post-traumatic stress disorder
Trauma Thursday: Gravity of PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a big deal, right? You will probably be surprised to learn that many people who have been diagnosed with PTSD have a very difficult time accepting this about themselves. I truly did not even believe that I had PTSD because I believed that my abuse “wasn’t that bad” and that others had it worse than I did.
I remember the day my therapist told me that I had a diagnosis of PTSD. I didn’t understand why he had “PTSD” written at the top of a white board with a bunch of familiar symptoms listed below it. Yes, I could relate to those symptoms, but I didn’t have something that serious, did I? Incredulously, I asked him if he really believed that I had PTSD. I remember his understated head nod in response. I was floored!
Why do many people with PTSD resist accepting the gravity of their diagnosis? It all ties into the survival instinct. No abused child can risk falling into despair, so abused children find ways to keep on going while living in a hopeless situation. One way they do this is by minimizing their experience. If the abuse “isn’t that bad,” then they can continue to endure. If they accept the reality – that they are completely helpless to stop the abuse from happening – then they lose the will to keep on fighting to survive.
- FaithA's blog
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Trauma Thursday: Why People with PTSD Don’t Talk About Their Experiences
I recently read a magazine article highlighting the issues with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in soldiers. The article talked about the soldiers’ reluctance to admit that they were struggling with PTSD or talk about their experiences. Also recently, a woman shared with me that her father, who fought in World War II, told her about a battlefield experience that he had never told anyone before.
I always find it interesting to hear the speculations of people without PTSD about why those of us with PTSD do not share our stories because, in most cases, the speculations are way off base. I can tell you why – We don’t want to burden you. When you have endured something as horrifying as being locked in a box for hours covered in blood or feces, or storming a beach through the body parts of your fallen comrades, you don’t know how much the other person can handle hearing. We don’t talk about it because we don’t want to burden you with the horrors that haunt our nightmares.
Trauma Thursday: PTSD is not a Mental Illness
One of my pet peeves is when people assume that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental illness. It is not. To assume that a foster or adopted child who has been traumatized is also mentally ill is to add insult to injury. Of course, someone with PTSD could also suffer from a mental illness, but PTSD itself is not a mental illness.
A mental illness is a biological issue with the brain, which is why bipolar disease and schizophrenia are hereditary. PTSD is not. It is not possible for someone with PTSD to pass along the disorder to a biological child unless the parent traumatizes the child. PTSD is a disorder caused by environmental factors, not biological ones. See Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Nobody is born into the world experiencing flashbacks due to a physiological problem with the brain.
Trauma Tuesday: PTSD and Cycles of Emotions
I recently cycled out of a very intense, two-week cycle of emotions that were a symptom of my post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While it is fresh on my mind (and psyche!), I thought I would share what it feels like from the inside to help you understand your abused child a little better.
Anyone with PTSD might experience some form of this cycling of emotions. The symptoms will be much more intense for anyone who suffered from ritual abuse like I did.
It started with mild feelings of anxiety. I could not relax. I noticed myself slipping back into some of my anxiety-control tics, such as blowing on my hands. I could not pinpoint why, only that I was feeling a bit out of sorts.
Next came the headache. As the stress began to build inside of me, my head began to pound. I became cranky and had a shorter temper than normal. I was less able to shake off the minor irritations of life with humor, which is my normal way of coping with the day-to-day annoyances that arise.
Sleep loss came next.
Trauma Tuesday: Raw Emotions After Flashbacks
One issue that might surprise you as a parent of an abused adopted child is that recovered memories (or flashbacks) come with very raw pain. People often assume that, even though the memory has been “hidden” from the child, the emotions should not still be there, too. That assumption could not be more wrong.
When an abused child recovers a memory/has a flashback, the emotions associated with the event return as well. The full punch of the emotions might lag behind by a day or two, but they will definitely come. When the child feels those emotions, they are as raw is if the traumatizing event has just happened.
Whenever your adopted child has a flashback, prepare yourself for dealing with very raw emotions within the next couple of days. Your child needs you to reasssure him that what he is feeling is normal. Experiencing very deep and raw emotions years after the event took place can make the child feel “crazy.” It is very important that you reassure the child that feeling these emotions is a normal part of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
- FaithA's blog
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Trauma Thursday: Is it PTSD or ADHD?
Sometimes the symptoms of one disorder can mimic another. For example, many abused children are misdiagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) when they are really suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). How can you tell the difference? It’s not always easy.
Children with PTSD might appear to have focus issues. They might stare off into space rather than focus on a school assignment. The same behavior might also happen with a child with attention deficit disorder (ADD) or ADHD because these children have a hard time focusing.
Children with PTSD might also fidget a lot, just like a child with ADHD.
Trauma Thursday: What Does a Flashback Feel Like?
If you are parenting a traumatized adopted child who has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), you might wonder what a flashback feels like. Before I had one, I had a very different idea about what a flashback was. I heard about veterans seeing the movie Saving Private Ryan and finding themselves “reliving” their trauma through flashbacks. I envisioned people who felt as if they had time traveled back to their past and lost touch with the reality of the present. This was very different from my experience with flashbacks.
Flashbacks generally come in one of two ways. One way is like what happened to those veterans: Something “triggers” the flashback because the sight, sound, smell, etc. reminds the person of the trauma. However, flashbacks do not necessarily need a trigger to come. Flashbacks also happen when the traumatized adopted child feels safe enough to begin healing from the trauma.
Trauma Thursday: Traumatized Adopted Child and Body Memories
Most people are familiar with visual flashbacks being a part of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I have also written about emotional flashbacks. Another variety of flashbacks that is less well-known is called a body memory.
A body memory is a flashback that a traumatized adopted child feels in his body. A body memory can result from any form of trauma to the body. A good example is the amputee who continues to “feel” his amputated limb. Some people believe that even the cells of the body experience trauma and that body memories are the body’s way of releasing the energy associated with the trauma, just as a flashback is the release of the emotional memory.
If the traumatized adopted child does not know what is happening, experiencing a body memory can be scary.
- FaithA's blog
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Trauma Tuesday: Traumatized Adopted Child and Disconnection From the Body
On my blog entry, Other Types Of Eating Disorders And The Adopted Child, Scrapsbynobody posted a very insightful comment. I have condensed it for brevity, but be sure to read the whole thing because she shows a lot of insight into the mind of the traumatized child:
[Our children] are very unaware of their own bodies. They talk too loud, crash into things, seem unaware of how to choose clothing for the temperature outdoors. They don't know when they are tired, they fret over minor injuries, but can't distinguish real ones … Our children don't over eat because of fear and trauma, at least directly, but because they have "shut down", or maybe never "turned on". – Scrapsbynobody
"Shut down" or "never turned on" is a good way to describe a traumatized child.
When I first started recovering memories of my abuse through flashbacks, I questioned their veracity because so many were from the perspective of the ceiling.
Trauma Tuesday: Traumatized Adopted Child and Triggers
Over on her blog, Julie gave some good advice about Keeping A Behavior Log if you are parenting a traumatized adopted child. She wisely pointed out that the traumatized child often does not even know why he is acting the way he does when he is triggered. Because I have spent most of my life experiencing triggers without knowing the cause, I thought I would write about this phenomenon from the traumatized child's perspective.
A trigger is anything that elicits an emotional reaction from the traumatized child. While it appears that the child is overreacting to a stimulus, he really isn't. Instead, he is reacting appropriately to something traumatic that he experienced but has not yet dealt with. Because you, as the adoptive parent, do not know what that trigger or experience is, it appears that your child is overreacting and just being difficult.
For example, I absolutely cannot stand to get dirt in my fingernails.
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