EFFECTS OF PRIOR TRAUMA

Many people who get up and go to work each morning are survivors of previous traumatic incidents. Most people adjust to trauma without complications that impact their working performances . People are more likely to do well at work then at home if they have had a trauma. They tend to put on a "work" face and get by. Then they go home and are tormented by reactions that encroach on their well-being. More than 25,3000,000 people will persist in their reactions to trauma to the extent that they could be classified as meeting diagnostic criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). (Thomas, 2002)

Originally studied in war veterans who demonstrated a wide range of behaviors as a result of battlefield trauma, PTSD is no longer only applied to "battle fatigue" or "shell shock ." According to experts in trauma management, half of the citizens in the United States will at some time in their life be exposed to a traumatic event. Approximately 8% will demonstrate persisting emotional reactions to the trauma to the degree that they may develop a stress disorder serious enough to require professional intervention (Kessler, 1995). People who have had prior trauma are more likely to perceive a threat in some situation than others who have not experienced a trauma in a similar situation. What this means to a manager is that because the effects of trauma may not be visible, there may come some situation at work that can trigger an old trauma. An employee who is your Rock of Gibraltar can suddenly fall apart at the seams or turn violent.

Although the timing is unpredictable, the statistical possibility is predictable. If you consider that half your employees may at one time or another have a trauma event in their lives, you should be prepared to respond appropriately and effectively if that trauma reappears at the worksite. Emotional residue from an old traumatic event that is reactivated may impact your work site. A new trauma certainly will impact your work site. An emotional spin may be the result of either situation if you are not expecting it to happen. And then your lack of expectation can add more emotional content to the emotional spin.

Case Example

The business had been robbed. The consultant had been called in to do a debriefing 72 hours after the incident. The primary victim was Darcy, a young cashier who was clearly shaken by the event and had expectable reactions. Surprisingly, another employee, Martha, who was in another area during the robbery was much more unsettled and demonstrated extreme, verbally angry behavior that was not consistent with the situation. After exploration during the debriefing, Martha began discussing this robbery as if it were her personal event. This extreme anxiety upstaged Darcy who just became more quiet and cried silently.

It came out during the debriefing that Martha was reliving a robbery of twenty years ago that had not been debriefed. Martha had followed the crime with thirteen years of alcohol use to cope with ongoing anxiety. Although Martha had been clean for many years , this second robbery precipitated a PTSD relapse. Her manager encouraged her to get some help and referred her to a local counselor. Some individual counseling and a few 12-Step meetings facilitated her rapid recovery from the most recent and the past crimes. Martha did not have an alcohol relapse .

Darcy entered counseling within a month because although her recovery from the robbery incident went well, her marriage began to collapse. She saw that as a result of acquiring new confidences associated with learning new skills to be a healthy survivor , the marriage changed. Her spouse escalated his alcohol consumption while Darcy began to identify how to find joy in growth and personal development. Darcy made new choices because she did not want to remain a victim. The marriage ended within a year when Darcy's husband took over the victim role and found a new lover to drink with him in his burgeoning self-pity drama. Darcy struggled with the loss of the marriage , but stayed focused on her own recovery.

Learning Byte

Employers need to pay attention to PTSD because the statistics clearly indicate that trauma is not going away, and human responses to trauma are not going away either. In a work environment, the symptoms of PTSD can be managed by using the grieving model, identifying when the symptoms are too much for your work site, and offering compassionate understanding that PTSD is a choice. People who have had trauma and are in the percentage that experience and demonstrate PTSD do not need further guilt and shame heaped on top of their trauma ” they need support. Managers do not have time to be counselors, but they can make a good referral to an expert in the community who does have credentials in managing the complications of PTSD.

DO THIS : Become knowledgeable about PTSD. Take a training. Hire someone to teach you. Read a book on the topic.

DON'T : Ignore this because it is more important and more prevalent than you would like to believe! PTSD might not get you but what if it gets your teammate or partner?

 

Stress reactions to crime, accidents, natural or man-made traumas and disasters are normal. People who do not have any signs of stress during or after extreme incidents are not normal. They may be, in fact, at higher risk for future stress reactions. The expectation that showing emotions means weakness is an expectation that does not serve recovery.

During the earliest phases of recovery from trauma, survivors tend to exhibit mild to moderate signs and symptoms of stress. Impending or extreme danger increases the response. Most normal reactions begin by looking quite extreme, but usually these are the symptoms that do not continue over time. Extreme reactions in the early phases of recovery exist as acute or temporary reactions. The symptoms to be concerned about are the ones that may appear two to three months or more after the incident. The employee to be concerned about is the one who forces bravado or has no response to something that is obviously traumatic to everyone else. Acute stress reactions can be extreme or subtle.

Chronic problems suggest a more long- term problem. A healing curve looks like a high spike in the earliest phases, levels off for a while, and then gradually decreases. A not-healing curve looks like a high spike in the earliest phases, levels off a bit, and then either spikes up and down many times, or does not decrease. A flat-line is not a good sign.

Well-adjusted and not so well-adjusted people usually have similar initial reactions to traumatic events. The difference is that well-adjusted people adjust to their strong emotions, and the less than well-adjusted struggle to regain their equilibrium and may take a bit longer to get there. Showing no emotions is not adjustment, it is pathology. All people who witness trauma or catastrophe will experience some or all of the following:

• shock

• terror

• blame

• anger

• guilt

• grief or sadness

• emotional numbing

• helplessness

• unhappiness

• loss of normal concentration

• difficulty with decision making

• memory changes

• disbelief

• disorientation

• confusion

• increased nightmares

• lowered self-esteem

• difficulty taking care of self

• blaming

• intrusive thoughts/memories

• worry

• feeling unconnected