egg2 by Chris27 of the UK courtesy stockXchng
The results of a just-released Duke University study suggest that people with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, suffer severe cognitive impairment. Specifically, patients with PTSD who underwent MRI brain scans during a test exhibited signs of impaired cognitive processing.
Combat veterans with PTSD as well as combat veterans without PTSD underwent MRI brain scans while they were shown a series of portraits. During the series, the patients were distracted with other pictures of combat, non-combat pictures, and some non-sensical pictures. When PTSD patients were distracted, they showed activity in their ventral cortex — regions of the brain associated with emotional processing. At the same time, brain areas in the prefrontal cortex, associated with working (short-term memory) and attention, “showed deactivation related to controls.” In otherwords, PTSD patients had a hard-time retaining what they were supposed to retain while they were being emotionally distracted by pictures that had nothing to do with the task at hand.
This discovery corresponds with the well-known symptom of PTSD known as hypervigilance. PTSD sufferers’ hypervigilance, a continual stress response state of “on,” leads us to regard many fairly innocent situations as threatening ones, and over-react, often with rage. The study suggests that PTSD involves a severe disruption in the regular information processing functions of the brain.
Dr. Rajendra Morey of Duke University, one of the study researchers, said a symptom like hypervigilance could be the result of an impaired brain misinterpreting information. While such a study doesn’t help us undo such brain damage, it does suggest that we may eventually be able to “re-program” the brains of PTSD patients so that they process information correctly.
Until then, I guess, we’re still all a bit, um, cracked. Of course my family knew that already. Thank you, I’m here all week.
The ever-brilliant Ryan North discussed the tricky bane of the PTSD sufferer, the amygdala, yesterday in his web comic. A must-read and a must-subscribe. Because if you can’t laugh at yourself, you can laugh at bowlegged dinosaurs. It’s a fact.
Under the knife
"A hand" by Shlomit Wolf of Jerusalem, Israel courtesy stockXchng
Tomorrow I add another wound to my hand so I can have a scar to match the one just beneath my thumb that I got when I was in college. That one I received when I sliced my hand open on a grill, cleaning it after hours at the Belmont, NC, McDonald’s. Tomorrow Dr. Wallace Andrew is going to slice me open again to get at my tranverse carpal ligament so he can cut it, releasing the median nerve pressure that is causing the carpal tunnel syndrome in my right hand.
We hope. He has a good track record, my Dr. Andrew, so I have high hope.
Wish me luck.
Antistress2 by Allyson Correia of Blumenau, Santa Catarina, Brazil courtesy stock.XchngEveryone deals with stress, but there’s a reason it’s called post-traumatic stress disorder: people with PTSD do not handle stress as well as some others do. Personally I believe PTSD is more of a disability than a disorder, and I would gladly thumb-wrestle anyone over whether there is such a thing as normal, but the fact remains that people with PTSD have severe limitations, and chief among them is a very, very, very narrow band of flexibility with which to bear stress. Pull it too hard and it stops bouncing back; it loses all elasticity and we go bye-bye.
Understanding what stress does to your body is crucial. You must be able to recognize when you are facing too much of it, and having a support system is also crucial. There are at least fifty (yes, I said fifty!) common signs of stress that anyone with PTSD is already familiar with on a sub-cellular level, and though it sounds simple, PTSD is a deep anxiety reaction to stress where those common symptoms can occur so fast, one on top of another, that they can seem to occur simultaneously. It takes a serious act of will, even now, for me to recognize sometimes when I’m stressed out, and that’s why having someone around to help me recognize those signs is such a big help. Someone who can notice, in case you don’t, when you are:
- gritting your teeth
- clenching your jaw
- stuttering or stammering
- sighing a lot or having difficulty breathing
- fidgeting, shaking your legs or hands, or pacing
- Scratching from itching or rash
- Acting hostile
- Breaking out in sudden bursts of irrational anger
It’s even more important to reduce your exposure to stress before you get overly stressed, and that means accepting that you are not a super woman or super man, that you cannot multitask when it comes to stressful work and family conditions, and that you need rest periods after you face situations that cause you stress. These include events where you have to speak in public, meetings where you have to socialize with a lot of people, events where you have to mingle among or traverse large crowds, and any time when you are called to perform at a high level, such as an examination, doctor’s appointment, or interview. People with PTSD need longer periods of time to rebuild their cortisol and adrenal levels and feel normal again.
Stress simply makes the PTSD brain shut down faster than one without. This is a fact and you don’t have to apologize for it. But you do have to plan for it.
Roof of the London Museum by James Wilsher of Romsford, Essex, U.K. courtesy stock.XchngOn my journey to here, I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why: Why am I so unhappy? Why does everything seem so pointless? Why am I jumping at shadows? Why am I so alone?
The answers to these questions differ for each person, I think, and I don’t think finding them is easy, but there are a myriad of simple tools available to learn about yourself. And even if some of them seem a bit hokey, they worked for me. I offer them up only as proof that knowing more about your own thought patterns, history and personality will help you change. The only way to avoid retracing the circular steps of the past is to identify those steps you took. The steps your family took. The mistakes you made. Because you will make them over, and over, and over again unless you learn to put your feet somewhere else.
When I was in the hospital, one of the counselors I spoke to started me on the path to recognizing familial patterns when she asked me if I could identify my triangular relationships. When I asked her what she meant, she drew a triangle on a piece of paper and pointed to one intersection of that triangle.
“This is you,” she said. She tapped another point. “This is your mother.” Tapping the third point, she asked, “Who’s here? Who changes the way you and your mother interact with one another?”
“My stepfather,” I said. “My grandmother.”
And I began to think about the other people who could be sitting on that single point.
“How many of these triangles do you think exist in your life?” she asked me.
“A lot, I guess.”
It was just one exercise, but it started me on a journey. I began identifying myself and the people in my life by matching their personalities to archetypes. Once I understood the archetypes who acted in my life, I could understand how I reacted to those archetypes. Whenever I needed to learn something as a kid, I always started at the library, because I learned early on that no one could hide anything from me if I learned how to find it myself; so I guess when I sought to change my life, it was natural for me to start in books to find the answers.
I started with astrology, because it’s the easiest, simplest way to type people, by their birthdate. While simple astrological signs might not seem like much, just learning how your astrological sign relates to another can be an eye-opening exercise. Getting your birth chart done will also help you understand the patterns in your life that started from birth, and some of the blockages that you may be carrying around like an old set of baggage. You might find that getting your chart read by a professional astrologer really opens your eyes to the patterns that seem to strangle your life; I myself found that I was able to untangle a lot of things once I saw those triangles for myself.
Don’t get me wrong; I don’t believe that stars control anyone’s fate. But the 12 horoscopes are powerful tools for understanding ourselves and others. In astrology, triangles in our chart indicate painful, difficult emotions and relationships, and maybe it was easier for me to confront these “triangles” in my life on paper first.
Another tool I used was the enneagram. Based on Jungian archetypes, the enneagram will also help you identify those emotional patterns that cause you to develop certain types of relationships, and identify the harmful and helpful patterns that can either lead you to, or keep you from, your better self. The enneagram is a bit of work, but you can do it yourself, and it is good work. I followed Don Riso’s system as laid out in his books, especially Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery. You can take a free sample of the RHETI (The Riso-Hudson Enneagram Test) online, or pay only $10 to take the full RHETI.
I highly recommend perusing the entire Riso-Hudson Enneagram Institute site to learn about the enneagram, the archetypes, and the system before taking the test. And another good read is astrologer Liz Greene’s article, The Eternal Triangle.
magnifiers by marija jure of Vilnius, Lithuania courtesy stock.XchngAs frequent readers of this blog know, there was a time when I was struggling with my post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) almost full-time: I attempted to kill myself, was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, was released, then had to break free from a co-dependent, dangerous relationship, then struggled to break out of the career (retail management) that was contributing to my depression.
The way I did all this was not rocket science and there was no special trick to it. The first thing I did was identify exactly what I hated about my life and visualize the better thing I wanted to take its place.
I hated my career. Retail was killing my soul, and everyone I worked with and all of my friends knew it. I was constantly sick and depressed, and if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me “What’s wrong?” I’d be a rich woman today. I hated getting up in the morning, I hated showing up for work, I hated clocking in, I hated being there, and every day dragged like being with the dead. The reasons I stayed were different, and always the same: financial. I convinced myself that I couldn’t write for a living, that was a frivolous dream that no one really did and that I had to be practical. But practical was killing me.
So when I decided to live, getting out of the hospital, I set my sights on getting out of my career at any cost. I would get an office job if it killed me, and I would do anything for any price, start right at the bottom, as long as I didn’t have to push aspirin. I continued with my job merchandising for retail at first, and then started training to work as a reservationist for American Airlines. Then I was granted an opportunity to start at a recruitment agency, and I took it. I started at $10 an hour, but it was an office job. No weekends, no nights, no aspirin. And every day, I imagined the career where I would be writing most of the day.
I’m not trying to say that it was easy. But I have been thinking a lot about people like the Escape Artist who can’t see a way out. There may not be any help. It may be all up to you. If that’s the case, then you can’t waste time crying about it. You just have to identify what doesn’t work and figure out what you want, and then start on that path, no matter how hard it is. Because what else are you going to do? Even if it kills you, at least tomorrow will be different from today.
The Sacred Pause
Traffic Lights in the Evening by Andrea Kratzenberg of Münsterland, NRW, GermanyMichael J. Formica at Psychology Today blogged about a tool for managing stress and anger known as the Sacred Pause. As he explained it, the Sacred Pause is a tool for getting to the root of a stress reaction or strong emotion. The Sacred Pause entails simply taking a breath when we experience a stress reaction, and naming it. Once the emotion is named, the next step is to peel back that layer of feeling to see the next layer, until the root cause is revealed. Formica gave this example:
John has a problem with road rage. When other drivers do something that he feels is “stupid” or “dangerous” or just plain thoughtless, he tends to respond in an overly aggressive manner. Responding with the Sacred Pause for him would mean being with his immediate feeling and voicing it. He is angry – employing the Pause would mean stopping and vocalizing or sub-vocalizing his feeling – “Angry, angry, angry…”. This would then lead to a peeling back of the layers of anger over the “next” feeling – “Fearful, fearful, fearful…”. And, going into the fear, reveals, “No control, no control, no control…”.
I imagine this could be an effective tool for strong anxiety. I can see myself employing it when I get fearful in the car after a sudden stop because someone has pulled out in front of us abruptly.
My current state of Complex PTSD is one of high-functioning. I am mostly symptom-free but I have moments that take me by surprise, and periods of high stress make me more vulnerable to outbreaks. But no life is stress-free, and any tool that can help me with those surprise times seems valuable.
Lama Surya Das: Six Steps to Anger Management
A Post from the Edge
Gun 2 by Cathy Kaplan of Pittsburgh, PAKayla Williams posted a great piece at the Huffington Post: the view from the trigger end of the gun of a PTSD suicide.
The gun is heavy in my hand, cold, solid. I sit on the edge of my bathtub and stare at it. The door is shut and I am alone. I can hear my own breathing, uneven.
This I can control.
Williams writes eloquently about the desperation and degradation of being a soldier with PTSD. Worth a read.
Read Kayla Williams: Army Suicides: My Experience
Retired USAF Sergeant Alex Leal, 39, surrendered to a San Benito, Texas, SWAT team March 5 after a three-hour standoff at his home. SWAT was called to the house when Leal threatened to shut himself in his house, douse himself with gasoline and set himself on fire.
Leal, an unemployed veteran of Operation Desert Storm, is currently on a Veterans Affairs waitlist for a 90-day treatement program for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
A personal relationship Leal had with a Detective at the scene, Art Flores, who coached Leal’s son on a soccer team, may have been the only thing that saved Leal’s life. Leal is currently being evaluated at a hospital.
CTS surgery date set; big new TV bought
Calendula 3 by Susanna Altarriba of Barcelona, Spain courtesy stock.XchngMy open carpal tunnel release surgery has been set for March 26th, hallelujah! I’ve spent a lot of the day today interviewing possible backups for when I will be out and starting the process for benefits and the like. I will be out of work for at least three weeks. I plan to spend that time testing the brand new flat screen we bought today by watching all my Lord of the Rings DVDs (and all the extras) in giant, high-definition color.
No, we’re not rolling in cash; one incentive for purchasing our house was a Best Buy gift card which paid for the television. We’ve had an empty spot in our family room since we moved in and have been watching our old TV in our upstairs loft. My husband can’t wait to watch the ACC Tournament on the big screen, and to tell the truth, neither can I. Shopping for the TV tonight was almost anti-climatic, we’d been dreaming about getting this thing for so many months!
So now I just have to manage the pain for the next three weeks or so, until I have to manage my post-op pain. Considering that we just bought a new house and a brand new TV, talking to three people today who were recently laid off, and the recent topics on this blog, make that seem pretty damned trivial when I look at the big picture. My hands might hurt, but I have health insurance that is going to enable me to repair my condition. I might not live in a mansion, but I have a nice new home when a lot of people don’t have any such thing. I am married to a great guy when a lot of people are alone. I have a pretty great job when a lot of people are unemployed. And I am alive when I could easily be dead.
I say these things not to make anyone in pain feel worse but only to proclaim my gratefulness to the larger universe. If I don’t wake up tomorrow, I will at least have said, at this moment, I knew what I had. And for every moment, now and now and now, I will know it is good.
