Hope For The Holidays - Yes, Ptsd Is Curable

[rightkindofme]

I often feel frustrated by the language used to discuss PTSD. I hit the same point as @BlackbirdSinging and wanted to close the screen. Yeah, I can talk about my trauma so @#$#@@#$ you that I am thus not going to have PTSD.

But I recognize the wise point made later in the thread that I didn't talk about my trauma for many years. It was something that I very consciously learned how to do over decades of work.

I hate the word "cure" for all the reasons mentioned in this thread. I don't think I will ever be completely symptom free. I feel like there is also a difference between the folks who are traumatized by going to war (which is a truly horrifying experience) and people with continual trauma from birth. I have no baseline to return to. I have no "before trauma".

Everything I learn about calming down is about trying to learn an entirely new way of being. I'm not just trying to get rid of the damage. I never knew anything but damage. I'm not trying to calm down like I did when I was a kid. I am so much more calm than I was when I was a kid that I seem like a different person.

I am "better" but I don't find these articles give me hope. They make me sad. They make me feel like once again someone is claiming that I "should" just be able to "get better" and I haven't yet so obviously that means that I'm just stupid and broken.

:(

@Lost Pup that doesn't mean I'm sad you shared the article. I think it is important that everyone with PTSD gain more awareness of alternative therapies. I completely agree that alternative therapies like massage are often as important as talk therapy for a lot of people.

 

[Abstract]

They are talking about immediately after a trauma and being able to talk about it rightkindofme! Think of your last trauma. Could you speak about it with appropriate emotion and in an organised fashion? The article talks about treatment immediately after a trauma.

I also think its unfair to claim that the reason you don't find it helpful and others do is because of early and repeated trauma and implying that anyone who does look at it differently obviously has a before and hasn't had repeated trauma. No matter the history there are differences in how people see things and what they find helpful.

Recovery is about reducing symptoms and improving ones life not somehow deleting the experiences we have had. In fact people who are not traumatised by events are particularly good about absorbing their experiences as part of their life story and therefore themselves.

I personally think the whole "making it as if it never happened" way of thinking is a distortion. That is never how human experiences work. People without trauma know that automatically.

Sorry it makes you sad though.

 

[rightkindofme]

I'm sorry I seem to be bothering you so much today Abstract. I will stop posting.

 

[Abstract]

@rightkindofme , you are not bothering me and there is no need to stop posting. I was not shouting in my last post. I was merely animated. You know? It just makes me really sad when I see people hold onto the whole incurable thing but that is my problem and noone elses. We all have to make our own way.

 

[Lucycat]

I see the article was written just a short while after I was diagnosed with PTSD. I wish I had read it then.

I agree with the cure/recovery thing, but guess that is simple journalistic license. I like the positive nature of the article, and the discussion that follows it.

I also have to agree with the huge difference about talking soon after trauma, and speaking of it later. It was speaking about my trauma some 40 years after the event, that triggered my spiral downwards and eventual diagnosis. I had not realised or understood all the emotion that was stored in my brain along with those memories. It was like a pressure cooker blowing its lid!

Thank you @Lost Pup for sharing this positive message with us all.

 

[DMerish]

I stumbled on that article a while back and thought it was enlightening. But, IMHO . . .

Curable? I don't know.
Manageable? Very possible, depending on the trauma, the individual, and how much the person "works at it".

I was diagnosed in 1987. I've had several periods of 4 - 6 years of relatively symptom free living. Then "BAM" symptoms are back. I don't think the term "remission" is used by professionals, but I call my symptom free periods "being in remission". Just my $0.02.

 

[Hashi]

Interesting too that she mentions not getting people to discuss the trauma straight afterwards.

That's a big thing for her. She found a different approach because she used to be a therapist who followed the "traditional" route of talking about it when that wasn't appropriate, and regretted it when she realised what it was doing to her clients.

I've lived with the effects of trauma my whole life (literally from birth) and I don't see someone saying I can recover as a judgement of the fact that I haven't recovered yet. I actually find that the therapists who believe in healing, like Belleruth Naparstek and Peter Levine, are those who understand that the more mainstream approaches and the previous lack of an outlet (eg having to suppress our feelings to survive childhood) can compound the trauma. Rather than blaming us for how long we've lived with this, they understand why.

I don't see it as a high level of self care and always being vulnerable to PTSD symptoms. I see it as a lot of work on healing, a continued high level of self care and being free of PTSD symptoms.

This may be a controversial thing to say but I'm glad there's some challenge and debate over this. To me, that's better than a blanket acceptance that some amount of PTSD is for life, for everyone who has been diagnosed. That message is everywhere, but it's only one view. There are other views and experiences.

 

[Lost Pup]

I actually find that the therapists who believe in healing, like Belleruth Naparstek and Peter Levine, are those who understand that the more mainstream approaches and the previous lack of an outlet (eg having to suppress our feelings to survive childhood) can compound the trauma. Rather than blaming us for how long we've lived with this, they understand why.

This is largely my point in posting the article. You don't have to be totally woo new age to recognize the degree, also, to which our beliefs condition our realities.

I think the other issue that has not come up here so much is the possibility of innate differences between early childhood C-PTSD and PTSD. For me healing is also a much belated developmental process of very primitive emotional and self-regulation. In this sense, for me, healing is mandatory (regardless of what it is called) because trauma has kept me from being fully formed in a way that I need to be to live parts of life.

Some interesting conversation though - surprised, if tickled, as I hadn't expected much, if any, strong reaction to the article.

Happy new year.

 

[rightkindofme]

I don't feel I am "holding on to being incurable". I feel I am realistic about the fact that having PTSD throughout my entire life has done extreme damage to my body. Dealing with that damage is something that is probably never going to stop. I will always have to do some compensation for my symptoms and issues.

I have a life that is better than anything I ever imagined "someone like me" could have. I have gone from having mental health professionals regularly tell me "you should be dead" to having people tell me they are shocked that I have the symptoms I have because I control them so well.

I write about my PTSD symptoms every day in a public journal (not here) because I want there to be documentation of the ups and downs and complications because if I don't write about it then it is invisible to the people who know me. I "fake" normal really well. That doesn't get rid of my intrusive suicidal thoughts and panic attacks and and and.

I do almost all the alternative therapies recommended in this article at least sometimes. I will go back to them periodically throughout my life but I'm not made of money.

I'm doing everything I'm told will "cure" me. I've been doing it for a very long time. I feel discouraged when people who deal with combat PTSD which was caused by a limited time duration experience specifically different from their normal life say that I can just reset my base body alarm system. I can't reset my system.

I have to consciously and deliberately work every day of my life to control a body that was altered by experiences beyond my control. Some days it is more work than others. Some days I only have to think consciously about controlling myself a few times. I sincerely doubt I will ever hit a point where I am not hypervigilant. I doubt I will ever get to the point of being able to "coast on neutral" and think I am ok.

To me that means I can't be cured. If I will have to work on this forever... that's not curable. It's *manageable*. I can *recover* to the point where I have a wonderful life... but I can't be cured. The damage can't be taken away. My brain was altered and that is that.

I sit on a swing every day because the rocking movement is soothing. I take all the @#$#@$ vitamins and supplements. I exercise (Two half marathons and a full marathon over the past two years). I write. I do yoga. I ...

I do freakin everything I am told will "make it better". It is better. I am much better than I was. But the problems aren't *gone*. I still deal with them just about daily.

So I get kind of touchy about being told I can just be cured.