New research has found a specific change in brain chemistry due to trauma. An article on Medscape.com says:
“Lower serotonin 1B levels were also strongly associated with age at first trauma. The earlier the trauma exposure, the greater the brain alterations and the greater the severity of PTSD symptoms, and the greater the risk of developing comorbidities,” senior author Alexander Neumeister, MD, associate professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, told Medscape Medical News.
“These findings establish that trauma at a young age causes long-lasting neurobiological and psychological effects in survivors with PTSD. In other words, early-life trauma can interfere with normal brain development,” he said.
The article is somewhat technical, but lay readers like us can pretty much follow what is being discussed. To read the story, you need to register for Medscape.com, which is free.
Read Potential new drug target for PTSD on Medscape.com.
Link supplied by a Lovefraud reader.
stargazer: Oxy could write a book and it would become a best seller for sure. She sure puts herself out there and haven’t we all been helped in some way through her posts?
Star, we don’t all have the benefit of the experience you gained in your previous profession. Being able to size up a ‘customer/trick’ in a few minutes to see how much money you could extract from him. Isn’t that what spaths do? Size us up? Star, just like stepping in the shoes of a ‘spath’ don’t ya think? Even with your special ‘gift’ you fell into the trickbag for a short minute with your ‘one and only’ spath. Maybe you could write a book. Just sayin! Shalom
Thanks Shalom! Yea I have written a couple of books, one a cook book for meat, and the other two local/family histories…nothing exciting! I have a friend who is a book publisher and I got her to get me some ISBN numbers for them and I sold a few (in the low hundreds) but it was kinda fun! Taught me just how DIFFICULT it is to write a book though!
After my husband’s death, I wrote a book about my P sperm donor with every intention of really publishing it, and since he was fairly well known in his field internationally, and very rich, I think I could have sold it, but funny, once I wrote it all out on paper and documented it…I TOTALLY LOST INTEREST IN PUBLISHING IT. What do I CARE what others think or thought of him? Or me for that matter ? (he had trashed me in his autobiography!) I realized that 1) no one who REALLY knew him would believe a word he said and 2) no one who knew ME would believe a word he said about me, and 3) the rest of the people who didn’t know me and didn’t know him didn’t matter.
I guess just writing and researching the book about the sperm donor was a release of the anger and the feeling of injustice I had felt. I don’t even hate the SOB now…by the time he died in the summer of 2007, I really didn’t even hate him any more, he was just NOTHING. He punished himself really, in being paranoid that someone would hear my story and believe it (that he raped me) because having nothing internally, IMAGE was ALL to him.
I’m glad I put it all down in words and purged it from my soul. It was like draining an abscess and getting all the rotten stuff out of it so that it can HEAL. Until it is cleaned out it cannot heal, but I don’t have a need for others to read it to validate it, I have done that for myself.
Shalom,
I’m not quite sure what you meant by your post *scratches head*.
And yes, ANYONE can fall prey to a spath. I certainly did or I wouldn’t have come here.
I just stood up to an N who is raising my little brother….well, her chance to SCREW HIM UP has passed, and she did a pretty good job of that. She found me on FB and decided to send me a message. This creature was married to my father, who is a P. After 1 week, she locked him into marrying her by deliberately getting pregnant (yes, in one week), which both of my step-sisters confirm she confessed was intentional (she later had an affair on my father and did the same thing to another man–within 2 weeks pregnant–who was married as well).
I remember this woman. I remember once when my little brother was a BABY that couldn’t even walk yet, she was angry that he wouldn’t stop crying. She threw him on the floor and started stomping on him and kicking him. I watched in horror at 9-years-old. I’d NEVER seen anyone treat a baby like that! I learned from my step-sisters that their father had walked in on her trying to strangle one of them as a baby and he had to pull her off the infant (my younger step-sister).
So, this woman looks me up on FB and sends me a message telling me that my brother finally managed to graduate high school, even though he was almost as “bull-headed” and ME (and she put YOU in caps like that to make sure I knew she was pointing her finger through the computer screen). Then she signs off with “love mom.”
Now let me tell you…after this long journey…looking back at this woman, for the first time, I didn’t back down. I’ll be damned if a disordered, toxic jerk is gonna push me around EVER again, so I let her have it. I told her precisely what was what (referred to this very article too!), knowing full well not a word of it would sink in, but just in case there was a half-dead human being somewhere in her skull, maybe she’d have a breakthrough. Why? Only for my brother, though I wonder if now she’ll tell him everything evil under the sun about me. Hmmm.
Oxy, I think if you read this, I’d love your advice. I didn’t tell my brother what happened and how I stood up to his mom. He doesn’t know that I saw her abuse him on a few occasions when he was an infant. Do you think I should tell him? I worry that he might not KNOW that it isn’t his fault he has TWO disordered parents. We have the same father, the abusive P, and at least I have a sane mother….but this CREATURE is his mother, and I wonder if there is anything I could do to help him. I almost sent a message to him letting him know what had happened, but then I worried that drama might be the last thing he needs more of right now, so I paused. I know he is deeply trauma bonded to her. After all, she is his mother…
What do you think?
Shalom,
I’m not a member of MENSA. In fact, I must not be very smart at all because your post to Stargazer sounds like you are calling her a spath… And I know you would never do that since your screen name means: I wish you peace.
Calling her a spath would therefore be hypocritical and that is certainly what spaths are.
I’ll ask again 😀
How do you guys keep track of your posts here? I post on threads, and then later have a hard time finding them… I mostly post on the recent comments section.
Anyone have a good method of keeping track of their comments and threads that they participate on?
You could write down the Thread Title, date and time you posted something, that makes it easier to search for comments..just a thought.
Thanks, sky. But when did I become a member of Mensa? Someone really should have told me! I would have so much more of a social life and wouldn’t be here so much! LOL
It’s quite alright if Shalom wants to slam and insult me. I think it’s more about her then me. People who know me here will know that, unless they also dislike me. Hey it happens!
But I did think the point about a stripper becoming spathlike was a very interesting and astute one, though somewhat random on this thread. In a way it’s true. The job is based on mutual exploitation, though it certainly had its moments where I had genuine connections with my clients. In that business, you are selling a fantasy. Part of selling a fantasy means you have to act. This is tough for a really sensitive person. I found that my personality did change, and I had to go through periods of detoxing. Thanks for helping me to remember the toll that job took on me. I am very fortunate that my intuition protected me from physical harm. I did seem to have a sixth sense for dangerous situations – meaning I may have gotten raped or beat up.
And you’re absolutely right, with the guy I dated, I never saw it coming at all. My intuition seems to work more for physical violence rather than the seductive kind of spath.
P.S. Oxy, I certainly hope you know I wasn’t insulting you by saying you’ve had more spaths pass through your life than Carter has little liver pills. If you were insulted, let me know. We have all had our different life experiences, and I marvel at them sometimes!
skylar:
Correct, my name means seeker of peace and truth. Shalom
Shalom,
well let’s work on the peace part, the truth is out already.
😀