What Is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Per the National Center for PTSD:

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can occur after you have been through a traumatic event. A traumatic event is something horrible and scary that you see or that happens to you. During this type of event, you think that your life or others' lives are in danger. You may feel afraid or feel that you have no control over what is happening.

They go on to say that:

Many people who go through a traumatic event don't get PTSD. It isn't clear why some people develop PTSD and others don't. How likely you are to get PTSD depends on many things. These include:

• How intense the trauma was
  
• If you lost a loved one or were hurt
  
• How close you were to the event
  
• How strong your reaction was
  
• How much you felt in control of events
  
• How much help and support you got after the event

PTSD symptoms usually start soon after the traumatic event, but they may not happen until months or years later. They also may come and go over many years.

What I think it leaves out in the bullets above is the duration of time spent in a situation. Would I have PTSD if say, I was taken away from my mother before I ended it myself in my twenties? If someone, any one had helped me, how would I be today? I had no control over my life, thoughts, or actions for so many years. In fact, for most of my life the only thing I could do was react, never act. I reacted to her moods, to her actions. It was pure torture for those 18 years I lived directly with her, and to think I didn’t cut ties until I was twenty-something!

No one knows for sure why some people get PTSD and others don’t. Is it brain chemistry? A hormone, a release of some chemical when trauma happens? There is a lot of controversy still about an experimental PTSD drug. I think it’s still in clinical trials. What it does is deaden the emotions during a traumatic event. Thus, if say something explodes like happened Wednesday, and you take the pill it won’t attach the fear to the memory so the theory is later in life if something like that happens again you won’t experience PTSD symptoms.

So what are PTSD symptoms? They vary a lot. The DSM-IV lists three different groups of symptoms, the first are intrusive:

• Distressing memories of the event
  
• Distressing dreams of the event
  
• Acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring
  
• Intense psychological distress when reminded of the event
  
• Physiological reactivity (sweating, heart racing, etc.) when reminded of the event.

But leaves out the symptoms associated with each of these. For instance, when memories starting coming back that cause ‘distress’ or ‘anxiety’ one can feel dizzy, faint, light-headed, confused, start to shake, get chills, have stomach cramps or nausea, etc. I suppose some of this is listed under Physiological reactivity. I always thought the dizziness was from something else, but had a clean bill of health. Yet when I start to remember or something happens my mind swims. Like all things, symptoms differ with people.

Others are listed as ‘numbing’ symptoms:

• Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
  
• Efforts to avoid activities, places, or people which arouse recollections of the trauma
  
• Inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma
  
• Markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
  
• Feelings of detachment from others
  
• Restricted range of affect and emotional responsiveness
  
• Sense of a foreshortened future

Which really blew me out of the water. I thought my personality was gloom and doom, even though I remembered fighting against my mother to not watch COPS and other such programs about the worst in society all the time. My favorite color was yellow for a long time and then suddenly I wanted the world in black. I felt every one of those above so strongly, especially the last. I never thought I’d live past age 21 and when I did, didn’t know what the hell was going on. I still have problems with feelings of detachment, like I don’t belong anywhere and can’t connect with people. And of course the third on the list – inability to recall an aspect of the trauma – there are a lot of black holes in my memory. But considering what I do recall, it’s probably best they stay that way.

Lastly are the ‘hyperarousal’ symptoms:

• Difficulty falling or staying asleep
  
• Irritability or outbursts of anger
  
• Difficulty concentrating
  
• Hypervigilance for signs of danger
  
• Exaggerated startle response

I always know something is up when my sleep patterns change, because damn, I love to sleep.

There are many theories on treatment and I am doing what is called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT. Per Wikipedia, “The particular therapeutic techniques vary according to the particular kind of client or issue, but commonly include keeping a diary of significant events and associated feelings, thoughts and behaviors; questioning and testing assumptions or habits of thoughts that might be unhelpful and unrealistic; gradually facing activities which may have been avoided; and trying out new ways of behaving and reacting. Relaxation and distraction techniques are also commonly included. CBT is widely accepted as an evidence-based, cost-effective psychotherapy for many disorders.”

So I have a checklist of symptoms that once a month we check. When a traumatic event happens, I go through and see my reactions. I do feel like a computer doing a system check, but since neither my body nor thoughts were ever really mine growing up, I’m just beginning to learn how I work. She goes through relaxation exercises with me and we talk about situations and how I feel during them. It may sound simplistic to some, but it is so hard for me to understand how I’m feeling at times and with everything, once it has a name, you can begin to control the beast.

I hope to post more information and get more links up soon. I’m new at this and still feeling my way around.

That great painting above is from http://www.refuter.com painted by Dmitriy Kedren

Three Strikes and You're Out

Picture taken from cellphone, making rounds on the internet, of a place a lot farther away than I was.

Three guesses where I work. Yup, there. I was on the phone arranging for a computer lab for my class when the lights flickered. I heard a low rumbling, thought I felt it, but rationalized it as a co-workers radio. Then I hear him ask, “Why is everyone running?” I ask what he means. “Outside, they’re all running away.”

No alarms went off. No sirens, no evacuation instructions. People were running around seeing who was still at work – because the earlier storms had knocked out some train services many had left early – but I was still there because of a late night class. We ran down the stairs to smoke billowing into the sky, or what was left of the sky. Not everyone was walking in the opposite direction, as some were taking photos or video with their phones.

I was with two women – one a manager of another group and one another ‘worker bee’ like myself. My first thoughts were, ‘will this trigger me? What’s going on, what’s going to happen, will I get home? How will this affect my PTSD, my emotions? How do I feel now?”’ The manager asked how I was doing, I told her I don’t know I just hope my PTSD doesn’t flare. Then I began to berate myself for telling her that. “Will she try to use it against me?” I thought, “What will she do with that info. Even worse, am I defining myself through this too much? Why am I thinking about my PTSD now and not about the other people? But, wait, the therapist wants you to focus on triggers, is this not a trigger? You’re security threatened?” It was an exhausting inner dialogue going on. So much so that neither my manager nor I noticed that we had lost the other woman.

She was leaning against a building in complete shock. She was shaking and her eyes glassy and vacant. That is when I started to freak out and almost cry. My hairs stood on end. I’d seen that look before – on the faces of people at 9/11. She didn’t know where she was, and when we asked how she was she repeated ‘three strikes.’ Then she told us that someone in her family had told her that having lived through the Trade Center attacks and the blackout it would be three strikes you’re out. She was out of it.

After getting her up and moving about we ended up splitting as we each live in different directions. My emotions were still all jumbled with fear, anger, the need to cry, and just that need to get home. The manager gave me 50$ in case I could find a cab. I had called my friend in New Jersey – she hadn’t heard about what happened – it wasn’t even on CNN yet so there was no word about transportation.

I just kept walking, convinced ‘up and over’ to the Westside would bring some transportation home. Along the way I ran into another boss who lived three blocks up and meekly asked to use her bathroom. This is a big stress thing- I’ll admit it. The more stressed I become the more I have to pee- heck, I can go three times in a five minute span. She invited me with open arms, gave me some granola bars and water, and told me to stay as long as I wanted. She also let me leave my heavy books there from school.

With that I went off, still wanting to cry but not sure how. The thought had crossed my mind about calling my therapist, but I felt I only wanted to because I thought I should, not because I really wanted to. The site of billows of smoke and other stuff shooting into the sky isn’t an ordinary one, and would rock anyone. It did rock most people down there, some more so than I. Did some shock kick in? Probably, my main idea was ‘away’ but is that a bad thing? Not really. Am I shaking? I have shivers. Let’s see the other things in the checklist – anxiety level is elevated. I’m fatigued and agitated at the same time. Flashbacks? Don’t think so. I can’t say other memories from 9/11 aren’t surfacing, but my breathing is getting back to normal.

*sigh* I feel like I’m running a virus check on the computer. I’m not even going to double check this, let me see how I really thought tomorrow. From my brain to my fingertips to the computer. Huhmm, fear is still there though. I’m jumpy again. I hate that.