Posted on 04/09/2013 9:41:30 PM PDT by neverdem
“PTSD is not psychosis, it’s a form of severe anxiety to a life threatening event/s.”
anxiety to a real life threatening event is actually a good thing. It keeps a soldier hyper vigilant and saves lives.
The problem is that the military realizes that a healthy anxiety to dangerous situations can be/is a hindrance to a good soldier doing his job. Thus they give these soldiers a 180 day supply when they send them out into combat. You could call it courage in a pill.
The problem is that although the anxiety of the life threatening situation is suppressed, the soldier continues to enter life threatening experiences and retains the memories of the experience. Much addiction is psychological in that the individual needs to continue the medication in order to not retrieve the stored memories of the traumatic experience. In short, the drug is needed not just to help the soldier at the time of the trauma, but to continue to block the retrieval of the memory of the trauma years later.
Drugs that merely block a symptom from surfacing, including the SSRI’s DO NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM. They merely allow a person to hide from dealing with it!
I don’t have time to explain and clarify my comment right now, but I will after April 15th...
Allow me to explain that the vestibular function works through the cerebellum and is the same area of the brain that is being tested when a police officer does a field sobriety test. It is also the reason why alcohol is used by many as an escape from emotional troubling memories. There are more dendrites in that portion of the brain than the rest of the brain combined.
The cerebellum is also the brain processing location for proprioception or balance function.
I have also found that vagus nerve stimulation causes individuals to block function in the cerebellum.
It is very logical that an individual with a balance disorder has a fear of heights. I wouldn’t classify this as a phobia as a phobia is unjustified fear. This fear is justified.
Yes and that is why 180 or any should be given at deployment, which they are discontinuing. However, I believe it is very helpful to those managing severe anxiety.
Stress however can indeed make these symptoms become more acute or begin to show sooner than it might have otherwise. This is simply because with cerebellum/Vestibular disorders the brain is in an almost constant compensation/correction mode correcting the incorrect sensory system. The more stresses you add good or bad the more overtaxed the brain becomes.
My son is prohibited from owning a gun because he has a “domestic violence” charge on his record, owing to the fact that he had a fight with girlfriend, she called the police, and he was convicted of “unlawful imprisonment” because e would not let het have her cell phone for a time.
It seems to me that he should not have his rights removed for an ordinary fight that most people have a one time or another with their wife or girlfriend.
I have worked with patients who have vestibular disorders, and patients who have vertigo where no vestibular malfunction was found. Some, the scar tissue from spinal surgery appeared to be the cause.
Really unusual thing I found was that people who lost someone close to them through death while there was unresolved conflict between them, there was a higher incidence of vertigo.
The anxiety is typically caused by the defense mechanisms in the body trying to block the retrieval of an emotionally traumatic memory when something in the current environment is stimulating retrieval.
For example, the tightening of the inter and outer costal muscles in the chest blocks the afferent spinal nerves from transmitting emotional discomfort to the central nervous system. This is one of the reason that stellate ganglion nerve block shots and the placebo stellate ganglion shots both work for PTSD treatment, but only temporarily. I talked with the researchers at Walter Reed about this and was not impressed.
The chest muscle contractions give that compressed chest feeling and make it difficult to breathe during the anxiety attack.
Pinched nerves can generate the vestibular disorder symptoms.
Yes, anxiety can cause a choking feeling in the neck area as well. EMDR is good for helping releasing physical body memories. But, as I stated before, anti anxiety is an excellent medication to help a person who is in severe distress and allow them to process when they are ready. You can not push a person to process more than they can handler before they are mentally, physically, emotionally ready or it could make someone much worse & backfire. At that point the therapist may spend weeks to months just to get the patient back to a somewhat stable place to begin working on the memories which sent them there to begin with.
Also, the anxiety causes the tightness first. Then the tightness causes anxiety. Tools are used to break the cycle. Sometimes meds help.
The tightness is the muscle contraction serving as a defense mechanism to block traumatic emotional nerve transmission. In my research, I have often instantly triggered and stopped anxiety attacks by stimulating the stored memory and/or removing the stimulation.
The most bizarre was a man in his seventies who instantly went into a standing epileptic seizure every time I stimulated a stored memory from when he was five years old. As soon as I removed memory stimulation, the seizure would stop. This was repeated four or five times with the same response each time.
I find it relatively easy to totally cure PTSD, even when working this Vietnam Vets who have had it since the early 1970’s. The problem with the various medical treatments is that they do not identify the storage location of the memory. They only deal with the anchor point in the physical body.
You make perfect sense there. You also sound like you may be a therapist or Dr.?
BTW any surgery can trigger Anxiety Disorders due to being put under. It can be short term or permanent. Vestibular or optic/auditory triggered anxiety disorder is not a traumatic not phobic induced disorder. It is a secondary condition to the physical or neurological primary one. That is why antidepressants often fail in treating this. It can make it worse.
Not every Vestibular patient is an anxiety patient. Not every Vestibular Disorder patient with anxiety disorder will have long term anxiety. From what I've read most cases cure themselves in about six months as the Vestibular issue clears up. These persons seem to be more prone to it because anxiety is produced by the damaged sensory processing system. The brain is being over tasked. That in turn can create the classic where am I, what am I doing, how did I get here, etc type of attack.
The possibility for full recovery seems to hinge on whether the Vestibular issue is short or long term issue. IOW the Vestibular issue clears up the anxiety goes away. Or in my case the more hearing I loose {confirmed by audiologist test} the fewer attacks I have auditory triggered if I have my hearing aids out.
I don’t dispute for a moment that stress with this type of AD compounds it. The human brain can only deal with so many task at once especially if any portion the processing system is damaged. I’m basing what I’m saying not on mental health research but rather vestibular research. Oh yea They also told my parents when I was about 7-8 that I had ADD/ADHD LOL. Nope I likely had C.A.P.D. They tried Ritalin about a week LOL. I became rather wired LOL.
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