It's post-traumatic stress disorder but everyone knows it by PTSD. This has been a common issue in recent years due to the prevalence of cases in soldiers returning from war. However, since this blog is a personal one, I can't really comment on the details of PTSD associated with the perils of war. There is a common misconception that PTSD only affects people that have experienced war. Yeah, it's more complicated than that. The stressors are defined as, "1) the person has experienced, witnessed, or been confronted with an event or events that involve actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself or others. 2) The person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Note: in children, it may be expressed instead by disorganized or agitated behavior."
Here is where I get to put my spin on the whole thing. "Stressors" as they say, can be a million different things happening all at once, or one big thing. Usually in a situation there are many going on all at once. And, when it mentions that threat of death or serious injury, it doesn't have to be physical threat. What could traumatize you isn't necessarily going to traumatize another person. Everyone is different. Sometimes it's just the perceived notion of the threat that can screw you up. When you see something that is horrifying or experience something that triggers the fight flight response, your brain catalogs what you see in the event. Everyone seems to know about this fight or flight response - what they don't know is there a third reaction: freeze.
I don't know why it's not as popular to talk about. You've seen the movies where each is represented in an action scene. There is the person who hauls butt away from the threat of danger; the person who takes control of the situation to find a solution; and the person who does nothing but stand there, frozen. I can't tell you how long I struggled with the knowledge that I had been a person that froze. When you freeze and do nothing, then you are doing nothing to facilitate in fixing the situation. Currently, and most of my adult life, I have been one to take action when no one else would - speak up when the masses remained silent. Evidently, having just watched some of the traumatic things in my childhood has paid off with compensation to the other end of the spectrum.
Most people who witness something that fall in this category will tell you later that they don't remember a lot of it. In actuality, their brain remembers what they saw; it's just usually too traumatic to keep in the active memory, so your brain, in its magnificence, stores it away where it will do the least amount of harm. Picture it as a filing cabinet: there are files you use all the time, which are readily available at a moment's notice; files of your memory that are available if needed, and so forth. The traumatic experiences get shoved behind all these files to protect your well-being.
However, even though you don't actively remember them, they affect your actions. It's almost as if the file left a sticky note on your current files before it was put in the back of the drawer. The thing is you sometimes won't even identify that file as the cause of your problem. Therefore, it affects your daily life, whether or not you want it to. For example: I have a skin picking compulsion which is caused by trauma that experienced in my childhood. I didn't actively remember these events, but they were events that I had no control over. So, I turned to something that I do have control over and that was my skin. Focusing on this gave me control, and the intense focus gave me an escape from my reality.
Without treatment, PTSD will stick around forever. There is no time limit, which is hard to imagine. People who served in Vietnam, as my father did, can be in their 50s and 60s and still be having issues. There was no knowledge of PTSD back then, the soldiers were just considered screwed up and left to deal with it themselves. Even older people can benefit from treatment. The important thing is that they get the help, no matter how long it's been. It's never too late to get help. There is no reason to suffer from these issues, when help is so readily available - and now, socially accepted.
1 http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/pages/dsm-iv-tr-ptsd.asp
Kathrine Verner has extensive personal experience in improving quality of life by analyzing and taking action to change the affects past experiences, anxiety, and compulsions have in her existence. Stop by and read the blog for humor and a unique perspective at http://www.theinnerskinpicker.com/.
No comments:
Post a Comment