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Topics - Slackjaw99

#1
I've noticed this topic getting more attention in the therapeutic community lately. While I can relate to the categories of neglect, emotional abuse, and perpetrator mental illness as describing the actions of my own parents. Seeing those causes in a vacuum caused my to view my parents with contempt and hatred to the point of estrangement for a couple decades. It was a level of hate that had to have taken a toll on my physical health.

Once I became "trauma informed", I did a deep dive into my family history, as well as learning all I could about DTD (developmental trauma disorder). Turns out my great grandmother emigrated to this country from Russia where her family was subject to sadistic pogroms which must have traumatized her. I don't know what my great grandmother's relationship with my grandmother was like, but I know my grandmother appeared to be extremely narcissistic and hysterical, and my mother was completely shut down emotionally. My mother told me she spent something like 4 years on a psychoanalyst's couch in the early 60s, and she still has severe anxiety. I have no doubt that my mother was traumatized by my grandmother.

From what I understand about early childhood development, our brains are still developing after birth- especially in regard to programming the brain's social structures and developing emotional/autonomic regulation. The difference between autism and cPTSD is that autistic kids have a "hardware" problem (malformed or missing social neurons) and cPTSD is a "software" problem where the neurons are there but programmed incorrectly. For normal social development to take place the mother must be attuned to her child. The child cries to indicate it's hungry, tired, itchy from poop, or scared, and the mother soothes her child and meets its needs. This is how secure attachment and self-esteem develop. From a position of secure attachment, a child eventually begins to explore farther and farther on her own. When the child is old enough, the mother takes the child to the playground sandbox to play with the other toddlers. She teaches the child how to share and how to recognize the emotions of other children.

But a traumatized mother has problems performing these basic caregiver activities resulting in DTD and later, cPTSD in the child. A child cries, and the traumatized mother recoils.  I can now see how this dynamic has played out in my maternal ancestry going back 4 generations. It has allowed me to replace my toxic, parental hatred with grace and love and ultimately, I believe, is helping me to find healing. I've even been able to grieve for my mother. Had I not found this knowledge, I'd still be telling others that my parents were two of the most narcissistic assh*les on earth.

The posts I've read here on OOTS make me suspect that trans-generational trauma is major contributing factor to many here with cPTSD as the descriptions of parents who were "narcissistic", addicted, or victims of mental illness themselves are plenty. But those things don't just happen in a vacuum. Trauma is usually a contributing factor. I'd imagine that it's exceedingly rare to find the truly evil parent that hates and abuses their child for no reason other than entertainment.

I believe the trans-generational trauma in my family has been passed down via entirely environmental factors, but there are researchers such as Rachel Yehuda who believe epigenetics (gene expression) plays a factor based on some small studies of children of holocaust survivors. Regardless of specifics though, I think trans-generational trauma causing cPTSD is a topic worthy of more discussion on OOTS. WDYT?

#2
My big complaint last year fueled by my fatalistic cPTSD outlook was the lack of "trauma-informed" therapists in my area willing to treat me. This was confirmed, of course, by the grand total of two trauma practitioners I met with. The first was a "Somatic Experiencing" practitioner who immediately had me lay down face up on a massage table. She placed a hand underneath my back, ostensibly grabbing my kidney, and asking if I felt better. For the $250, she could have at least grabbed something more pleasurable.  The second was a "SensoryMotor" psychotherapist. After spilling my guts to her, she seemed so visibly disturbed by me that I almost expected the followup email stating that we "weren't a good fit" and ending with a list of referrals. All I can say about that was at least the kidney grabber didn't cause me additional rejection trauma.

From what I've gleaned on this site my complaint is shared by at least a few others.

On the third try I did find a person that I would say fits the description of a "good enough" therapist. This person while being "trauma informed" wasn't able to apply their preferred trauma focused modality to my particular flavor of cPTSD, but they did allow me to direct my own approach to therapy taken in large part from Pete Walker's From Surviving To Thriving. They were also open to experimental sessions using a certain plant medicine recently legalized in my state. Less than six months later and I now consider myself to be trauma free.

The lesson I learned from these experiences is that there are only two kinds of therapists out there, and I'm not referring to trauma-informed vs. trauma-uninformed. There are those who want to run the show, and there are those who will let you run the show. Over the decades I've suffered at the hands of therapists who like to run the show. I'm referring to the psychiatrists, psychologists, MFTs, LCSWs, etc who each come from their various schools of thought and research, and who specialize in treating certain "disorders" and even one or two who've invented new "disorders". My favorites were the self-proclaimed "addiction specialists" who hypocritically helped me trade my alcohol and benzo addictions for dependencies on powerful insomnia meds, brain-destroying anti-psychotics, and sex. In the end, all that was accomplished was a futile loss in a game of whack-a-mole.

Another lesson I learned is that relying on a therapist to "know it all" is a bad bet. A better bet is to take the initiative to read books written by therapists expert in cPTSD, distill the knowledge and apply it to my particular therapeutic needs. The takeaway from my recent experience is that to recover from cPTSD I had to become my own therapist- literally. My healing sessions required a "dual awareness" (mindfulness) approach where my left brain played the role of therapist/parent while speaking to my right brain AKA inner child self AKA emotional brain to effect a massive catharsis of grief.

While I am now working with a therapist who is "trauma-informed", I'm probably more trauma-informed than he is. But none of that matters. It wouldn't even matter if he wasn't trauma-informed. What does matter is that he respects the knowledge that I bring into therapy from authors like Pete Walker or Bessel Van Der Kolk. He's open minded, and is open to experimenting to find the right modalities for my situation. Beyond that, he listens to whatever I want to kvetch about without judgment. I believe that in order to do that, a therapist must have dealt with their own issues successfully. Because of these basic attributes, I found the first therapist in my life who I could *trust*.

Having a therapist that is trustworthy and empowering is much more valuable than a therapist who is necessarily trauma-informed. I say this because cPTSD is not a disorder you can ever recover from by relying on a therapist to hold your hand through the process. Conversely I say from my own experience that learning how to self-parent, and by extension being your own therapist, is a critical factor in ultimately reaching a place where its safe to release the pent up traumatic grief once and for all.  Would love to know WDYT.




#3
As someone who was "blessed" with DTD, I suffered two devastating impacts- the inability to regulate my emotions and the inability to regulate my autonomic nervous system (ANS). From age 15 for the next 36 years I both self-medicated and gobbled down every class of chemical produced by the profiteers of Big Pharma in an effort to get through each day. I've taken MAOIs, tricyclics, tetracyclics, SSRIs, anti-psychotics, stimulants, depressants, anti-convulsants, opioids, anxiolytics,  supplements, nootropics, eugerics (sp.), placebos, and let's not forget good Ol' Grandad. I probably left a few out, but you can get the idea. The sad part of all this was that some of the most destructive and toxic substances were prescribed by so-called "addiction specialist" psychiatrists rather than those that were self prescribed. I finally got so fed up with Big Pharma and Big Psychiatry that I decided to become my own psycho-pharmacologist and perform a neuroscience deep dive into the psychiatric drug discovery pipeline.

The following are my buckets with explanations to follow in future posts and edits. I hope we can agree to respectfully disagree where appropriate.

The Good (symptom reduction with less adverse impact):
    - off label anti-convulsants for anxiety and SNS control such as pregabalin, gabapentin, or baclofen.
    - off label blood pressure meds such as propranolol, Minipress, or clonidine.
    - some off label first generation anti-histamines (short term use) - promethazine, hydroxyzine
    - some 5th generation anti-depressants in the approval pipeline such as NSI-189
    - some MAOIs
    - plant medicines that must be discussed in another forum section

The Bad (some symptom reduction with more adverse impact):
    - most tricyclics
    - SSRIs, SNRIs - Prozac, Celexa, Effexor - examples of Big Pharma corruption and disinformation to be explained in a dedicated post at some point
    - most insomnia meds - including Ambien, Bellsomra, Lunesta

The Ugly:
    - benzodiazepines - clonazepam, lorazepam, diazepam, or any other 'pam'
    - opioids including Kratom - abuse, addiction
    - anti-psychotics - all "generations" including Seroquel, Geodon, Zyprexa. These are over prescribed, especially to  children for behavior control. They are grossly mis-prescribed to those with DID. They directly cause type 2 diabetes and movement disorders via cumulative destruction of dopamine neurons in the brain's movement center. The latter officially qualifies anti-psychotics as actual poisons or slow acting chemical weapons
    - alcohol - toxic to every type of cell in the human body

#4
Tomorrow I'll be 51 years and 3 months old. For 51 years and 2 months I suffered from a brain with the "fight or flight" switch stuck in the on position. As an infant, my cries for attention triggered my mother (a trauma victim herself) to recoil from rather than sooth me. I quickly learned to fear my emotions as a matter of survival- effectively eliminating access to the process by which humans discharge traumatic energy.

The mold was cast. I became a fearful and withdrawn child who preferred to play alone. I was easily bullied and ostracized. Were I to come home crying after being bullied, my mother's defensive reaction was to, at best, dismiss my distress, and at worst, ridicule my crying. While there was some physical abuse at home, the extreme emotional neglect and abuse took a far greater toll (the new ICD11 diagnosis misses the mark badly!). I was unable to make true human connection, yet to be accepted socially was all I craved. This set the pattern for my life- desperately seeking acceptance from women, from co-workers, from social groups, always coming across as weird, needy, or hiding something, getting rejected or ostracized, and slinking away in shame and self-hatred while adding yet more people and groups to my * list.

Each stop down the long road of cPTSD saw more and more loss until the resiliency of youth wore out and I began to give up. About 10 years ago I gave up on the idea of ever finding a life partner. About 3 years ago i gave up on trying to cultivate a career. Unemployed and friendless I was even bullied and ostracized by the HOA in a condo I was renting causing extreme agoraphobia. Along the way I took every psychotropic pill invented by Big Pharma, played whack-a-mole with at least a dozen different trauma-uninformed psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers, and even spent a couple years institutionalized for "alcoholism". I reached the point of active contingency planning for my own euthanasia.

Despite the horrid omission from the new ICD11 diagnostic criteria, I was well qualified for a cPTSD diagnosis. An LCSW from one of the local medical groups diagnosed me with PTSD in lat 2015, but it wasn't until February 2017 that I became truly trauma-informed and diagnosed myself with cPTSD. Since then I made an effort to learn everything possible about the condition from the neuroscience to the psycho-dynamic theory and even the anthropological aspects of trauma within our hunter-gatherer forbearers. The most intriguing phenomenon I came across was the growing number of case studies of trauma victims being "cured" by plant medicine (psychedelic) infused therapy in just a few sessions. This includes the ongoing studies by MAPS.org with MDMA, as well as all the sensationalist articles about Ayahuasca ceremonies deep in the Amazon jungle. Contrast this to the reports of conventional therapy taking years if not decades to produce a significant reduction in symptoms.

This being the short version of my healing journey, suffice to say I was beyond blessed to have partaken in the benefits of psychedelic assisted therapy using cannabis extract. After a period of preparation and trial and error, I experienced four healing sessions over the course of two weeks involving trauma catharsis where visually I appeared as if in a grand mal seizure, and acoustically I produced a wailing sound that could only be described as blood curdling. There was much more to these sessions that I will expand on here, or can be gleaning from looking at my resent posts in other areas of this board. http://cptsd.org/forum/index.php?action=profile;area=showposts;u=3013

Since these sessions part of me is still thinking this is too good to be true, but as I witness my most debilitating symptoms evaporate after 50 years of * on earth, I'm reminded of the miracle I experienced. My goal now is to share more details of my experience in future posts as I'm convinced that "plant medicines" will be integral to fast track trauma therapy in the future.
#5
Ideas/Tools for Recovery / Breathe!
February 27, 2018, 01:44:18 AM
In a recent mind exploration session a voice from somewhere deep in my subconscious told me to just breathe. It's one of the most basic functions for life, but for those with cPTSD it's one of the most basic dysfunctions.

It's a fact that when stuck in fight and flight mode our breaths become short and shallow. So no wonder we have all kinds of muscle ailments- neck pulls, tight shoulders, stiff lower backs, and the pain that goes with them. It's due to lack of oxygen. I used to swallow ibuprofen and acetaminophen like candy until I realized all I had to do was take full breaths and my spasming muscles would calm after just a few minutes.

The diaphragm is the only muscle in our bodies that can be controlled by both our autonomic nervous system (ANS) and conscious thought. Our ANS's are essentially broken in cPTSD. In my case, my sympathetic nervous system (SNS) operated at level 10, and my parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) operated at about level 3.  Consequently, I was always plagued by excessive sweating, IBS, tremor, and insomnia- all signs of an overactive SNS and vagus nerve dysfunction.

As it turns out, the one way we can hack our ANS to our advantage is through conscious breath. The Buddhists have used breathing as the basic tool for calming the body and mind through meditation for thousands of years. But it's only in the last 25 years that we've begun to understand the neuroscience behind meditative breath. Conscious breath or focusing on filling and emptying the lungs fully and at various rates stimulates the vagus nerve in various ways. My favorite is extremely short but full in breaths and long full out breaths with a little resistance (humming) to stimulate calmness, lower heart rate and BP. 10 minutes of this before a therapy session makes all the difference in the sessions' effectiveness. Apparently those of us with highly refined meditative breathing practices can stimulate their vagus nerves as well as, if not better than implanted electrical vagus nerve stimulators.

The ability to stimulate the vagus nerve via conscious breath to calm the mind and body is a fundamental prerequisite to recovering from cPTSD. It's the most basic somatic therapy to master given that all somatic therapies really just stimulate the vagus nerve in some way. Best of all it's free as long as air is free. But conscious breath is often overlooked as we tend to focus on paying thousands of dollars for therapists who've graduated from places like the Somatic Experiencing® Trauma Institute where all they teach you is how other mammals release traumatic energy. Anyone seen the video of the polar bear? I've had several healing sessions where breathing to stimulate the vagus nerve preceded spontaneous cathartic grieving and release of traumatic energy.
#6
We've all heard it said that soldiers who experience battlefield trauma are victims of "shock" trauma or regular, plain ol' PTSD. However, what's really going on is that a soldier on tour in a battle zone normally experiences multiple instances of battlefield horror. The trauma becomes ingrained not because of what the soldier experiences, but because the soldier is expected to maintain decorum in the aftermath and s/he is part of a culture of machismo where emotional display such as crying (how humans release trauma) is just not allowed. The solder is, in effect, held hostage by their branch of service which is akin to the abusive family or lover where emotions are punished, and without a way to release trauma is highly subject to internalizing future traumas no different than someone diagnosed with cPTSD. WDYT?
#7
I am my Emotions
my Emotions are Me
I need no longer fear my Emotions...and

because of this
    I give myself permission to Feel
because of this
    I am no longer afraid to Cry
because of this
    I am no longer afraid of Loss
because of this
    I am no longer afraid to Trust
because of this
    I am no longer afraid to Love
because of this
    I am no longer afraid of Joy
because of this
    I am no longer afraid to Laugh
#8
This past week I've had 3 psychedelic assisted therapy sessions focused around the grieving process suggested by Pete Walker in his book From Surviving to Thriving. The setting and process was very similar to the MAPS study using MDMA. The psychedelic used in this case was THC (vaped hybrid cannabis concentrate, legal in CA, USA). The process involved went something like this: dark, quiet room, comfortable couch --> ingest THC --> acute vagus nerve stimulation through holotropic breathing --> mindfulness based visualization of traumatic periods of life. Out of nowhere a voice in my head said you now have permission to feel. I then launched into intense grieving for the losses suffered to the point where my body was contorted as if in a grand mal seizure. I grieved the losses of childhood. I grieved the repeated disappointments throughout adulthood. Finally I grieved the loss of relationship with my mother in infancy and understood at the core level that her own cPTSD meant that my infant cries triggered her to recoil from me when she should have comforted me. I then forgave her and grieved for both of us because of the lifetime of guilt she felt for abandoning me emotionally.

Sometime during the second session the grief turned to the realization that rather than learning how to regulate my emotions from my mother's mirroring, I had actually learned to fear my emotions as a threat to my survival. But I simultaneously realized that it's only through unrestricted display of emotion that trauma can be discharged and let go of ... and that's what I had been doing during these sessions. In my third session the outward crying from grief turned into crying out of intense happiness beyond words due to the freedom and relief I was experiencing in knowing that the lynchpin of my cPTSD was broken. From now forward I can grieve over the remaining losses and trauma of my past and know that there is no concept of future trauma because I now have the tool to release rather than hold it. The key is embracing not fearing my emotions. So much of my life was lost because I feared my emotional reaction if an endeavor did not produce a positive result.

So far my hypervigilence, dissociation, and emotional flashbacks are fading, and my hair trigger anger over minutia is gone. What took Pete Walker 30 years to accomplish through conventional therapy, took just one week with psychedelic assisted therapy (albeit I did a tremendous amount of prep since becoming "trauma-informed" one year ago). Neuroscientists speculate that psychotropic compounds might allow us to bypass the PFC allowing our cognitive brain structures to communicate directly with our emotional brain structures in a healing manner.

For 50 years I was a prisoner. Now at 51 I am free!
#9
I'd like to post a shill for an organization raising money to conduct scientific research studying the efficacy of psychedelics in treating PTSD. As a neuroscience junky, I'm greatly intrigued by reports that this class of chemicals used in a therapeutic setting can potentially condense not just years but decades of therapy into weeks and months. It's hypothesized that they can rewire the brain in a way that causes a "reset" back to full integration of hemispheres and structures that become fragmented through traumatic events. Even therapeutic (not recreational) use of cannabis can help us smash through our "inner-critic" which is the primary blocker of good psychotherapy work and help us live in the "here and now".
The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is a US based non-profit that conducts this research, but relies entirely on private donations given that our draconian federal government sees "no medical value" in this class of chemicals. If you want to support the search for and effective "cure" for cPTSD check out www.MAPS.org.
#10
Medication / Albuterol - nice discovery
January 13, 2018, 01:50:13 AM
As a life long cPTSD sufferer my sympathetic nervous system operates at about a 10, whereas my parasympathetic nervous system operates at about a 3. Because of this I have all sorts of physical problems like hyperhydrosis, tremor, high BP, IBS, muscle tension, cramps, etc. Turns out that albuterol (oral, not inhaled), an old and generally safe asthma medication which I started taking to help burn fat during cardio sessions, increases the action of the sympathetic nervous system until tolerance develops (rather quickly). As my tolerance developed, I noticed I was having less issues with all the symptoms listed above.  I believe off-label use of this med could have great value to cPTSD sufferers who currently take BP meds off label (propranolol, clonidine, minipress, etc) to control physical symptoms given those meds also lead to tolerance and blood pressure issues. So I thought I'd share this.