What Is Tertiary PTSD?

What is tertiary PTSD? PTSD stands for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s a problem most often associated with soldiers returning from battle but has more recently been used to describe symptoms of people that have also undergone some kind of trauma in their lives for which they have difficulty coping afterwards. The effects of PTSD come in stages often called primary, secondary, and tertiary. Therefore, tertiary PTSD are the effects that show up in the third stage of the disorder.

Since the symptoms of tertiary PTSD are dependent upon the first and second, understanding all of the effects will help friends and family members cope with a loved one suffering from PTSD. However, the effects most likely will not show up in this clearly linear fashion. Some of the effects may not be apparent at all, while others, may show up out of order.

Primary PTSD

Some of the symptoms of primary PTSD include nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia, hypersensitivity, paranoia and withdrawal from society. With the nightmares and flashbacks, the PTSD victim has to constantly relive the source of the trauma. Hypersensitivity occurs when the PTSD patient comes across similar stimuli as occurred during the trauma. For some soldiers, a loud noise or sudden bright light may trigger the memories and the resultant “fight or flight” sensation. Perhaps a person who suffers from PTSD from a robbery or rape was walking in a park near flowers. Later, fragrant flowers may remind the person of the attack.

Secondary PTSD

Secondary PTSD actually occurs to the patient who has PTSD because of their family’s reaction to their illness. Divorce is very common among sufferers of PTSD because the spouse that did not suffer the trauma can no longer handle living with the emotional, physical or mental outbursts of the patient. Trauma that changes the way a person acts, reacts, and thinks will also change the family and friends around that person as they now have to deal with a completely different personality.

Tertiary PTSD

Tertiary PTSD has to do with the world surrounding the patient. People that have been changed dramatically may no longer feel that they fit into normal society, or a society that has not been through what they have been through. Difficulty relating to others is a common tertiary effect of PTSD, as are feelings of low self esteem. To combat these feelings of vulnerability and worthlessness, PTSD patients often have drug and alcohol related issues. These negative feelings become exaggerated and irrational but those suffering from PTSD can’t overcome them.

Trauma Trap

PTSD has been referred to as a trauma trap. The minds of people afflicted with PTSD can no longer think of the happy things in life after they have suffered through or witnessed horrific acts of violence. Whatever the initiating event, the guilt of still being alive while someone else died or the memories of helplessness during an attack, the mind cannot move passed the events and dwells there even long after.

PTSD is not a new problem. History has shown that soldiers have suffered from it for as long as there has been war and human atrocities. The only thing different was the terminology. Soldiers returning from World War I may have been called “shell shocked.” For World War II the term was “war neurosis.” Earlier societies and other cultures similarly have other terms for the condition.

Unfortunately, many of the other physical symptoms of PTSD such as the inability to concentrate, being tired all the time, feeling irritable, or having headaches, can be symptoms of many other problems that PTSD may go undiagnosed, especially in non-military personnel. We have come to understand PTSD from soldiers, but it is much more difficult to diagnose in non-soldiers. Medical researchers work on being able to accurately diagnose these cases through trauma screenings, but no one set of questions could diagnose all cases.