Do we all have PTSD ( post traumatic stress disorder) in some way?

Paco Dennis

Paco Dennis

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Mid-Missouri
I have been reading a lot of posts lately that express struggle and difficulty with managing issues. Deaths, jobs, scarcity, finances, politics, illness, and so many more. All of these will cause us stress and some of them can be and are traumatic, some more than others. We seem to keep our humor going and other essential topics. :) I have been thinking about what a mixture of good and bad life is. Everyday is filled with ups and downs...in various ways. I keep expecting it to get better. That in itself will cause stress, because life rarely gets THAT much better. :) I hope I am learning how to be a good friend of "me", instead of being so critical and negative about stuff. I am finding that it takes conscious effort to move my thinking from a downward spiral. I don't have to go down that road, and it IS up to me. So I am training myself to take the road less traveled, the hard way, and it does take effort. I also think we need to treat ourselves with as much love as we can. Not narcissitic love. More like best friends love.
 

I think more people have PTSD than is recognized. Some have a milder form, some a more severe form.
I don’t see how any military personnel that have seen combat cannot have some degree of PTSD. The same is true of law personnel.
Longterm worry over financial difficulties can trigger PTSD.
I wish we could do a better job or recognizing and treating the problem, especially with our soldiers.
 

Very timely topic. I just realized something relevant to this yesterday. I was having feelings of failure because my usually successful approach to most problems has been planning, organizing, anticipating, thinking ahead. It just hasn’t been operating like it should during the pandemic, and the “get a bigger hammer” approach won’t work either.

it just dawned on me yesterday that we have no real history on how to deal with crises coming from all directions like now. I can’t keep asking myself if maybe I’m not working hard enough.
I’m going to take a more forgiving, less punitive attitude toward my own coping efforts.
For me anyway, Im just going to have to set the mental tools aside and do a better job of just swimming with the tide.
 
Geezerette said:
Very timely topic. I just realized something relevant to this yesterday. I was having feelings of failure because my usually successful approach to most problems has been planning, organizing, anticipating, thinking ahead. It just hasn’t been operating like it should during the pandemic, and the “get a bigger hammer” approach won’t work either.

it just dawned on me yesterday that we have no real history on how to deal with crises coming from all directions like now. I can’t keep asking myself if maybe I’m not working hard enough.
I’m going to take a more forgiving, less punitive attitude toward my own coping efforts.
For me anyway, Im just going to have to set the mental tools aside and do a better job of just swimming with the tide.
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There is a saying in counselling, “sometimes, the most you can do is survive.”
 
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I don't think I have any form of PTSD, I am thankful for all that we have, and the past is past! If I wanted to moan and groan about a part of my past, I suppose I could. I choose not to worry about it. I know I am the only one responsible for my happiness and I choose to be happy.............except for this damned oxygen, it seems I actually need it. Then there is this damned cat........he is adorable and fiendish too. He wants to claw and chew on my hose, so I have to hide the cannula and soft part of the hose from him. However, that doesn't cause PTSD. He can't help being a kitten.
 
Paco Dennis said:
I have been reading a lot of posts lately that express struggle and difficulty with managing issues. Deaths, jobs, scarcity, finances, politics, illness, and so many more. All of these will cause us stress and some of them can be and are traumatic, some more than others. We seem to keep our humor going and other essential topics. :) I have been thinking about what a mixture of good and bad life is. Everyday is filled with ups and downs...in various ways. I keep expecting it to get better. That in itself will cause stress, because life rarely gets THAT much better. :) I hope I am learning how to be a good friend of "me", instead of being so critical and negative about stuff. I am finding that it takes conscious effort to move my thinking from a downward spiral. I don't have to go down that road, and it IS up to me. So I am training myself to take the road less traveled, the hard way, and it does take effort. I also think we need to treat ourselves with as much love as we can. Not narcissitic love. More like best friends love.
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A psychiatrist wrote a very interesting book that was primarily about anti-depressants but also covered a variety of other issues. One term he used was "creeping brackets"- enlarging the diagnostic criteria for virtually any and all medical and psychiatric conditions.
When it comes to PTSD specifically, I noticed a website awhile back that went as far as to list moving (relocating to a different place) as a 'trauma.'
Take, instead, the actual definition: https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/what/ptsd_basics.asp A person experiences or witnesses a life-threatening incident. Examples: war, sexual assault, natural disasters, fatal or near-fatal accidents.

When I was a kid, my father worked at a V.A., and many of the patients had what was then called shell-shock. It was changed to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder when it became known that living through other types of life-threatening situations could cause the same symptoms. But it was not meant to cover situations that were simply difficult, unpleasant, or bad. That's "Pharma" at work- along with the inaccurate claim that genuine PTSD can never be cured.
 
Thank you @JaniceM !! Excellent post. I agree 100%. What constitutes what is life threating is very complex. What could bring one to suicide ( life threatening ) could be very unnecessary to some/most, but it is the last straw for the suffering person. The universality of suffering and it's constant presence in our lives makes pain ( trauma of some sort ) . So the definitions are very important...medically, i guess the best way to deal with any suffering is with compassion and kindness.
 
PTSD is " disorder in which a person has difficulty recovering after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event."

No, I can't think of a terrifying event that I've been unable to recover from. I guess the 9/11 attack affected me for several days, but I recovered.
 
Gosh - and just when I thought life had treated me quite well, I find I probably have PTSD anyway??

One of the lucky ones, I had good folks, a lifetime with a good wife, good kids (who are now in their sixties), a decent job, and reasonably good health. I'd have to dig really deep to find seriously bad things that have happened over the years. Maybe I could have done without a few needed operations and made more money but PTSD - -I don't think so.

For a person like myself to use that term, demeans it's real meaning for those whose lives have been filled with tragedy, much of it beyond their control. I'll just muddle along in the short time I have left and hope I don't have to revise my thinking on the subject.
 
My crude opinion would be only a few people have PTSD. Others to a long list of negative emotional events simply have fading lingering emotional reactions that within days are gone. That is the way our neocortex controlled brain using the lizard brain amigdala works. Evolution given a normally developed mind, would not have beneficial reasons to allow its negative brain functions like anxiety to last beyond remembering whatever enough for future avoidance.

https://www.livescience.com/amygdala.html

Now it is true fair numbers of people are stressed emotional basket cases that over time inadvertently train their brain to be warped. Others regularly take so many neurosystem affecting drugs and substances over long periods that their brains also end up as basket cases. Of course in neither case will they likely look into a mirror as to why they ended up so.

The large neocortex is the part of the human brain that separates us from other animals. Recent neuroscience has discovered there are about 400k cortical columns in the neocortex each a physically complex 6-layer intertwining functional unit of neurons of repeating near identical structure. Each column is about 2 to 3 millimeters high at the surface of gray matter and about 1/2mm in diameter. Each cortical column contains about 60k neurons resulting in a total of about 25 billion neurons total in the neocortex. Cortical columns contains identical units termed minicolumns that function as pattern recognizers consisting of about 100 neurons or 400 total cells including glia. Within each pattern recognizer are about 100 neurons so about 200 million pattern recognizers in the brain. And each individual neuron contains a long single output structure axon with buttons at its end that attach to multiple input dendrites of following neurons. There may be thousands of dendrites on each neuron so trillions of connections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_column

When we humans are born the contents of these pattern recognizers are empty and during life we change them via neural plasticity chemistry connection processes that connect axon buttons to dendrites and as we age prune away unused dendrites. So unlike the old IQ narrative, we are more about what we make ourselves, what we experience and learn. Fill the brain of a genious with truth, logic, science, understanding, and the results can be incredibly productive and accomplished. And just like with computer programming, fill a high IQ person's mind with garbage and the result is garbage and illogic. Addressing this thread, fill one's brain with stress, anxiety, excessive negative emotions like fear, anger, hate, confusion and the result may be a warped mind susceptible to PTSD from events the rest of us would otherwise not have issues recovering from.
 
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David777 said:
Addressing this thread, fill one's brain with stress, anxiety, excessive negative emotions like fear, anger, hate, confusion and the result may be a warped mind susceptible to PTSD from events the rest of us would otherwise not have issues recovering from.
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I've seen with a few foster children that the horrifying experiences they went through did affect their brains, in addition to PTSD, flashbacks, hearing voices, and disassociating, they were super geniuses at watching everyone in the area and recognizing creepy/dangerous people.
 
It seems to me that all emotional disorders come in different degrees to different people, and that would include symptoms of PTSD. Psychologists draw arbitrary lines through the variations of degree before they issue a label for a disorder, and the process often includes an amount of guesswork. Almost everyone understands the concept and can empathize with PTSD to some degree, because we probably all have a little bit inside of us. We just don't have it to the degree psychologists need to make a diagnosis.
 
Paco Dennis said:
I have been reading a lot of posts lately that express struggle and difficulty with managing issues. Deaths, jobs, scarcity, finances, politics, illness, and so many more. All of these will cause us stress and some of them can be and are traumatic, some more than others. We seem to keep our humor going and other essential topics. :) I have been thinking about what a mixture of good and bad life is. Everyday is filled with ups and downs...in various ways. I keep expecting it to get better. That in itself will cause stress, because life rarely gets THAT much better. :) I hope I am learning how to be a good friend of "me", instead of being so critical and negative about stuff. I am finding that it takes conscious effort to move my thinking from a downward spiral. I don't have to go down that road, and it IS up to me. So I am training myself to take the road less traveled, the hard way, and it does take effort. I also think we need to treat ourselves with as much love as we can. Not narcissitic love. More like best friends love.
Click to expand...
Having that special someone who stands by you helps a lot. Trust me on this.
 
If I was going to suffer from PTSD it would have been because of my first experience of childbirth at 20 years of age. While quite traumatic at the time, the experience dissolved away when I held my rather large baby daughter for the first time.

I don't believe that any of my life experiences have damaged me permanently.
Changed me, yes. Damaged me profoundly, no.

I hesitate to equate my difficult experiences with those of people who have suffered the horrors of war or systematic cruelty over long periods of time, especially during their formative years.
 
I just read an AP update about the unspeakable mass murder of 36 in Thailand, including 24 preschoolers. A three year old girl named Paweenuch, apparently deeply asleep during the attack, was missed by the murderer and left unscathed.

I quote: "...people have also flocked to Paweenuch, tying dozens of white, yellow and red “soul strings” to her wrists in the hope it will help her also spiritually survive the horror, in the belief that when someone suffers such a tragedy, they lose part of their soul."

It struck me as a really good description of how deeply PTSD goes. People really do seem to lose part of their soul.

https://apnews.com/article/thailand...e&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_04
 
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