According to the National Institutes of Health website “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat.”
Signs and Symptoms of PTSD are grouped into three categories:
1. Re-experiencing symptoms:
• Flashbacks—reliving the trauma over and over, including physical symptoms like a racing heart or sweating
• Bad dreams
• Frightening thoughts.
Re-experiencing symptoms may cause problems in a person’s everyday routine. They can start from the person’s own thoughts and feelings. Words, objects, or situations that are reminders of the event can also trigger re-experiencing.
2. Avoidance symptoms:
• Staying away from places, events, or objects that are reminders of the experience
• Feeling emotionally numb
• Feeling strong guilt, depression, or worry
• Losing interest in activities that were enjoyable in the past
• Having trouble remembering the dangerous event.
Things that remind a person of the traumatic event can trigger avoidance symptoms. These symptoms may cause a person to change his or her personal routine. For example, after a bad car accident, a person who usually drives may avoid driving or riding in a car.
3. Hyperarousal symptoms:
• Being easily startled
• Feeling tense or “on edge”
• Having difficulty sleeping, and/or having angry outbursts.
Hyperarousal symptoms are usually constant, instead of being triggered by things that remind one of the traumatic event. They can make the person feel stressed and angry. These symptoms may make it hard to do daily tasks, such as sleeping, eating, or concentrating.
Unfortunately whenever a psychological experience is dubbed “a disorder” people get the impression that the person who has this experience is “defective” or “crazy” or of poor character. The thought that PTSD symptoms are related to some core defect in character/personality serves to further increase the sufferer’s anxiety and level of symptoms. Not wanting to consider any predisposing factors to these symptoms may also prevent a person from doing real soul searching.
There is one main reason to emphasize that PTSD symptoms constitute a disorder. That is that the symptoms greatly impair a person’s ability to function. They also rob people of love and well-being. Overwhelming anxiety is not conducive to well-being or loving relationships.
Because PTSD symptoms are debilitating we have to address them, face them and ultimately conquer them. That means acknowledging the other fears/concerns that go along with having these symptoms:
1. Am I crazy?
2. Am I defective?
3. Will I ever be normal again?
4. Why did this happen to me?
5. How can I prevent this from happening again?
6. Can I trust myself?
To start to recover, notice that if you reduce PTSD down to its core essence it is simply difficulty processing that the trauma was then and today is now. For people whose PTSD is related to an experience with a sociopath, the problem is that the sociopath may not be gone. The then and now is blurred. The worst things done by the sociopath are in the past and there may be protections in place but the sociopath is still around. Sometimes that source of trauma is the other parent of beloved children.
Recovery in such a context means having a clear head to really sort out what was then and what is now. Next week we will consider other roadblocks to distinguishing then from now.
One Step,
PTSD is one difficult thing to live with. This is for certain. I often think that the aftermath of living with this is worse that the actual trama itself in many ways. The manifestation of the symptoms of this disorder has affected my life an every level possible. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
It feels SO PERMANENT. This Ptsd stuff.
I miss my mom to. She passed away a couple years ago in the month of May and so mothers day has been a difficult day since her passing.
Maybe its a good idea to think about having a friend call over there for you.
thanks witty – i will try to make that happen tomorrow. just to say hi.
21 fake characters and counting. 21. and i have left out about 4 kids. and the dogs.
i am sitting here looking at a list of twitter messages – mostly fake characters talking to one another – only one real person in the lot (not counting the ppath). and i think, why does that trigger me so? i know they are all her…and i see that it was the chronic and constant ‘distraction’- the drama and trauma of those characters that she created, that kept me from seeing the forest. and it is this ‘state of distraction’ – the contstant stress and given/withheld reward that traumatized me as much as, if not more than the deaths/ suicide attempts/ dying (the ‘story’) . and when i see the list of characters blah blahing to one another, i re-experience the anxiety of that time, overlayed with the knowledge of what she is and what she is capable of….she was capable of deeply distracting me from reality, she created a whole fantasy that was so overwhelming that the falseness of it couldn’t be seen.
all they are, are fake characters on a list. they don’t have to have power over me…they don’t exist. they are characters in a book; a book i was immersed in, characters i identified with; but ultimately, just a story. so, can i choose to close the cover?
she’s just a crazy ppath. she’s no one to me. i don’t have to hang on, to anything.
this line of thought is just forming – so maybe not so clear…but it feels like a little patch of freedom.
i have found a psychiatrist who deals with PTSD. asked the cognitive dude to refer me.
i am sorry your mom is gone witty. they are such heart connections. my mom has been demented for many years now. i have been losing her for a long time, but this time of nc with my dad has made it really hard. i send her cards and letters and newspaper clippings of the stuff i do. i never hear from her – she doesn’t think to write or phone, i hope he gives them to her. so maybe i will do a ceremony tomorrow, for out lost mothers, and the aching daughters.
x one step
Dear Witsend,
I’m sorry you are missing your mom. I hadn’t even thought about “Mother’s Day” as holidays by themselves don’t mean a lot to me any more, though son D did say he was taking me out to breakfast tomorrow morning for Mother’s day. I don’t get “emotional” about a specific day per se. I guess that’s a good way to look at it really, at least for me! With son D every day is “mother’s day,” since with him it is always a good day! With the other ones, it really doesn’t make my heart sad any more–just more of the same.
I do miss my MIL though some times, not specifically on “Mother’s day,” but just the friend she was before she had her strokes. I hope you will do something special for YOURSELF Witty, you have been a good mother to your kids, as much as anyone could have done, so be a good FRIEND to yourself!!!! ((((hugs))))) At least you have some good memories of a mother who loved you, and that’s more than some of us have!
One,
Sorry about your mom. Moms are tough. being one, having one, its all a tough thing.
I think we should celebrate that any woman is brave enough to have a go at it. Its tough no matter how it turns out. Because it always turns out we lose them before we are ready.
As much or more we embrace this one day the nurturing power of women because that is what it is all about. And it is what makes and saves lives in family, in community and in very special places like LF.
It is about that effort to try and try and try again to protect, to nurture, to teach and to encourage that is what sends people into the world to do the things that people must.
Whoever you launch on this morrow, know that you are appreciated and in turn launched by the women who nurture you.
witty – and all you good mothers out there – Happy moms day – i dont think you will see me and ox in line at halmark tho…
One, it has to come out somehow. Have a gut feeling that you are letting the pressure off just that way.
Let’er buck.
You have to feel your way through this. You have to get to the place where you can observe your feelings and let them help you understand what you need to do next.
You’re ok. Its just time to get to the next place and see what it looks like there. If what worked for you before isn’t working for you now, then what is?
It might be something you haven’t noticed while you were working so hard to make the old keep going.
It is a time of changes and they are profound, Being open to the things that what was no longer works and willing to let it go in love is the way, I believe the new path opens. Its there. Are you open to it?
The guidance is in you and around you. Be and recognize it.
She turned her face toward the guesthouse. Should she go there and breakfast with the nuns, speak perhaps of the old days at Camelot? Morgaine smiled gently. No. She was filled with the same tenderness for them as for the budding apple tree, but that time was passed. She turned her back on the convent, and walked down to the Lake, along the old path by the shore. Here was a place where the veil lying between the worlds was thin. She needed no longer to summon the barge- she need only step through the mists here, and be in Avalon.
Igraine
One step. and witty, may I be your stand in Mum for the day?? [or foras long as you like!!]
Sending youa real Mum {{{{HUGGGG!!!!}}}}
Lotsa Love,
Mama Gem.XXX
geminigirl,
Momma Gem you can be my stand in mum all year long 🙂
Hugs right back at you.
Happy mothers day to all.
Well, there’s nothing quite like a brisk achey hour long walk on a deep blue skyday on Sunday. If you can muster the strength to try a long walk during ptsd and the raw pain stage, it cannot be said enough how beneficial doing this is. Ideally in a country natural (park) setting. It’s a time we own as ours and nobody can abuse this glorious segment of time. Of course it was full of ‘mindchatter’ and remembering many posts and usernames on here. I fantasised working on OxDrover’s ranch, riding one of her horses herding cattle and doing some manual labour(!). I have learned so much here and think you are all great. Very articulate, insightful and inerently normal people. I reminded myself at the end as I sat in the car suitably sweaty and hungry for a hearty supper, that the “sane” ones who are double quick to label others insane are insane and the “insane” ones they describe are normal healthy fully functional people who only question their sanity when they are involved in any way with abnormal people. You don’t know insanity until you meet an insane/abnormal person.
Sociopaths don’t get ptsd, remember their brains are incapable of feeling. They exact it, suppress it, create it, manufacture it. They don’t feel it. They observe it in others. But they don’t know how it feels. They are addicted to causign trauma. But they are unable to feel rock bottom and then healing. We can. We are able to heal. After rock botom. It’s a phase. They are tormented with the inability to feel normal so they adopt an act to appear normal. We don’t act becasue we are normal. So people who experience PTSD are normal functioning humans able to feel the full range of emotions and responses that abnormal people simply cannot.
I’d rather feel all the emotions in the human psyche – love, pain, sorrow, grief, healing. There’s a balance. A sociopath’s balanced emotions is what? Attack, defence, attack, defence, attack, defence.
smallfont chat with geminigirl:
geminigirl, is it you visiting Scotland this summer? Was it you who wanted to share a photo with me? If so, I would love to meet you and chat over a cup of tea and shortbread biscuits. That offer is always open even if it is virtual. If you want to send that photo, you are welcome to. I’ll be happy to help you. We’ve had lots of airspace disruption (iceland’s volcanic ash issue), sadly if your flight is cancelled, you may not get any compensation. I’ve read people losing thousands and insurance companies don’t cover.