Surviving PTSD and Trauma

Traumatic experience of many kinds, as well as repeated exposure to trauma, can lead to PTSD. Our guest, Michele Rosenthal, experienced a very traumatic event at the age of 13 and lived 24 years before a diagnosis with PTSD helped her to heal.

What is PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)?

A traumatic experience can change your life and who you are as a person. Dr. Harry Croft, HealthyPlace Medical Director and Board Certified psychiatrist says PTSD results from out of the ordinary life situations where the person is at risk and feels helpless and unable to do anything about their situation. Key symptoms of PTSD: re-experience (flashbacks), avoidance, sense of a foreshortened future (feeling that something bad is going to happen to me), arousal (being easily startled).

PTSD Recovery is a Process

Michele understands these symptoms well and discusses the process she went through to recover from PTSD. She says, "it was not an easy or short journey." In her experience, after a trauma and recovery a person can be very different from who they were before and many relationships can end in separation or divorce. Understanding the process and hearing from others who have been through it may help you or your loved one to recover from PTSD.

Watch Surviving PTSD with Michele Rosenthal

Our video interview with Michele Rosenthal is no longer available. You can find her on her YouTube channel and in the HealthyPlace PTSD Playlist below.

She shares with us part of her personal story and knowledge obtained by running her site, Heal My PTSD.

Share Your Experience of Surviving PTSD

Have you lived with PTSD? How did you survive and how did you go about your process of recovery? If you are in the middle of that process what are your thoughts on recovery from PTSD? Please share your comments below.