Anxiety symptoms due to a traumatic experience

Anxiety caused by trauma

There is nothing wrong with being anxious or afraid at times. This is a natural physical reaction to the fact that there is danger. Fear can therefore be necessary in certain situations. But anxiety symptoms can also be persistent, for example for a specific situation. This is often an unfounded fear, as there is no danger at all. It is then very likely that you have become anxious due to a traumatic experience.

What is the relationship between trauma and anxiety?

There is a very clear relationship between trauma and fear. Most people will process a traumatic event normally and find a place for it. If you cannot process the trauma properly and it does not really get a place, then the event will continue to play in your head. If this is still the case a month after the event, you can be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is an anxiety disorder caused by a trauma. Therefore, there is a very clear relationship between trauma and anxiety.

What are fear symptoms?

There are many different types of anxiety that may arise from a trauma. The complaints can be different for each type of anxiety. In general, all types of anxiety can be classified into three categories: tension, re-experiencing and avoidance. Tension means that you are constantly living under stress. The reason for this does not even have to be the trauma but only the fear of being confronted with the fearful situation. If you suffer from PTSD, then reliving the event plays an important role. Constantly reliving of the event, ensures that you cannot give the trauma a place. This makes you feel constantly anxious and this affects your daily life. Avoidance is a consequence of the reliving. Precisely because you do not want to relive or come into contact with a situation in which you are confronted with the fear, you start to avoid situations. Many people with PTSD are therefore lonely and in social isolation.

How can you reduce anxiety?

Once you suffer from a certain anxiety disorder, such as PTSD, it is very difficult to get rid of it. In fact, the only solution is to treat your fear by means of professional therapy. Anxiety therapy EMDR has proven to be very successful. It must be said, however, that EMDR is only successful if the fear originated from an unprocessed trauma. The therapy focuses on processing the trauma and not on the fears you are struggling with at that moment. If the trauma is processed, the fears will disappear too.

EMDR for anxiety and panic

When you are struggling with certain fears, the cause of which can be traced back to a traumatic experience, EMDR is eminently suitable. The therapy was developed in 1989 and is still relatively new. That is why research is still being done into how EMDR works in the brain. That EMDR works is acknowledged by science. With EDMR a trauma can be processed in a relatively short time. In this way EMDR helps to get rid of fear quickly.

Everything EMDR therapy revolves around is to distract the client. For this, the therapist uses hands, which the client has to follow, or the client gets headphones and is distracted with sound signals. The distraction takes place when the client is asked to think back to the traumatic moment. As soon as the client is distracted, he/she no longer thinks about the trauma. Although thinking back can be very difficult and emotional in the beginning, this will decrease after a few distractions. In this way, the trauma slowly gets a place and the memory can be recalled with less emotion. As soon as the trauma is processed, the fears usually disappear too.

EMDR with the innovations of Psylaris

The founders of Psylaris have their roots in mental healthcare. That is why the innovations developed by Psylaris can be applied so well in mental healthcare. Psylaris also has the necessary applications for EMDR therapy. Virtual reality is now an integral part of the mental health care, for different types of therapy. With EMDR-VR, Psylaris has developed an EMDR module for virtual reality. The client can use the VR glasses both in the treatment room and at home, and the therapist has more options for more intense distraction tasks.

With EMDR-Remote, as a practitioner you make use of the online platform of Psylaris. This platform can be used to apply EMDR therapy remotely. The client can thus be treated from home. The platform has video calling facilities, many types of working memory loads and an automatic secure storage of client data.

EMDR therapy with modern methods

As a developer of modern methods and tools in mental healthcare, Psylaris has also made EMDR easy with modern techniques. Virtual reality, for example, plays an increasingly important role in the mental healthcare sector. With EMDR-VR and EMDR-plus, Psylaris has developed a VR-module. The module can easily be used by the practitioner and has many distraction possibilities. The client gets a more intense distraction than during a regular treatment. The VR glasses can be used both at home and in the treatment room. This makes both the practitioner and the client more flexible.

If the client is unable to come to the treatment centre, Psylaris uses EMDR-remote to make it possible to receive EMDR treatment at home. EMDR-remote is the online EMDR platform of Psylaris, where the practitioner and the client can conduct an EMDR session via video calling. Again, the practitioner has many possibilities to distract and the client, who is chained to the house, is still being treated.

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