is in order
All your knowledge and memories with associated thoughts and feelings, are stored in so called drawers and your brain is a kind of chest of drawers. You can compare this to your computer: all your documents and images with information are stored in folders, so they don't disappear as soon as you close it.
When you need information from a folder, this folder opens in your brain. For example: you are at work. The “work” folder is then open because you need this knowledge to do your job. Ideally, this folder closes when you go home again. But if you are still mulling over your work, for example, the folder remains open. Or you talk about what you did that day at home, which also requires the folder to be opened again.
What we often see with autism is that a folder remains open when associated things are not clear, logical or unfinished. You keep having thoughts about the subject and it is not easy to let it go (i.e. close the folder).
Thus, a drawer in your head may also remain open that has to do with a loss or a drastic event. As a result, you keep thinking about it. You may also be experiencing the feelings you had during the loss or major event over and over again.
Because the folder remains open, you may experience symptoms appropriate to stalled grief or PTSD. The difference between open folders and stagnant grief or PTSD is that the core problem is not the disturbed processing, but the inability to puzzle all the pieces of information into a logical and meaningful whole.
Wrong links
During the processing of stimuli in your brain, information that belongs together is categorized and transported together. However, it can happen that pieces of information are transported further together when they don't actually belong together. This is what I call a wrong document in the wrong drawer, and this makes retrieval a lot more difficult. There is a piece of information missing for the linking together.
A simple example of this is not eating food that once made you feel sick. Suppose you ate fish one evening, after which you became ill that same evening-a severe allergic reaction in my case. Your brain can then link the piece of information about eating fish in general to the piece of information about getting sick. The result is that every time you think about eating fish, say because someone suggests going to a seafood restaurant, that linkage pops up. You probably won't get another bite down your throat because you're afraid it will make you sick again. And even though rationally you may know that that need not be the case (because possibly you happened to have bad or the wrong fish that night, which says nothing about all the other kinds of fish, or the getting sick had nothing to do with it and it was coincidental that it followed each other), I no longer get nauseous at the idea of eating fish. Just having it researched what you can and cannot eat and then that does feel like truth.
Everyone's brain makes these mismatches from time to time, including the brains of neurotypical people. However, the likelihood of a mismatch in autism is higher, because in the autistic brain information comes in fragmented (i.e. in separate pieces a kind of dustpan and brush effect. All the pieces are there but in a shattered order).
Now the link between a specific type of food and getting sick is not a world catastrophe, but it can just happen to create a link that has much bigger implications for your daily life. An example: during an evening walk, fireworks were set off. In your startle reaction you heard a high whistling sound which gave you even more panic also the flashes of light all around gave excessive excitement and as soon as you hear a bang you want to crawl away. Since then you feel intense fear when you hear bangs outside or if someone just after New Year's Eve someone sets off a piece of fireworks.
Do you recognize yourself in the above article? Then do not hesitate to seek help. For this you can contact your family doctor.
“We have calcium in our bones, iron in our veins, carbon in our souls, and nitrogen in our brains. 93 percent stardust, with souls made of flames, we are all just stars that have people names.” {qoute by Nikita Gill}
The Old Sailor,
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