Does Anxiety Cause PTSD or Does PTSD Cause Anxiety?

a post by Edie Weinstein for the World of Psychology blog



“PTSD is a whole-body tragedy, an integral human event of enormous proportions with massive repercussions.” ― Susan Pease Banitt

This question came up in conversation when I was speaking with someone who has experienced severe panic attacks to the point of calling them “debilitating”, requiring inpatient care. As they were sharing about the ordeal, they told me that when they contemplate the time spent seeking treatment and the aftermath, it ramped up both the anxiety and PTSD symptoms. Even as a career therapist with decades of experience treating people with stand-alone anxiety, with no overt PTSD symptoms, I had not considered that remembering the anxiety was re-traumatizing. I have heard clients share that anticipating panic attacks was in and of itself anxiety provoking. For this person and so many others, it is hard to determine the line between the two.

As is the case for many who struggle with this condition, they experienced body memory, flashbacks and tremors, as if the events of the past were recurring. Reminding themselves, “I am here and now, not there and then,” alleviated some of the more intense indicators.

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Some useful reminders of tactics for coping whether it’s PTSD or something else that underlies the panic / anxiety.

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When You Crave Control of Everything When You Crave Control of Everything

a post by Margarita Tartakovsky for the World of Psychology blog



You like to have things under control. Your home has to be organized in a particular way, and so does your schedule. You get stressed out when your days don’t go as planned — your child gets sick and misses daycare, you run into terrible traffic, a client cancels a meeting, your partner doesn’t want to attend the party.

Often it doesn’t take much for you to feel frustrated, frazzled and downright overwhelmed. Any disturbance to the status quo feels unbearable.

Maybe you like to control how others perceive you, so you show a very specific image: You are calm, collected, poised and put together, but on the inside, you’re anything but. Maybe you like to control the people in your life, everything from their schedules to their actions.

Either way, you need to have control. And it’s a need that often feels insatiable.

Where does this relentless craving come from?

Some people need control because they grew up in an environment where they had very little of it. As kids, they were surrounded by chaos or inconsistency, said Tanvi Patel, LPC-S, a psychotherapist specializing in work with high achieving adults and adult survivors of trauma.

Maybe their parents struggled with extreme moods or addiction. Maybe their parents repeated cycles where they were emotionally unavailable and then overly involved and intrusive, she said. Maybe they grew up with many different guardians, she added.

These kinds of situations make it difficult or even impossible to develop healthy attachments—and it’s our attachments with caregivers that dictate how we see ourselves and how we see the world, Patel said.

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