PTSD and the Senses

PTSD affects everyone in different ways, but one common effect of PTSD is how it changes the way we sense the world around us. We might find ourselves being shut down emotionally. It may feel like some of our five senses are not working as they should. Some people even lose balance or experience frequent dizzy spells. It can be alarming when you are caught unaware of the effects PTSD might have on the senses.

A Sensory Processing Disorder

Many mental health professionals consider PTSD to disrupt normal sensory processing, with some even classifying it as a sensory processing disorder. A sensory processing disorder is a condition that affects the way your nervous system processes stimuli. For example, you might find certain lights too bright, certain environments overwhelming because of their noise and busyness, or certain flavors and smells unbearable.

PTSD affects not only our physical senses but our emotional ones, too. Some people battling PTSD have been described by friends and loved ones as “shut down.” It’s as if they have lost all energy, excitement, and passion and have become numb, cold, and distant.

A sensory processing disorder might affect people by making them overly sensitive toward stimuli, or it might work the opposite way, causing them to be less responsive to emotional and non-emotional stimuli.

Sensing Inside and Out

We absorb information and react to stimuli externally through our bodies and our five physical senses and internally through our thoughts and emotions. The two are often connected with sights, sounds, smells, flavors, and tactile sensations affecting our emotions and sometimes even our attitude and outlook.

For example, a prolonged, jarring sound can make us feel anxious or even put us in a bad mood. Similarly, we might experience euphoria when we smell and taste our favorite food, and that good feeling might lift a heavy mood.

There is a third sense, too, and that is our sense of balance. Through a complex collection of nerves known as the vestibular system, we can walk, keep balance, and use our body as we need to, depending on the activity we are doing or the environment we are in.

When we sense a change in the environment, we adapt our body language to the situation to keep us safe or to fully experience the moment. We might need to tread lightly on slippery surfaces when we come across them, for example. Formally, our physical sensing is called exteroception, our emotional sensing is called interoception, and our sense of balance is called proprioception.

PTSD and the Senses

Trauma affects each level of our senses, potentially causing us to feel over-aroused by allowing too much information to enter the brain or under-around, where we don’t respond quickly enough or appropriately to information. We might also become increasingly clumsy and uncoordinated, almost as if we have forgotten how to perform basic tasks.

From the outside, all of this looks like a person who is highly strung and overwhelmed by their environment. Even if it is an ordinary, everyday environment that they have been in before, they might look completely checked out, as if in a zombie state. They might be suddenly uncoordinated and unsteady on their feet or just possess a completely different body language than normal.

This can be alarming to witness and difficult to experience first-hand. Many people discount previous traumatic episodes and the effects of PTSD and instead begin searching for an explanation for this alarming behavior. While there might be additional problems, the chances are that we are experiencing the effects of PTSD on our senses.

Finding Support for PTSD in McKinney, Texas

A large part of healing from PTSD is learning to integrate our senses – physical, emotional, and balance. This sounds complicated, but there are basic exercises and disciplines we can learn in therapy that will help. It is entirely possible to regain our affected senses and begin to heal from past trauma. As with most good things, it takes time and practice.

Help is available in McKinney, Texas for those dealing with PTSD and those supporting loved ones with PTSD. Therapy and counseling in McKinney, Texas help create a space for people to unload all of their anxieties and learn new ways of coping with PTSD symptoms.

If you are ready to start a healing journey from PTSD, reach out to our office today at Texas Christian Counseling, McKinney. We will pair you with an experienced trauma counselor in McKinney to get you started.