While such events are traumatic for everyone involved, they can be especially evocative and frightening for men and women with PTSD and can be a source of retraumatization even if a person’s past trauma had no specific connection to such events.Īnother possible cause of retraumatization could involve an exposure to an environment or situation where physical danger seems to be present, or having an encounter with someone who is perceived as a threat (possibly even the person responsible for the original trauma). Natural disasters, warfare, and terrorist attacks are sudden, shocking, and often cause enormous suffering and destruction. Even exposure to such events in a movie, fictional television show, or news report could provoke retraumatization if there is enough similarity to the person’s previous trauma. This could involve the witnessing of domestic violence, for example, or child abuse, or some type of physical assault that the PTSD sufferer is helpless to prevent. Possible causes of retraumatization may include some type or exposure to violence or abuse that doesn’t bring direct harm to the PTSD sufferer, but still evokes vivid remembrances of past experiences, in addition to provoking compassion and empathy for the victims. With retraumatization, past traumas are relived with an air of authenticity and detail that is hard to shake, and for each sufferer the powerful triggers that cause such shocking occurrences are unwelcome reminders of how devastating and debilitating their previous experiences really were. But it is their capacity to remind men and women with PTSD of times they’d rather forget that gives them their potency. Retraumatizing events replicate important elements of the original trauma (i.e., feelings of a loss of power, control, or personal safety) without replicating the actual events themselves.Įxperiences that retraumatize may involve some degree of physical or emotional suffering. Retraumatization should not be confused with revictimization, where men and women with PTSD are abused or injured in the same way again. Vivid reexperiencing of past trauma is notable and terrifying because it returns PTSD sufferers to the most painful moments of their lives, to memories of experiences that caused significant psychological and emotional damage.
While normal triggers can bring back unpleasant memories, or even provoke disturbing flashbacks, retraumatizing events are especially powerful triggers that somehow recreate the intense dynamics associated with the original traumatic encounters or episodes.
Retraumatization happens when people with PTSD are exposed to people, places, events, situations, or environments that cause them to re-experience past trauma as if it were fresh or new.
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