ptsd
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; The storm after the storm.
PTSD Awareness
All over the world, people suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, also known as PTSD. "To be exact, 5.2 million people do." When I say PTSD, I know most of you are thinking about people who have PTSD from serving our country, but let me tell you this. Yes, you are correct about that, but that is only one kind of PTSD. A person can develop PTSD for multiple reasons and events they have been through. Today, I will tell you about the four most common causes of why people develop PTSD through their lives.
By Natalie C..7 years ago in Psyche
Trauma Part Four
Please click this link to read preceding articles. Plateau For a while I felt stuck. I didn’t feel like I was getting better. The anxiety that lives in my chest is still ever-present. I was talking to Saya, my therapist, about a lot of things that were happening currently instead of digging into my past. I felt I made significant mistakes. I should have cut all ties with anyone connected to my ex, but I just couldn’t pull the trigger with some friends I’d made. They didn’t do anything wrong and I had relationships with them outside my ex. But realistically, I’ll never see them again. Maintaining any connection to my ex is distressing, but so is the thought of cutting ties.
By Hecate Jones7 years ago in Psyche
PTSD and Me
The majority of my life has been filled with trauma. I have only been free of it for the last four years. My trauma began when I was just a young girl. My birth mother and father got a divorce and I was left to live with my mother. Being a daddy's girl left with a mother that didn't understand her was hard! My big brother was a mama's boy. He was a straight-A student, always (as far as I can remember) did what she wanted him to do. He was the golden boy with our mother. Because I was rough and tumble and the furthest thing from a girly girl as you could get, she didn't like me. I didn't get straight A's, was lucky, even, to get a B. And I was defiant. These led me to being mentally and emotionally abused. I was often called a little bitch, stupid and told, "why can't you be more like your brother?" Not things a kid needs to hear. I never had any support from her either. And that wasn't the worst of what I dealt with living with my birth mother. When I was around eight years old, she got involved with a truck driver that abused drugs and alcohol. She moved us in with him, and for two years, my brother and I were forced to watch this poor excuse of a human being beat and rape our mother every day. He always accused her of cheating on him, would ask my brother and me for confirmation of her infidelity. Why didn't we leave? Why did my brother and I stay and watch? We were told we would be killed if we moved. We were told if we left him, he would hunt us down and kill us all. The threat of life is an excellent motivator to make you stay in an unsafe situation.
By Michelle Frank7 years ago in Psyche
CPTSD and Narcissistic Abuse
My name is Michele, and this is my first article for Psyche. I am incredibly excited to use this medium, and hope that you will join me on my blog, The Hippy Chic, on WordPress. I will leave a link at the bottom of the page. Go easy on me, I am new to this audience.
By Michele Elkins-Hoffman7 years ago in Psyche
Living with PTSD
Post traumatic Stress Disorder, or more commonly known as PTSD. What is PTSD? Sure there are medical definitions, psychology books that cover it, articles that try to explain it and books that have been written about it. However, what does it mean for the thousands who live with it day in and day out?
By Tiffany Myrick7 years ago in Psyche
What Is C-PTSD?
Complex trauma disorder is something I deal with daily. It is a source of constant stress for me. I have no idea if I’m ever going to be able to find treatment for it. I know how to live with my symptoms. My medication helps a lot, and nobody wants an out-of-control psychic with C-PTSD and schizoaffective with rapid cycling bipolar 1 features losing it. My trauma becomes known to other people should I lose control of myself. You can only hear so much about trauma anyway since some people can’t hear about it besides.
By Iria Vasquez-Paez7 years ago in Psyche
Trauma Part Three
Please follow this link to read preceding articles. Benzodiazepines In 2012, I had a severe reaction to Xanax. I’d developed severe anxiety after my hysterectomy when I was trying to get on a complete regimen of hormone replacement therapy. At age 28, I had menopausal levels of reproductive hormones, which can pose serious health risks. Starting hormones was a shock to my system and I had unrelenting insomnia. After not sleeping several nights in a row, the nurse practitioner who was prescribing my hormones prescribed Klonopin. It was only a matter of weeks before the dose I was on felt ineffectual. I switched to Xanax at a higher dose as I was also still trying to get on doses of hormones that felt right for me.
By Hecate Jones7 years ago in Psyche
It All Started When I Was a Child
"Don't kill anyone, Erica! Calm down!" My peers would tell me when I was around 12 years old. I've always had issues expressing myself in a calm and even-mannered way. You could say I had anger issues. It took very little to set me off and it was like a bomb.
By Erica Hale7 years ago in Psyche
Trauma Part Two
Please follow this link to read preceding articles. Breakthrough Something that all abuse victims experience is cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is when you hold conflicting beliefs, such as, “This person is kind and generous and we have a good friendship,” and “this person mistreats me.” Abusers use a tactic called intermittent reinforcement, a type of operant conditioning. Through operant conditioning, a subject learns to associate punishment or reward with a particular behavior. A rat presses a lever and it gets a food pellet reward. Intermittent reinforcement is inconsistent. Sometimes the rat gets a pellet for pressing the lever, and sometimes it doesn’t. There is no more powerful means of altering a subject’s thoughts and behavior. When tested, intermittent reinforcement has been found consistently to be significantly more powerful than continuous reinforcement. It inspires obsessive, self-destructive behavior in favor of seeking the reward. The rat will forego other healthy behaviors, such as grooming or socializing, in favor of pressing the lever until it becomes physically ill.
By Hecate Jones8 years ago in Psyche
PTSD in Family Life
When I was 24 years old, I decided to make a change in my life that would lead me down a completely different path. I was a single mother of two boys. I was living at home in my parent's house, working two part time jobs just trying to get by. I was wishing for anything that would allow me to provide a good life for my boys. I decided to go back to school, and become an Emergency Medical Technician. My first time through the program I had a hard time focusing; I ended up not making it past my midterm and had to start the program again. I worked harder the second time and managed to pass everything leaving the program with an A, and feeling really good about myself. I managed to land a job right out of school, with a private ambulance company, that handled emergency calls as well as general transport for the hospitals. I loved it. I was making good money in overtime, and was finally able to save up enough money to move out on my own with my boys. A year after I started working in EMS, I met the man I call my husband, he is a paramedic with 14 years in EMS and has seen more things than I could even imagine. We used to work on an ambulance together from time to time, and between the strokes, gun shots, abuse calls, codes, calls for children, and so many more bad calls, we still managed to make it through the shift. EMS isn't for the faint of heart, you have to control your own emotions for the people you are trying to help. There are those calls in EMS that will forever stick with you. The faces of those that you just couldn't save, that you just couldn't help, that you wish you could of done more for. Almost every EMT and paramedic in the field, no matter what town, state, or country they are in, suffers from some type of PTSD. Trying to manage a home life with a spouse and children while dealing with the effects of PTSD is a challenge within itself. Most EMS providers won't even admit that they have PTSD, or they will say they have it under control. I would know, my husband suffers from PTSD every day, and still tells me he doesn't have it. I have been woken up in the middle of the night to him screaming from having a nightmare of a call that still haunts him, or from him screaming a patient's name repeatedly and telling them in his sleep to stay with him. There are days you can see in his face that something has him looking back in those memories, those memories that could be triggered from anything as simple as something that is being said to something that was just seen on TV. Even on medication the effects of PTSD can still be seen in many EMS providers; effect such as burn out, distancing themselves, and sometimes even aggression towards the people around them. PTSD isn't something that should be taken likely, it should be addressed, and those suffering from it should seek help. Friends and family members of all EMS providers should be made aware of the signs and symptoms of PTSD, and should offer a safe place for EMS providers that may be suffering from PTSD.
By Wendi Simpson8 years ago in Psyche
