Southernbelle - much of what you are describing is numbing and depersonalization which can be part of dissociation. Dissociation is like being absent from yourself or being outside of yourself. Dissociation is much more accurate than multiple personality disorder because it describes the spectrum of what occurs.
Dissociation is a coping mechanism that allows people/children to undergo terrible trauma, but lets the concious mind off the hook.
We have different areas of the brain that take in information and process it - and not all of those areas are directly input to the long term memory. The more primitive areas of the brain process things without "thinking" about them.
The idea of being able to process everything knowingly would be absurd in primitive man because by the time he thought about the fact that a lion was about to eat him and what should he do, he'd be dead. So we have areas of brain that take in info, rapidly compare it with "emotional/environmental" memory and voila - within nanoseconds, the emotional brain can say "Hold on, you're in danger, run, hide!" Which means that the people who had the best emotional/environmental memory, were the ones most likely to survive a dangerous environment.
The problem fur us is that our emotional/environmental memory has geared up to fantastic proportions - so we percieve danger (triggers) when in fact there may be none. Or we are triggered by fractions of things - a face, a voice, a place, a sound.
The startle reflex is a great example. A loud, unexpected noise may make anyone jump. But for people with PTSD, any out of place noise, any hand on the shoulder - can make our hearts pound and our bodies sweat as if the lion indeed is just around the corner.
PTSD isn't a mental illness per se. It is an altered brain neurobiology. Think of yourself as the super-survivor. Cure will mean undoing that altered neurobiology that took a while to wire. Right now there is no cure, but learning to manage that automatic response is crucial to getting a better life.
The more I have come to understand my PTSD, the more I realize that I am more acutely aware of surroundings, facial and body cues, voice tone, etc than the average person. Using that to my advantage by being able to rapidly recognize when I am going into PTSD mode and regulate my response gives me a leg up on other people. I "see" things they don't.
Consider your PTSD like a superpower that you just have to learn to regulate. I'm sure that when Superman was a little boy, he had a number of bumbles learning to use his super-powers.
Dissociation is a coping mechanism that allows people/children to undergo terrible trauma, but lets the concious mind off the hook.
We have different areas of the brain that take in information and process it - and not all of those areas are directly input to the long term memory. The more primitive areas of the brain process things without "thinking" about them.
The idea of being able to process everything knowingly would be absurd in primitive man because by the time he thought about the fact that a lion was about to eat him and what should he do, he'd be dead. So we have areas of brain that take in info, rapidly compare it with "emotional/environmental" memory and voila - within nanoseconds, the emotional brain can say "Hold on, you're in danger, run, hide!" Which means that the people who had the best emotional/environmental memory, were the ones most likely to survive a dangerous environment.
The problem fur us is that our emotional/environmental memory has geared up to fantastic proportions - so we percieve danger (triggers) when in fact there may be none. Or we are triggered by fractions of things - a face, a voice, a place, a sound.
The startle reflex is a great example. A loud, unexpected noise may make anyone jump. But for people with PTSD, any out of place noise, any hand on the shoulder - can make our hearts pound and our bodies sweat as if the lion indeed is just around the corner.
PTSD isn't a mental illness per se. It is an altered brain neurobiology. Think of yourself as the super-survivor. Cure will mean undoing that altered neurobiology that took a while to wire. Right now there is no cure, but learning to manage that automatic response is crucial to getting a better life.
The more I have come to understand my PTSD, the more I realize that I am more acutely aware of surroundings, facial and body cues, voice tone, etc than the average person. Using that to my advantage by being able to rapidly recognize when I am going into PTSD mode and regulate my response gives me a leg up on other people. I "see" things they don't.
Consider your PTSD like a superpower that you just have to learn to regulate. I'm sure that when Superman was a little boy, he had a number of bumbles learning to use his super-powers.
