Feeling of guilt and self-blame

It is not uncommon for a traumatic event survivor to blame themselves for parts of the traumatic event. They feel personally responsible that things have happened the way they did and they think they should have known and therefore could have done things differently. They may think if they have done things differently, the traumatic event might have never happened. Another very common think is to feel guilty to survive the traumatic event while other people didn’t. The feeling of guilt for surviving is often expressed as “It should have been me who died.” This feeling of guilt and self-blame can be very draining and traumatic for the survivor.

Depression

The immediate reaction to a traumatic event is a desire to sleep all the time. However if this symptom of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) persists for weeks or months, it may be a signal of a beginning of depression. Depression or “being pressed down” in other words is unfortunately very common symptom of PTSD. The feeling of sadness can be overwhelming and too much for the traumatic event survivor to bear. If you have lost a loved person or you lost your limb or former looks, it may be almost impossible for you to imagine your life carrying on. It can feel as part of you has died. If the loss if less obvious, you may suffer even more as others don’t consider your loss and therefore expect you to be your normal self. The less obvious losses may be losing friends, miscarriage or abortion, loss of physical strength and ability or mental ability, being made redundant. You may think: “I will always feel this way and never be my old self again” and you give up your efforts you had before the traumatic event. You start thinking negative about yourself and the rest of the world, you may feel worthless. You start having negative self-talk such as:” I never do anything right” and you become depressed. Your depressed mind gets so caught up in negative thought patterns that it becomes almost impossible to concentrate on other things. You may experience an overwhelming fatigue which is one of the typical symptoms of PTSD. Signs of depression include little motivation to eat or taking part in social or physical activities. Other symptom of PTSD can on the other hand be comfort eating. The term “burn-out” is used when someone is trying hard to cope with symptoms of PTSD doing all the right things and yet feeling more depressed.

Bob describes how he lost his right eye, when he was working as a controller in a warehouse. He was working on one of the machines when one of the sprung metal fittings had come undone through his own wrong doing and hit his head. His right eye was damaged. He suffered an initial shock. He was hospitalized for a short period of time. After he recovered physically, the company he was working for offered him a different job, which he could do with the functioning of one eye only. He tried to get on with his life and to ignore his internal emotional reactions, because he was ashamed of them. He felt he should be brave, accidents happen all the time after all and the accident was caused by his own wrong doing. However he couldn’t get rid of his feelings and became depressed. He blamed himself and felt very down and upset. Also he felt very alone because he felt too ashamed to talk about his feelings with anybody.