What is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and How Do I Know if I Have It?

1.  In an interview with Dr. Marylene Cloitre, Amy-eden posted this on her blog (a great blog for ACOA recovery), Guess What Normal Is:

“Do You Have PTSD from Childhood?”

“Panic.  Anxiety.  Fear. Nightmares.  Insomnia.  Fuzzy-brain feeling.  Indecision.  Confusion.  Out-of-body numbness.  Dissociation.  Reacting to present-day events from the past’s influence.  These are all familiar states of being and feeling to people who grew up in an environment influenced by alcoholism, workaholism, narcissism, depression, or otherwise dysfunctional parenting that involved neglect. If you know these feelings, does that mean you have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?”

“Quite possibly.”

“Marylene and I discussed how PTSD is diagnosed today, as well as historically, and how people with PTSD can get better with therapeutic treatment. (Yes, there’s hope!)”

“THE BASICS OF POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD)”

“While many of the questions I discussed with Marylene were focused on the fallout of being someone raised by dysfunctional parents, she also outlined the basics of PTSD in general—as well as a bit of high-level controversy among psychologists.  “There is some controversy,” she forewarned me, “about what kinds of experiences can precipitate the development of PTSD. At present, a person has to have had a certain type of event occur in order to qualify for a PTSD diagnosis,” she says. “And childhood adversities such as neglect or psychological abuse are not formally recognized as experiences that can cause PTSD. Still, we know that people who experience childhood adversity do get PTSD—so you can see that there’s something wrong with the existing definition of events that precipitate it.”  The good news (for us) is that the DSM that comes out in 2013 will reflect a new diagnostic approach to PTSD which may focus exclusively on the symptoms and abandon the requirement that a certain events (and not others) cause PTSD. (The DSM is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.)”

“Dissociation—feelings of unreality—is one of the hallmarks associated with Acute Stress Disorder (ASD),” Marylene says. “But this is somewhat controversial because that feeling isn’t currently connected to the PTSD diagnosis, although dissociation is widely recognized within the community as a symptom that occurs with PTSD.”

“ASD symptoms occur right after the event. While many people have ASD which resolves on its own within three months or so, it is a risk factor for developing PTSD.  It identifies people who are at risk for developing a chronic stress reaction. The timing is essential to the diagnosis,” Marylene explains. “When the acute stress symptoms last past three months following a traumatic event, it can become a conversation about a potential PTSD diagnosis.”  The symptoms of ASD are identical to those of PTSD, with the exception of the additional dissociation symptoms.”

2. From Pastor Dave writing at PTSD and Ministry in a post entitled “Piling On“:

“However, the official definition of PTSD from Princeton University and found on the sidebar of the blog reads, “PTSD is an anxiety disorder associated with serious traumatic events and characterized by such symptoms as survivor guilt, reliving the trauma in dreams, numbness and lack of involvement with reality, or recurrent thoughts and image”  These traumatic events can be one large event – or a series of smaller events that continue to pile on.”

“When we look at our case study, Hawkeye Pierce, we see that he is surrounded by trauma, he’s an Army Surgeon in a warzone, that’s to be expected.  There wasn’t one event that pushed him to Sidney though, it was the culmination of all of the wounded, all of the death, all of the destruction, all of the stress and anxiety that caused the spiritual and emotional implosion.”

“Most of us don’t live our lives in a war zone, but there are those who have been piled on throughout the years.  Abuse, abandonment, trauma, death, fear, feeling threatened.  When those events pile up over the years  one can begin to experience PTSD symptoms, guilt, numbness, nightmares, dreams.  While a psychological professional may not diagnose PTSD because of the lack of a specific traumatic event – the wounded soul is still wounded – and the wound looks similar.”

“When I look at my life, there is a specific event that led to me being diagnosed with PTSD.  I can name it, I can tell you about it, it’s an event on a calendar every year for me.  However, going through counseling (PROFESSIONAL HELP IS A MUST) I came to realize that there were many little wounds on my soul as well as the one large wound.”

“Would I have shut down from the little wounds?  We will never know, however as my life continued there would have been more little wounds, one after another until perhaps one day I would have found myself numb, withdrawing, having nightmares.  The wounded soul is the wounded soul, it’s the feeding ground of the dragon.  Whether that wound is a long jagged festering wound of TRAUMA, or death by a million paper cuts of traumas, the soul is wounded.”

3.  From Heal My PTSD, Michele Rosenthal writes about her PTSD recovery in “PTSD Recovery: The Reality of Change“:

“This week I’m doing something I never thought I would do: I’ve come back to New York City. We arrived on Saturday, but with last night’s news of the death of Osama Bin Laden, this trip has suddenly become even more meaningful than I expected. I was living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on 9/11. The memories of that day are, of course, still picture perfect in my mind.”

“For those of you who don’t know this part of my story, NYC is the place of my trauma. More than that, it’s the place in which my PTSD raged so out of control I scared myself. It’s also the place in which I bounced around the offices of medical and psychiatric professionals looking for help that never came. I left the city so that I could heal.”

“During my years of healing my family took frequent trips back to NYC. I could never go with them. The thought of getting on the plane was enough to trigger me with anxiety, stress and emotional meltdown. The idea of going back to a place that was so riddled with pain and sadness and the danger of my own insanity was too much for me to even consider it. Even immediately after my recovery I had a sort of superstitious feeling that NYC was cursed and I was better off staying out of it.”

“Now, however, I’m back. My whole family has come back to celebrate my brother’s big __th birthday. And here’s what’s fun about PTSD recovery: Now that it’s all over and solid and I’ve moved so far on with my life, I’m actually excited to romp in the city for a few days. Saturday night we went to a play on Broadway. Yesterday we went to the Yankee game. This afternoon we’re going to the Metropolitan Museum. And while, yes, the ghost of my other sad self is here, and while, yes, I feel sorry for and acknowledge her past pain, I’m loving being here as who I am today.”

“We can make progress out of that awful place where PTSD drags us. We can shift out of that terrible chaos and find a place of peace. If, according to Judith Herman, a ‘central task’ of recovery is establishing safety, this means not only in the therapeutic environment but also in the physical world. Sometimes, it means (as if did for me) making a drastic change by leaving the place of my trauma so that I could heal in a place that offered me a blank slate.”

“I’ve heard from other survivors who’ve relocated to heal. It can seem like a drastic move, but everyone I’ve heard from agrees: Sometimes letting go and starting over means letting go of everything, including your hometown. Later, when you’ve tamed the PTSD beast, you can choose to go back — and have a really good time doing it!”

“Today, I dedicate this post to all the survivors of 9/11 — those who gave their lives, those who tried to save them, and the families and friends left behind.”

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