This morning I got on the internet to find out more information relating to the development of PTSD in children. I found a very interesting article and have posted the link at the end of my post. The last two or three weeks my thinking and emotional state have been totally out of "whack".
On Saturday I flipped out over a post I read, thinking first it was brought on by a bad childhood memory. I now realise it was more than that, as I've been this way for weeks. Crying, sadness and depression. Trying to break up with my friend, as it has become too hard. It is a combination of issues, and I hate it. I have never considered myself to be normal. Never seemed to fit in. Have been accused of being morbid, unusual and strange. Sadness comes easy to me. My dream is to be loved, understood, accepted like most of us. It always seems to be elusive.
The article is titled " Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. What Happens in the Brain?" by Sethanne Howard and Mark W. Crandall, MD. Some of what I read relating to small children really surprised me, however it gave me a clearer understanding of my PTSD. I suppose that PTSD is not one size fits all. The same as what could be said for diabetes. A lot of people including the medical profession think and treat people for either Type 1 and Type 2. There is also Latent autoimmune diabetes of adults (LADA), sometimes called diabetes type 1.5, is a concept introduced in 1993 to describe slow-onset type 1 autoimmune diabetes in adults. Adults with LADA are often initially misdiagnosed as having type 2 diabetes, based on age, not etiology. I, my father, his family and my brothers and sisters fall into this category. We are all insulin dependent. The majority of them died between the ages of 42 and 60.
This is part of the article I was referring to and how PTSD affects the development of a small child's brain. This is only a portion the whole article is brilliant. In my opinion anyway.
"There is a special and sad vulnerability for children. During early development, the brain enters a hyper-alert phase as part of the learning and growing process. Children absorb an amazing of information in a short time. They learn walking, talking, communication, and how to control information. Children learn the difference between their actions and themselves. They learn to separate themselves from their environment. They build their identities. One pictures that alert little amygdala busy processing all that new information from the world, storing up experiences, defining rules, figuring out language and the power of words (that’s the terrible twos.), figuring out society, and “look! See what happens when I drop the ball – it falls to the floor and makes a noise and rolls away. Will it do that again? Let’s see.” Children are wonderful scientists and natural experimenters. It must be an exciting time for the brain.
What if there is trauma? Trauma can push this alert state to such extremes that there is damage to the brain cells (PTSD). If the child stays this way for an extended time, then memories that might have become long term (and therefore retrievable later to the adult brain) are never connected. She loses her memory of childhood. And she never fully builds
an integrated personality. This is not necessarily a multiple personality, although in the most extreme cases, the child can develop the Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) that results in multiple personalities. Some people have improperly characterized all such injuries as DID. Far more common than DID, however, is the injured, traumatized personality that develops
PTSD.
In the case of a young child this is especially serious. It seems as if children are born with a brain filled with templates, some complete, most needing some input from the environment to complete their structure. The child fills in these templates as she grows and learns human behavior. At 16 Washington Academy of Sciences some critical point the child integrates all the templates into an executive control, an identity, a self. The safer the environment the healthier the final product. Probably by the age of six the templates are complete
enough to define a whole person.
If the child completes the integration, then she/he can endure a lot of physical and mental attacks and not lose their identity. She/he will develop their own strategies for survival. If however the trauma is severe enough, then depending upon the trauma and when it occurred, one or more particular templates may remain incomplete; she/he does not
integrate. Sadly, they do not know this has occurred. The painful future, the misunderstandings to come, the failures and confusions, these will all make little sense to them. They think that their brain is operating the same way that everyone else’s brain does. They think they have the same genetic templates and the same completed personality. They do not understand why they have problems.
If there is enough fear, then the brain recognizes almost all realtime input as a threat, and if the links are weak to begin with, the child never learns to “touch” reality".
I hope I have done this right, as I'm not to good at it.
[DLMURL]http://www.washacadsci.org/Journal/Journalarticles/V.93-3-post%20Traumatic%20Stress%20Disorder.%20Sethanne%20Howard%20and%20Mark%20Crandalll.pdf[/DLMURL]
On Saturday I flipped out over a post I read, thinking first it was brought on by a bad childhood memory. I now realise it was more than that, as I've been this way for weeks. Crying, sadness and depression. Trying to break up with my friend, as it has become too hard. It is a combination of issues, and I hate it. I have never considered myself to be normal. Never seemed to fit in. Have been accused of being morbid, unusual and strange. Sadness comes easy to me. My dream is to be loved, understood, accepted like most of us. It always seems to be elusive.
The article is titled " Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. What Happens in the Brain?" by Sethanne Howard and Mark W. Crandall, MD. Some of what I read relating to small children really surprised me, however it gave me a clearer understanding of my PTSD. I suppose that PTSD is not one size fits all. The same as what could be said for diabetes. A lot of people including the medical profession think and treat people for either Type 1 and Type 2. There is also Latent autoimmune diabetes of adults (LADA), sometimes called diabetes type 1.5, is a concept introduced in 1993 to describe slow-onset type 1 autoimmune diabetes in adults. Adults with LADA are often initially misdiagnosed as having type 2 diabetes, based on age, not etiology. I, my father, his family and my brothers and sisters fall into this category. We are all insulin dependent. The majority of them died between the ages of 42 and 60.
This is part of the article I was referring to and how PTSD affects the development of a small child's brain. This is only a portion the whole article is brilliant. In my opinion anyway.
"There is a special and sad vulnerability for children. During early development, the brain enters a hyper-alert phase as part of the learning and growing process. Children absorb an amazing of information in a short time. They learn walking, talking, communication, and how to control information. Children learn the difference between their actions and themselves. They learn to separate themselves from their environment. They build their identities. One pictures that alert little amygdala busy processing all that new information from the world, storing up experiences, defining rules, figuring out language and the power of words (that’s the terrible twos.), figuring out society, and “look! See what happens when I drop the ball – it falls to the floor and makes a noise and rolls away. Will it do that again? Let’s see.” Children are wonderful scientists and natural experimenters. It must be an exciting time for the brain.
What if there is trauma? Trauma can push this alert state to such extremes that there is damage to the brain cells (PTSD). If the child stays this way for an extended time, then memories that might have become long term (and therefore retrievable later to the adult brain) are never connected. She loses her memory of childhood. And she never fully builds
an integrated personality. This is not necessarily a multiple personality, although in the most extreme cases, the child can develop the Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) that results in multiple personalities. Some people have improperly characterized all such injuries as DID. Far more common than DID, however, is the injured, traumatized personality that develops
PTSD.
In the case of a young child this is especially serious. It seems as if children are born with a brain filled with templates, some complete, most needing some input from the environment to complete their structure. The child fills in these templates as she grows and learns human behavior. At 16 Washington Academy of Sciences some critical point the child integrates all the templates into an executive control, an identity, a self. The safer the environment the healthier the final product. Probably by the age of six the templates are complete
enough to define a whole person.
If the child completes the integration, then she/he can endure a lot of physical and mental attacks and not lose their identity. She/he will develop their own strategies for survival. If however the trauma is severe enough, then depending upon the trauma and when it occurred, one or more particular templates may remain incomplete; she/he does not
integrate. Sadly, they do not know this has occurred. The painful future, the misunderstandings to come, the failures and confusions, these will all make little sense to them. They think that their brain is operating the same way that everyone else’s brain does. They think they have the same genetic templates and the same completed personality. They do not understand why they have problems.
If there is enough fear, then the brain recognizes almost all realtime input as a threat, and if the links are weak to begin with, the child never learns to “touch” reality".
I hope I have done this right, as I'm not to good at it.
[DLMURL]http://www.washacadsci.org/Journal/Journalarticles/V.93-3-post%20Traumatic%20Stress%20Disorder.%20Sethanne%20Howard%20and%20Mark%20Crandalll.pdf[/DLMURL]
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