The last decades of 20 century witnessed an increase in frequency and prevalence of PTSD in the general population. The majority that has had an initial episode of PTSD do not recover even if many years passed away. Among the most stressful events on the first place : sudden and unexpected death of a loved one, rape, violent attack, armed fight. It is very possible for a person that has had a PTSD episode to live with these active and traumatic symptoms, even for more than 20 years, but it usually interferes with work (Davidson 2001). In many of these cases, the people are not diagnosed correctly from the start, because they have a somatoform pattern and only 11.8% of the patients that are attended by a physician experience PTSD classical symptoms.

          Trauma victims bounce between denial of events, its compulsive representation through flashbacks and nightmares, night terrors, profuse perspirations, generalized anxiety of extreme intensity, sleep depravation, panic, chronic alcoholism and other addictive behaviors. In this manner, the mind can organize and process these high intensity stimuli.

          Horowitz identified, in 1976, 8 frequent psychological themes that appear after a trauma:

• Annoyance and sadness
• Guilt towards the anger felt or destructive impulses
• Fear felt by the victim that he/she will become destructive
• Guilt for surviving
• Fear that he/she will identify with the victims
• Shame towards feeling such as helplessness and interior emptiness
• Fear of repeating the trauma
• Fury directed towards the trauma’s source

          Initially it was considered that the post-traumatic symptoms’ severity were proportional with the severity of the stressing factor, however scientists proved the exact contrary. For example, minor burns can determine PTSD if the patient has an inconsistent emotional status and major emotional discomfort, while severe lesions or widely spread haven’t developed post-traumatic symptoms. This proves that PTSD depends more on subjective factors than on the stressor’s severity.

          In 1993, March reached the conclusion that, in order to express PTSD symptoms, a patient needs to have a personal predisposition, to experience extreme fear, the have a feeling of helplessness, to perceive life as a treat and to fear a possible physical violence. Most people don’t develop PTSD even though they experience horrible traumas, because this disease’s incidence is very low among people that were healthy before the trauma occurred (Schnyder, 2001). What is more, the events with apparently minor severity can cause PTSD in certain people, because of the subjective meaning of the events. Old traumas can be awaken by actual circumstances.

          According to Davidson and Foa in 1993, causing factors for PTSD can be:

• Genetic-building vulnerability to psychiatric disorders
• Unpleasant or traumatic childhood experiences
• Certain personality traits (antisocial, dependant, paranoid, borderline)
• Stress or recent life changing events
• An inadequate or damaged supporting system
• Increased alcohol consume in the last years
• The feeling that control can be achieved more from the outside than from the inside

          Increased symptoms severity was associated with a lower IQ, witch shows that cognitive variables can damage an individual’s ability to deal with a trauma. Although dissociative defenses can be activated to keep the painful emotions outside the conscious zone, remembering the traumatic events can determine the brain to hold them into a state of high cognitive activation. Therefore, cognitive and emotional factors can collide and this leads to this disease’s characteristic oscillation between memory intrusion and memory loss. Unsolved traumatic memories remain cognitively active exactly when they are emotionally repressed by defense mechanisms like dissociation. These traumatic memories are held “captive” as a result of a painful emotional load association.  The survivors of a trauma cannot often use their feeling as a signal, because any strong emotion is a treat regarding the initial trauma’s comeback. To prevent this, their feelings usually turn somatic or they take prescribed medication blindly. These people can have disabilities regarding their self-care function; they cannot calm themselves or relax sufficiently on their own to fell asleep.

          Exploratory psychoanalysis can be harmful for people suffering from PTSD, because living again the trauma can do more harm than good. That is the reason why PTSD approach is difficult, and the therapy consists of anxiety management, cognitive restructuring, dialog with one’s self in order to deal with the trauma and readjusting the brainwaves’ pattern.

          Massive traumas force a person’s self to defend by denial, diminish or projective disclaimer. The anger of becoming a victim is often projected on others, and therefore some trauma survivors become hypervigilant in order to protect themselves against possible aggressions from the people that surround them. Some might feel angry because they feel vulnerable.

          Neurofeedback / EEG-Biofeedback are known for over 15 years of benefic effects regarding post-traumatic stress disorder. This syndrome was first diagnosed in Vietnam war veterans, and afterwards it continued with Golf, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans war. Meanwhile, techniques have become more diverse, and therefore this disorder is easier to approach nowadays; it also increases life quality and helps to reintegrate these people in society and families.

          Neurofeedback has many approach levels; it can help calm anxiety, eliminate fear and vegetative sympatic reactions, panic feelings. This device creates a physiological stability and the therapy that follows consists of dissocializing the trauma from the affected person, in order to make it less painful, and the following outcome is pursued: heeling to gradually replace the traumatic event that will become a simple past event, long gone and pain free. The result consists of rendering the traumatic event to a state of biographic event, like any other. In this manner, the patient can function normally from that moment of the treatment on, without having flashbacks or nightmares.

          Acute Stress Disorder

          It has the same characteristics as PTSD, but symptoms appear one month after the stressful event’s ending, and lasts between 2 days and 4 weeks.

          Unlike PTSD, amnesia might appear, regarding some important trauma aspects, also depersonalization, derealisation, inattentiveness regarding the surrounding events, subjective sensation of detachment, of insensibility or lack of emotional response.

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