This post turned out rather long, my apologies!
I have been reading a book by Cordelia Fine ‘A Mind Of Its Own’. I highly recommend this book. It basically shows how the brain is deceptive, lies and refuses often to see our own faults because we need to survive. She noted, with humour, the only people who truly see reality, their own faults, are the clinically depressed! Therefore a healthy brain operates by preventing us realising our own faults. I hope I conveyed that well. It is not just her opinion or pop-psychology. She cites psychology/neuroscience research studies from Harvard, Stanford, etc. As someone who personally is involved with a level of academia, I have a trust thing with books, I don’t like to be fed lies, haha!
She grave a great metaphor of how there are several mechanisms of the brain and how it is the ‘conscious mind’s’ job to block any unsavoury messages. THAT is the brain performing optimally. However, I believe and this is my interpretation, my conscious brain has failed to do this. Someone on here has said that PTSD is not necessarily just one experience. Like all the things you have been trying to bury, even ones that weren’t particularly traumatic at the time (maybe just upsetting, weird or difficult to understand) suddenly are triggered off. You aren’t necessarily just dealing with one thing, though that may have triggered the collapse; everything else in your personal history gets illuminated. You are completely swamped. I have also heard this from a suicide clip off YouTube when a woman said her breakdown in the end was caused by the death of her husband, and then everything else just came up.
Does this sound accurate to anyone? Is this similar to your experiences? I was reflecting that really...PTSD is bad luck. Because we cannot control our brain. When I had my breakdown, I was consumed with guilt to the point of feeling suicidal. The thing I couldn’t work out was, how did people live with it? i.e. offenders. And then I worked out previous to this breakdown, it just hadn’t occurred to me to deeply reflect on them (who would? – healthy brain). It was just bad luck that the memory was triggered. And part of me thinks... I wish it hadn’t. I still fail to see any good that has come out of this. It’s meant enduring an amazing amount of personal pain, guilty, doubt, denial, delusions, confusions and depressions. I now can no longer rely on my memory and it’s undermined my confidence in myself.
And the thing is... it just was bad luck that I was triggered. If I hadn’t seen the person who brought it all back, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. I guess I posted this to see if anyone had felt similar to this, but also because I am in the position of both having mental health issues and becoming a ‘professional’ who hopefully will assist and support people during crises.
I have been reading a book by Cordelia Fine ‘A Mind Of Its Own’. I highly recommend this book. It basically shows how the brain is deceptive, lies and refuses often to see our own faults because we need to survive. She noted, with humour, the only people who truly see reality, their own faults, are the clinically depressed! Therefore a healthy brain operates by preventing us realising our own faults. I hope I conveyed that well. It is not just her opinion or pop-psychology. She cites psychology/neuroscience research studies from Harvard, Stanford, etc. As someone who personally is involved with a level of academia, I have a trust thing with books, I don’t like to be fed lies, haha!
She grave a great metaphor of how there are several mechanisms of the brain and how it is the ‘conscious mind’s’ job to block any unsavoury messages. THAT is the brain performing optimally. However, I believe and this is my interpretation, my conscious brain has failed to do this. Someone on here has said that PTSD is not necessarily just one experience. Like all the things you have been trying to bury, even ones that weren’t particularly traumatic at the time (maybe just upsetting, weird or difficult to understand) suddenly are triggered off. You aren’t necessarily just dealing with one thing, though that may have triggered the collapse; everything else in your personal history gets illuminated. You are completely swamped. I have also heard this from a suicide clip off YouTube when a woman said her breakdown in the end was caused by the death of her husband, and then everything else just came up.
Does this sound accurate to anyone? Is this similar to your experiences? I was reflecting that really...PTSD is bad luck. Because we cannot control our brain. When I had my breakdown, I was consumed with guilt to the point of feeling suicidal. The thing I couldn’t work out was, how did people live with it? i.e. offenders. And then I worked out previous to this breakdown, it just hadn’t occurred to me to deeply reflect on them (who would? – healthy brain). It was just bad luck that the memory was triggered. And part of me thinks... I wish it hadn’t. I still fail to see any good that has come out of this. It’s meant enduring an amazing amount of personal pain, guilty, doubt, denial, delusions, confusions and depressions. I now can no longer rely on my memory and it’s undermined my confidence in myself.
And the thing is... it just was bad luck that I was triggered. If I hadn’t seen the person who brought it all back, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. I guess I posted this to see if anyone had felt similar to this, but also because I am in the position of both having mental health issues and becoming a ‘professional’ who hopefully will assist and support people during crises.
