Cure For PTSD - Does it Exist?

[anthony]

The memory doesn't forget Evie, as it stores everything we ever see, smell, touch, taste and hear. The only change is that what our memory will allow us to access vs. not access. A cure to reverse the damage to the brain is not about the removing the trauma, it is about correcting the chemical shift within the brain to provide more and less of various chemicals that others do not endure, hence why they do not have the same reactions as we do... about as basic as I can put it for ease of understanding.

The difference if the chemical imbalance is rebalanced, is that when you think about your traumatic times no longer will you have this symptom outbreak to begin with, no longer would you have these meltdowns as such, you would simply be sad, cry, and so forth as people typically do without PTSD. All the emotion is the same, its only how it affects us that would change. No longer would we be affected with all the harsh symptoms, instead we would just process the trauma and grieve, feel and deal with normally.

 

[anthony]

Welcome to the forum Don.

 

[TLight]

Stem Cells

Well, I guess realistically I'm with the treatable crowd.

But, in my soul, I will never believe that anything is 'uncurable.'

I'm wondering if anyone is checking into stem cells to 'regrow' the hippocampus? Sounds like a pretty scary experimental path, but for some of us who are in continuous distress and virtually 'locked' in our homes...........it might be worth a try.

I think I'll do some research.

 

[TLight]

ps

I can feel it happen in my brain when I'm triggered. Funny, only on the left side and it comes from the base of the back of my neck to a part on the top of my brain. It's agonizing.

 

[lrs]

I've experienced this as well.

 

[lrs]

Anthony wrote
"The difference if the chemical imbalance is rebalanced, is that when you think about your traumatic times no longer will you have this symptom outbreak to begin with, no longer would you have these meltdowns as such, you would simply be sad, cry, and so forth as people typically do without PTSD. All the emotion is the same, its only how it affects us that would change. No longer would we be affected with all the harsh symptoms, instead we would just process the trauma and grieve, feel and deal with normally."
************************
This is precisely the case. At least it has been with me. There is a story behind this. It's kind of long, I'm not sure I could get into this too much today. But my father died Nov 2004. Even in death, he was a jerk. He stuck it too me, and found a way to give me the middle finger from grave. But still he was my father. I went through the grief, and the anger, from this for about 9 months. But it's done, and that's just the way things are. I'm past that now, when I recall this, it's just one of those things. If I had not done that 1 thing I did, perhaps the biggest fluke of all time, I think this might have sent me over the edge. I can safely say this because I know what I was like before, during and after.
Anthony's description is pretty much accurate. That's just the way things are.

 

[nic]

I am one who likes to have hope...hope that ONE DAY, (and hopefully one day soon), I will be able to get rid of the PTSD symptoms. I know the memories will always be there, and I'm starting to accept that, (at least for the concrete memories). The thing that I cannot deal with, however, is the debilitating effects that the memories cause...pretty much all the crap I was going through a few days ago that made me not really be able to function. That, I hope, will be cured.

I would like to go back to something earlier on this thread and something that Anthony reiterated. Take the "Jack and Jill" example. While I do want to have hope that I could be cured, I don't feel like anyone here is saying that I can't be, but rather that the current PTSD treatments have not shown to cure it. Therefore, I still can have hope that this may be a possibility in the future as many studies are being done on PTSD and various PTSD symptoms. The other thing is that if I WAS told that yes, PTSD is 100% curable, (as long as I "worked on it"), that would probably make me feel worse, like there was something WRONG with me for not being cured yet.

 

[lrs]

Many, if not all of you, know I believe PTSD is curable. My life was once crippled by PTSD. I had it pretty bad. I have written about what happened, and my story is posted on this forum.
Four years ago this coming Sat morning, I told my wife I no longer had ptsd. It has been 4 years since I have had a nightmare, flashback, or jumped out my skin at a sudden noise.
It has not always been easy, in particular with the death of my father. He is the one who caused the trauma.
That first year was something else. I think the thing that took the longest to straighten out was what I would call "distorted thinking". People with, but not limited to, PTSD, seem to have this. I might have had a terminal case of distorted thinking. But it did straighten out, nonetheless. Maybe not 100%, who's to say. But it's better than what it once was.
I think distorted thinking would make a great topic for a thread all it's own. I have come to believe distorted thinking can trace its roots from an unbalanced mind.
I still have unanswered questions, but it makes a lot more sense now. And it is so simple.

 

[nic]

lrs, I find what Anthony had to say about your case quite interesting...especially the ambidextrous thing. I was ambidextrous as a child, but sliced my thumb pretty badly at age 13 and haven't written much with that hand since. There are some things, however, that I still do with both hands (e.g. playing tennis--I like to switch whenever one arm gets tired) because I cannot break the habit. I never thought about the effect this had on my brain. Do you think this has helped cure your PTSD symptoms?

 

[linasmom]

I think the thing that took the longest to straighten out was what I would call "distorted thinking". People with, but not limited to, PTSD, seem to have this.

I have distorted thinking badly and it's the main reason I'm in therapy. Not even just thoughts that I'm thinking to myself, but I'll hear something that someone has said, and everyone else hears the same comment and I'll be the only one to interpret it in some sort of distorted fashion. It's as if the sound went through my ears, and then my head translates those words into something far removed from the original statement. It's really embarrassing once I'm able to rationalize it, usually hours or days later. (which is something else I suffer from - I will obsess over conversations I've had with people for days after the conversation happened, focusing in on tone shifts that I may have missed in the original conversation and timing of certain phrases within a conversation). :wall::wall::wall:

 

[spiritofnow]

Linasmom

You have just totally described me!

I just wanted you to know that -to know that you are not alone in feeling like this! I am in T too and working my way through unpicking all these faulty templates created for thinking and reasoning.

We have to go back to the source!

You will get there!

Spirit x

 

[lrs]

Yes I do think it was the attempt that I made to learn to play left handed. I am right handed, and this description will be from that perspective.
I had been playing a stringed music instrument, a right hand5 string banjo, for just over 20 years. When I first picked up a left hand banjo, it was like a completely different instrument. Nothing seemed familiar, and it was like starting all over again. But I was persistent and just stuck with it.
Almost from the beginning, I was aware that something SEEMED to be a little different. But I couldn't quite pinpoint what it was. It would be akin to having a backpack, with a hundred 1 pound weights. If you remove one weight every 2 or 3 days, after a couple of weeks it might become just a little bit noticeable.
The learning of a stringed instrument does not come in a moments time. If you practice every day, your brain starts to rewire itself, slowly over time, to accomodate itself to the new things you are asking it to do. New neuronal pathways will form, new synaptic connections will emerge, gross motor skills and fine motor skills will become fine tuned in order to accomodate this new thing you are trying to do. In addition, some old connections will be disconnected in this process.
We already accept as fact, the brain is not static. However, I believe, we tend to automatically think of our brain in terms of it’s left brain activities, as though our brain is this one organ sitting up there in the middle of our head. It is also my belief, most of what we do in the course of our daily lives, is left brain oriented. We don't actively do things that work our right brain to the same extent.
By not actively using our right brain, maybe it just collects memories over the course of our lives in a happenstance, nonstructured manner. Rememer how memory is stored in our brains? It is in the form of neurons and synaptic connections. But they are not constant, each and every day, new connections are formed, and old ones are dissipated. What happened in my case indicates this can happen in our right brain, as well as our left brain. But there is more.
Dr Roerich brought some very interesting information in another thread. He made the point our right brain processes information twice as fast as our left brain. In addition, right and left brain do not always seem to function together in a symbiotic mode.
There has been research with documented results showing a lack of hemispherical lateralization in people who have PTSD.
It is my belief there are at least 2 major mechanisms involved with what I experienced.
1 – When I picked up a left handed instrument, and practiced daily, I was forming new synaptic connections, and also old connections were being disconnected, and that this was occurring in the right hemisphere. After roughly 3 months of doing this, I realized I was not having the flashbacks, nightmares, jumping out my skin at sudden noises, and my mind felt clear. That was when I told my wife I did not think I had PTSD. To date, 4 years later, I have not had ANY of these PTSD symptoms.
But then something else started.
2 – I had been playing a right handed instrument for 20 plus years, so there was already significant accommodation and "wiring" in the left hemisphere, for this activity. By providing the right brain with some commonality that the left brain already possessed, a HUGE process unfolded that lasted for about a year.
In the mornings when I would wake up, there was a process that would occur. I could feel it, and was consciously aware of it. I did not know what it was, and I knew I was in uncharted waters, but I just went with it and let it happen. You can literally feel a balancing effect taking place. It would last for about an hour, and it was peacefull and serene. I consider and believe it was a mechanism by which the brain balances and heals itself.
I have tried to find a name for this, but to date, have been unable to do so.
I believe, if you have PTSD, it is because at the present you are wired that way. But you are not stuck with it.