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PTSD
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder |
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DISCLAIMER:
Although this website, related blogsite,
and listed resources provide an avenue for information and
discussions on sensitive veterans issues, we
wish to make it very clear that we recommend
veterans, and their family members, should
always seek help from professionally
qualified medical and clinical sources.
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What is Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder? |
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PTSD is an acronym for Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder. It is a word formed from
the initial letters of a name or combining
initial letters of a series of words to form
an application of something; like WAC for
Women’s Army Corps or RADAR for Radio
Detecting And Ranging; so this is what
the PTSD letters stand for, Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder. Now that you
know what PTSD stands for, let’s move on to
what it is!
If you happened to read my overview on “Filing
A Claim” then sit back and read with
interest what I have to say here. I have no
acronyms after my name like, BS…MS…or PhD.
But have learned about PTSD through a self
taught course by experiencing PTSD, going
through PTSD counseling, and learning about
something I didn’t know I had for nearly
four (4) decades. I knew something was wrong
with me for forty years, but I didn’t know
exactly what or why. In all that time I
never made the connection, never connected
the dots, between what I experienced in
Vietnam under combat and what the hell my
behavior had to do with it during the next
forty (40) years. So as far as PTSD goes, I
did not come out of some school for social
workers doing my master’s degree in PTSD
counseling; I came out of a combat situation
over forty years ago with the infection and
medical condition of PTSD and have had to
learn to live with it. And you can live with
it and manage it whether you are the last
surviving member of World War I or a new
veteran experiencing PTSD for the first
time. There is hope and you can get through
this.
Now this section is specifically for and
about Combat PTSD in veterans. That is where
my experience comes from, but in a larger
sense there are a lot of similarities and
symptoms that cross over into other areas of
the trauma experience. So let’s take the
common sense approach in trying to explain
PTSD as I see it; and hopefully give you,
the visitor to this website, some
enlightenment for yourself and your
families. |
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I guess if you are a combat veteran you
already have a good idea about this
question. Well, it didn’t come from a toilet
seat, it wasn’t something you ate, and it
wasn’t your fault for getting it. As my
old Drill instructor used to say: “Did
you hear what I said soldier?”
Getting PTSD is not your fault. No body
that I know ever wanted to have it or have
to deal with its effects and symptoms in
their life. But the larger more important
question should really be: “How do I
deal with PTSD?” Well, if you stick
with me on this, I’ll try to give you the
best suggestions and understanding I can
about that question further in this study
course of PTSD 102.
From this point forward I want it understood
that this is my understanding of PTSD, what
it is, what happened in the process of
getting it, why it is a treatable medical
condition, and how you, yes, you the
individual with combat PTSD, can
take a pro-active approach in
dealing with PTSD symptoms and effects in
your life. PTSD is a medical condition. You
have to educate yourself and understand what
you are dealing with and why? So lets’ go
through the nickel tour of understanding the
foundational principles of PTSD. Remember, I
am a foxhole soldier talking from my own
experiences.
Now pay attention, this is the Cerebral part
of our course on PTSD and you may have to
read this part or section over more than
once to absorb it, but heck you’re a veteran
you can take it. Just consider this your
reading assignment.
The first thing is that PTSD is about your
brain. Your brain is like the engine in a
car. The engine makes the car move and
function. Your brain makes you move and
function. Thoughts are things.
When you think you eventually form concepts.
These concepts are then interpreted into
action, doing something; non-action, not
doing anything; or neutral not committing,
but thinking about whether to act or not act
until you have enough information to form a
concept, and thus to act or not act. So as
we grow and make mistakes and gain
experience we begin to know and understand
what works for us and what doesn’t and
generally some form of moral conduct is
established within us to help guide us in
the right direction. Add to this a veteran’s
emotional make up while he or she is
maturing and learning and then throw in a
person’s needs, wants and desires, and the
brain begins to take on a pretty complicated
set of calculations that guide a person
through life. When we were growing up,
things like issues were pretty much in Black
and White terms. As we grew older like in
our twenties we found out that Black and
White now more often than not came in shades
of Gray. So in combat learning shades of
gray comes a little earlier for us and it
becomes confusing at times to deal with the
situations. Why? Because they are life and
death issues now, and you are not back at
the local Drive-In in Podunk, Somewhere.
Simply put, trauma, and especially long term
combat trauma, starts screwing up this
normal process in the brain so that a whole
new set of elements is mixed in and causes
the brain to function differently. This is
where PTSD comes in. I have come to think of
PTSD as the body’s way of protecting you and
helping you to survive horrible situations
and circumstances in combat.
So here is what THEY know from research and
study. That there are brain structures in
human beings responsible for aggressive
behavior. Normally during our socialization
process, our growing up years, we are taught
to refrain from using these aggressive brain
structures.
The problem with Combat PTSD, and long term
exposure to trauma situations, is that we
have found out that the primitive or
aggressive brain structures undergo
chemical changes in how the brain works,
which in turn influences behavior in certain
social situations. In other words, the
combat trauma you experienced produced
chemicals in your body that made permanent
changes in your brain and your body. Simply
what this means is that when you are in a
stressful situation it makes you extremely
uncomfortable.
Research has also shown, especially in
combat veterans’ with extended traumatic
exposures, that it can damage parts of the
brain responsible for holding information in
short term memory and increases the use of
that part of the brain which lacks language
ability. The bottom line is that because of
the specific damage that combat veterans
experience they often have problems with
short term memory loss, attention and
concentration problems, mood swings and
sleep disorders. Is this starting to make
sense to you? So what does this mean? It
simply means that in combat veterans with
PTSD the parts of your brain which are
responsible for anger, rage and fear, begin
to take charge in your life and rule your
behavior. And to the combat veteran, and
others close to them, their actions many
times have no connection to what is going on
in civilian life. They simply don’t
recognize the connection between the combat
trauma experiences, years or even decades
later and now in everyday life. They just
know something has set you off. They simply
can’t say this is what I am experiencing and
this is how it affects me. The combat
veteran and the family members don’t have a
clue. Counseling gives you the clues, what
to recognize and how to connect the dots.
Now lean closer to the screen and pay close
attention. There is a specific part of
the brain that has the responsibility for
storing or holding short term memory
information called the hippocampus.
It becomes damaged when the individual is
in, or exposed to, prolonged traumatic
stressful environments. For combat veterans,
as a prime example, under prolonged stress
the hippocampus can be reduced in size as
much as twenty percent. The
hippocampus has the added responsibility of
not only storing or holding short term
memory information but of projecting that
information into the higher cortex or smart
part of the brain for processing. The higher
cortex is the debriefing part of the brain
that filters the incoming reports from the
front line brain cells.
Now here is where it gets a little more
interesting. The hippocampus is your working
memory. Short term memory. I guess you could
compare it to the RAM portion in a computer.
The Hippocampus can hold so
many bits of short term memory information.
Through damage, like traumatic stress, it
develops the inability to hold as many bits
of information. Then a competing sub
cortical structure in the brain called the
Amygdala, responsible for rage
and fear in the survival mode function of
fight or flight, orders the body to produce
adrenaline or other chemicals. When this
occurs the higher cortex, or smart part of
the brain, is overwhelmed by the lower, more
primitive psychological processes. Sort of
intellectual vs. survivalists brain cells.
To put it another way, its like a bunch of
front line soldiers telling the Commanding
General they are taking over what needs to
be done and the General is no longer in
command because they are getting their asses
shot off and they are being overrun; and the
General is back in some nice bunker sipping
cold beer.
Your brain has two thinking protectors for
you. One the hippocampus and the other the
Amygdala. Both have your best interests at
heart. When information comes into your
working brain both of these parts of your
brain process the information. The
hippocampus sends this information to your
higher smart brain for sorting and sifting
until the incoming stimuli is identified and
then the smart brain sends back information
on how to properly deal with that stimuli.
In your life experiences certain sights,
sounds, smells, and situations become
triggers of arousal. In combat trauma these
experiences are very strongly imprinted in
the brain. If the Amygdala has learned that
these triggers are signs of danger then it
immediately takes over in a sort of survival
mode. The hippocampus then becomes
overwhelmed and unable to activate or get
the stimuli information to the higher
cognitive or thinking process. I guess you
might say it just freezes up. When this
occurs the Amygdala rules. Unfortunately,
what you learned and experienced in combat
is now attached to you for the rest of your
life. So when you act or react as though you
were still in a war zone, and think in terms
of danger and self survival for you and
others, but it is now in a back home
environment, your actions and reactions are
now inappropriate in a “civilized society”,
your behavior is then unacceptable.
Trauma comes from a Greek word meaning
wounding. Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder is mental wounding. Rather
than having a physical wound where you see a
bullet hole, or shrapnel with blood, you
have psychological wounds. It can’t be seen
with the naked eye but combat veterans’ feel
its effects inside themselves all the time.
Almost seventy percent of combat veterans
with combat PTSD can also be identified with
other diagnosable health problems. The most
recognizable are what is known as “affective
disorder”, or mood disorder, and substance
abuse with some form of drug or alcohol--a
way of numbing yourself to the realities of
the world. If you are a combat veteran
reading this, does this make sense to you? |
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The Difference Between
You And The Normal |
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Here is a good illustration between you,
the combat veteran with PTSD, and the
normals… those with out PTSD.
The arousal scale goes from One to One
Hundred percent. When the normal person
wakes up they are about a five on the
arousal scale. When a normal person gets
ready for work the arousal scale starts to
rise slowly so by the time they are in their
car going to work they are now maybe at
twelve or fifteen on the arousal scale. Then
they have to deal with the ride to work and
the other insensitive drivers and now maybe
their arousal level is at twenty. First
thing that happens when they get to work is
their boss calls and tells normal nice
person they want to see them in their office
immediately. Now another five points is
added on the scale for anxiety and
expectation. When they see the boss they are
told they are being given a new project to
work on for the company--and by the way the
boss says, “Don’t screw up this project like
you did the last one.” Normal nice person
goes back to their cubical with a now
elevated thirty on the arousal scale. As the
day progresses more numbers are added to the
arousal scale so that by the time the normal
person gets home from work, they are now at
maybe fifty or fifty five percent on the
arousal scale.
Now, here comes the surprise, the combat
veteran with PTSD generally starts their day
out at about the fifty percent arousal
level on a scale of one to one hundred.
When you understand this you begin see that
just waking up already puts the combat vet
at the arousal level that a normal person
ends their day with. Now is this beginning
to make any sense to you? |
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First, realize that getting combat
PTSD is not your fault. Second,
there is something you can do about it! It
is manageable if you know and understand
what you are dealing with, and then you can
decide to direct your PTSD symptoms into
positive energy outlets. Third, go
to my article on “Filing A Claim”
and get started on your claim and follow my
directions very carefully.
Fourth, and this is a WARNING
with a caution: Find a good PTSD counselor
for one-on-one and group treatment of PTSD.
One that is fee based paid and you don’t pay
for the counseling after you file your
claim. WHY? Because PTSD is a
clinical problem, it deals with the
emotional, psychological and physical side
of you as a human being. You need to have
someone who deals specifically with PTSD
issues in combat vets, and can help you get
through the beginning stages of discovering
your PTSD and how it affects you and your
family and friends. You also need a support
group and other individuals who know exactly
what you are dealing with and going through.
You need a support group and a counselor
there with you when you deal with this PTSD
CRAP. You need to debrief from your combat
experiences, sometimes decades down the
line, that you have never dealt with before.
Remember, you have been wounded as surely as
if you had a bullet rip through your body in
combat. When you start picking at the PTSD
scabs you will find there is a lot of
emotional PTSD pus inside you and you need a
good PTSD counselor and/or PTSD group to
help you work through the things that have
been hidden and buried for a long time. In
many cases a lot of combat ugly things. How
do I know this? I went through this and have
personally witnessed over 100 other PTSD
veterans go through this process. So do I
know what I am talking about, YES I DO!
PTSD is TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) in my
opinion.
Your brain has been combat damaged by stress
chemicals from within your own body as a
natural reaction to survival mode you
experienced in combat--and it does come
under service connected experiences and
situations so don’t let any one else tell
you differently! Nobody who knows what
PTSD is, and is medically qualified, will
ever deny this or refute it. PTSD can
not be reversed, as some in the VA would
have you believe, but it can be managed.
However, it needs you, the combat veteran,
to take a proactive approach to learning how
to manage this thing called PTSD. And as my
old Drill Sergeant use to say: “Are
you hearing me soldier?” |
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Once you are found to be suffering the
effects of PTSD, as a combat veteran, by the
VA, it usually means some form or type of
drug therapy will be prescribed to help you
manage your PTSD. There is nothing wrong
with taking medication that will help you
cope with you PTSD. If you are proscribed
any medications by anyone with the VA, or
otherwise, make sure that they have a
background working with PTSD, and that they
have a working knowledge of the symptoms and
effects of PTSD. Remember, and always
remember, that proper diagnosis in
medicine is the hardest thing to do.
Once a proper diagnosis is discovered then
proper treatment can be applied.
Now again, read this out loud right now as
you are reading this screen: Once a
proper diagnosis is discovered then proper
treatment can be applied.
If you have any questions about
medications, please email us and we will try
to give you our best thoughts on the matter.
We are not doctors or medication
specialists, but we do want to know if you
suspect improper medical advice has been
given to you, it may help another veterans
down the line. |
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