PTSD

PTSD Diagnosis

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When I was a high school student, I was diagnosed with OCD. That was in the early to mid 1950s. PTSD diagnosis did not come about till 1980.

Labels like OCD, depressive, alcoholic, bipolar, mood disorder, and schizophrenia pigeonholed, but accomplished nothing resembling a cure. Powerful drugs left us in a stupor, killing motivation for anything but sleep.

Back then, PTSD was a category for veterans returning from combat. Years later the diagnosis expanded to take in the suffering of others affected by trauma, overwhelmed by symptoms ranging from profound depression and confusion to self-harmful behaviors.

Like the vets, we suffer nightmares, flashbacks, explosive rage, and difficulty maintaining relationships.

Trauma

For someone suffering from PTSD, the present moment can be nightmarish. PTSD results from trauma associated with rape, molestation, and child abuse of any form, including neglect. It complexifies the problem when the source of nightmares, flashbacks, and explosive rage are not enemy combatants, but our own caretakers.

After trauma, energy is focused on suppressing inner chaos at the expense of spontaneous involvement in life. These attempts to maintain control can result in a whole range of physical & mental symptoms, so it is important for therapy to engage the entire body and mind. Trauma survivors suffer a host of physical problems along with the mental and emotional gamut.

Understanding past trauma does little to help in dealing with present trauma. That is why talk therapy attempting to help with insight and understanding to manage behavior is seldom effective. Brain scans show the problem originates deep in the emotional brain. When the emotional brain signals danger, cognitive talk therapy cannot counter.

Talk Therapy

Talk therapy did not affect the transformation from mild-mannered man to raging, destroying, out-of-control monster. It was that dramatic and it took place in shockingly brief moments. In a matter of minutes I destroyed an entire living room set of furniture. No matter how much insight and planning, the emotional brain has a reality of its own and it is the emotional brain that reigns.

Public Domain

In all the years of therapy, rage was hardly discussed. Neither was PTSD. Probably a lot to do with the overpowering shame at the complete lack of control and violent destructive behavior. The only therapist I shared this with was the spouse abuse counselor, and it required Valium for her to stay with me a full session.

We make bizarre decisions and engage in self-defeating behavior. Millions of us end up imprisoned.  We are emotional animals with a dinner napkin-thin neocortex. We are overwhelmed  by lightning-fast affective feelings from a subcortical brain that shuts down our rational mind.

Triggers

Dread and rage can be triggered by most any event in the external and internal environment. Triggers are dependent on each unique trauma. Triggers send the emotional brain time-traveling back to the initial trauma.  Never fully here and alive in the present, the brain is in constant battle — zapping life energy to keep the emotional brain suppressed.

Before taking Prozac, I had absolutely no control. Prozac lowered the trigger point dramatically. This opened the possibility for self-therapies: Ki Breathing Meditation, Open Focus Training, Attention Therapy, and Metacognitive Therapy, And Cognitive Therapy.

Triunal Brain

I have found knowledge of the brain important to understanding how trauma affects the mind and body. Understanding the triunal (three-part) brain helps to confront present trauma.

Reptilian Brain

Our reptilian brain, present at birth, is the brain of reptiles and includes the brainstem and hypothalamus sitting above it. The reptilian brain controls heart rate, lungs, breathing, body temperature, defecating, and balance. It coordinates the functioning of the endocrine and immune systems and ensures systems maintained within balance known as homeostasis.

Limbic Brain

Limbic brain, next to come online, sits atop the reptilian brain. Development of the limbic brain begins right after birth. All mammals share this limbic brain. It is individually shaped by an infant’s experience together with genes, but can be affected later in life  by epigenetics.. The reptilian and limbic brain are sometimes referred to as the emotional brain.

Neocortex

In the second year of life, the frontal lobes, which make up the bulk of our neocortex (outer brain) begins development at a fast pace. The frontal lobes are the executive brain enabling us to use language and to think abstractly.

Attention Therapies

Attention Therapies reach down to the limbic brain where raw emotions bubble up into semiconsciousness. Focus on Ki Breathing Meditation, Open Focus, and ATT in place of ruminating on thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

Ki Breathing Meditation

Breathing is the core of Attention Therapies. Few people are aware of even the basic mechanics of breathing and its effects on our mind and body. Fewer know of breathing as a major skill for peak performance, flow, and transformation. Ki Breathing Meditation affects body and mind and is my daily go-to self therapy. Ki Breathing Meditation makes other therapies viable. It helps keep the reptilian and limbic brain in check.

Open Focus is a mix of narrow and diffuse focus. If you are narrowly focused on a book you are reading, in open focus mode you take in the the space all around.  If you are engrossed in an internal dialog, you open up and experience the world all around. You alternate attention between narrow and diffuse focus, sometimes paying attention simultaneously in both modes.

Focus on the process of attending with Open Focus and Attention Training Therapy (ATT). Open focus concerns spacial focus; ATT focuses more on sound.  A focus on process and away from problem-solving is healing.

Insight Meditation

Step back from reacting and judging what your brain is thinking about for the ten thousandth time. Take the Point of View (POV) of an observer. What are the patterns of your thinking? Are you going over and over the same thoughts? Are you focusing on each discomforting sensation. Think and feel without reacting or judging. Step back in your mind and allow thoughts, emotions, and sensations to come and go without clinging.

Find a balance of therapies that work for you. Include the body as a process. Somatics, yoga, jogging, swimming, resistance exercises, whatever balance of therapies that work for you.

Self-help books that help:

Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus

The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body