Why Do Only Some Traumas Create Ptsd?

[braggle]

Ok so I've been mulling over this since i woke this morning. And I've wondered in a general manner as to why in the case of multiple trauma only some things cause PTSD.

For me the things that have caused my PTSD have been sexual abuse as a child by a family member and a rape and sexual assault when I was 14 by a man twice my age. Yet I went on to be raped again several times by a boyfriend when I was 17 in quite a humiliating manner. These last attacks though, have not caused PTSD even though they were more sustained and in my mind were more damaging than what happened when I was 14. Don't get me wrong it had an effect on me but not in the same way that the others have created a disorder with all the fun stuff that comes with it.

Why is it that someone can be witness to horrific things and not all of them have the same effect? I understand that things can accumulate and it may be the last straw so to speak. But what about when a traumatic event happen afterwards and don't have the same lasting effect?

Any thoughts?

 

[Sandstone]

I've been wondering much the same. I've been in a situation where I feared for my life, but that doesn't seem traumatic to me in the same way as the other things. I was talking about this with my T last week, and can't for the life of me recall what she said, except that she would have found that situation traumatic.. It was at the time, but now it doesn't have that power over me

I'll be interested to see what others say.

 

[braggle]

@stenni I know my partner sometimes looks at me like I'm crazy for talking about something that would be utterly life changing for them the same way I talk about doing the chores. Maybe at a certain point we have just become so desensitised to trauma that it stops having an effect.

 

[anonymous]

Maybe at a certain point we have just become so desensitised to trauma that it stops having an effect.

This has been where my thinking has led.
Or that perhaps we become so adept at using dissociative means to deal with things that we somehow remove ourselves from the full impact of further traumas so that they don't affect us in the same way as earlier ones.

 

[braggle]

Anonymous that is a good point with dissociation. If it feels like it has happened to someone else how can it have an effect on us.

 

[desiderata310]

I recently discussed this with my therapist or at least... something related.
I was stalked by my ex for a long time, it's such a trigger that I have to go through the house when I first get home so that I know I am safe.

Around the same time that I was dealing with my ex activly stalking me but before I knew I had PTSD, I befriended a cyclist who became very scary, very quickly. Even in my dealings with him at group rides, I wasn't frightened off, I simply took extra precautions to make sure that I wasn't too close. When I moved a month later I kept the news quiet and did the move quickly with available friends in one day. I 'unfriended' the guy. I was calm about the whole thing.

He recently tried to 're-friend' me. THAT action upset (but not really a trigger) and made me realize that I was in just as much danger from him as I had been from my ex but my attitude was more ...cavillier. The guy had taken to randomly leaving beer on my doorstep, texting me crazy threatening messaged and leaving obvious tell tale signs that he'd been walking around my apartment trying to look inside. One night after I had moved he tried to follow me home and I was forced to continue driving for several hours to try to drop him (I didn't want to go to a friend's house for fear that he would do something to them)

He was a loose cannon.

When I talked to my therapist about why my ex had truamatised me but this guy SCARED me but didn't traumatise me, he said 'after dealing with the lion, dealing with a rabid dog wasn't so scary'

There's some truth to that. Maybe it's all about desenitization.

 

[braggle]

'after dealing with the lion, dealing with a rabid dog wasn't so scary'
@desiderata310 I really like that analogy. I suppose that even if you deal with more than one lion in your time you its never as scary as the first.

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

Peri-traumatic dissociation (when it happens at the moment of the original trauma) is the greatest indicator of future PTSD. For me, this translates to the young traumas affecting me more, as I definitley dissociated during them. The adult traumas were dealt with better at the time and thus are resolving better and faster and I'm less triggered by them.

 

[braggle]

@theshadowoftheliving I've just looked that up quickly, and its very interesting I will have to look further into it. I must admit I've been in denial for a long time over my dissociation so don't know much about it.

Are you saying that you didnt dissociate during your adult traumas? Sorry if I've gotten that wrong.

 

[Go Hungry]

I think it's a matter of experience, like you guys said. Over time, a person can become so inured to danger and trauma that it simply doesn't affect them the same way. I know that when I was younger, sometimes when something bad happened I would just start laughing, because to me it was simply absurd. How could so much shit land on one person. To the point that when something would go bad and freak my friends out, I would be the one who was calm-headed in the situation, because to them it was a catastrophic event, and to me it was simply Tuesday. When you've been on edge for so long, it just takes a little more (except when it takes practically nothing) to set you off sometimes.

I also think that some of it just comes with maturity. Last night I was talking with a friend who was having an apocalyptic case of the 'forlorn love'. She got involved in a love triangle with this married couple, and was just shattered by the fact that the guy (who to all indications is an immature shithead who wants it both ways) wasn't showing her as much attention as he was his wife. I explained to her that this is -exactly- what happens when you throw yourself into a love triangle, and considering just how astronomically co-dependent and wrong-headed this couple was, the best thing she could do was run like hell.

The thing that most stuck out to me though, was how this was such a catastrophe because she had simply never been through it before (well, not the love-triangle bit, but the unrequited love) and had no experience as to how overwhelmingly LAME it was, :yuck:. At my age, I know that people come and go. Sure, I get emotionally attached to people, but I also keep an air of detachment because.. well.. this isn't fatal. I think everyone who has lived and loved enough in life understands that it comes and goes. Things change. She is too young to know that.

The relevance of this is that, like before.. You just get used to catastrophe.. and it stops being traumatic. It just doesn't matter, because your heart will keep beating, you'll meet other people, it'll be okay. As long as it doesn't kill you, it simply doesn't kill you.

Or I could be totally wrong. It could just be that as a trauma survivors we've seen shit that'll blow most folks socks off, and just don't sweat the little things.

Great thread. :)

 

[Sandstone]

perhaps we become so adept at using dissociative means to deal with things that we somehow remove ourselves from the full impact of further traumas so that they don't affect us in the same way as earlier ones.

this translates to the young traumas affecting me more, as I definitley dissociated during them. The adult traumas were dealt with better at the time and thus are resolving better and faster and I'm less triggered by them.

Interesting. Two completely conflicting explanations, both seem completely plausible.I think I'll only get to the truth if I deal with the Traumas that I know had a precipitating impact.

 

[braggle]

It just doesn't matter, because your heart will keep beating, you'll meet other people, it'll be okay. As long as it doesn't kill you, it simply doesn't kill you.

.
@Go Hungry I think that realistic, litteral approach is something a lot of us do without even realising, its simply self preservation.

I get you about the laughing at bad situations. Its not that I think bad thing are funny but sometimes it comes as an aumatic respoonse along with "Again? Really? Again?"