How to Deal With Your Loved One Who Has PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that is triggered by a traumatic event that can be instantaneous, or it can be delayed up to three months. People of all ages can get PTSD. When you are in a stressful event, your nervous system reacts with a fight-or flight response. Your heart rate increases, blood pressure rises, muscles tighten which increases your strength and reaction time. When all danger is gone, your nervous system calms your heart rate, and blood pressure to a normal state.

With PTSD when a stressful situation has passed, sometimes the nervous system becomes stuck and is unable to return to its normal state. This leaves the person unable to move on from the experience. Recovering from PTSD means helping the nervous system become unstuck so healing can take place.

Symptoms may include flashbacks, memory loss, depression, nightmares, and severe anxiety as well as continuous thoughts about the event.

Severe anxiety, memory problems, trouble sleeping may increase when a person with PTSD visits a sick loved one and knows they are going to lose them. Overwhelming guilt and shame sometimes attack the loved one of the terminally ill person who has unresolved issues with that dying parent. This is why it is so important to forgive those that have wronged us. If we hold unforgiveness and bitterness in our hearts, it manifests in our physical and our spiritual bodies preventing us from living a productive, healthy, and happy life.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is usually associated with military veterans. It is also known as "shell shock, battle fatigue or combat stress". The most common events that trigger PTSD are combat exposure, rape, childhood neglect, physical abuse, sexual molestation, physical attack, being threatened with a weapon.

Other traumatic events can lead to PTSD including fire, natural disaster, mugging, robbery, assault, civil conflict, car accident, plane crash, torture, kidnapping, life-threatening medical diagnosis, terrorist attack, and other life-threatening events. When intrusive memories occur, flashbacks and nightmares of reliving the terrifying event for minutes or days at a time can occur.

One of my siblings was recently diagnosed with PTSD, having suffered depression for many years she suffered devastating memory loss at the death of our mother. At our mother’s wake, she completely broke down, insisting that she had slept for two days. And the woman in the coffin was not her mother. It took my stepfather to take her hand and lead her to where my mother lay to show her the ring on her finger was from him. She was taken to the hospital immediately and put on medication.

Upon examination, by the doctor, we were told that depression can be so intense that it lasts for an extended period and can cause memory loss. Childhood abuse that is not dealt with, adds to the traumatic event. The mind battles to accept the impending death of a parent, but intrusive memories, anxiety, guilt, shame, insomnia, intense fear, helplessness can all work together to create psychotic breakdowns. PTSD reinforces the grounds for memory loss.

If PTSD goes untreated it may only get worse resulting in intense, disturbing thoughts and feelings related to their experience that last long after the traumatic event has passed. They will relive the event through nightmares or flashbacks. Left untreated they may experience fear or anger, extreme sadness. They can become detached or estranged from other people as well. The things or places they used to go before the traumatic event, may stop them from going altogether.

While you are receiving treatment for your memory loss it can be helpful to write down directions of places that you need to go. Where you live, and places you frequent, doctors’ appointments, friends, and family.

In your address book, if you do not recognize anyone in it, ask a friend, or relative to ask who each person is and write down their relationship to you. When a person has a memory loss due to PTSD, be supportive in helping them get their memory back, they may ask you lots of questions. Be patient and loving while they try to remember memories that seem to elude them. They are there, just locked away.