Ptsd Vs. Rts Vs. Rr-ptsd

[Abrasky]

That was what my psychologist did, got me to talk and she would make associations. I've tried it myself many times to write my story, but have never got any memory back. I generally find that the memories only come back after a successful session with my psycologist. Some psycologsists I've been to haven't been able to bring back memories with me, others have been successful with it. I've had some psycologists talk about something about finding new definitions for things. People have definitions to things it's how their brain is structured. Trauma changes or gives a faulty definition to things and that is part of why the brain becomes traumatised. Not sure what that is all about either. Just repeating what I've been told.

 

[anthony]

Yep, that is correct. You may have read me say on the other forum, sometimes it can take months or a year or two, but someone will say something to a person / they will read something, and in their brain things just click. One statement, phrase, is what it took for their mind uniquely to just understand its confusion, thus begins to recollect more / something, or solves a whole lot in one hit.

The person is everything. If you aren't asking the right questions, you can't get the right answers. You also need to be provoked with trauma therapy in order to be pushed... because when you push the brain, emotional, to get angry, the brain releases honesty whether it wants to or not. In trauma therapy, comforting is not the best way to do things during the session, but instead to provoke the brain to get angry, to get responses which can be used and thrown back at you, which instigates further thought after the session usually, and memories begin trickling back before the next session. Obviously the person is calmed before leaving, and warned about the procedure first.

I intentionally attempt to piss people off when getting into trauma therapy, because its where they actually do their best work, knowingly or not, the brain releases true emotion better when angry... you just need the right person to be listening.

 

[Abrasky]

Thanks Anthony. I was interested to here those responses. I agree about getting the right responses if asking the right questions. I suppose because I have suppressed the trauma, I can't ask the right questions, that seems to be a part of the trauma is to avoid the questions, if that makes sense. That's why a therapist helps.

I find that interesting that you piss people off in therapy. I thought my therapists have had a different approach with this, I don't recall therapists making me angry until you mentioned it, they tend to make me feel grief. But know that you mention it, maybe they have tied to make me feel a bit angry, but haven't recognised it because I piss people of generally anyway and can't see this. Cheers to your insightful comments.

 

[anthony]

I don't mean, you asking the right questions, I mean you need to be asked the right questions so your brain is provoked... so yes, a third party with experience.

Any decent trauma therapist will do it to a degree... how far they go, that's another thing. I tend to have found over the years, the more you can keep throwing the statements back at them, it provokes more memory.

It is not uncommon that I achieve my result, being I will often get a person to the point where they will walk away from the forum, from me, which is intended... so they stew on it for days / week/s, then they will begin having lightbulb moments... their brain will begin putting things together, then they open up and start being honest with themself, with others... to just dump it all out, often beginning to recall things they thought they couldn't.

There are tricks to getting the brain to open Pandora's box, so to speak... once you get it open, then its just a matter of getting it all out as fast as possible, then trying to manage the fallout, then slowly starting to pickup the pieces and put things back together in a much better way.

CBT... its the best of them all for longevity of PTSD. 80% + CBT will be doing a lot better within two years, if done correctly. If not... you can go on for years talking, talking, talking, achieving little to nothing, or making things worse.

 

[cherryblossom]

It is not uncommon that I achieve my result, being I will often get a person to the point where they will walk away from the forum, from me, which is intended... so they stew on it for days / week/s, then they will begin having lightbulb moments... their brain will begin putting things together, then they open up and start being honest with themself, with others... to just dump it all out, often beginning to recall things they thought they couldn't.

I can vouch for that. Boy, did Anthony piss me off Link Removed. I'm not sure how many days/weeks it took me to calm down! But, it worked. I wrote my whole story down - every last bit. And now in therapy I'm making progress Link Removed I think being honest with myself was the key. The realisation that I was pissing around, denying big parts of what happened, and thinking by avoiding it - I would get better. And also acceptance. Accepting that I was raped, sexually assaulted, and threatened with death. And that, no matter what I thought of my actions (freeze, didn't escape, didn't scream loud enough etc, etc) today, I couldn't change the past. I have to work out a way to live with it, not just wish it had never happened. The fallout was huge. It's not a pleasant process at all. It hurts like hell. I probably could have done with a better support network of family and friends before I started the process, but I managed to develop that during the fallout. Most days now, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it's getting closer.

 

[Lucycat]

I feel I am way behind you. I cannot get/feel angry in therapy. Never have. I have very rarely got angry at any point in my life. There is just one time that comes to mind and that is many years ago. I get cross occasionally, but it really is very mild- you know like when he forgets to put the lid back on the toothpaste!

I get very sad sometimes. Sad, suicidal and depressed. But I feel sad also about the fact that I do not feel anger and I want to. I think I need to.I guess I just want to experience life rather than just letting it wash by me.

CB, you have written your story. I have not. In actual fact I don't read people's stories on here. I miss that bit out as I find it too hard, and jump down the page to easier-to-read comments and follow on. I have let out little bits here and there, as I have felt able but have never challenged myself with the full story. I am still in 2 minds as to whether it is necessary. I did tell all in my Police statement, but that was like someone else did it, and it was not me at all. I have little recollection of that day.

As I have said before I have been having EMDR and I certainly feel it has helped enormously. However there are times when I think that I am kidding myself. Its like Pandora's box got opened and I looked at some of the stuff inside and have ignored the rest. The lid can't go back on, but I can't put the 'stuff' away until I have taken a peek, and I am putting that off.

As I am writing this I have started shaking and am now having palpitations. Time for a break...

 

[Abrasky]

I often wonder if my pandora's box is a whole bunch of boxes full of smoke and inside each box is another box. At the end is this one box that actually has the trauma in it. It took 12 years to get to that last box. Opening that last box made me so angry like a volcano all the remaining memories about the trauma have just decided to flood me in the last year.
A psycologst told me once, 8 years ago, I'd never get anywhere if I pursued psycodynamic therapy as I walked out her door after EDMR and CBT made me go backwards. I am happy. I am off antideppressants for 6 years, not agoraphobic for 8, and finally at a point where all the anger is coming up and all the memories are flooding out without therapy. So I possibly don't need therapy any more as I am resolving things now. It took me 13 years of doing psycodyamic therapy, but getting to the end I feel I starting to not live disassociated to escape my trauma. Maybe CBT will work for me now. What works for one person one one day many not work for another another day. I hope something works for everyone, everyone deserves it. PTSD- hope they find a cure one day.

 

[ams]

I'm actually more confused than ever by what is written here. I don't find that it clarifies anything for me. I'm not saying that what he has written has no value - just that's it's confusing IMHO.

I'm also suprised by this -



I think for many people there is a 'lag' in time between the traumatic event and PTSD. I know there was for me.

But I apreciate you posting Ams - maybe I'll re-read in a few days and gain more from it.

I was actually surprised by his comment there, too. A LOT of cases of PTSD are acute, and the symptoms show up almost instantly. I don't even remember when my symptoms showed up but I know for a fact there is a chronic PTSD in addition to the acute PTSD, and chronic sets in after months, sometimes years later. Something triggers it. It's very likely I had PTSD as a kid, and it just laid dormant until by first rape, which triggered the more severe PTSD symptoms.

But there isn't a clear line between PTSD and RR-PTSD, or either of those and RTS. In Psychology, they are all very very similar and very blurred, and confused for different disorders, when they all sound like PTSD but are just a different variation. I've heard talk in psychology about how the new edition of the DSM will list all these as PTSD and make it so it covers sexual assault/rape too, instead of having it so mysterious.

 

[cherryblossom]

I personally don't really see the benefits of breaking down any diagnosis into smaller and smaller entities - when the treatment is much the same. Whether someone has PTSD because of combat, or rape, or child sexual abuse, it makes no difference to me. There are a lot of symptoms to PTSD, but I'm not convinced that some are more relevant to different trauma's than others. Sometimes, I just think we should forget about a diagnosis, and just concentrate on the symptoms that affect us as individuals.

 

[anthony]

I feel I am way behind you. I cannot get/feel angry in therapy. Never have.

Because most therapists are to worried about you suing them! Therapy is a mockery for most, because everyone's constantly trying to cover their arse.

 

[anthony]

I personally don't really see the benefits of breaking down any diagnosis into smaller and smaller entities - when the treatment is much the same.

Couldn't agree more with that statement.

There are a lot of symptoms to PTSD, but I'm not convinced that some are more relevant to different trauma's than others.

Absolutely they are... and let me explain why and how using the two most prevalent.

Combat and Rape. A trained soldier is pre-taught anger, they are trained to instinctively act in an aggressive manner when threatened. Now remember that keyword, threatened. Think about the first two criterion for PTSD, and what do you see in them? Threatened is part of the entry for diagnosis, along with symptoms of anger which are on a severity scale, along with every other symptom.

Sex. Sex is something that is more an emotional act for female gender, than the physical act. So when raped, the core of the majority female gender have their entire emotional morals torn out from under them, because something they grow with and feel is a positive attribute, an enjoyment emotionally to them with the right partner, and so forth, all shattered. As a result due to the core positive emotional aspects correlating with sex, love making; dissociative symptoms are far more prevalent within sexually abused sufferers than a combat veteran, who is mentally trained the opposite, to not dissociate and instead act in rage to remove the threat.

Absolutely symptoms change based on the foundation of trauma itself. There are plenty of studies that also show all these aspects... just do a search on Google Scholar or such, complex PTSD, sexual abuse, etc, and begin picking through the studies performed that clearly show, undisputed, differences in reactions to stimuli due to specific traumatic occurrences.

Its like bringing in those who's trauma is only MVA based, nothing else. They won't have the anger or dissociation, they will have far more fear and isolation of going outside... just being near vehicles, being worst end of the spectrum.

 

[anthony]

Sorry... not to be in disagreement, but more to help others see specifics, here are some examples of a reference I was pointed at just now... been reading through, and you can see with two examples given below, how both types of trauma uniquely suffer in specific areas depending on the trauma type:

Sexual Abuse

An example from the textbook Psychology introduces a 33-year-old nurse named Mary who suffered severe trauma in the weeks following an attack in her apartment by an intruder who raped her at knife point Criterion one . In the weeks after the attack Mary suffered from an immense fear of being alone in her apartment the second criterion , and preoccupied with attack, she feared it could happen again. Her worry developed in to an obsession with protection and she installed numerous locks on all her windows and doors, eventually Mary became so overly preoccupied with the attack that she could no longer go out socially or even return to work Criterion three and five . She became repelled by the idea of sex. Her associated behaviors encompass criterion four.

Veteran/s

In the seven years since the Gulf War, three percent of United States Soldiers have so far been diagnosed as having Posttraumatic Stress Syndrome. Those with greatest exposure to combat are the most likely sufferers, which lends to the idea that the more severe a traumatic event are more difficult it is to overcome. Additionally it develops predominantly in soldiers who were categorized as having the least “stress resistant personalities” coupled with low levels of social support. Essential to recovery of any stressful event is the knowledge that the sufferer is not alone or unique in the grief and that others care about his or her recovery. Those soldiers who returned from war with no one to share their experiences with are likely to re experience warfare in the form of nightmares and flashbacks. After witnessing the deaths of both enemies and comrades those without social support are likely to internalize their pain which have a good chance of escaping out of the body in the symptoms listed Bernstein.

Just from the above examples, you can see very different reactions and symptoms displayed, based on specific trauma type.

Yes, PTSD is the same for everyone, and every suffers the same range of symptoms at their worst, however; there will be symptoms that are worse based on the type of trauma.