Ptsd In General

[Jimmy1]

One of the worst things I believe is the fact that no matter how much therapy you do, and no matter what medication you are on, and even removing yourself from an environment where there are multiple triggers, you can still have really bad days for no apparent reason.

The head of the PTSD unit here in Townsville believes that if you can isolate all of your traumas and deal with them over and over with exposure therapy until they become just a memory, then you can be cured of PTSD. This may be true with someone with PTSD from surviving a car accident, or a natural disaster, a savage assault, or even a sexual assault. They are usually individual traumas, or several traumas and are easy to identify and isolate. However; with a service person, i.e. Military, Coast Guard, Paramedics, etc who are exposed to multiple traumas, this can be different. Nowadays though, most Police, Paramedics, Firemen and woman, are counselled directly after a specific incident involving death. They talk through the incident which allows it to be filed away to be only a memory.
Service people from the old days though when PTSD was not really recognised, suffered a lot later on in their lives.

The military though is a totally different kettle of fish. While your in a combat zone, most battles and serious scenarios are fast moving with multiple things happening and most of the time multiple traumas.
In some instances, those people are debriefed and then sent out again, leaving a lot of the traumas unchecked. This is why we as combat PTSD sufferers have such a hard time and are different from the general mix.

I have been to four years worth of therapy and there are still images that wake me up in the night. New ones. Sometimes I think my mind is playing tricks as I cannot remember the actual situation, lets face it, there are usually a lot. I remember a report being sent to our DVA here from my senior whilst I was on one of the operations. It laid on the line what I was exposed to, and quite frankly, I had put it into the far recesses of my mind and could not remember it.

I must admit though, a lot of my severe traumas I have dealt with over and over and over. I can actually talk about them now with close friends if needed and Margaret. Some I still don't like going near as I hate the emotions attached. But I have promised my therapist that once the surgery is over I am going to tackle them.

But even though I have completed a course on PTSD where I learnt all about it, and learnt the coping strategies involved with dealing with different incidents as they arise, I still get days where I want the world to just go away. That is the problem with living with Margaret sometimes. I am seemingly normal for a lot of days, then comes a time like this evening. My stress levels have been pretty high of late and with the surgery coming up I am nervous.
We went out to dinner and there was a big line up, lots of people. I was anxious as and Margaret told me to 'Chill'. Sometimes she forgets. I wanted to walk away.

Walking away and isolating never solves anything though.

I really don't know why am babbling on though. I suppose I just have this info in my head and thought I would share in the hope that some of you or some of the lurkers out there who just read the posts might get something out of it.

The good news for everyone with PTSD especially Combat related PTSD is that there is a future for us. You just have to stick with it.

How many of you went through 'Boot Camp' and wanted to give up. It was just a little pain and you were transformed into a soldier, sailor, airman/woman. Trust me. You can never ever be who you were, you have been rewired by the PTSD and conditioned by the military. The new you has a lot more experience in the world and will have seen things that normal people would not be able to fathom.

Just keep going. You will get there.

Have a great evening all.

Jimmy

 

[Wagon]

Jimmy,

Nice post. I think this describes the struggle quite perfectly. Going through a dark spot now, But a good reminder I should talk to my wife more abut things....even though I do, I should not just say I'm depressed and leave me alone. Been doing some serious isolation now for 5 days.

Wagon

 

[wife of]

Just remember that EVERYONE on the planet sometimes has days where they want to be isolated,its a normal response,its just the frequency and extent that is altered in someone with ptsd so don't beat yourself up too much for needing some time out......Sue...

 

[Ted Moen]

Hey Jimmy, nice post.

I have come to understand ptsd not as something you have or don't have, but as a continuim. Everybody has their life experiences, some of which are experienced as traumatic to them. What is experienced as traumatic depends on the person and their sensitivities. Traumatic experiences will generate a variety of symptoms along a range of levels of severity. At some point along the range of symptoms the severity becomes clinically interesting and would result in a diagnosis of ptsd from a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist.

At the core of what is experienced as traumatic for any person is the flight, fight or freeze response we are all hard wired for, the system that injects our systems with adrenalin in situations experienced as threatening, giving us the ability to do what we need to do to survive the situation, then injects our system with stuff to calm us down once the threat has passed.

Most people experience a threat, their system responds, they do what they need to do, the threat passes, there system takes them back to normal, then the feelings flow and generate ptsd symptoms for up to six months as they work the feelings through. Their symptoms are very real to them and they benefit from support and therapy, but would not be considered clinically interesting. For some people the ptsd symptoms last beyond six months. They are given the official diagnosis.

Some people experience an ongoing, threatening situation. The three main catagories in this part of the continuim are traditionally abused children, battered spouses and combat veterans. For people in this group the threat continues over weeks, months, even years. The person survives on continous injections of adrenaline, and develops patterns of behaviors that allow them to survive the ongoing threat. For some of these people when the threat eventually ends their system goes back to normal in terms of the fight, flight or freeze response, but they are left with a lot of stuffed feelings and patterns of behavior that interfere with their functioning in their current situation.

For others experiencing an ongoing, threating situation the level af adrenaline required to make them able to do the things they need to do to survive overwhelm their system and result in actual damage to the system (brain damage). These people are left with the ability to produce adrenaline on demand, but no longer have the ability, or have a reduced ability to produce the stuff that takes them back to normal when the threat has passed. So these people not only are left with a lot of stuffed feelings and patterns of behavior that interfere with their functioning in their current situation, but even things to startle them result in their system physically responding to a threat situation and old patterns of behavior kicking in, with their system not being able to physically bring them back to a normal, non-threat condition.

I don't like the term cured for any level along the ptst continuim, but for the latter group being cured would involve repair to brain damage which is currently beyond our capabilities.

I prefer to think of ptsd as a condition which those of us who have had to do what we had to do to survive a threat or multiple threats or ongoing threatening situation or multiple ongoing threatening situations are challenged with learning to live with a little better each day as we learn to understand the specifics of our condition and how to manage our symptoms in our current situation.

There is more to it than just keeping going like we did in boot camp. There is learning about our symptoms and how to manage them in our current situation so we start getting our current needs met and get to relax and actually enjoy life for whatever time we have left.

Ted

ps don't mind me this is the month my company had matriculated down to a level where we were declared combat ineffective (tet68 and the aftermath) and our equipment and few remaining enlisted people send to a different division .. somebody had decided to quit allocating replacements to us somewhere along the way but the missions continued .. i was lucky in a backward sort of way and reassigned just before the final battle because of insubordination so i have a tendenacy to get insubordinate this time of year and feel a need to challenge the experts

 

[Jimmy1]

Firstly Ted, thank you for such an awesome post. I might add a little more.

There is another part to combat related PTSD that a lot of people don't understand.

When we first joined the service (whatever one that was), we had morals. Yes we were trained from being a civilian to being a soldier, sailor, airman, marine etc, etc, but our life values and morals were still the same.
For example, respect your elders, be kind to children etc, etc.

Then we see operational service, and our whole belief and moral system is blown to the shithouse.
We see dead elderly people and children, we see elderly people and children living in fear, we see children going to school in basically prisons. All because of war. The horror and atrocities are just too hard to bare.
Then while involved in a life threatening incident, what saves our lives??? Not what our parents taught us. Not what our schooling taught us, but what we learnt in boot camp. For example, we dived for cover when we heard the primary of a mortar. We protected ourselves when we saw something suspicious. We thanked the military.

So when we first come home to our own houses, do we trust civilian morals and values?? No.
That is why we are hypervigilent. That is why we watch everyone and get anxious on the streets and in shopping centres. That is why we are so jumpy. That is why we only seem to trust other veterans.
Its not our wives or children's fault. But if we treat them like little soldiers, they will survive.

I hope this has given insight into a fraction of our thought process.

So basically medication calms our minds while therapy can take its part in deprogramming us. Making us feel safe and secure. A lot of veterans don't want this. They isolate and some isolate to extreme.
I know of one Vietnam Veteran who lives 50 mile from the nearest person. He has a long driveway.
He has two attack dogs roaming his yard. Yet he still has deadlocks on his doors.
He is on no medication and see's no therapist or psych. He trusts no one. He does not even have a phone.
To get in contact, you have to drive to the gate and hope he is home. Then wait till the dogs go get him.

The fight response can be good sometimes too. It has saved peoples lives.

For instance. If there was a car accident, or fire in a building (Tex, this is for you), most civilians will stand there and just watch. Most trained personnel will run straight into the danger, saved lives, and its only after it has calmed down do they really think about what they have done. Then they say it was nothing.

Well more waffling. A reminder, that this is only my opinion.

Jimmy