It's painful to feel like its only you vs. your struggles. As your therapist, I guide you to turn your triggers into teachable moments. With the right set of tools, you can free yourself and begin to re-love the life you live!
It has been over a year since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic worldwide. This past year is marked as a year of separation, anxiety, fear, uncertainty, and loss of loved ones. It has been a year of changes that has been trying on your mental health.
The Problem
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Are you resisting thoughts and emotions related to the pandemic?
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Do you experience panic attacks in public?
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Are you afraid to take your mask off?
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Do you stay away from places, objects, or events that remind you of COVID-19?
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Does it feel scary leaving your home?
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Do you feel isolated and trapped?
If you answered yes to 3 or more questions, you may be experiencing COVID-PTSD. Many people associate Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) with veterans who survive a horrific trauma, yet continue reliving the painful experience. Today, consequent of COVID-19, people are experiencing a similar set of negative emotions, flashbacks and nightmares. COVID-PTSD is affecting those who painfully suffered and recovered from Coronavirus, as well as their family, friends, and frontline workers.
The Symptoms
Symptoms of COVID-PTSD generally develop soon after experiencing a traumatic event, which in this case is the pandemic. Sometimes the symptoms can take a few months to appear and may be triggered with things opening back up. COVID-PTSD can lead to functional impairments such as brain fog. Brain fog is a set of mental symptoms that prevent your ability to think and concentrate, making living life confusing, worrisome, and depressing. If untreated, this psychological trauma can persist for months, years or an indefinite period.
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Reliving the traumatic experience through nightmares, intrusive thoughts that make you feel like you’re reliving the experience. PTSD it doesn’t feel like a memory—it feels like you’re going through the trauma again.
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Triggered anxiety and avoidance of certain places, people, or things. Not going out or wanting to see friends.
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Becoming more upset and emotional than usual as a result of not being able to handle your response they way you used to.
The Treatment
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Cognitive processing therapy helps you identify beliefs you have surrounding that event and understand whether they are rooted in truth. It also challenges your fear and anxiety of the event happening again. It helps you reorient yourself in reality and have you enjoy the present.
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Exposure therapy helps you confront your fears. As things open up and you are afraid to be in a public, this therapy helps you face your fears gradually. It is a process of moving towards the fear and anxiety. Experiencing this fear or anxiety does not mean you’re in danger, it means your brain is trying to tell you that you are.
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Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy helps you address the root cause of the symptoms through transformational experiences that restore brain connectivity and rewire negative thinking patterns.