Psychology of the body - PTSD (questions, observations from personal experiences)

reply to post by Thurisaz


nat, is that you???

you are in australia, correct?

i hope you are doing good these days. i took a couple years off from ATS, but i am back.

peace,
et

Originally posted by Thurisaz

Originally posted by Thurisaz
I finally found the courage to report the incidents to the Police and have filed a report. It is now being investigated

He was arrested and charged then released on bail and today is the day I go to court. It was supposed to be this morning, but now I am scheduled for after lunch.

I would like to swear but won't... I haven't been able to disclose this since, but when I went to court, I dissociated and they adjourned it for November pending Doc report... the DPP withdrew the case at the twelfth hour because of the PTSD.

I am angry and since then the PTSD has got worse.

Angry

OP, there are others in this thread who seem to have found effective techniques which I hope you will try and are more than I can offer. I just want to support you by agreeing that much trauma is stored in muscle memory which, yes, is the brain, but involves whole body awareness; this is the foundation for Strasberg's "method" acting technique. And I know it's very real. I wish you the best in your recovery.

reply to post by Thurisaz


hi thurisaz
an excellent thread.
i know some ex-army buddies who have ptsd. i was witness to the triggers and their behaviour turned to what i call combat mode. they were offered councelling and drugs. it seemed to me that the drugs only masked the issue and over the years i feel that the only course of action was to confront the problem. one freind in particular told me that the key to managing this debilitating situation was to learn to let go. as i have read this thread i have noticed posters with differing techniques in the management of the condition.

i wish you all the very best in coping with this condition and i know through personal experience as soon i got my buddy to open up and talk he kind of came back from wherever he was albeit for a while.

regards f

Ill tell you my story ..

first allow me to point out that no doctor has given me a real diganois of PTSD .. after doing some extensive research in to what could have been my issues i found information about this back in late 06 when i was trying my best to hold on to somebody who wanted out of the realationship..
i have never been on any of their so called meds . as i always felt that i had the strength within me to somehow rise above that .i have my good days and my bad days just like anyone else lately tho thank god my good days out number my bad days yet i dont know why this is ......

back in 95 shortly after my first born was born( shes now soon to be 16 ) my then boyfriend yelled and threaten my family to force them to allow him to see his daughter..( hes totally mentally unstable , hell the whole family is for reasons im not getting into on here as they would break the T N C s of the site) so we my sister and i went to his cheap hotel room where he was living at the time to show him the baby... after that my family had desided to cut him out from amelyas life all together for the babys sake....
heres where i screwed up my whole life.. be it a love spell he put on me or whatever that was . at any rate i had just given birth not 5 weeks before and was post-partom.. i ran out of the back of the house to go see him . he made a phone call to his sister and got her to physically threaten me over the phone because of what we told him . she thought that he had the right to be a part of his daughters life .. in any other normal situation he would have had that right .she told me either pack up my self and the baby and move down to his hometown or else she would come up and kill me and take the baby anyway.
anyway thats exactly what i did . i took my baby and headed down to his hometown. the largest mistake i have ever made in my life .
a few months later him and his sister ganged up on me the two of them declaired me unfit to care for my daughter ( when both of them were and are still on SSI) started a anouther huge fight and kicked me out in the street one night and kept the baby . so there i was in a strange city knowing nobody expect his family . i didnt know where to go to for help and my family had by the moved back to new york. i was literally homeless and broke. a few days later he joined me and left the baby with his sister ..
next thing i know Im pregnant again . and his sister up and spilt town leaving my daughter with his mother.
when she was 5 or 6 months old i got legal paperwork in the mail too late to do anything about . so his mother could claim legal gardianship over the baby . to which she got with no backround check on her at all.

by the time our 2nd daughter was born we were living in a rundown trailer with no heating or anything like that .
so thanks to two different phone calls ( one from the hospital and one from his mother of all people)CPS interviewed me while i was still in the hospital checked out our living situation at the time and deemed it to be unfit to raise a baby in and even then i agreed with CPS...
he on the other hand did not agree....
my 2nd daughter was born 5 weeks early after 38 hours or longer of labor.. they kept her at the hospital for an additional 9 days which then gave cps time to talk me into signing over the baby to them and fostercare..i felt at the time that i had no choice and they cps told me it was to be a temp thing til one of us had a job and a decent place to live .
thats exactly what i did i went out and the first thing i did was get a job as soon as i was able to . by then my then husband still continued to refuse to help me in any shape or form as to better houseing ect . so it was all on me .
by this time we had gone to court to try and get the baby back because we had heard that in these kind of situations cps normally gave the new parents a 90 day grace period to prove that they could handle the stresses of raising an infant... our source of information was wrong .
to get the baby out of foster care asap i had asked my sister to step in and take her back to new york . that too was only suppose to be temp
during the 9 month court battle both of us were declaired unfit as parents legally me from what my mother told me that was only because i at the time refused to leave my husband. til almost 2 years later when the mer thought of him literally made me sick .
bare in mind what had happened to me was yes it was partiallly my fault but all i really ever wanted out of life was to be sombodys wife and mother .
i was in my late teens and early 20s when this happened.
since then i have had hardships like you wouldnt believe .. but now as i look back on it all yes these experiences did screw me up . but somehow , someway i have risen above all of that and become a stronger woman for it ....
so yes in a way i do have PTSD but my case is rather mild ...

Ps this is the short short verison of what i went though at these peoples hands ... i left out a lot of details and stuff .

reply to post by alysha.angel


I have just read your post and you have had a lot to deal with. Don't minimize your experiences...

'stress' is a broad term and unfortunately, many of our emotions are incorrectly placed into the category... stress.

I read your post and I felt so much grief for you. Grief is a separate emotion. Fear is a separate emotion and so on but we tend to throw many emotions into the 'stress' hat and never identify precisely what we are feeling. One day when the stress hat is full and inside your churning... it becomes too much. You have many issues to deal with....

Identify each emotion and chuck it out of the stress hat... put it in the grief hat, the fear hat etc.
Maybe do some personal writing or even drawing... and make sure you have a box of tissues.

Talking, rehashing events DOES help.... it is hard but over time, things that were so intense get easier and easier to deal with.

Emotions - How To Understand, Identify Release Your Emotions.

Emotion Pics

^
I had a A4 page of different emotions that I carried around with me... I had to identify what I was feeling. We typically reduce emotions to cover 4 or 5 main feelings...which is wrong. There are so many and I found the exercise really helpful.

The personal danger you were faced with was traumatic and at the time you experienced it, you did your best to survive and any feelings you had/emotions etc -> you would not have been able to deal with them and survive at the same time.

Not to mention grief of losing your children. You have had such a dreadful time... be kind to yourself!

Nat

reply to post by Thurisaz


i really appreciate the offer to help but honestly i dont need it .. im fine as iam ....

like i said i have good days and bad days and im cool with it ...


recently my mother has passed away and my two younge girls were stolen by the local government yet i was unable to cry since im so used to bad things happening to me ....

reply to post by alysha.angel


ok well...take care of yourself and thanks for sharing.

Originally posted by jetxnet
No, lol, the USA is Prozac nation. If you do get cheaper services here, it isn't worth much at all.

The intelligent couselors here cost alot of money. I think WWII may have done more damage on the US family system than people realize. Dysfunction is passed down from generation to generation. During WWII times, many children were neglected. These "baby boomers" then grew up to neglect and abuse their kids (not all of course). This creates continued stress and virtually no support systems other than addictive outlets.

Just speculation, but somewhat of a good speculation I think.

Wow, you are the first person who has ever expressed just what I feel. I grew up with a WWII vet and actually submitted a short story (WRAP-The Leg) about my experience. You're right-those people didn't have PTSD diagnoses or counselors for that matter and they used alcohol to dull the pain. Unfortunately, alcohol abuse and raising a family don't mesh well. I've questioned the greatness of the "Greatest Generation' ever since the book came out. What is so great about never talking about anything? Let's just pretend it never happened. And yes, dysfunction was passed down from generation to generation; I'm a living example. Trust me, when you were never taught coping skills (outside of the bottle) you basically repeat what you learned. Well, I could go on and on here but I won't.

To the OP, I don't know if you are able to exercise but that has been a big help to me. I find kickboxing and running work the best. I find I relive experiences; words and memories, the things that eat away at me and I focus my physical energy on it until I feel like I'm beating up the negative feeling/energy. Does that make sense? At any rate, I feel so much better afterwards and maybe a big part of that is the endorphins but I think a part of it is feeling physically empowered. My body is mine and I can make it stronger and powerful to protect me.

Originally posted by jetxnet
PSTD can and often does lead to Clinical Depression. The brain's chemistry is more easily thrown out of balance after a highly stressful event (or an accumulation thereof leading up to a major stressor).

You can't think your way back to balanced chemicals. It can take months or years to get back to recovery. Recovery can be full or partial.

People that have never experienced PSTD or depression (longer than two weeks) are very lucky. They should be thankful, as life is easy when not depressed. When depressed, life is very hard.

That is interesting. When I was in the military, I got into -extreme-ly bad trouble ( I will not go into it here, because it is a huge long story, which you would likely have difficulty believing initially) for nearly 7 months I was under intense federal investigation over a misunderstanding regarding classified information/material. There was made mention to me of "the death penalty." I was 21 yrs old.
This dizzying ride finally stopped, like nothing happened, and I even rienlisted. Over the next 4 years of my second enlistment, I became increasingly strange. I let my physical appearance go and withdrew, and sometimes said and did odd things. I was required to take an extensive psychological and IQ test, they were considering committing me, but I did not want that ( I should----have allowed it in retrospect, I should have been diagnosed and treated.) I dodged the 'bullet' by a molecule, but I should not have.

reply to post by queenofsheba


thx for the tip. Exercise has helped and yet I fear triggers so avoid going out just in case I see something that triggers a memory. But, I do (on good days) get out and go for a run/walk.

reply to post by simone50m


do you have some support?

reply to post by simone50m


do you have some support?




Currently, I stay in my little abode with my 2 cats, and see my next-of-kin family every now and then, but there is no mental health professional in my picture. After I left the service, I spent years trying to pull myself up "by the bootstraps" until I was forced into a VA hospital because I became homeless and suicidal. They got me on disability, but there was never indepth delving into my past because they were shorthanded for help (at that time) and overwhelmed with other veterans in similar need. However----a couple of the Social Workers (LCSW)s, were made aware by me, briefly, of my strange long-ago ordeal, and they were trying to persuade me to pursue Service Connected Disability based on such. But I said 'NO" because the experience related to the ufo phenomenon subject. So I have never sat down with anyone and therap'ized about it. Never! a civillian, much less a VA type. Plus I had a bad taste left in my mouth, so-to-speak, over the years, by ufo people, who told me to basically shut up and go away. I had no smoking gun or eidence for aliens, and I think also they were afraid of me-with-my case.
But now there is the worldwide web. Maybe one day I'll showcase all my material (documentation etc) when I ever get a scanner............(Or maybe not, I've been on the recieing end of how VICIOUS self annointed skeptics can be......) (I HATE conflict.)

reply to post by simone50m


Here we have another testimony of how the Govt fails the VETS. It is so terrible. You serve your Country and this is the support you get when you return home = no support. I am sorry that you have been let down by your Country.