Background Ptsd Or Not

[Jimmy1]

During my last therapy session we delved back to my past, way back to childhood.
My father was 42 when he had me. He served for a little bit in the Army Reserves and the Navy during WWII. His mother dragged him out because he was not 21, so he joined the Police Force.
He did 32 years on the force.

It was only of late that I joined the dots and figured out from his behavior growing up that he had PTSD. He used to work in single man stations in small towns. He would work extra long hours and sort of keep away from the family. He never went to many of our sporting events and was always grumpy. Nothing was good enough. If you got 99 out of 100, he would just say why didn't you get 100. If we were planning to go to the beach or some other crowded place he would fight and bitch to find an excuse not to go, but once he was there we had a good time.

Early on in my military career he did mention a couple of serious life threatening instances that would make you hair curl, about facing three armed gunmen alone, about picking up bits of bodies off a railway track and a story about being on 'Floater' duty (picking up the bodies in the river) in Melbourne in the early days.

.....................

End result is my therapist believes that a lot of veterans and other people with PTSD have a background with it to start with. Whether they were abused, beaten, or just resided with a person exhibiting symptoms of PTSD.

Not that you have to answer, but did any of the rest of you grow up with this???????

 

[FUBAR1]

I personally think your therapist is trying to connect dots that aren't there. A lot of people have abusive parents or ex-service personnel in their childhood, and some of them go on to face life events that cause them to have PTSD and some don't. I don't think there's any basis whatsoever for implying a causal relationship. The truth is that science has yet to determine whether PTSD is a function of predisposition or a function of the given event at the given time. And since, currently, there is absolutely zero evidence of predisposition - not to say it won't be discovered in the future, but right now there is not one solitary study showing the slightest shred of predisposition - I'd say it's mighty damn presumptuous for your therapist to imply that childhood traumas have some kind of causal relationship with later development of combat PTSD. Could your father have had an influence in you going into the services? Sure, but I think that's where it ends. You could have had a perfect damn childhood and still developed combat PTSD as a result of f*cking combat. I'd be a little pissed with the therapist, but that's just me.

 

[Ned]

Well, I don't know. I mentioned in another thread that my dad saw fairly extensive service between '45 and '58.
At 19, he was one of the first lot into Nagasaki. Then Palestine (Irgun & the Stern Gang), Malaya, Borneo, Aden, Cyprus (EOKA), and Suez (which is why I'm around).
He saw a lot of things, carried a couple of scars, and was just like you describe your Dad, Jimmy. All the symptoms.
I don't know if this pre-disposed me in the slightest, though.
I was a cheerfully ignorant twat prior to all my stuff, (now I'm just a twat).
I think my problems are all my own work.
No, I think it's just that your Dad had it and you paid enough attention for the penny to drop now. Maybe that's why you understand it that bit better.

 

[Jimmy1]

I personally think your therapist is trying to connect dots that aren't there. A lot of people have abusive parents or ex-service personnel in their childhood, and some of them go on to face life events that cause them to have PTSD and some don't. I don't think there's any basis whatsoever for implying a causal relationship. The truth is that science has yet to determine whether PTSD is a function of predisposition or a function of the given event at the given time. And since, currently, there is absolutely zero evidence of predisposition - not to say it won't be discovered in the future, but right now there is not one solitary study showing the slightest shred of predisposition - I'd say it's mighty damn presumptuous for your therapist to imply that childhood traumas have some kind of causal relationship with later development of combat PTSD. Could your father have had an influence in you going into the services? Sure, but I think that's where it ends. You could have had a perfect damn childhood and still developed combat PTSD as a result of f*cking combat. I'd be a little pissed with the therapist, but that's just me.

FUBAR, you are taking it all wrong, probably as I did not explain it enough.

What I meant to say is that some of us are more susceptible due to a history in the family. And therefore, its not just the combat that we have experienced that is playing around with our moods and memories.
Of course, our experiences are the main root of beast within us, but for some of us, our childhood could have been a lead up.

They actually have a name for symptoms that spouses exhibit when living in a long term relationship with someone with PTSD, its called secondary PTSD. My son who grew up with me as his only parent for 5 years actually displays way more anger than a normal child. Why, because it is what he lived and believes as the right way to act.

Another example for children is spouse abuse. There is a high percentage of males who grow up in a house where their mother is beaten by the father end up beating their own spouses. Its a learned behavior.
So, why not for PTSD. If a child grows up in a house where the father or mother goes off on a rant for the smallest things, display OCD, isolates in depressive moods, why couldn't it make that person more susceptible??????

Its not a given, but it may be right.

 

[FUBAR1]

Oh, I think I get it now. Yeah, I know about secondary PTSD. Guess you're saying if you're already traumatized, doesn't take as much more to break the camel's back?

 

[Jimmy1]

Well that's the theory there working on. It's not a given though, they just say if your history contains something like that you are more susceptible. It had to originate somewhere.

 

[Anglesachse]

I think you are on the right track Jimmy.

Like Neds old man, mine was all over the place, 22 years in total as I believe. I know the family had lived in Rhodesia but that was before I was born, I have come to believe that he was in Malaysia and even Aden the Falklands (I remember him going and coming back) and god knows where else while serving with the Rhodesian and British Army, but there is no real evidence other than what I have picked up over the years. He never spoke of anything, never wore medals, would just disapear for months on end.

We used to move around a lot more than the other families aswell. In the Brit army you would normaly be looking a 3 years in one spot for a Corps, and upto five for a Reg. I remember going to 12 schools, my last was when he left the army and I remember going there 3years. so doing the maths that makes 11 schools in 8 years, and I have seen the school reports that we used to get that confirm this.

Like you say it`s only now that I have pieced stuff together to get the PTSD Picture. Explains why there was a lot of Alcohol and a lot of violence in my childhood but I still can`t work out where he was or who he was with, I remember picking up the odd piece of info here and there. I know he was in the Royal Signals, I know he was with 24 Independent Infantry Brigade (the only place we ever had Mil Memorabilia from) and remember the name 5 Field Force and HQ Sig Sqn. But his actual job I know idea about. I have seen a picture of him at the Sigs Boys school as an Instructor, and I know he was at Fulwood Bks, in Preston when he left the Army, at the time he was a Corporal but was doing the job of a WO but I have no info as to what, why etc.

Yeah I reckon it does condition you, like you said Secondary PTSD, plus the abuse I had as a kid leaving its own PTSD mark, and then joining up and seeing Combat. Me for my part have never been able to draw a line through it all and say, That was because of that, and That was because of this. My Therapist had a real nightmare trying to sepperate stuff. and came to the conclusion "mr.., you are a very hard book to read, and I don`t see that you will ever realy get to fully understand half of what has happened in your life, as your whole life uptill present is one huge knotted mess"

I guess she is right, but we worked on a lot and managed to get explainations for a lot, and I now know what and why to some degree, so can work on myself.

At least I can now work on making sure I don`t f*ck my son up.

tuppence

 

[Sarg]

Born in the Air Force. Dad joined the Army Air Corps in 46' and I was born a year later. Mom said we had 21 furniture moves before I was sixteen. Dad didn't see any action at all. No wars, no "police actions", sat at a desk the whole time. No abuse. Parents didn't hit each other, fought like cats but no hitting. When they disciplined me it was with a belt and no blood, no whelts and pretty much what I deserved. My therapist too, tried to tie my PTSD with childhood problems. No way.

My PTSD is the direct result of combat. It was the gearbox of my mind stripping out every gear. It was two many things, happening too fast for far too long. As I said before, I went nuts over there. Instead of withdrawing from fear, I flew every night, just to show I could function with that fear. One can only do that so long before it screws up all one's thinking. It shifts reality, rewires the thought process. What one used to hold dear, now meant nothing. Life was cheap because ordinance was cheap.

The VA diagnosed me within months of my return. Called it "anxiety reaction". What the f*ck was that? How do you treat it. Is there a salve or something I can put on it? "Treated", that's what the VA called it, for forty years and even worse off than when I first started going to them. I'm hoping this shift to private therapy improves me. But this path is very well worn.

Sarg

 

[Jimmy1]

Sarg, the DSM IV used to stipulate that if it was less than 3 months since the trauma it was 'Acute' after 3 months 'Chronic'. My psychiatrist also told me that if it was less than 30 days since your return from a combat zone it was classed as an anxiety disorder or a depressive episode. f*cks me.

 

[Sarg]

Jimmy, I was told that PTSD didn't even hit the DSM IV until early to mid eighties. Dunno. All I knew is that I was messed up.

Sarg

 

[Jimmy1]

Your probably right mate, I was only joining then as a young 18 year old.

In WWI and WWII they just thought it was combat stress, and probably even with Vietnam, its only with technology and case studies that they realised there was such a problem.

I hope that the DSM IV actually puts Combat related PTSD in a separate category one day.