Removing Therapy Type Confusion

[anthony]

I like to think of all the big words like this when explaining them to people.... if it has to do with psycho.... then it simply means they are trying to get between your conscious and sub-conscious. If it is cognitive based, which means someone has either pre-trained you or training you as you go, then your cognition is attempting to be changed.

Acupuncture, obviously does nothing with your cognitive functions, nor does the acupuncturist try and change cognitive function, hence it is a naturopathic medicine, even though the results can and do relieve symptoms.

 

[No Folded Hands]

As I read through this it seems to me we are essentially talking about desensitization. Physical desentization therapy has been done for a long time in relation to allergies; and psychological desensitization for phobias is similar.

 

[anthony]

Desensitization is part of both cognitive and behavioural aspects, yes... though only an aspect.

 

[Froggie]

Anthony I'm really awed with what you have come up with, thanks so much for this information, I'll have more questions to ask but I have to leave for a medical appt. early this morning and then will be away for a couple of days. I should be paid for being a grand-mother helping my kids out ! will be back on this subject, really an eye opener.

 

[Ted Moen]

I asked the facilitator of the VA PTSD group I go to about this and the VA here does not offer it and she said she doubts its effectiveness anyway.

Hey Femaleveteran, I think they specialize in EMDR at the inpatient program at North Chicago. I know many vets with ptsd (Detroit VA) who have gone through the program in North Chicago and almost all report positive results.

Ted

 

[Blutarg]

Very interesting Anthony and puts everything 'in it's place'. Thank you again for a very valid article.

 

[Teddy]

Sometimes I find all this stuff so confusing.....
There are so many big words and yet I feel like none of them do that much. They certainly don't seem to live up to their impressive names...
I have been fighting this crazy stuff for 16 years and am now being told that the stuff they wanted to do with me back then would have been more harmful than good.
I have however had some relief from the symptoms by simply running through the experience with my T. Usually I just talk about 'what happened' but during the one session (had to stop for other family reasons, damn it) that I got so much out of, she then told me, in my words, what happened. (she told me the story as if she was me and she said it out loud) All I can tell you was that it was one of the most excruiating experiences I have ever had and I ended up trying to beat my way out of the room through the glass paneled walls of her office. She just kept going with her talking calmly, no matter how much I begged her to stop. I was crying and it was really messy as she told me step by step, in my words, what happened.
Now I don't know what the difference was with her saying it versus me saying it but honestly there was a remarkable change in a lot of my symptoms. For the better of course! Thankfully!!!
She did explain to me some about that she believed that with a trauma situation, your brain takes in fragments of information in a way that it scatters the 'bits of info' all around your brain. Basicly the story doesn't have a line holding all the bits together. It is fragmented.
By doing this sort of therapy she said that it would help pull the bits into place so that there was a line to the story thus it would make more sense and the panic or something, would be minimilised. (like finding bits of a jigsaw from all around the room and putting them together into one picture)
I haven't a clue, I unfortunately only was able to do the one session and since then have had alot of family traumas, jump in, so have been too unwell to go do any more. I am not sure if I am even explaining this very well but whatever happened that day in that session has been the only thing that has made any marked differences for me and whilst I felt like it was going to kill me at the time, it didn't and I have noticed some major improvements since.
Perhaps Anthony can explain it. Buggared if I can!!
But perhaps it might help some one reading this.......

 

[femaleveteran]

thing is about some of the resident PTSD programs is that they do not take women. I asked about them a month or so ago when someone from another VA somewhere in Virginia, I think, came here to talk about the program there and at that one they only take male veterans. I asked my group facilitator if there were any that take women and she said that there is only one that she knows of that takes women veterans and it is at a VA in Cincinatti, OH. I guess you get to come home after the first couple weeks for the weekend and stuff though so it is not like being on a locked down psychiatric ward which i have heard is horrible. I dont know if I will get a chance to go to any resiodential program any time soon anyhow so it is up to me to figure out what is going to work....in the short term anyway.

 

[No Folded Hands]

That's something I've run into as well, although not in regard to resident programs, just in regards to all other programs. Women need not apply at the VA. I beleieve, from what I've heard here and there, that it is largely a function of the VA not having caught up to the reality of females having PTSD as well as males. Often I have heard its not that women are being excluded, but that only combat veterAns are allowed into programs. That, of course, excludes almost all women from eras earlier than the current one whether they were in combat situations or not -- they do not have combat zone or combat MOS tacked on after their names.

 

[anthony]

Just slightly discriminatory I believe still... obviously the US VA system are a little behind times...

 

[femaleveteran]

Well the VA better get over it really quick because there are few areas in Iraq where women did not go or even serve in for extended periods time while working there. Truthfully there were very few parts of that country that could not be considered a combat zone, if there were any places at all. Considering suicide bombers have no hesitation in blowing up even their own houses of worship then hopefully you will see my point. I find it hard to believe that there would have ever been any safe areas in any warzone whether it was in WW2 or any other war.

For Example, I think most who served and/or lived in Europe during that time would agree that adjacent countries were no safer than Germany was for Jewish persons during WW2.

I suspect that with Afghanistan steadily ramping up that the same thing will happen with women there. And, for me personally, I have not had a problem being accepted as a combat veteran as far as the groups I go to at the VA and whatnot. I have been just as accepted in the groups I have attended by MOST veterans of other wars and not just my fellow vets from Iraq who know what type of area I worked in.

I just know that this one VA residential treatment program that sent representatives to the VA in my area to talk about their program only accepted males as residents. I was going to attend the informational meeting just to check it out and when I asked to sign up for the meeting my group facilitator told me it would be a waste of time and she also definitely told me that the only residential VA treatment program currently in existence for female veterans with (how she put it was) "evidence based PTSD" was according to her located in Cincinatti OH. I am sure that program also is burdened currrently with the fact that I am sure it has to accomodate female vets with PTSD who were not only serving in combat zones but who might have PTSD from other military related traumas as well (i.e. sexual and/or other forms of assault while serving, witnessing or being the victim of training accidents in the military, etc....) So while there might be programs sprinkled throughout the country for men there is just the one for women. I am sure the facilitator, since she is a PhD and has worked for the VA for ten years or so, knows what she is talking about with regards to that issue at least. i hope that she does anyway...if not then I need to seriously reconsider being in her group period.

And I suppose there rightly should be more programs for the most part since I am sure the percentage of males presenting to the VA with PTSD is probably higher given the fact that in most other wars up to this one men served mainly on established front lines and such...and given the fact that there are simply more men serving in the military in general than there are women...and that goes for any MOS...As I said -- in Iraq, it is a little different than other theatres of war in the past have been in that there were no established front lines...the whole country was one big rambling front line....still is I gather.

As well, based upon what I have learned from talking to other veterans who have dealt with the VA for decades, it seems to me that is the habit of the VA to not fix a problem until they get presented with an overwhelming need to do so. It is a systemic problem that the VA has had since it came into being and not one unfamiliar to most other government related departments/entities/organizations etc...

So as more and more women come back from the various theatres of the War on Terror with PTSD then I guess, maybe in the next fifteen-twenty years, the VA will catch up to the need for such programs to be as widely available across the country for women as they are for men. I am not going to concern myself so much with the idea of residential treatment right now as I am just trying to make it through the week at this point. As I start to see a need for different treatments for myself or if there is something I think will be benficial to me then I will just have to get it myself. I could say alot more on this subkect but out of respect i will try to stay on the current topic of removing therapy type confusion as opposed to creating it

.

 

[anthony]

Lets keep this on topic please... which is about therapy type confusion, not VA.