Trauma is the impact felt from high levels of toxic stress. This can be emotional or physical. We may feel toxic stress when we face strong, frequent, or prolonged challenges. These can include abuse, neglect, violence, or substance use in the home.
In simple terms, PTSD is a response that some people may develop after experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event like violence, an accident, or sexual abuse. It can also be the result of toxic stress.
Toxic stress response can occur when a child experiences strong, frequent, and/or prolonged adversity—such as physical or emotional abuse, chronic neglect, caregiver substance abuse or mental illness, exposure to violence, and/or the accumulated burdens of family economic hardship—without adequate adult support.
Examples of when toxic stress can occur include when children experience chronic neglect, family violence, physical abuse, parental mental illness, sexual abuse and ongoing emotional abuse.
Triggers can include sights, sounds, smells, or thoughts that remind you of the traumatic event in some way. Some PTSD triggers are obvious, such as seeing a news report of an assault. Others are less clear. For example, if you were attacked on a sunny day, seeing a bright blue sky might make you upset.
If someone has PTSD, it may cause changes in their thinking and mood. They may suffer from recurrent, intrusive memories. Upsetting dreams, flashbacks, negative thoughts, and hopelessness are also common. Experiencing PTSD triggers may cause the symptoms to become worse or reoccur frequently.
Toxic stress may be acute, cumulative, or chronic. Individual stressors do not have to be actually traumatic to create toxic stress; long-term severe stress may be harmful even without acute traumatic events.
Toxic stress can manifest in distinct changes in a person's physical and mental health as well as affecting their behavior and choices. These changes are individualized, but some of the more commonly reported signs of toxic stress include: Physical pain or discomfort like headaches, muscle aches, Gastrointestinal upset.
However, the death of a close family member can create stress that may last for years. There are three categories of stress: positive, tolerable, and toxic.
Chronic stress- The APA defines chronic stress as stress that is constant and persists over an extended period of time. It is the most harmful type of stress to our overall health.
Examples of toxic stress can include abuse (physical, sexual, emotional), neglect (physical, emotional) and household dysfunction (parental mental illness, domestic violence, parental incarceration).
Toxic stress has the potential to change your child's brain chemistry, brain anatomy and even gene expression. Toxic stress weakens the architecture of the developing brain, which can lead to lifelong problems in learning, behavior, and physical and mental health.
You can get PTSD after living through or seeing a traumatic event, such as war, a natural disaster, sexual assault, physical abuse, or a bad accident. PTSD makes you feel stressed and afraid after the danger is over. It affects your life and the people around you. PTSD starts at different times for different people.
While emotional trauma is a normal response to a disturbing event, it becomes PTSD when your nervous system gets “stuck” and you remain in psychological shock, unable to make sense of what happened or process your emotions.
And, with quite a lot of overlap in symptoms whether it's anxiety or PTSD, it can be hard to distinguish the variety of anxiety disorders from PTSD, which the newest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders now calls a “trauma and stressor-related disorder.”
The good news is that parents and caregivers may be able to prevent or even reverse the damaging effects of toxic stress. Research shows that reducing a child's exposure to severe stress or providing responsive and supportive care under stressful conditions can make a difference.
The good news is that when a person is no longer exposed to constant experiences of threat and toxic stress, the brain can rest and begin to rebuild itself in healthier ways. The brain is capable of healing itself.
A sense of dread. Worried or tense. Neglected or lonely. Existing mental health problems getting worse.
Repeated or severe activation of stress hormones can increase levels of inflammation throughout the body which can then, over time, lead to damage to the heart and arteries. Toxic stress can even damage the immune system leading to a higher risk of infection or development of autoimmune diseases.
Good stress is short-term and it inspires and motivates you, focuses your energy and enhances performance. Bad stress, however, is the kind that wears you out, leaves you jittery and is harmful to your health. Bad stress, or distress, can lead to anxiety, confusion, poor concentration and decreased performance.
Learning how to cope with adversity is an important part of healthy development. While moderate, short-lived stress responses in the body can promote growth, toxic stress is the strong, unrelieved activation of the body's stress management system in the absence of protective adult support.
People with PTSD have intense, disturbing thoughts and feelings related to their experience that last long after the traumatic event has ended. They may relive the event through flashbacks or nightmares; they may feel sadness, fear or anger; and they may feel detached or estranged from other people.
If you have PTSD, you may have trouble keeping yourself from thinking over and over about what happened to you. You may try to avoid people and places that remind you of the trauma. You may feel numb. Lastly, if you have PTSD, you might find that you have trouble relaxing.