After accident, injury, or other traumatic event, it's easy to be thankful that the experience is over, and to look forward to getting on with your life. Sometimes, that's how it is. Sometimes, a person can really wish that's how it could be. Days, weeks or months - even years later - the victim of trauma may still be experiencing the pain of that moment.

It's not easy to explain Post Traumatic Stress to someone who has never known it - and the most down-to earth, sensible people can be affected as easily as anyone else. It can be devastating, months after an accident or injury, to wake sweating after a nightmare of the incident, or to suffer flashbacks even in broad daylight, or to be suddenly tearful or intensely angry for no good reason. Others really don't understand, and well-meaning advice to 'pull yourself together' is worse than useless. Emotional trauma can produce similar symptoms, which are examples of a natural process called the fight/flight response.

People can suffer for years from pain and distress and may be aware of remembering again and again the events they want to simply forget. You do not necessarily need to suffer. Help is available and modern psychotherapy and counselling - which may or may not include hypnosis - really can help you deal with the past, so you can get on with your life.

What is Post-Traumatic Stress disorder?
Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a condition some people develop after they experience a very traumatic, sometimes life-threatening event, for example observing another person or group of people being killed or injured. Natural disasters, experiences of abuse, wars, and serious accidents are likely to cause some victims or witnesses to experience PTSD. In some people, PTSD develops immediately after an unusually traumatic event. In other people signs of the disorder do not develop until several weeks, months, or even years afterwards.

Characteristics associated with PTSD
PTSD develops when a person witnesses or experiences a traumatic event and later experiences some of the following for a prolonged period of time:

• Reliving the event - thinking and/or dreaming about it frequently
  
• Unsettled or distressed in other areas of life - work, home, etc.
  
• Avoiding situations that might lead to recalling of the trauma
  
• Experiencing emotional numbness
  
• Showing a heightened sense of being 'on guard'.
  
• PTSD victims may have such additional symptoms as a sense of hopelessness, or fear, insomnia, irritability, and/or difficulty concentrating.