PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

[Green Eyed Fairy]

I did a forum search for PTSD.....only came up with some old posts....one of them being my own.

I was diagnosed about 9 years ago with PTSD. It came from childhood abuse.

What is PTSD aka Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

It's natural to be afraid when you're in danger. It's natural to be upset when something bad happens to you or someone you know. But if you feel afraid and upset weeks or months later, it's time to talk with your doctor. You might have post-traumatic stress disorder.
What is post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD?

PTSD is a real illness. You can get PTSD after living through or seeing a dangerous event, such as war, a hurricane, or bad accident. PTSD makes you feel stressed and afraid after the danger is over. It affects your life and the people around you.

If you have PTSD, you can get treatment and feel better.
Who gets PTSD?

PTSD can happen to anyone at any age. Children get PTSD too.

You don't have to be physically hurt to get PTSD. You can get it after you see other people, such as a friend or family member, get hurt.
What causes PTSD?

Living through or seeing something that's upsetting and dangerous can cause PTSD. This can include:

* Being a victim of or seeing violence
* The death or serious illness of a loved one
* War or combat
* Car accidents and plane crashes
* Hurricanes, tornadoes, and fires
* Violent crimes, like a robbery or shooting.

There are many other things that can cause PTSD. Talk to your doctor if you are troubled by something that happened to you or someone you care about.
How do I know if I have PTSD?

* Your doctor can help you find out. Call your doctor if you have any of these problems:
* Bad dreams
* Flashbacks, or feeling like the scary event is happening again
* Scary thoughts you can't control
* Staying away from places and things that remind you of what happened
* Feeling worried, guilty, or sad
* Feeling alone
* Trouble sleeping
* Feeling on edge
* Angry outbursts
* Thoughts of hurting yourself or others.

Children who have PTSD may show other types of problems. These can include:

* Behaving like they did when they were younger
* Being unable to talk
* Complaining of stomach problems or headaches a lot
* Refusing to go places or play with friends.

When does PTSD start?

PTSD starts at different times for different people. Signs of PTSD may start soon after a frightening event and then continue. Other people develop new or more severe signs months or even years later.
How can I get better?

PTSD can be treated. A doctor or mental health professional who has experience in treating people with PTSD can help you. Treatment may include "talk" therapy, medication, or both.

Treatment might take 6 to 12 weeks. For some people, it takes longer. Treatment is not the same for everyone. What works for you might not work for someone else.

Drinking alcohol or using other drugs will not help PTSD go away and may even make it worse.
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-easy-to-read/index.shtml

I also have an eating disorder.....and have suffered from depression and anxiety.

PTSD and eating disorders co-occur. This may not be too surprising given that a number of psychiatric disorders have been found to co-occur with PTSD, including, for example, major depression, anxiety disorders, borderline personality disorder, and substance use disorders.

Eating Disorders

Eating disorders are characterized by severe problems in eating behaviors. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition recognizes two eating disorders: anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.

Anorexia nervosa is condition where a person refuses to maintain a healthy body weight (determined by a person's age and height). Bulimia nervosa, on the other hand, is characterized by a cycle of uncontrolled bingeing behaviors following purging (such as vomiting or the use of laxatives), restricting behaviors (for example, fasting), or excessive exercise.
Trauma, PTSD, and Eating Disorders

People with eating disorders often report a history of trauma. Childhood sexual abuse, in particular, has been found to be a risk factor for the development of an eating disorder.

There is also some evidence that having PTSD may increase a person's risk for developing an eating disorder. Specifically, it has been found that people with PTSD are approximately 3 times as likely as someone without PTSD to develop bulimia nervosa. Likewise, people with bulimia nervosa may be more likely to have co-occurring PTSD than people with anorexia nervosa.

How Are Eating Disorders and PTSD Related?

In regard to bulimia nervosa, it has been suggested that the behaviors associated with this eating disorder may be a way of managing or regulating uncomfortable and distressing emotions. For example, it has been found that depression may be connected to the development of bulimia nervosa-related behaviors. People with PTSD often experience many strong unpleasant emotions (such as shame, guilt, sadness, and fear), and to the extent that people with PTSD do not have healthy ways of managing these emotions, they may develop or rely more on unhealthy behaviors, such as bingeing or purging.

The behaviors connected with anorexia nervosa may be a way of establishing a sense of control over one's body and life. This may be especially important for a person who has not felt as though he has had this control, such as someone who has experienced a traumatic event. Likewise, a person who has been abused may be more likely to be dissatisfied with his body and have a low self-image, leading to the unhealthy behaviors of anorexia nervosa.
Treatments for PTSD and Eating Disorders

There are currently no combined treatments for PTSD and eating disorders. However, there are effective treatments for both conditions, and learning how to better manage symptoms of PTSD may reduce a person's reliance on unhealthy behaviors, such as those found in bulimia nervosa.

http://ptsd.about.com/od/relatedconditions/a/PTSD_EatDis.htm

I'm also an addict.....

Addiction Rates High Among People with PTSD

A new report finds that 45 percent of people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) smoke cigarettes, 52 percent have been diagnosed with alcohol abuse or dependence, and 35 percent have been diagnosed with drug abuse or dependence, the Navy Times reported Feb. 20.

The smoking rate among people with PTSD is about double that of the general population, as is the rate of alcohol abuse and dependence. The drug addiction and dependence rate is almost three times that of the general adult population.

The authors of the report, "PTSD and Health Risk Behavior," said the high addiction rates may be because many PTSD victims try to use alcohol and other drugs to self-medicate. Heavy use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, along with the fact that people with PTSD are more likely to be overweight or obese, also may explain why other research has shown that veterans with PTSD tend to have more heart problems.
http://www.jointogether.org/news/research/summaries/2007/addiction-rates-high-among.html

In the past, "flight or fight" would kick on, fight usually winning when I felt "threatened" or "attacked" and then when I cooled down, I would flood with self-doubts about whether or not someone had wronged me or if I was crazy/over-reacting.
My reflex to react kicked on too easily. Drugs didn't help this but a year and a half with a counselor that showed me how to love myself and find inner peace. In essence, he told me that I can self control it to an extent....even though it will never "go away". This was contradictory to what the psychiatrist that put me on medication said.......

I now seem to be able to not "over-react" now and it has also spread over into treating myself better now. Instead of being filled with self-doubts when I start thinking someone is treating me badly, I can now step back, analyze it calmly and make a good conscious decision with my logical mind. Life is much better now with no guilt for sticking up for myself and treating others better.

I can be "hot and cold"....this is the best way I can describe it. That and the numbness that sometimes comes over me.....the feeling always returns though. I am grateful for that....and that knowledge makes me feel better about myself.

Also, I found this article about EMDR for the treatment of PTSD.

EMDR to Treat Underlying PTSD in Drug Addiction
Addiction Therapies

When a person experiences a traumatic event they often internalize the event and re-experience it. In effect, they are not only traumatized during the “activating” event, but every time something triggers a memory of the event. A traumatic event is an experience that causes physical, emotional, psychological distress, or harm. It is an event that is perceived and experienced as a threat to one’s safety or to the stability of one’s world.

The most well known cases of PTSD are seen in war veterans. Vietnam War vets who suffered from PTSD showed significant impairment in their ability to re-integrate into the “normal” (that is, non-combat) world. Many of these vets did not seek treatment, but even more disheartening is the fact that many probably could have been treated if effective programs had been available. Now with Iraq War veterans also showing significant signs of post-traumatic stress, we are poised to either end up with another generation of battle-rattled young men or to face the problem with the resources these war vets deserve.

PTSD is not only caused by war. Any significant traumatic event or a series of traumas over time can lead to symptoms of PTSD. Some common causes are:

* Child or domestic abuse
* Living in a war zone or extremely dangerous neighborhood
* Sexual Assault
* Violent Attack
* Sudden death of a loved one
* Witnessing a violent death such as a homicide

One of the most effective treatments was discovered incidentally by Francine Shapiro, PhD, in 1987. When Shapiro was hiking and became anxious and overwhelmed, she noticed that as she scanned the environment with her eyes, moving them back and forth, she began to relax. This led her to assume that eye movements had a desensitizing effect, and when she experimented with it clinically, she found that other people had the same response. It became apparent that eye movements alone weren’t comprehensive, so she added other treatment elements and developed Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing – known as EMDR.

Untreated trauma can be a significant source of psychic pain and emotional turmoil, which leads many of those suffering to self-medicate with alcohol or drugs. If those people seek treatment for drug addiction, they are at high risk for relapse if they do not find a way to re-process and cope with the trauma.

One of the current practitioners of EMDR is Los Angeles-based psychotherapist Barbara Brawerman, Psy.D, MFT a Certified EMDR therapist and an EMDRIA-Approved EMDR Consultant who has trained in affect regulation skills training as well as somatic-based psychotherapies. Brawerman became interested in EMDR when she noticed that traditional talk therapies weren’t working for her complex clients who had multiple diagnoses, particularly those who also suffered from alcohol or drug addiction. She wanted to develop a more integrated approach that treated both the left and right hemispheres of the brain, which she found in EMDR.

Brawerman teamed up with Promises, a Malibu drug addiction treatment program, to develop a trauma recovery program that uses EMDR.

“Many people struggling with addiction have underlying traumas and use alcohol or drugs to withdraw and numb their memories; when the drugs and alcohol are taken away, they’re left with a sense of emotional overwhelm that is not alleviated through talk or cognitive therapies,” explains Brawerman.

Talk Therapy Doesn’t Always Work

Brawerman founds that talk therapy often kept patients stuck in the traumatic event, essentially reliving it and even intensifying the traumatic feelings.

“Eye movements and bilateral stimulation remind the patient that they are still in the present. They’re attending to the trauma in the past while being consistently reminded that they’re now in a safe environment in the present with a therapist they can trust,” she explains. “Trauma lives in the right hemisphere of the brain, so treating just the left hemisphere, such as with talk therapy, doesn’t work. EMDR connects the left and ride sides of the brain, allowing the person to look inward and get in touch with his or her innate ability to heal and self-soothe.”

Originally designed to treat traumatic memories, EMDR has been found to effectively treat PTSD, panic disorders, anxiety, and other psychological distress that may follow a distressing experience. Several studies report a 77-90% remission in after just five treatments in those patients who have experienced a single traumatic event.

Brawerman believes this type of intervention lessens the risk of relapse. “If there’s a particular incident or belief about self that has been haunting a patient, if I can help to desensitize and reprocess their experience into a more healthy perspective, then when they are discharged, they’re less likely to be triggered by that experience,” Brawerman says.

Brawerman says that with those addicted to drugs it is critical to review any traumatic incidents during the developmental and individuation processes, whether a patient has the ability to separate themselves from others and adaptively define a personal relationship with the outside world.


http://www.drugaddictiontreatment.com/featured/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-and-drug-addiction/

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