TONY SCOTT'S SUICIDE: ANY SENSE?

 

Photograph from Wikipedia.org

Do the suicide notes left behind give any clue, any understanding, any sense to Tony Scott leaping off the Vincent Thomas Bridge to his death?  And will we ever be privy to the information in those notes?  Or will we be left in the dark wondering?  If there is pertinent information in those notes, Tony Scott’s family would be giving us a gift by disclosing the information.  The information may be helpful in stopping someone else from checking out way too early.

And as these stories have gone in the past, we will probably never know what prompted Tony Scott.  But this I do know, and you know as well.  And most likely, Tony Scott knew as well.

We each carry with us conscious and unconscious secrets, personal secrets, family secrets.  And most interesting, some of these secrets are obvious to everyone but to us, the secret holder.

Last week, for example, a close friend told me that he was more and more experiencing an inexplicable rage that was beginning to ooze and at times explode all over the place.  It scared him. My friend claimed vehemently, “This isn’t me.  There is something wrong with me....I even went to the doctor to see if he could find out what’s wrong with me....”

“It makes perfectly good sense to me,” I told my friend. “It’s pretty obvious to me why you’re feeling all that rage inside.”

My friend looked at me quite puzzled.  I then insisted that he knew what the rage was all about, and I insisted that he tell me.  But, for whatever reason, crazy reason, perhaps, he allowed himself to remain in the dark.

So I finally told him all the things he had recently told me about his life including being in a thirty year marriage with a person he never liked from the start, “‘can’t stand to be around....have no respect or admiration for...’ were your words,” I reflected back to him.  “You also told me that you have been taking care of EVERYONE for your entire life, and you’re fed up with that.”

He just stared at me.  Like that was too simple to explain the rage, the amount of rage, but for any of us, standing on the outside looking in, that is a LOT, and good reason to be enraged, but it was a secret he kept from everyone including himself until it finally oozed or eeked out on its own in a conversation with a friend.

So what was going on for Tony Scott?   We may never know, but we know there was something that drove him to leap off the bridge.  We can shake our heads and say, “No, probably not.  It is just a mystery,” and allow ourselves to stay in the dark, or we can say, “obviously, there was something, and I wonder what secrets I am keeping even keeping from myself....Maybe it’s time for me to begin doing something with my secrets.”

You may not jump off a bridge if you don’t do something with your secrets, but they will eventually have their way with you.  Trust me.  You can count on it.  And hopefully my promise will not come floating into your consciousness as you are leaping or pulling the trigger or emptying the pill bottle or driving the car over the embankment or worse driving into on-coming traffic and taking other people with you.

And do not be too quick to blame brain chemistry and chemical imbalances.  Why do we go there?  Those imbalances do not occur by accident, but are triggered and set up by the over-the-top events in our life that either we choose to keep secret or have been deemed secrets by our family, including events that sometimes occur while we’re waiting to be born.  The chemical imbalance simply substantiates that a person did not have enough serotonin at the moment to put the brakes on his or her suicidal impulses.  It does not explain the suicidal impulses to start with.

The worse part about killing myself?  The legacy of suicide we leave behind for our family, especially for our children.  We set them up to also take their lives.  It will run a six generational cycle, and maybe Tony Scott was already a part of that cycle in his own family, but I do not know that.

Is suicide selfish?  Hell yeah, it’s selfish, but I hesitate to focus on anyone else’s selfishness as I have enough of my own to go around for both myself and anyone else who might need some!  I vividly remember yesterday afternoon, eating directly out of a half gallon of heavenly hash ice cream carton, and not being able to stop myself no matter how much I both gently and then not so gently reminded myself what I was doing to my health.  And I can no longer deny how selfish I was for how many years?  Well, the first time around it was 21 years, and the second time around, 16 years, that I drank and drank and drank and destroyed my health and significant relationships. 

So to sentence Tony Scott to death for selfishness is a mute point and perhaps missing the point.  But I suppose you could remember this when you consider killing yourself, for whatever reason. The pain you leave your loved ones, not just until the memorial service is over, not just for a few weeks or even years, but for generations, may be greater than the pain you think deserves your killing yourself. 

INTERVIEW WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

SMALL TOWN        BIG TOWN

WE ARE ELECTING A PRESIDENT SOON, AND YOU GET TO INTERVIEW EACH CANDIDATE ONE ON ONE!

 Yes, that's right.  You’ve been selected to interview the candidates for President of our great nation.  One on one!  No television cameras.  Face to face honesty.  No audience to play to.  No competing candidates to spar with.  Just you and the man.  So what are you going to ask?

I hope to God you are not going to ask him what he is going to do for YOU job-wise or take-home-pay-wise.  I hope to God you are not going to ask him any questions about his economic policy, his foreign policy, in fact, I hope you are not going to ask him any questions about his platform.  Come on, get real.  Do you really think there is a candidate out there who is going to tell you the honest-to-God truth about what he is really and actually going to do once in office?  First of all, there is no way he can tell you.  He has little or no control over what is going to happen once he is in office.  Get real!

Don’t even think about asking him what he is going to do about all the illegal aliens that mow your lawn, cook the food in your favorite restaurants, and frame all the new construction going on in your community.  Come on, get over it and get real!  The Native Americans wanted to throw us out too, remember?  So we killed them!  Forewarned!

Don’t even think about asking any question about health benefits. He doesn’t care about your health or your health benefits.  He doesn’t care about your life period.  Come on get real!  Why would he care?  Seriously, why would he care?  There is no room in a candidate’s life or schedule to care about YOU.

Now notice I am not using the pronoun her.  Now that is an interesting state of affairs, no pun intended.  But what’s with our country that we don’t think a woman can do the job?  And why have we not recognized the many capable women who could do the job?  How about your MOTHER, for one?   

Now here are the questions you are going to ask him.  Well, that I suggest you ask him!  Now, these are tough questions and chances are, any candidate will avoid answering them like the plague.  So you will have to repeat the question broken-record style till you get an answer.  And, of course, you will have a camera rolling the entire time.  You especially want to zoom in on the eyeballs and facial expression as you ask each question.  That initial non-verbal response will tell you EVERYTHING including the unspoken true answer to your questions.

SO HERE ARE THE QUESTIONS.  Rehearse them so you can ask them with conviction.

*When was the last time you drove around town looking for the least expensive gasoline?

*Do you have credit cards or even a credit card and what are your balances?

*What do you use those credit cards for?

*Do you have health insurance and who pays for your health insurance?

*Do you have a job besides campaigning for the president?  And how and how much do you get paid each month?

*When was the last time you went grocery shopping?

*When was the last time your car needed repair?

*When was the last time you had to call AAA and how long did you have to wait?

*When was the last time you saw marijuana plants growing in your backyard?  And how did you handle it?

*When was the last time your teenage kid got picked up for shoplifting?

*When was the last time you attended a parent-teacher conference?

*Have you tried to help your kids with their homework lately, and how did you do?

*Have you ever had an electric bill over four hundred dollars for your home or apartment?  How about over six hundred dollars?

*How much did you pay for the shoes you are wearing?  Would you even consider shopping at Payless?

*When was the last time you gave some change to the homeless guy hanging outside Starbucks?

*When was the last time you sat down on the sidewalk next to that homeless guy to tell him what you’re going to do for him when you become president?

*When was the last time you picked up a prescription and the generic form didn’t do the trick?

*When was the last time you had to wait for days or weeks for approval from your insurance company to have tests to determine whether or not you have a potentially terminal health matter?

*When was the last time your insurance company refused to reimburse for medically necessary treatment?

*When was the last time you went to therapy?  You know, psychotherapy?  How come you’ve never gone?  Not even good ol’ marital or family therapy?  So nothing goin’ on at home?

*When was the last time you had an affair?  Okay, let’s go easy on you.  When was the last time you thought about having one?

*Do you go to church and why?

*Are you saved and what does that mean?  The rest of us aren’t?

*So when was the last time you got a knock on the door to tell you that your son or daughter was killed in action?

*So what will you tell returning combat soldiers about Post Traumatic Stress?  That you’re sure that only a small percentage of them have it?


*Do you ever have a heart to heart with God?  A heart to heart where you just sit very still and LISTEN?  How many times?  How often?  What are your plans for such conversations for the future?

*What has been your addiction of choice over your life time?  Uh-uh.  Haven’t had one is not an acceptable or honest answer!  You don’t get this far up the ladder of politics and not have excruciating stress that drives you to “use” something.

*How did you deal with that addiction?

*When was the last time you screamed at your spouse, at your children, at your coworkers and what was it all about?  And did you go back and apologize and get that situation healed?

*What do you think about sex?  Do you like sex?  How does it fit into your life?  If you become president, how often do you think you will make love each week and to whom?

*What kind of toilet paper do you use?  So who buys the toilet paper in your household?

*How many times in your life and how many times recently have you changed really really nauseating diapers either of your children or your senior relatives?

*Do you have aging parents or relatives, and who’s going to take care of them if you get into the White House?  Are they going to get to stay in the Lincoln room?

Maybe my list of questions will trigger for you, the interviewer, even more relevant questions.  Yes relevant.  We want to know just what kind of person the candidate really, really, really is.  If we have a candidate who is addressing the real stuff of life, then we can have confidence that they can handle the unreal stuff of national and international politics.

THANKS FOR READING AND COMMENTING AND SHARING.

WHAT TO DO WITH POST TRAUMATIC STRESS, PART TWO

REVIEW
So in PART ONE, we began to define Post Traumatic Stress by citing Criteria A.

The person has experienced, witnessed, or been confronted with an event or events that involve actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself or others.

The person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Note: in children, it may be expressed instead by disorganized or agitated behavior.

Criteria A, is the first of six criteria listed under Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in  DSM-IV-TR)(1).  And remember, we are taking issue with the use of the term disorder.

Secondly, in PART ONE, we acknowledged out loud that we did experience a trauma. 

We concluded PART ONE noting that, sometimes, I might not remember enough of the traumatic event to say out loud what happened.  In the blog, The Gift of Post Traumatic Stress, Part Two, we talked about why this is.  So the excess adrenalin pumping through our body and our brain tends to neutralize the brain chemicals necessary for conscious or explicit memory processing in our hippocampus.  Consequently, the facts of an over-the-top event may “disappear” the way the content of a dream fades away very quickly after we wake up.

So sometimes, we will want to retrieve the facts of the events from another source other than our own memory, and it may require some courage and even some effort or work on our part, but  this retrieval can be an important part of what we do with our Post Traumatic Stress.

LET SLEEPING DOGS LIE?
Why not just drop it and let sleeping dogs lie?  Well, what our brain does “remember” implicitly or unconsciously are the emotions surrounding the event.  These emotions sit in our amygdala waiting to be triggered by any event that even remotely reminds the brain of the traumatic event.  These emotions hanging around in the background, out of consciousness, leave us with a pervasive sense of impending doom, or leave us with heightened vigilance, or low grade fear, anxiety and or depression, along with a sense of helplessness.  So we live our life with a very limited range of emotion.  What emotions we do feel, we do not know why.  And at times, we feel nothing, a kind of numbness, but even that has an overlay of there’s something out of whack.  If we just drop it, we are left to live like this, and what this is, is survival mode.  The worst part of survival mode is the isolation because healthy relationships are next to impossible for us to nurture and grow while in survival mode.

These issues surrounding memory processing are what set up the symptoms we will be talking about here in Part Two.

So what are those symptoms?  The symptoms are outlined in Criteria B through D.

CRITERIA B
intrusive recollection....Recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, or perceptions....Recurrent distressing dreams of the event.... Acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring....Intense psychological and physiological distress and reactivity at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.


The intrusive recollections, the dreams, the reactivity let us know that those emotions we talked about above, the emotions that are dangling about like loose threads, are looking for a storyline with which they can weave together and make a complete story of the trauma. 

WEAVE TOGETHER A COMPLETE STORY
What do we mean by a complete story?  A complete story weaves together both the facts of the events with the emotions of the event which will then help us make sense of our post traumatic stress.  Once we make a complete story of the trauma, we can then weave the trauma into the fabric of our life and finally lay it to rest in our history or past. The trauma can then become a part of our life instead of dominating our life as it does now.

Okay, so concretely, what do I do now?

SAFE PEOPLE
Again, you want to surround yourself with safe people.  Safe people, friends and loved ones, maybe even professional folks, like a good therapist, or a support group.  Safe people who will not become bored, tired, or irritated listening to you talk about your symptoms--your intrusive recollections, your flash backs, your dreams, and nightmares.  Safe friends will not become bored, tired, or irritated listening to you talk about it over and over and over and over and over and over and over.  If you are an adult, be sure your safe folks are your peers.  As an adult, leaning on a child for support, as you work through a trauma, can be traumatizing to the child.

SAFE PEOPLE VS PITY POT
OH YES, there are safe people for you.  If you convince yourself that they do not exist, you will never see them even when they are right smack in front of you.  THEY ARE THERE.  I know they are.  I have seen them.  They have walked me through my own traumas.  They are alive.  But we can convince ourselves that they do not exist, and when we do that, no one does want to walk with us because then we have chosen pity pot land and we tend to drive people away, not by the story of our trauma, but by our unwillingness to receive the support people have for us.

WHAT GOOD IS IT TO MAKE MY FRIENDS EXPERIENCE MY TRAUMA?
Many folks fear that telling about their symptoms is like making their friends live through the trauma themselves.  Probably not, but even if it means that, remember, you experienced the trauma and lived through it, and your safe friends will be happy to experience the trauma with you if it means you becoming again the friend they know.   And the reality is telling the horrors of the trauma to safe friends makes it possible for you to experience the trauma perhaps for the first time.  You know, full blown, from inside your skin, from inside your consciousness.  And experiencing it for the first time, will make it possible for the trauma to be processed into our hippocampus, into our past, our history.

DREAMS, NIGHTMARES
Keep a notepad next to your bed and when you wake up from a dream or nightmare, jot down immediately what you remember.  When looking at a dream, perhaps what is most significant are the emotions experienced in the dream.  When you have recurrent dreams where you feel powerless and helpless, begin rewriting the “script.”  You will be surprised how the dream, itself, when you dream it again, begins to change.  In the dream, you will begin to feel more powerful, less helpless, and the outcome of the dream will gradually change.

WHEN SOMETHING REMINDS YOU OF THE TRAUMA
When something reminds you of the trauma, begin paying attention to your breathing.  Breathe a little more deeply than usual.  Definitely avoid breathing shallow.  That will only create a felt sense that the trauma is happening again at this moment.

After you breathe for a few seconds, allow yourself to feel the emotions.  If you need to scream and you’re somewhere private, then scream.  If tears come, do not choke them back.  Breathe into them.  They will come like a wave and then leave again.

Surround yourself again with safe people, so, at a moment like this, you can have someone hold you.  You can call someone on the cellphone.  Yes, guys, have someone hold you, a man or a woman, preferably a man.  As men, we need men to support us through trauma.

When you begin to feel the feelings associated with the trauma, speak them out loud, even if only to yourself.  So, I feel scared, terrified, lonely, helpless, overpowered, defeated, hopeless, angry, sad, depressed, anxious, scared to death.  I think I am going to throw up, and let yourself throw up.  Giving voice to an emotion, literally discharges the energy of the emotion and the energy of the emotion literally dissipates.

JOURNALING
Begin journaling each day, journaling off the top of your head with no agenda, just writing whatever comes out on to the paper.  If you do not like to write, get some kind of recording device and just talk into the recorder randomly, off the top of your head for five minutes.  Don’t censor anything.  Let me repeat that. Don’t censor anything.  You may want to be very careful not to leave your journal around or make it possible for anyone to hear your recording unless you consider them a safe person.  When I journal off the top of my head, I write almost illegibly so I don’t have to worry about anyone reading it.
                               
Check out the book, THE ARTIST'S WAY.  Julia Cameron present a process called morning pages and morning pages would be very helpful in indirectly but directly processing trauma.   Again, if writing is an issue, use a recording device.

INTERNET
With the internet literally at our fingertips, you can blog about your trauma, post photographs related to your trauma.  You can create You Tube videos, featuring the one and only (yourself, silly!) talking about your trauma.

ARE YOU AN ARTIST?  IN THE CLOSET OUT OF THE CLOSET
If you are an artist of any kind, you can write fictional accounts of the trauma, write poems about the trauma, compose music or choreograph a dance depicting the trauma, or give expression to the over-the-top experience on canvass, in stained glass, in sculpture and pottery, and in any other artform of your choice or talent.

EXERCISE BUT WITH CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE TRAUMA
You can increase your exercise routine and bring the trauma into your consciousness as you exercise.  This is an important piece.  By bringing the trauma into your consciousness while you exercise, you will exhaust the energy of the trauma.  If you simply exercise without bringing the trauma into consciousness, you will benefit from the exercise, your body will get the workout, but the trauma will remain as powerful as ever.

LEFT RIGHT BRAIN INTEGRATION
All of these above suggestions are ways of weaving or integrating the trauma into both our right and left brain hemispheres.  This left-right brain integration supports creating a complete story about our over-the-top event.  It also defuses the emotions associated with the trauma as these emotions become less vulnerable to being triggered.  The left-right brain integration also places the trauma into our past so we know the trauma happened and is over.  We don’t keep waking up, as in the movie Ground Hog Day, experiencing this day as the day of the trauma.

There is also a therapeutic intervention called EMDR, which directly attempts to integrate the right and left brain hemispheres by a simple therapeutic procedure involving eye tracking or tapping alternate sides of the body while one is focusing on the emotions associated with the trauma, and I think EMDR can be and has been effective in resolving trauma issues.

MONITOR YOUR SELF-TALK
Catch yourself and stop yourself from saying.  When are the dreams going to stop?  What is wrong with me?  When am I going to be able to do this right?  I should have been stronger.  It couldn’t have been this bad.  Lots of people go through what I went through and don’t have all these symptoms.  Oh yes they do!  What you are experiencing is very very normal in response to a traumatic event.

Let your self-talk shift.  Wow, my dreams keep coming, but they are changing.  There is nothing wrong with me.  I am experiencing what normal people experience when they go through an over-the-top event.  I was as strong as ever and yes, what happened was really awful, really terrifying, really debilitating, really over-the-top.  It could have killed me if my brain didn’t work so wonder fully.  I am just like everyone else who experiences trauma.  We all have these symptoms.

So now, let us look at Criteria C and D
CRITERIA C

Avoidant/numbing....Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by at least three of the following:
   * Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
   * Efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the trauma
   * Inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma
   * Markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
   * Feeling of detachment or estrangement from others
   * Restricted range of affect (e.g., unable to have loving feelings)
   *Sense of foreshortened future (e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span)

CRITERIA D
hyper-arousal....Persistent symptoms of increasing arousal (not present before the trauma), indicated by at least two of the following:
   * Difficulty falling or staying asleep
   * Irritability or outbursts of anger
   * Difficulty concentrating
   * Hyper-vigilance
   * Exaggerated startle response


So, NOTICE, all the above symptoms are pretty normal responses to a trauma.

Of course, I am not going to want to talk about something traumatic or over-the-top as if it was a Super Bowl game.

Of course, I am going to want to avoid activities or places associated with the trauma.  Do you think the folks in the movie theatre in Aurora Colorado were back in line the next day to see Spiderman?  Probably not.

Of course, one is going to think they have little time to live after experiencing a trauma.  I survived this, but tomorrow I will probably get run over by a kid on a tricycle or killed in a drive by.

Of course, I will have difficulty falling asleep and of course, I am going to be angry, irritable, and have little if any patience.

And, of course, I will have trouble remembering important aspects of the trauma.  We have already talked about that a great deal.  It has nothing to do with our memory, but, of course, everything to do with our memory.  Adrenalin flooded our brain and literally neutralized the brain chemicals required for memory processing.  No, I am not losing my memory or my mind.

Do you notice that most of what is recommended prior to our looking at Criteria C and D flies in the face of Criteria C and D? So are the symptoms listed in Criteria C and D going to make it impossible to “tackle” the recommendations?

Well, it could work that way if you let it.  Again, a key are your safe people.  Make a commitment to your safe people that you are going to follow the recommendations and suggestions above.  Have them check on you daily or hourly.  Be accountable to your safe people, and allow them to HOLD you accountable.

BE WARY
Again, experiencing the various symptoms listed in Criteria C and D lets you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that what you experienced was, in fact, over-the-top.  As we noted in PART ONE, be wary of anyone, even yourself, saying things like, “Hey, it was no big deal....all in a day’s work....it’s what we do as a policeman, soldier....”  Of course, it IS what you do and what you do is to face trauma every day of your life and sometimes, several times a day and that is the point of this article.

Be wary too of anyone who says something like, “When will you face reality?  Why do you think you are so special?  This kind of shit has been going on in our family (or in our church, or in business, or in politics, or in our country, or in the world) for generations. Buck up and get over it!”

It doesn’t matter how “normal” trauma has become in our lives.  It is trauma, and if we do not do something with trauma, our brain and our soul and our relationships are going to pay a high price.

HAS THIS BEEN HELPFUL?  
So has this been helpful?  Let me know.  I will use these FIVE BLOGS as a reference point for current news that is in any way related to Post Traumatic Stress.

I do not see Post Traumatic Stress as a disorder even if one experiences the stress for an extended duration.  Over-the-top events, trauma, is given that name because by definition, it is something that one will not get over in a day.  And yes, it will create impairment for us socially and occupationally, especially if the trauma occurred on the job or as part and parcel of our social life.

MY GUARANTEE
What I am willing to go out on a limb and guarantee for you is that if you follow the recommendations in this blog, and if you digest the information in the other four blogs the best you can, you will not get stuck in your Post Traumatic Stress and, in fact, you will want to move on, and you will.

THANK YOU FOR READING AND COMMENTING AND THANK YOU FOR TAKING ON THE WORK OF GRABBING ON TO YOUR POST TRAUMATIC STRESS AND WEAVING IT BACK INTO THE FABRIC OF YOUR LIFE.   

WHAT DO YOU DO WITH POST TRAUMATIC STRESS, PART ONE

Okay, so what is it we do with Post Traumatic Stress?

Well, we are going to take a look at the criteria listed in the book.  The book?  Yes, the  DSM-IV-TR)(1) which lists all the mental disorders for which a mental health professional can bill your insurance, including picking your nose while driving the car.  (Just kidding!).

Now, the criteria listed for Post Traumatic Stress in this book are very helpful in identifying how Post Traumatic Stress comes about as well as identifying the many symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress.  However, listing Post Traumatic Stress in this book classifies it as a disorder.  And that, I think, is a misnomer.  To read more about my take on Post Traumatic Stress as a gift rather than a disorder, check out The Gift of Post Traumatic PART ONE and PART TWO .

So the first thing one does with Post Traumatic Stress is to acknowledge Criteria A.

CRITERIA A (taken from DSM-IV-TR)(1).

*The person has experienced, witnessed, or been confronted with an event or events that involve actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself or others.

*The person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Note: in children, it may be expressed instead by disorganized or agitated behavior.

So let yourself say out loud.

YES, I EXPERIENCED, WITNESSED, OR WAS CONFRONTED WITH AN OVER-THE-TOP LIFE-THREATENING EVENT.  AND YES, I WAS SCARED SHITLESS, TERRIFIED, FELT HELPLESS, AND THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE OR WISHED I WOULD DIE.

OUR BRAIN BLOCKS THE FULL IMPACT
As described in our other blogs, our brain blocks the full impact of a trauma so we can survive it without going completely bonkers.  And as time goes on, we tend to hold on to that “blocked” or minimized version of what occurred.  For example, when someone is sexually abused, a person will often say, but there wasn’t any penetration, when in reality, any kind of sexual abuse is penetrating.  Men, in particular, when they experience trauma, will reassure me, “it was no big deal....part of the job....I knew when I joined up....other people had it a lot worse.....”

 “It only happened once,” is a classic minimizer.  Of course, it doesn’t matter if an over-the-top event occurred only once.  It’s still over-the-top and traumatizing.  Even once is more than a person’s brain can take in.  It’s like a little bit pregnant!

AND it’s okay that our brain blocks the trauma, and we subsequently minimize.  It really is.  It’s the brain’s way of protecting us from a head-on collision with the horror of the event.  And now, that the trauma is over, it is also okay to let yourself become aware of the minimizing.  Let yourself slowly drop the filtering screens and say out loud what actually occurred.

SAY OUT LOUD WHAT HAPPENED
I had to shoot the man....the woman.  I didn’t think I had a choice....I tried to resuscitate the child, but I couldn’t....when I walked in the house on a welfare check, the woman had been dead for days....when I assisted the coroner in lifting up the body, I thought I was going to throw up and I can’t get the smell out of my nose.  That was last week....I thought I was helping the person by risking my own life and crawling out there with them, but as soon as I did they jumped....I remember the dog’s teeth and the pain was unbearable for a second, and then I guess I just went somewhere else because I helplessly watched the dog chew on my leg....I know he was a ruthless asshole and deserved to die, but I can’t get it out of my mind watching my bullet enter his brain....I remember the awful feeling when they informed us we had fired on our own buddies....I remember arriving at the bank and the bullets flying everywhere....I remember hearing the squeel of tires from behind me and the next thing I knew....I just can’t make myself get into a car....I have operated on, you know, zillions of patients, and I can’t stop wondering why I couldn’t save this one....I can never quite figure out why my own father would do that to me....why my mother would do that to me....why the priest would do that to me....why my doctor would even think of doing that to me....I guess I knew it was my job to take him out, but when I did, the look on his face, the blood....keeps haunting me....I was so close, and if I would have been willing to risk crawling a tad farther into the flames, I think I would have saved him, but instead, my best friend’s hand disappeared into the fire....I mean, the driver didn’t have a head, and I can get silly about it, but, well, I hope I never see that again, but I probably will....I could not believe she was picking up the knife and running toward me....I could not believe he was trying to suffocate me....I heard the plane’s engines and before I knew it, it was crashing all around me....I thought I would not live to tell this story.....

There are endless stories of over-the-top events, some obvious headline stories, others secrets, and still others stories that are probably not even thought of as being traumatic, but each of them is.  And again, it’s not about how strong you are or how seasoned or experienced you are.  The bottom line is you are not a robot, but a living human being, and you are going to respond to over-the-top events in the same way that every other human being does.

SOME STORIES ARE DISGUISED AS ORDINARY
Some over-the-top events are so disguised as “ordinary” that we miss it all together.  Jack told me that he couldn’t stand watching his “Pa” pick up a chicken and wring its neck and then chop off its head with a hatchet.  Jack would run and hide, and his Pa would chase him with the chicken’s head in hand and shout, “I’m going to find you, you pussy.”  When Jack was about twelve, his Pa forced him to wring the chicken’s neck and chop off its head himself.

Jack never realized the impact of those experiences until he got sober and his wife told him that every time he got drunk and the kids would get upset, he would scream at them, “If you don’t quit your whining, I’m going to wring your necks.”  The kids would scream and Jack would laugh his drunken laugh.

It was very unsettling for Jack to confront  this sadistic side of himself that came out not only with his kids but with friends and enemies.  It was very challenging for Jack to reach a place where he could be at home with the parts of himself that were scared shitless of so many things.  Jack was so bound and determined not be a pussy that he became sadistic instead, just like Pa.  This is a good example of not recognizing and acknowledging and not debriefing a traumatic event and how it then impacts our life without us even knowing it.

And, it can be even subtler than that.  Bob told me that, that as a kid, he laid awake night after night listening to his parents fight.  He said he was torn apart inside by his love for his parents and his simultaneous hate for them.  He was not sure he wanted them to stay together but became absolutely terrified any time they talked about divorce.

When Bob got off the phone talking to his former wife, his new girlfriend said to him, “I hope you never talk to me like that.”  Bob was stunned.  He had no awareness of talking loud to or being over bearing with his ex-wife.  He thought he was simply standing his ground and not letting her push him around one more time.

Years of tuning out, successfully or unsuccesfully, Mom and Dad’s constant arguing and splitting off from his own wide range of mixed emotions, left Bob almost completely disconnected and unaware of how he sounded or how he looked whenever he was triggered.  Ah, triggered!  And Bob caught himself that night from destroying one more relationship as he was about to tell his new girlfriend that she didn’t know what the f she was talking about.

IS EVERYTHING TRAUMATIC?
Do you get a sense that I am implying that just about everything can be traumatic?  Well, no, not everything is.  Not at all.  But when we catch ourselves becoming triggered when others are looking puzzled, so they see no connection with reality and our triggered behavior, that is a clue to us.  There is something in our life, similar to this moment, that WAS or still IS traumatic, but because our brain works the way it does, we have no awareness what that event is or was. But it is time to pay attention and to identify the event, to acknoweldge it.  

OBSERVING SOMEONE ELSE EXPERIENCING A TRAUMA
For many of us, we, ourselves, may not experience an over-the-top event, but we may witness someone else experiencing a trauma.  AND HERE TOO.  Let yourself say out loud.

YES, I EXPERIENCED, WITNESSED, OR WAS CONFRONTED WITH AN OVER-THE-TOP EVENT THAT WAS LIFE-THREATENING TO SOMEONE ELSE.

We forget or perhaps don’t even know that witnessing someone else going through an over-the-top event impacts us equally profoundly and traumatically.

So a first responder may experience daily events that involve actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of...OTHERS.  The Combat soldier obviously experiences daily events that he or she may miraculously survive, but others, including buddies and innocent bystanders, do not survive.

You, as an “ordinary” person may witness your child or a close friend or even a stranger being hit by a car, falling off a cliff, being pulled out to sea by a rip tide, being attacked by dogs, being shot in a bank robbery, in a movie theatre or a fast food restaurant even.  You may walk into the garage to find your grandfather hanging from the rafters.  You may be traveling in a car with grandfather when he has a massive heart attack or stroke.  You may witness a parent or a child having a psychotic episode.  As a therapist, you may listen to your client talk about their own or a family member’s abuse or describe a psychotic episode they witnessed of a parent when they were little.

I remember one client telling me that she felt safe in her room when she heard Mom and Dad fighting.  She never knew for sure what Dad was doing, but she figured the repeated thumps had to be Mom’s head hitting each stair as Dad dragged her down the stairs into the kitchen to force her to cook him something to eat.  She never thought of the experience as traumatizing till she found herself in the identical scenario one evening with her own husband.

Well, the scenarios are endless, and it doesn’t matter that none of it happened to you.  Over-the-top events are traumatizing to the observer or listener as well.

Being traumatized as an observer or listener is a BIG CLUE as to how our brain works.  So let’s take a moment to talk about MIRROR NEURONS.

MIRROR NEURONS
Yes, there are neurons in our brain called MIRROR neurons.  You may have figured out already what mirror neurons do.

These mirror neurons make it possible for us, from the very beginning, to learn new behavior by observing the “Giants.”  These mirror neurons also account for other interesting phenomenon.  For example, when you are kind to another person, endorphins are triggered in both your brain and the brain of the person receiving your kindness.  NOW, here is the real phenomenon.  The same endorphins get triggered in the brain of a person who is simply watching your act of kindness.  How incredible is that?  So yes, these mirror neurons are the building blocks for our developing compassion and empathy.  These same mirror neurons come into play when we are observing another person confronting trauma.

So, it is pointless to say, “But it didn’t happen to me, I was just there watching it happen to someone else.”  Well, guess what?  Because of our mirror neurons, it happened to you neurologically just as it did to the person you were observing.  And it is going to be equally traumatizing to you as well. 

AM I JUST A WIMP OR A WUSS?
To acknowledge any piece of Criteria A does not mean your are constitutionally weak.  Nor does saying out loud that the event scared the shit out of you, terrorized you, or left you feeling helpless qualify you for whimp or wuss status.  Acknowledging Criteria A simply indicates you are a normal human being and not a robot.

Now many of you experience Criteria A every day on your job.  Or if you are a combat soldier, you experience Criteria A every day for the duration of your tour of duty. 

Listen up!  That the experience is all in a day’s work or it’s just what we do every day, makes it no less traumatic or over-the-top or life threatening.  The fact that it is our job is not the same as a “pass” for our brain.  Our brain, like everyone else’s brain, will see these events as traumatic and will respond accordingly.

Yes, as a seasoned policeman, fireman, EMT, soldier, surgeon, with years of experience and training, we may have a more extensive and more effective array of survival behaviors than the man on the street, but the adrenalin still flows and flows in great quantities.

In fact, it is the excitement and the adrenalin that keeps drawing us back to our job.  But it is also the adrenalin that continues to disconnect us from our thinking and feeling brains, and it is the adrenalin that ultimately keeps us from having emotionally meaningful relationships with the people, big and small, whom we love and who love us.  It keeps us from being as close to them as THEY want us to be.

And again, it is NOT about how strong you are, how seasoned you are.  Traumatic events are traumatic for you, and require you taking the time to debrief.  And if we do not, again, when it comes to those important relationships, our most valuable and life-giving resources, like empathy and compassion, will not be available to us.  When the brain stem takes over, it shuts down our capacity for compassion and empathy.  It zeros in on one thing only.  SURVIVAL.  In fact, we will tend to resent anyone who complains about anything that hurts because obviously they don’t know what hurt really is.  Yes, you’ve thought or said those very words, haven’t you?

You know, interestingly enough, what we are describing thoughout here also applies to the person who either by choice or circumstance continues to live in a potentially life-threatening situation which, in a sense, becomes that person’s “normal.”  So, for example, a prisoner of war, perhaps a prisoner or inmate of any kind, the person in chronic pain, the person in an abusive relationship, an abusive job, the person who lives in a war-torn country, gang members. So any situation where HOPELESSNESS begins to reign supreme, and a person puts all of his or her energies into SURVIVING.  But they have stopped LIVING.  And for those of us who voluntarily choose to take on trauma as part of our work or life, we are at risk, very high risk, for “burn-out” and reaching that same place of hopelessness.

THE ANXIETY AND THE RAGE
So when we are experiencing Criteria A, either once or on a daily basis, our brain works the way we described in The Gift Of Post Traumatic Stress, Part One  and PART TWO.  We go into survival mode, and we remain there till we take the time to rebalance our brain chemistry and our brain functioning.  Until then, we are disconnected both emotionally and thoughtfully.  We basically are not emotionally present or emotionally available to the people who love us and want to live with us.  We will tend to spend most of our hours feeling anxious, very anxious and rageful.  Rage, not anger.  If it were anger, we'd have half a chance (check out Real Men Get Angry).  We will tend to spend a great deal of our energy either repressing that rage or expressing it in self destructive and sometimes other destructive ways.  We will do just about anything to settle the anxiety, including a wide range of addictive behaviors.


SO HOW MANY TIMES DO I SAY IT OUT LOUD AND TO WHOM?
Well, to start, how about saying it out loud to wonderful You, TO YOURSELF?   So, in the privacy of your car, your room, your office, say it out loud. I EXPERIENCED, WITNESSED, OR WAS CONFRONTED WITH AN OVER-THE-TOP LIFE-THREATENING EVENT AND YES, I WAS SCARED SHITLESS, TERRIFIED, FELT HELPLESS, AND THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE OR WISHED I WOULD DIE   If you are by yourself in an empty church, say it out loud to your God.  If you have a support group, say it out loud in a support group meeting, not once, but over and over again.  Find safe loved ones and safe friends to whom you can tell "your story" over and over and over again out loud.

So you are going to begin shifting from simply saying out loud that you experienced an over-the-top event...., to telling a story about the event.  Each time you retell the story, you may find the story changing, embellishing, becoming more dramatic, becoming more painful in content, perhaps even more painful to tell.  These are good signs because the story is coming alive and taking on a life of its own, which means it's becoming your story.

The point of your story is not how factual it is, but how well it describes the metaphorical or the full meaning of your story.  So it is not just that on Monday morning, I shot a suspected murderer.  Those are the facts.  The full meaning of the story includes all of your feelings, including guilt, shame, seconds thoughts, fear of reprisal, a whole gamut of emotions and thoughts.  Perhaps you even feel proud and justified.  Perhaps you even have a since that you finally proved yourself or you fear that some smart ass is going to remind you that you hesitated before pulling the trigger.  So not just the facts, but the whole story with all your fears, your laughter, your tears, your anger, your resentment, the whole nine yards.

What if no one wants to hear my story or folks say they have heard it enough?  Well, then these folks are not safe folks.  You haven't found the safe folks, yet.  They are out there.  I know from first hand experience.

Several years ago, I was working with a group of foster parents and grandparents when the topic of war came up.  Every one began sharing their battle experiences until a Viet Nam Veteran said that the last time he shared his experience with a group that everyone moved away from him and stopped talking with him.  So each person in the group told him that they wanted to hear his story and promised him they would not only listen but would continue sitting with him and talking to him throughout the rest of the workshop.  So he took a chance and began telling us how he had to "liquidate" women and children.  The group kept their promise.  And it was the beginning of healing for this Veteran.

Once we can say out loud that I EXPERIENCED, WITNESSED, OR WAS CONFRONTED WITH AN OVER-THE-TOP LIFE-THREATENING EVENT AND YES, I WAS SCARED SHITLESS, TERRIFIED, FELT HELPLESS, AND THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE OR WISHED I WOULD DIE, I can begin addressing all the other symptoms I display or act out rather than looking at them and saying “I don’t know why I am doing those things” OR "I don't know why these things are happening."  And it is here where we will begin in PART TWO.

DON'T REMEMBER?
So what if I don't remember the over-the-top event or don't remember even enough of it to say that I experienced....?  Well, the reality is that with all the adrenalin pumping in our system at the time the event occurs, it makes it next to impossible to remember, as indicated in in a previous blog.  So let yourself say whatever it is you know, and say it out loud.  We will talk about this further in Part Two.

NOW BE A LIVE PART OF THIS BLOG AND SHARE WITH US.  Share with us those events in your life that you have accepted as being traumatic.  But also tell us about those events that you minimized, for a long time, and denied as being traumatic.  And share with us the events that you still think are or were not traumatic, but other people keep insinuating to you that they were.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR READING AND SHARING.

THE GIFT OF POST TRAUMATIC STRESS, PART TWO

Hello again.  Or if you have come to this page without looking at PART ONE, well, check it out to have a better understanding of where we are picking up, here in Part Two.

In Part One, we introduced our three brains and offered a very simple but accurate picture of how the the three brains function and interact with most of the emphasis on the thinking and feeling brains.  Here we are going to delve into our survival brain in greater detail.

Here is the conclusion of Part One.
Now, when the brain stem does go into action, it cuts off the dialogue between the thinking brain and the feeling brain, and we go on what we call auto pilot.  It's not really auto pilot because the brain stem is running the show, but the brain stem does not have the ability to think or make decisions.  It simply moves us in a direction of survival and relies heavily upon any previous behaviors that have resulted in our saving our ass in moments of danger.  This is the way everyone's brain stem works.  And these are the critical pieces in understanding how our brain functions and the critical pieces in understanding why Post Traumatic Stress is a gift.

SO LET'S CONTINUE.
When we switch on to auto pilot, we stop trying to figure things out.  We basically stop thinking, and we no longer feel whatever it is we are feeling.  We begin experiencing whatever is going on from a place outside our body, so to speak, from a position of observation.  We often describe this phenomenon as “watching myself go through the motions.”  We make very unthoughtful and sometimes outrageous decisions, but it is all in the effort of surviving or saving someone else. And if we succeed in surviving, then the brain stem is quite excited and tells us to save that behavior for the future, for the next time we are in danger.

So I’m sure you’ve heard stories about four-foot ten, one-hundred pound Mom, looking out the kitchen window and seeing her toddler run over by a car.  Mom does not think, does not call for help.  She runs out into the street and does whatever it takes, including picking up the car, to save her child.  She does not think ahead of time if it is even possible for her to pick up a car nor does she feel the pain in her muscles when she does pick up the car.  She acts totally on auto pilot and saves her child and saves the day.

Or you may have heard about people in burning buildings leaping from windows and living to tell about it.  There may have been many other options available.  For example, a fire escape, a voice on a loud speaker telling them to move to the roof or informing them that a ladder is being extended up to the window ledge and that a fireman will assist them.  But they see or hear nothing.  The conversation between the thinking and feeling brain is shut down by the brain stem, and the brain stem is looking for the “best” way to survive.  And so they jump.  Miraculously, they survive, sometimes without a broken bone, sometimes with every bone broken, but surviving nevertheless.

Okay, so we survived.  Now what?  Well, there is more.

When we do go through an over-the-top event (trauma), the chemicals necessary to “process” this event into our memory, so that we know the event is over, it happened yesterday, last week, twenty years ago, those chemicals are neutralized by all the adrenalin flowing through our brain, much the same way a car battery is neutralized by pouring baking soda into it.

As a result, the traumatic event never becomes PAST.  The event itself, especially the facts of the event disappear much like our dreams when we wake up.  But what doesn’t disappear are the emotions associated with the trauma: the fear, the anxiety, the pain, the horror, the absolute helplessness. These emotions are “stored” or “remembered” unconsciously in our feeling brain, specifically in the amygdala.  They just sit there, “stored” waiting for an opportunity to be triggered or fired off in response to anything that even remotely reminds the brain of the initial trauma.  This triggering process occurs almost completely outside our conscious awareness.

Why does it happen this way?  Well, I am not God, so I cannot give the final word about the way my brain works, but it seems obvious to me, so here is my obvious explanation.

When I am at risk of dying, there really is no time to think.  There is time only for action, life-saving action.  And if I were to feel whatever it is that I am feeling (pain, fear, terror, helplessness), I might just pass out or shrivel up and die on the spot.  So just like our facial muscles are preprogrammed to move into nine different configurations, so our brain stem is preprogrammed to respond to trauma or over-the-top events in a specified manner.

The first thing that happens is the brain stem sends a signal to our adrenalin reservoirs to dump large quantities of adrenalin into our system.  One immediate result of excess adrenalin is the shutting down of the dialogue between the thinking and the feeling brain.  The adrenalin also gives us incredible strength for whatever action we take.  At the same time, the excessive adrenalin makes it impossible for us to remember the event or to process the event into our hippocampus or conscious memory.

Perhaps, if we were able to remember the event the same way we remember other events, we would be repeatably traumatized for days on end and eventually wear out and die.   So making it impossible for us to remember. completes the effectiveness of being on auto pilot and observing ourselves from a distance, so to speak, observing ourselves without thought or feeling as we move through the motions of survival.  What a gift!

Now, our brain stem does NOT have the ability to think, to assess, or to debrief.  At the end of the day when the trauma is over, the brain stem never asks if you are half dead.  It only asks if you survived!  And, if the answer is YES, then the brain stem is quite excited and shouts, “ALRIGHT!  So, the next time we are in this same situation, we are going to do exactly what we did today.”  So there is the rub, perhaps the only rub, because, after all, we did survive.  But it is quite possible, that there may have been other options to survive, options that are less injurious and less risky.  And yes, of course, maybe not.  But that is why it is so important to debrief after a trauma.

So, in a sense, God does His or Her part.  God gives us this gift, a survival brain that literally saves our ass in situations where the fear or pain might just outright kill us.  But the REST is up to us.  The rest?  Yes, assessing our survival action, debriefing our emotions, rebalancing our brain chemistry, bringing our thinking and feeling brains back on line, so to speak.  You see, through careful thought and debriefing, we may discover a better way to survive for the next time.  This is not a question of second guessing or playing Monday morning quarterback.  It is simply using our brains to reassess and make our lives more livable and our survival more attainable.
    
The rest also includes consciously looking at and facing the trauma.  We can do that in the present.  We no longer have to look at the trauma the way we did when it was occurring, because it is, in fact, over and cannot effect us.  And in looking at and facing the trauma, we weave the facts and the emotions of the event into our memory.  If we just try to bury and forget the trauma, we risk remaining disconnected from our thinking brain and feeling brains, and we will risk remaining stuck in survival mode, auto pilot.  Remaining on auto pilot is particularly debilitating for ALL of our relationships, especially relationships with our loved ones.

And here is another part of the gift.  Since the trauma is over and we are buffered from the full impact of the trauma, we are not hard-pressed to do the debriefing work all at once.  We have plenty of time and space for visiting the event. weaving it, and working it into our life, into our history. 

But this debriefing, this weaving and working it in to fabric of our life is an absolute must.  A traumatic event is like a loose thread.  You don’t want to pull on the lose thread nor cut it off.  You do want to weave it back in to the fabric.  So too here.  It’s basically about being whole again and having all of yourself, your thoughts, your emotions, all of your resources available to you, not just survival resources.

In a soon to be published blog BRINGING OUR THINKING AND FEELING BRAIN BACK ON LINE, we will walk through the steps of debriefing and weaving and working the trauma into the fabric of our life.

In our next blog, we will look at the politics of Post Traumatic Stress.  As described in both Part One  and PartTwo, Post Traumatic Stress is a gift.  So how does it become a disorder?   Check out the The Politics of Post Traumatic Stress for the answer.

THANKS FOR READING AND COMMENTING.

THE POLITICS OF POST TRAUMATIC STRESS

 So what exactly is Post Traumatic Stress?

We will begin our discussion today by looking at “Criteria A” for determining whether or not a person is experiencing Post Traumatic Stress.  Criteria A, along with criteria B through F, are spelled out in the DSM-IV-TR)(1), which is a diagnostic and statistical manual used by most mental health professionals.

Criteria A
    The person has experienced, witnessed, or been confronted with an event or events that involve actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself or others.
    The person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Note: in children, it may be expressed instead by disorganized or agitated behavior.

There are also Criteria B through F which we will look at below.

So tell me this.  How many people can you think of who not only fit criteria A, but who fit criteria A over and over again on a daily basis?  Think combat soldiers, perhaps soldiers period, policeman, fireman, EMT folks (like ambulance personnel), emergency room folks, surgeons,  nurses.  And let’s not forget folks who work and live in gang and or crime-infested neighborhoods.
 

And, of course, there are many people throughout the world who live daily with the threat of terrorism, political upheaval, or who live in countries where war is non-stop.  Yes, they experience Criteria A daily.  (Sometime, watch the movie, Harrison’s Flowers.)

And if we want to become all inclusive, there are the folks, even in our own country, who are the object of hate, and who must live under the fear of being attacked.  For example, there are the people we refer to as the “derelicts.”  And as much as we don’t want to admit it, people, in this country, can still be attacked for the color of their skin and their sexual orientation.  So yes, the list can be quite extensive.  And my point?  Simple.  There are plenty of human beings experiencing Criteria A all the time, plenty of folks subject to Post Traumatic Stress.  They are not some rare minority who don’t have what it takes to face the realities of life.

So is Post Traumatic Stress the same as the acronym PTSD?  Well, the big difference is that letter “D” which stands for DISORDER.  M-m-m.  How did Post Traumatic Stress become a disorder?  Wow!  That’s an interesting question.  You think?

So what is with that?  And what are the implications and the ramifications to categorizing Post Traumatic Stress as a disorder?  Don’t you just love those words?  Implications and ramifications!   Well, it is more than an implication.  According to the DSM-IV-TR)(1), you are considered “disordered” if you have experienced, witnessed, or been confronted with an event or events that involve actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself or others, and then you responded with intense fear, helplessness, or horror.

Really?  How come?  Well, none of us like saying the obvious out loud, but apparently, the bottom line here is money.   Yes, insurance companies are not in the business of subsidizing or supporting therapeutic services for healthy folks.  Absolutely not.  When I bill your insurance company for the therapy services I provide you, I have to “give” you a diagnosis, which means you fall into one of the many “disorders” that qualify for insurance reimbursement.    Ugh!  This is how the system is set up.  At least in mental health treatment, you get to use your insurance benefits when you are “disordered” and “sick,” not healthy or well.

So with respect to Post Traumatic Stress, adding the D implies that a normal person, a healthy person, an “ordered” person (in constrast to disordered), will not experience Post Traumatic Stress, which is just a huge huge CROCK!  We just listed above a large large number of ordinary human beings who are subject to Post Traumatic Stress on a daily basis.

So today, I want us to consider that perhaps Post Traumatic Stress is a normal response to actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself or others.   Adding the letter D, disorder, pathologizes a normal neurological response to trauma.  The ramifications of adding that letter D may just be what keeps so many people, like soldiers, policeman, fireman, EMT folks, from seeking the support they deserve to debrief the at times daily occurrences of Post Traumatic Stress.  They have to pretend that they are not having a normal response to trauma because they do not want to be seen as weak and disordered.

As indicated in two previous blogs (The Gift of Post Traumatic Stress, PART ONE  and PART TWO) from my perspective as a therapist in practice for 30 years, Post Traumatic Stress is a gift, the brain’s gift to those of us who again experience actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself or others.

Criteria B through F further attempt to pathologize normal responses to the extraordinary.


Criterion B: intrusive recollection....Recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, or perceptions....Recurrent distressing dreams of the event.... Acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring....Intense psychological and physiological distress and reactivity at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.

Criterion C: avoidant/numbing....Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by at least three of the following:
    Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
    Efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the trauma
    Inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma
    Markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
    Feeling of detachment or estrangement from others
    Restricted range of affect (e.g., unable to have loving feelings)
    Sense of foreshortened future (e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span)

Criterion D: hyper-arousal....Persistent symptoms of increasing arousal (not present before the trauma), indicated by at least two of the following:
    Difficulty falling or staying asleep
    Irritability or outbursts of anger
    Difficulty concentrating
    Hyper-vigilance
    Exaggerated startle response

Criterion E: duration....Duration of the disturbance (symptoms in B, C, and D) is more than one month.
Criterion F: functional significance....The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

One does not have to be weak, disordered, or less than to experience any one or all of Criteria B through F.  Again they are the brain's normal response to trauma, as well as the brain's way of protecting us from having a head-on collision with the trauma and experiencing the trauma all at once.  Criteria B through F are also part of the gift of Post Traumatic Stress.  How?

First of all, experiencing these Criteria lets you know that what you experienced was, in fact, over-the-top.  Be wary of anyone, even yourself, saying things like, “Hey, it was no big deal....all in a day’s work....it’s what we do as a policeman, soldier....”

  Of course, it IS what you do and what you do is to face trauma every day of your life and sometimes, several times a day and that is the point of this article.  The experience of Criteria B through F confirms for you that you faced trauma, and that you continue to face trauma.  And to suggest that some combat soldiers or some EMT folks or some firemen or some surgeons or some policeman do not experience criteria B through F is ludicrous.

Does anyone believe that there are some folks who will feel no pain when they undergo surgery, and therefore do not require any local or general anesthesia?  Does anyone believe that?  Of course not.  So too, when we experience an over-the-top event, trauma, we will experience Criteria B through F, not because we are disordered or weak, but because our brain is designed to save our ass from the full impact of the trauma at the moment it is occurring.

So know, whenever you face an over-the-top event, whether it is once in your lifetime or on a daily basis, God has given you a brain, a wonderfully designed brain that keeps you from being “wiped out” by over-the-top events.  And also know, that now that your ass has been saved, you have a little work to do to get your brain back into balance.  AND also know, it is not something you can do alone.  You need and deserve safe safe people to accompany you on this journey.

So our next blog will focus on that journey, BRINGING OUR THINKING AND FEELING BRAIN BACK ON LINE.  Watch for it.  It will be posted soon.  Then we will take a look at all the traumatic or over-the- top events in the news.

THANK YOU FOR READING AND COMMENTING

THE GIFT OF POST TRAUMATIC STRESS, PART ONE

Post Traumatic Stress. You can Google these three words, and you will have a zillion links for your sweet mouse to click on, all with very good and helpful information.  If you search deep enough, you will find references to Post Traumatic Stress being a gift. For example, this reference to the book, The Gift of Fear.

Wouldn't you know it?  Here I thought I was coming up with an original idea.  Nevertheless, this is my take on Post Traumatic Stress as well.  It is, indeed, our brain's gift to us as survivors of every and any kind.

Here, in Part One, I want to introduce you to your brain.  Well, actually to your brains.  We have three of them!  To appreciate the gift of Post Traumatic Stress, we want to know exactly how our three brains operate.  What follows is somewhat simplistic but very very accurate.  And if you want even further simple details with pictures included, check out Brain Facts.  It is a wonderful primer on the brain and no cost to download, compliments of the Society for Neuroscience.  The picture below is taken from Brain Facts.

OUR THREE BRAINS

Yes, we have three brains:  One devoted to thinking processes (top brain, thinking brain), one devoted to assigning emotional significance to our experiences (mid-brain, feeling brain), and one specifically for saving our ass (brain stem, survival brain).  These three brains are well-designed and intricately connected and integrated. 

So here is how it works.  At any given moment, we are taking in “information” through our sensory organs.  You know, ears, eyes, nose, tongue, and skin.  The information from the sensory organs goes directly to a place in our mid-brain called the THALAMUS.  The thalamus acts as a relay center.  It somehow decides what information to send on to our thinking and feeling brains.  The implication here is that we perceive far more than we are consciously aware, much like your digital camera takes in much more information than you realize till you examine the actual photograph.

So you snap a picture of your honey sitting across from you at your favorite restaurant on the night you celebrated your anniversary.  Weeks later, when you view the photograph, you are intrigued by something in the background.  Digital technology allows you to zoom in on the background, and there you see a man, five tables away, putting a diamond ring into his mouth!  Come on, laugh. We gotta have some humor here!

So the thalamus decides what information to send on to the thinking brain and the feeling brain.  When the feeling brain receives the information, it sends an immediate message to our muscles which we experience as a feeling or emotion.  This feeling will automatically prepare our muscles to move either toward the experience or away from the experience.  This is why emotions are often referred to as biological motivators because our emotions or feelings literally move our muscles. motivate us to move toward or away.

Simultaneously, the information is picked up by the thinking brain.  The thinking brain and the feeling brain begin a conversation neurochemically and neuroelectrically.  This conversation assists us in making a good decision about our behavior.

So, check out this example.  You pull up into a parking space, you keep the engine and air conditioning running because it is a hot day, and you know you will not be parked very long.  Suddenly, a door opens and out walks a gorgeous woman.  Not only is she gorgeous, but she is walking toward you.

So the thalamus picks up the information from your eye balls.  It sends the information to your feeling brain.  Your feeling brain sends a message to your muscles which, in turn, prepare to move toward the woman.  You feel excitement and tingling throughout your entire body. 

Simultaneously, the thinking brain gets the information, and the thinking brain and feeling brain begin a conversation.

FEELING BRAIN: Wow, I am excited.

THINKING BRAIN: Of course you are excited, she is one gorgeous woman

FEELING BRAIN: I want to jump out of the car and run toward her.

THINKING BRAIN: Of course you do.  And you know what?  I think that would be a very smart move on your part.

FEELING BRAIN: Wow!  I am just going bananas, in fact, my banana is doing some funny tricks too.

THINKING BRAIN: What the heck are you waiting for?  If you don’t get out now, she will be in the front seat before you know it.  Let her know how excited you are.  Get going, move, get out of the car, run toward her.

So here is a scene where a man is picking up his sweety from her job.  His brain works marvelously and directs him well.  The man has both feelings and thoughts about the experience, and in that dialogue between thoughts and feelings, the man comes to a decision about how to behave.  Yes, our brain works really well unless it has been tampered with.

So let’s look at another example.  There’s this macho stud muffin named Jock.  Now, Jock’s been trained from a very early age to act tough and be tough and not to show emotions, not to do anything rash!  So in Jock’s brain, there’s an extra voice, so to speak, that interferes with the dialogue between the thinking brain and the feeling brain.  Jock finds himself in the same situation described above, but the conversation will look “slightly” different.

Jock pulls up into a parking space.  He keeps the engine and air conditioning running because it is a hot day, and he knows he will not be parked very long.  Suddenly a door opens and out walks a gorgeous woman.  Not only is she gorgeous, but she is walking right toward Jock.

Just like our first example, the thalamus picks up the information from Jock’s eye balls.  It sends the information to his feeling brain.  His feeling brain sends a message to his muscles which prepare to move toward the woman.  Jock feels excitement and tingling throughout his entire body.  Simultaneously, the thinking brain gets the information, and the thinking brain and feeling brain begin a conversation.

FEELING BRAIN: Wow, I am excited.

THINKING BRAIN: Of course you are excited, she is one gorgeous woman

FEELING BRAIN: I want to jump out of the car and run toward her.

THINKING BRAIN: Of course you do.  And you know what.  I think that would be a very smart move on your part.

EXTRA VOICE: HOLD IT!  Have you forgotten who you are?  SIT!

FEELING BRAIN: Wow!  I am just going bananas, in fact, my banana is doing some funny tricks too.

THINKING BRAIN: What the heck are you waiting for?  If you don’t get out now, she will be in the front seat before you know it.  Let her know how excited you are.  Get going, move, get out of the car, run toward her.

EXTRA VOICE: DUDE, we’ve been through this before.  She’s going to think you are a pushover.  You gotta let her know you’re boss here.  SIT.  Let her open the door herself.  She’s a woman, right?  She wants to have rights, right?  So let her.  Get a grip on those emotions and feelings, Jock.  They will just get you into trouble.  In fact growl at her when she gets into the car and tell her she’s late!

      

OUCH!  So Jock’s brain has been tampered with.  In fact, it probably happens to most if not all of us.  This is not a blame game here, but something to be aware of.  So think about it.

When we are little, we know simply and clearly what we we see, smell, taste, hear, and experience.  BUT when, as a little person, we speak out loud what we experience, we are often told that we are way off base.  In fact, we are more often than not told that we are NOT seeing hearing, tasting, smelling, experiencing, what, in fact, we are experiencing.

For example, Mom says, “I’m going to put medicine on your owee, and it says right here on the bottle, it will not hurt.  So don’t be crying!”  Well, it hurts like hell, but how are you going to contradict the authority of a giant?

Or you say, “Daddy, how come you were kissing that woman?”  And Dad slaps your face and tells you, “You did not see me kissing any woman.  Now get that idea out of your head.  I don’t know where you come up with these stories.”  Well, you know damned well you saw what you saw.

“Hey, Mom, look at the fat lady,” and Mom is covering your mouth so fast and so hard, you pass out!  And then she adds insult to injury by telling you that the woman is not fat and furthermore you know she is not fat, and finally, you’re just trying to get attention.

“Dad what is that funny smell on your breath?  Is that beer?”  And Dad is on you like a fly on poop and insisting that he doesn’t drink beer.

So, the scenarios go on and on.  Again, our brain works really well if no one tampers with it.  But, our brains do get tampered with, and we all have these “extra voices” in the dialogue between the thinking brain and the feeling brain.  And by the time we are eighteen, we no longer see what see, no longer hear what hear, no longer smell what we smell, no longer feel what we feel, no longer know what we know.  So having learned about that sad state of affairs, let’s move on to take a look at our brain stem (bottom brain) or survival brain.

SURVIVAL BRAIN (BRAIN STEM)

Now, while the thinking brain and the feeling brain are carrying on their conversation, the brain stem is monitoring, in fact, constantly monitoring our entire body’s operations to be sure we are not at risk.  At risk for what?  At risk for survival.  Our survival brain is kind of like air traffic control.

So the brain stem monitors what we call our autonomic nervous system which keeps tabs on items like  heart rate, digestion, respiratory rate, salivation, perspiration, pupillary dilation, micturition (urination), and sexual arousal.  The brain stem wants to make sure that everything is in balance.  Whenever the brain stem notices something is out of balance, it goes on alert.  When we begin to approach any kind of threshold, so for example, a pain threshold, a fear threshold, a blood sugar threshold, a blood pressure threshold, the brain stem goes into action.

Now, when the brain stem does go into action, it cuts off the dialogue between the thinking brain and the feeling brain, and we go on what we call auto pilot.  It's not really auto pilot because the brain stem is running the show, but the brain stem does not have the ability to think or make decisions.  It simply moves us in a direction of survival and relies heavily upon any previous behaviors that have resulted in our saving our ass in moments of danger.  This is the way everyone's brain stem works.  And these are the critical pieces in understanding how our brain functions and the critical pieces in understanding why Post Traumatic Stress is a gift.

In Part Two, we will pick up right here and follow the Brain Stem's path to survival.

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