What is psycho traumatic situation?

It is necessary to elaborate on the definition of traumatic - frustrating crisis and stressful situation. Despite the difference in names, its essence lies in the inability or difficulty of a person to satisfy actual needs. When it comes to personal development, the most appropriate term is "psycho traumatic situation". This concept, despite its vivid and emotional name, means not only the extraordinary circumstances in children's lives, such as death or serious illness of parents, family breakdown, accident, unjust accusation and punishment, child abuse, etc., but such circumstances that an adult may seem senseless or ridiculous.

Trying to determine how strong a traumatic situation is for a person, it should be remembered that in this case the search and application of objective evaluation criteria is inappropriate. Here is important what one feels and not what others think.

The impetus for the actualization of psychological readiness to use psychotropic substances becomes not only strong negative emotions, but also the weakest, even subliminal ones, if their influence is fairly long-termed and systematic. For example, the relationship between the environmental degradation and increasing drug use. Adverse environmental effects on the body (for example constant exposure to radiation in the areas affected by the Chernobyl accident) cause stress on the biochemical process level, that is, the body constantly feels the danger. This prolonged state of "readiness" of the body not only reduces immunity, attracts disease, but also creates a feeling of psychological discomfort, the cause of which, of course, is not realized.

The beginning of drug abuse can be directly related to the transitive, crisis stage in a person’s life. For example it can be a new job, or moving to another city, or a new family life (rather the birth of a child, when difficulties arise together with new responsibilities), or the breakup of the family, and sometimes even the retirement (usually men whose life was focused on work and now they don’t know what to do). This confirms that a psycho traumatic situation can mainstream human psychological readiness to use psychotropic substances.

In difficult circumstances people who cannot (due to their personality features) find a productive way out of a traumatic situation and do not have effective means of psychological protection, are powerless to emotional states that negatively overflow them. Instinctively trying to escape disintegration of mental functions and the emergence of neurotic symptoms, people resort to external methods of psychological defense. They try to reach the altered states of consciousness with the help of artificial (chemical) means.

Psychological readiness to use psychotropic substances is the backbone factor of addiction. It also can help to predict the phenomena of addiction. In other words, if such readiness is determined in the personality, it is possible to assume that a psycho traumatic situation can lead to drug abuse, neurosis or suicide. Each of these outcomes would be a tragedy for a person and a loss to a society.

Opportune detection of a person's psychological readiness to use psychotropic substances allows early prevention of abnormalities in one’s behavior.