Lets Create A Ptsd Diagnosis - Off-topic Discussion

[oasis2003]

I agree that cPTSD causes more complex symptoms especially because I have multiple traumas some have been treated relatively successfully but the cPTSD part is going to take years to work through for me especially the dissociation and the emotional regulation part. Plus medical traumas are intrinsically linked to developmental traumas. There can be repressed memories emotions and pain which surface as triggers and somatisation .
Stress inoculation therapy has been good, but EMDR was so retraumatising for me, even though just dealing with one trauma, it brought back lots of other repressed emotions and memories that did not even know that I possessed .

Some belief systems and coping mechanisms I have been doing all my life, without realising that they were not normal or natural .

 

[lostforgottensoul]

I often wonder if there is a seperate diagnosis for CPTSD, would it take the place of possible more comorbility. Like you can uncompass most of my issues under CPTSD instead of PTSD + BPD + GAD...+ + + ? Im just going to find it intresting if it stops as many diagnosis, not to discount them at all, im just wondering if it would.

the emotional regulation part.

Thats part of why Im wondering it. My inabilty to regulate emotions is blamed on BPD, would that change?

Suppose we will need to see. Im enjoying watching the simplification of PTSD. Its complicated, to me, and to simplify that is awesome!

 

[UnKnown-Self]

@lostforgottensoul said "would it take the place of "
And listed some disorders....

It's not a matter of CPTSD would take the place of any disorder

The misunderstanding is some disorders are symptoms of PTSD and/or CPTSD. You can be depressed or anxious and not have PTSD and with medication and learning coping skills get on with your life.

The thing is PTSD and CPTSD don't react to medications or if they do not for long. So they will give anxiety meds, ADHD meds, anti depressants the list goes on and on. Because doctors try to medicate the symptoms and ignore the root cause(s) of the traumas causing the symptoms.

You don't have, CPTSD AND ADHD, GAD, depression on and on... Work on your root traumas, retrain your brain, get some new neurons and synapsis going to create new pathways in the brain and the brain will balance the chemicals that create the symptoms.

IMHO PTSD complex or not is NOT a personality disorder.

It's a perfectly effective and normal way for the brain, psychi whatever in reaction to abnormal situations.

We are not broken or defective or disordered.... We survived some really terrible things that changed brain pathways. That is not a permanent change. The brain is remarkably adaptive. The work is accepting not only the traumas but that we can retrain our brain to close the old pathways and open new ones. That's not dysfunction, not unless you accept it as such . It is challenging and hard work but doable. Believing that is what keeps me working, even when I slide back the old paths, I get back up and work at making those new pathways. I don't know if I will ever be totally "well" I kinda like some of my quirks but I want to stop the self hate and self blame, I want to communicate a different message to myself, I want to love all of me and know all of me. Most of all, I want to free the children. The other parts, if we could learn to at least work together to keep the body healthy, I could live with doing different things, listening to different music and one minute feeling like Doris Day and at the same time mumbling f*ck a duck and shittin' feathers, which we know Doris Day would never say not unless she is in wonderland and that's alright with me.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

@Alice.in.Wonderland i love that you spoke about "brain pathways" as that exactly how my therapist explained my intrusive and constant thinking patterns and basically most stuff and all of these therapies, like CBT and practicing it is making new brain payhways. That may have been "layman's terms" though; I dont if thats what they actually are.

I dont know the science of it all. It would be amazing if we had brain mapping comparing non-tramatize and a tramatized (or non-PTSD & a PTSD) brain side by side and see the areas of the brains that isnt firing, firing the wrong way, which areas are hyper active and which areas are hypo active whenever the exact same stimuli is applied. Why, in 2016, we dont have this science yet? Why is the science in its infant stage at this time? Why isnt it more understood? Why have we not appilied funds to understand it?

I didnt mean to offend anyone. Im just wondering if C-PTSD is a possibility to explain things that right now we only have other disorders to explain. I dont much understand it all myself but i also havent taken much time to research and understand what we do now know.

 

[anthony]

Why, in 2016, we dont have this science yet?

We do... it just doesn't prove anything, because there are counters to everything they find. Do some research.

 

[UnKnown-Self]

Dr. Amen look him up. He does do brain scans that show how stressors affect the brain and how they look when healing.
More research is being done. You don't hear as much about it because the prescription is meditation, yoga, changing you beliefs and negative thinking, diet and many other things that don't pay the pharmicudical companies who pay for the advertising of take this pill or that.
Forget the quinoa, fresh fruits and vegetables grown without GMOs forget the exercise, forget the trauma work and take a pill instead. They gotta make a living after all:rolleyes:

 

[lostforgottensoul]

Do some research.

Dr. Amen look him up.

I will, on both accounts. I suppose it got confusing and frustrating because this counters that so which one is it really? But I def need to research more!

Thanks! Sorry to throw things off-topic off-topic **head scratch**

 

[anthony]

You don't hear as much about it because the prescription is meditation, yoga, changing you beliefs and negative thinking, diet and many other things that don't pay the pharmicudical companies who pay for the advertising of take this pill or that.

I wouldn't personally go that far... pharmaceuticals are controversial, no disagreement there, but they're the only thing around right now, along with the other mentioned treatments, that are physical, tangent, usable now. Neuroscience has no use for us right now. They're trying to understand the neurology of PTSD, yet even if they do eventually achieve it, will they discover an anomaly formed in the brain or will it simply be a change in neuronal firing and such. Neither one they know how to fix, even if they find an accurate aspect associated to the brain.

If physical, can every sufferer of PTSD really endure brain surgery as a treatment? If sequential misfiring, then do we simply revert back to traditional present treatments that have known plasticity to reformat already to the normal sequencing pattern?

There is no evidence of chemical composition, as every person is unique. A lot of hypothesis at this time in science, pharmacology is a present tense solution that works for a minority, which still makes it a valid solution for doctors in an attempt to stop some people tossing themselves off of the highest building or such.

We're at a stage still where it is a "save as many as you can with what we have, and accept that some will die because we lack the knowledge to treat them."

 

[UnKnown-Self]

@anthony
Okay, I still have to work on black or white thinking and meds can help. I take some myself but I have learned the hard way to do my own research and learn just what some of the adverse effects can be.
I'm not advocating people stop taking their meds.
I think and I'm including myself , there are other things that could help if we just give them a chance. Meditation and exercise for instance .
The complexities of the brain do differ with each person and I think from my own experience and awareness, with PTSD, depending on what is being triggered my brain and body will react differently. I can get flu like symptoms, or muscle cramping and various levels of cognitive ability/fogginess.
The problem is the habit created of being unaware and detached from my body and feeling, keeping aware on a regular basis is hard work. Sometimes PTSD has to be stuffed and ignored or handled with an occasional low dose Valium because functioning well enough to earn a living does have to take priority.
That's why the support of people on this forum is such a helpful tool.
Since I do have work tomorrow and have to function it's time for me to hit the hay.

 

[joeylittle]

I did very deep research into Dr Amen. He's got no hard science backing how he is using those brain mapping protocols. They are approved for evaluating other things: but they are not diagnostic, there's no science backing it. He's just got a very strong hunch, an opinion, and he's parlayed it into a major money-maker for himself. It's just capitalism at work. I was so disappointed, felt like Dorothy finding out who the Wizard really was.

In my opinion, the specific spectrum of symptoms that make up BPD are enough to classify it as a separate disorder entirely from CPTSD. The real practical test of it would be to do a valid trauma therapy with BPD-ers who have criterion A trauma, and see if the trauma therapy addresses a big chunk of their symptom sets, without being accompanied by rigorous DBT therapy.

GAD is so much an insurance code in the US at least - if you have any other diagnosis they will generally also attach GAD so that various treatment configurations will be covered. Or, for people who only have that single diagnosis, or a diagnosis not containing anxiety as a symptom.

Just my thoughts.

 

[Sandstone]

Have you read the paper at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4165723/ on
Distinguishing PTSD, Complex PTSD, and Borderline Personality Disorder: A latent class analysis

They argue that
"BPD is characterized by fear of abandonment, shifting self-image or self-concept, shifting idealization and devaluation in relationships, and frequent impulsive and suicidal behaviors. In Complex PTSD, as proposed in ICD-11, the fear of abandonment is not a requirement of the disorder, self-identify is consistently negative rather than shifting and relational disturbances highlight chronic avoidance of relationships rather than sustained chaotic engagement. While emotion regulation difficulties are central to both Complex PTSD and BPD, their expression is quite different. In Complex PTSD they predominantly include emotional sensitivity, reactive anger and poor coping responses (e.g., use of alcohol and substances). In BPD, some of the preceding may be observed, but the criteria, perhaps the defining characteristics of the disorder, include suicide attempts and gestures as well as self-injurious behaviors, events which occur much less frequently in complex forms of PTSD than in BPD samples . " (my bold)

I recognise this distinction in my life, though isn't much of an argument.

 

[Powder]

Criterion A is everything when it comes to an accurate diagnosis of PTSD. (source: http://psychcentral.com/lib/differential-diagnosis-of-ptsd-symptoms/)

Without the intrusive thoughts clustering around a traumatic event or reminders of it, it would be misdiagnosed as generalized anxiety disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder. These are different in cause and treatment.

It's important that even if the patient does NOT remember the major details of the Criterion A event, they exhibit a symptom pattern that nonetheless clusters around traumatic events in the past, even if they display amnesia for the major details of the event(s) themselves. They will still bear a sense of doom and feel unable to face the past.

Other diagnostic criteria matter as well.

Depression should generally be present intermittently and as a secondary issue following a period of anxiety and arousal due to re-experiencing (nightmares, flashbacks, triggers). Depression should not be the main presenting issue.

There should be physical signs of chronic anxiety levels, such as cold extremities. This is also in OCD, but in OCD the patients methods of relieving anxiety is different and so is how they experience intrusive thoughts.

There should be signs of hyperarousal and avoidance, showing that either over or under arousal is the norm within the disorder.

PTSD revolves around a real trauma, and therefore it is not a mental illness. It is a reliving of the trauma in the present as if it were still upsetting the person in body and mind both.