PTSD

It’s hard to focus on the present when your brain keeps dragging you back to past trauma. At Exhale Health, skilled psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner Katrina Kadzmarek, MSN, APRN, PMHNP, provides compassionate post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatment in the practice’s conveniently located Scottsdale, Arizona, office. She uses a trauma-informed care approach to understand your past, help you heal, and guide you forward to a happier future. Phone the office or make your appointment online today.

What is PTSD?

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) develops in some people after they survive or witness a frightening, shocking, or life-threatening event. Examples include natural disasters, physical assault, military combat, terrorist attacks, and sexual assault. 

With PTSD, memories of your traumatic experience return uninvited. PTSD may surface shortly after your traumatic experience or months or years later. 

What are the signs of PTSD?

PTSD symptoms happen in four general categories, including:

Intrusions

Intrusions include unwanted memories of the traumatic experience. They may happen as nightmares, vivid flashbacks, or daytime memories. 

Avoidance

When you have PTSD, the things that tend to trigger your intrusive symptoms may become apparent very quickly. For instance, a particular place may trigger unbidden memories. This is what leads many people with PTSD to avoid situations, locations, and people.

Thought and mood changes

PTSD can affect the way your brain works, leading to forgetting details around the trauma, feelings of self-blame, self-hatred, detachment from others, or hopelessness. Some people with PTSD describe an inability to experience joy.

Increase in arousal and reactivity 

People with PTSD are often hyper-aware of their environment and prone to rapid reactions. You may be suspicious of everyone and everything, become startled easily, or have a hair-trigger temper. Reckless behavior is also common.

What is trauma-informed care for PTSD?

Trauma-informed care looks to your past to help you find solutions for the future. At Exhale Health, Katrina works with you hand-in-hand, examining your traumatic experiences and delving into their far-reaching effects to better understand your needs in the present day. 

Katrina does everything possible to help you avoid retraumatization by identifying triggers, anticipating when they’re likely to happen, and helping you establish a safe-feeling environment.

Katrina helps you develop effective strategies for healing, provides medication management, and encourages lifestyle changes that contribute to healing. 

Additionally, Exhale Health provides comprehensive care for anxiety disorders and mood disorders like depression and bipolar disorder. Symptoms of these conditions can sometimes mimic PTSD, and the conditions can occur together. 

No matter what your PTSD looks and feels like, there are powerful methods to treat it and help you find the way through this difficult time. Call Exhale Health or phone the office for help now.