Yeah, I think the way PTSD jumps up the body to 20 times the adrenals, which is why my friend with PTSD now has seizures, and his acid levels were so high that a non-PTSD person would have died of shock, (but the Dr. said he didn't because his body is accustomed to it) is that we feel incredibly unsafe from things in our environment that should not trigger such strong responses.
For instance, I'm in a really bad way right simply because there has a lot of movement outside the window of my apartment, and there are workers above me hammering or walking now. I feel trapped and in a trigger zone, suddenly, where I wasn't before. My own house should be my refuge, and right now it's not. I feel extreme anxiety in my body, even though my mind says "It's fine." As a result, I am having nightmares and flashbacks. I am really sick. And, I just acted horrible to my spouse, and I am having trouble at work focusing. I am getting really sick and then sicker, and I am finding his choices and actions unbearable on top of all this because he is usually the one to help me, but he can't; this makes me really angry at him, even though I don't think it's intentional on his part.
My eye is twitching, and I feel super worked up. Just because there are sights and noises coming into my space that I am not used to. The normal coping stuff I can't do because I am too ill already from previous stress.
The stress cups don't begin to touch on the multi-layeredness of the cups within cups. It doesn't display the domino effect and how sensitive people with PTSD are to their environments because we are already jacked up there to 20 times the vigilance of a normal human being. The brain is way over-active, which is clearly shown and can now be used, if affordable, for diagnosis of PTSD. When your body and brain are PTSD, there is no simple way to "shut down" the red alerts going off from triggering other alerts, until the unpredictable random stuff happening inside and outside of our bodies takes over. And I am running around treating the symptoms of all this, and I can't find the core of it because it's buried in being PTSD, and I don't have a way into that; it's not curable.
I believe PTSD is in the details, in that it's being taken down by the small, ordinary stuff that lets me know how delicate a system is a PTSD life. PTSD people vary in their own awareness of how delicate the balance is dancing into the fine spaces between triggers. Which is why we sometimes think the only way to live is to remove all uncertainty and make our world 100% Groundhog Day predictable and devoid of stimulii. This, then leads to boredom and depression. Not to mention, we then lack any needed human back up for support and safety nets because we've scared them all off or refused to let them in.
Combat or not, the same recipe gets the same results. We try too hard to bond with someone and then we can't stand being around anyone who brings in a host of symptom-producing triggers by virtue of being alive. Even if I love them more than I love myself, I end up not being able to know how to handle it. I just want to isolate when I'm triggered. Which I can't, so then my body gets really sick. After being ill so much, it gets harder and harder.
For instance, I'm in a really bad way right simply because there has a lot of movement outside the window of my apartment, and there are workers above me hammering or walking now. I feel trapped and in a trigger zone, suddenly, where I wasn't before. My own house should be my refuge, and right now it's not. I feel extreme anxiety in my body, even though my mind says "It's fine." As a result, I am having nightmares and flashbacks. I am really sick. And, I just acted horrible to my spouse, and I am having trouble at work focusing. I am getting really sick and then sicker, and I am finding his choices and actions unbearable on top of all this because he is usually the one to help me, but he can't; this makes me really angry at him, even though I don't think it's intentional on his part.
My eye is twitching, and I feel super worked up. Just because there are sights and noises coming into my space that I am not used to. The normal coping stuff I can't do because I am too ill already from previous stress.
The stress cups don't begin to touch on the multi-layeredness of the cups within cups. It doesn't display the domino effect and how sensitive people with PTSD are to their environments because we are already jacked up there to 20 times the vigilance of a normal human being. The brain is way over-active, which is clearly shown and can now be used, if affordable, for diagnosis of PTSD. When your body and brain are PTSD, there is no simple way to "shut down" the red alerts going off from triggering other alerts, until the unpredictable random stuff happening inside and outside of our bodies takes over. And I am running around treating the symptoms of all this, and I can't find the core of it because it's buried in being PTSD, and I don't have a way into that; it's not curable.
I believe PTSD is in the details, in that it's being taken down by the small, ordinary stuff that lets me know how delicate a system is a PTSD life. PTSD people vary in their own awareness of how delicate the balance is dancing into the fine spaces between triggers. Which is why we sometimes think the only way to live is to remove all uncertainty and make our world 100% Groundhog Day predictable and devoid of stimulii. This, then leads to boredom and depression. Not to mention, we then lack any needed human back up for support and safety nets because we've scared them all off or refused to let them in.
Combat or not, the same recipe gets the same results. We try too hard to bond with someone and then we can't stand being around anyone who brings in a host of symptom-producing triggers by virtue of being alive. Even if I love them more than I love myself, I end up not being able to know how to handle it. I just want to isolate when I'm triggered. Which I can't, so then my body gets really sick. After being ill so much, it gets harder and harder.
