ysabetwordsmith (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2013-03-19 02:44 pm
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2013-03-19 02:44 pm
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What PTSD Is
Here's a brilliant post about the kind of PTSD that builds slowly, a pervasive shift in worldview, rather than the kind that comes from a sudden major shock. This is how it can form in people who aren't front-line soldiers but rather support crew, or cops, or people living in poverty or neglectful relationships.
Now look at the part where it talks about society not being a safe place, everyone's out to get each other, no trustworthy connections, no safety net if something goes wrong, nobody to care if you live or die. That's what we're making our world into every time we cut public services and support. We're making it more like the place inside a PTSD sufferer's head. "Every man for himself and devil take the hindmost" isn't a society. It's madness.
Now look at the part where it talks about society not being a safe place, everyone's out to get each other, no trustworthy connections, no safety net if something goes wrong, nobody to care if you live or die. That's what we're making our world into every time we cut public services and support. We're making it more like the place inside a PTSD sufferer's head. "Every man for himself and devil take the hindmost" isn't a society. It's madness.
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Thank you for the link to that article, Ysabet. I'm going to be bookmarking it for certain people.
I'd still love to know how my colleagues on that team avoided ending up the way i have ... unless too much empathy was to blame, or something similar - I'll take feeling too much over too little.
Thoughts
*hugs* I'm glad I could help.
>>I'd still love to know how my colleagues on that team avoided ending up the way i have ... unless too much empathy was to blame, or something similar - I'll take feeling too much over too little.<<
Anyone can be broken, but not everyone's breaking point is in the same place. In particular, some people are highly resilient to sudden severe shocks but vulnerable to sustained stress, while others are the opposite. Some are damaged far more by harm to others than harm to themselves, some the opposite. One might be fearless in the face of weapons in the hands of an enemy but shattered by abuse from a relative, or vice versa. So if something horrid happens to a group of people, chances are some of them will sustain traumatic damage from it while others won't, and the degree of impairment and symptoms are likely to vary.
The more representations of PTSD that are available, the more likely people with it are to see something that matches their experience. So that helps identify it and encourage people to seek help if such is desired and available.
This divergence between different manifestations and expectations reminds me a bit of the situation with rape, where people usually think of stranger rape because it's so garish, but acquaintance rape is far more common. A lot of people who have been raped just don't realize it because their mental image of the crime is so different from what they experienced, even if it fits the legal definition. So for example, if people think of PTSD as a doorkicker's problem featuring vivid flashbacks, they might not recognize that three years of domestic abuse resulting in insomnia and touch-aversion could be a different facet of the same condition.
Re: Thoughts
>>So if something horrid happens to a group of people, chances are some of them will sustain traumatic damage from it while others won't, and the degree of impairment and symptoms are likely to vary.<<
I know that *intellectually*, but there were thirty odd of us all told, and sometimes, when I'm feeling especially broken I can't help but feel angry at them for not even noticed I was being broken by the cases i was dealing with. Both the personal (the suicide of a friend & the death in a RTA of another that forced me to pull away from part of my support structure) and the day in, day out deaths in Afghanistan, some for the stupidest reasons - and some because no one had read our reports yet.
Re: Thoughts
There's a long hard way between knowing and feeling.
>> but there were thirty odd of us all told, and sometimes, when I'm feeling especially broken I can't help but feel angry at them for not even noticed I was being broken by the cases i was dealing with. <<
Sooth. It may be that you hid it well; you're a strong person. It may be that some of them really didn't care. It's downright likely that some of them didn't see how wrecked you were, because they were wrecked too, just not showing it noticeably; it's often the case in groups that some damage will be more visible than others.
>>Both the personal (the suicide of a friend & the death in a RTA of another that forced me to pull away from part of my support structure) and the day in, day out deaths in Afghanistan, some for the stupidest reasons - and some because no one had read our reports yet.<<
Yeah, that last bit is really hard. Lack of accurate information can be fatal. I think people don't realize how crucial knowledge is. One of the things I deal with least well is problems caused by other people's ignorance or indifference in the face of knowledge that I have.
Re: Thoughts
I think the incidents that stick worst in my mind are the ones that involve egregious cases of that. 20:20 hindsight compounds things of course, but some things were just inexcusable once we'd found all the pieces - or as many as were left and put them together to find out what had *really* happened - and that kind of detail coupled with a mind used to meditations/trances and fabricating worlds for writing?
On the slightly brighter side of things, later this year I should be attending a chronic pain programme specifically geared for people with PTSD, despite technically not fufilling the diagnostic criteria on the UK psych manuals, as my secondary care professionals agree its the best course of treatment for me they can offer.
Re: Thoughts
Sooth. That's always going to hurt.
>>and that kind of detail coupled with a mind used to meditations/trances and fabricating worlds for writing?<<
Yyyyeah ... that's a problem. That kind of mindset can tear itself apart under the wrong circumstances. The strength and the weakness of the power are the same thing; like the way super hearing makes it possible to hear a lost person from a distance, but also makes sirens a misery. There are things I try to limit my exposure to for that kind of reason.
>>On the slightly brighter side of things, later this year I should be attending a chronic pain programme specifically geared for people with PTSD, despite technically not fufilling the diagnostic criteria on the UK psych manuals, as my secondary care professionals agree its the best course of treatment for me they can offer.<<
Good luck with it!
A lot of mental health care comes down to "We don't really know what's going on because the mind isn't something we can X-ray but this is the best we've been able to figure out as a solution." Sometimes it helps. It's just so much harder to fix things that can't be touched directly with what most people have available.
Re: Thoughts
Unfortunately at the time, orders were orders ... and mostly* I was doing okay while I knew I was actively making a difference. It was when I was discharged and I could still see what was happening, still left with enough knowledge to put together an approximation of each new death from the news I lost control for a bit.
*mostly because I had an officer I nicknamed Evil in my head ... she was mildly sociopathic, maybe? But she had a tendency to thoughtlessly hand me cases to work on that I'd specifically asked our colonel to be kept away from when he was out of the office and insist I work on them.
>>A lot of mental health care comes down to "We don't really know what's going on because the mind isn't something we can X-ray but this is the best we've been able to figure out as a solution." Sometimes it helps. It's just so much harder to fix things that can't be touched directly with what most people have available.<<
Gods above and below, I wish that the therapists would just admit that sometimes - I've just has a year of cognitive behaviour therapy, where thanks to the way the mental health system in the UK works and the diagnostic manual is written, I got treatment for exactly two thirds of my presenting mental health symptoms because I couldn't possibly have PTSD because there was no Trigger as defined by them. The potential treatment for the PTSD is actually being offered by the Consultant Anaesthetist leading the Pain Management team ... that's the screwy thing; that its not mental health services that's treating it.
But she can get away with it because I present with the symptoms, which means I'll do best in that program, which will cost less in the long term than having me fail one program and need more expensive painkillers, so it's at her discretion which course she puts me into. Without that, I could go much, much longer without treatment because i can't afford it privately.
Re: Thoughts