PTSD Survivors Speak: Changing Perspective, Part 1
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 • PTSD Guest Post: Survivors Speak •
LeSan is a survivor taking control. In this 2 part series she makes a case for why we should take the ‘disorder’ out of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Changing Perspective
Nothing gets my goat faster than seeing the words illness and dysfunction ascribed to someone who is dealing with Post Traumatic Stress (PTS).
The biggest hurdle we have to tackle first and foremost with PTS is how we define it for ourselves. Did you notice that I left the D for dysfunction off of Post Traumatic Stress? This is because I believe it to be one of the most misleading and damaging labels we struggle under. Yes, I am actually going to pick a semantic fight. Not because I think we should call it Happy Getting on with Your Life Normally Syndrome but rather because I think that we are looking at this thing all wrong.
The term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was obviously coined by someone who never actually had it. Post, means after but the event is still in psychological action even though the first phase of it is over. Stress, is a highly inadequate word which doesn’t even come close to describing what you are living through and the word disorder is just plain missing the point. Traumatic is probably the only word that actually works here. Trauma is definitely what happened but it is clearly not post since you’re still actively suffering with it and stress is what happens when you’re late for an appointment or you miss your flight connection.
The difficulty comes from defining what you are living with as a disorder or a dysfunction. Experiencing a traumatic life event/s is certainly off the chart for normal living but your mind and body are designed to find ways to handle it and I have a profound respect for that process.
To suggest that because you physically survived that’s the end of it is woefully short-sighted. The physical event may have ended but the psychological event is still in going on so you are actually still in the process of surviving it.
We get caught up in thinking that because it isn’t physically happening right now that the event is over. There is an expectation that we should fit right back into the flow of life as if the trauma had never happened. That can only mean one thing: That you would have to deny reality and that would certainly be dysfunctional. That kind of thinking forces us to live in the trauma far longer than we have to.
What we are missing here is how the brain and body work to process time and reality. Most events happen in a predictable manner that the brain is prepared for and it processes the information in a quick and efficient manner so that it can move onto the next moment.
We are specifically designed to protect ourselves and process information in a chaotic world. When trauma occurs this amazing mechanism goes into hyper-drive. Your mind suddenly gets busy collecting every tiny bit of information it can about the traumatic situation in order to make sense of and therefore protect you. Its goal is to regain control by understanding. As you well know trauma doesn’t exactly make sense and you certainly are not in control. The part of the process where we make sense and order out of everything gets put off until we can get back to it. That task then has to become a deliberate choice on our part instead of the automatic processes we are accustomed to.
LeSan is an artist in every way: former President of Northwest Watercolor Society and Chairman for several national juried shows, she paints in oil, watercolor and pastel. She also sculpts in stainless steel mesh. She has taken the past couple of years off to build a garden and rebuild her reserves. You can see her personal progress at www.bluegategardens.blogspot.com. She says, “I would like to say that I hope to figure out the great mystery of my life before it’s over but I suspect that I am going to use up every last minute of living in process. It’s not a bad way to live.”
Tune in next Wednesday for Part 2 of “Changing Perspective”.
The opinions represented are solely those of the author. To contribute to “Survivors Speak” contact Michele.
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I have to say I completely agree. We work with women healing emotionally from a traumatic birth, and we believe that their response is REASONABLE considering what occurred. It is a NORMAL response to an ABNORMAL situation. How then is that a ‘disorder’? Thank you, LeSan.
I am hearing what Le San is saying, but I think it also helps us to educate people in all manner of dis-ease …
Society has attached the ‘negative’ stigma to disease … But energetically speaking, any negative impact is simply a dis-ease that can be altered with assistance.
Negative energy manifests in our body, as a dis-ease. It doesn’t mean we are insane or abnormal.
The level we vibrate at determines our capacity to ‘get away’ from dis-ease and improve our life.
@Tanya — LOVE the simplicity of your idea about energy and how it can be altered — how it is MADE to be altered! All too often as you, and Melissa and LeSan are pointing out, survivors take on the stigma that surrounds PTSD, as if we are wrong, broken or sick. That sort of mindset can only impede healing. Thank you — all of you! — for speaking out against our giving in.
I am so happy and relieved to see that I am not the only one who believes in the ability, even necessity, to change the way we think of this. Once I stopped reacting with fear and negative judgment toward my own self I quickly began processing through the trauma and moved toward reclaiming and re-inventing myself. It is exactly as Michele is trying to teach, that we need to take positive control of our lives and our process back. It’s hard but it is so do-able and the rewards are worth every effort.
I completely relate to the writers above in their response to the label PTSD. As a clinician for the past 30 years I can tell you that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a term used for specific symptoms for diagnostic purposes. There is a need for specific criteria to be listed for each illness so all clinicians diagnose uniformly. In the same vein how could a medical doctor diagnosis diabetes without a manual listing symptoms. The diagnosis allows us to provide the most effective treatment.
Unfortunately in our society, an illness related to mental functioning has a stigma. From my perspective that is what needs changing.
@Alice — Great point and thanks for sharing your professional perspective. Would you be willing to take that idea a little further and suggest ways that a survivor could get out from under the stigma? Or, suggest what we can do to advocate for eliminating the stigma altogether?
That’s brilliant and I agree. I’d rather view illness as a moment out of harmony. There’s no hope in words like disorder and illness. Thank you, LeSan.
@ Alice. Bravo to this – Unfortunately in our society, an illness related to mental functioning has a stigma. From my perspective that is what needs changing.
Ok then, I have never thought about this, ever, until Michele added me on Facebook and I looked at the Group she has started to make people aware, as sufferers, of our plight. For more than 21 years I have carried the “tag” of PTSD and never really thought anything about it until now, I don’t suppose that I had to as I still had a job, the Army still paid me and they still sent me on trips and courses, yet reflecting I know see those “trips” & “jobs” for what they were, I was ostracized without them really doing that. I’ll explain that a little more so you know what I’m thinking. The “jobs” & “trips” included thinks like running the motorbike bay (only me working there), Tour of Duty in the Falklands/jungle etc (again just me in the job), skiing, rock climbing and parachuting (guess what? Yes just me again).
Actually reflecting I now see what that “tag” came with and why it is not more widely known about or even accepted, my own experiences within the Army, now I look back, I see that I was avoided by many and put into a specific group with the stigma attached that some of you have mentioned when people think about anyone with any form of psychological ailment. I even now see why my own brothers are still scared of me, I used to think that they were giving me respect for my service and the fact that I, as the youngest, had been to war but now I reflect it seems even they have placed that stigma on me because of my experiences and subsequent “problem/s”
With that in mind I agree that because of the wording placed upon our form of personal problem has only served to increase that stigma attached to our predicament therefore the way others treat and look towards us. In short I wholeheartedly back LeSan’s idea that we change the title placed upon us, but, and a big but, I don’t think that LeSan’s idea that ‘Post’ is the wrong word, maybe they just left out a slash to join the words together, Post-Traumatic, therein making them one word and the post aiming at the trauma we have, or still are, suffering from after the actual event that triggered our ailment. As LeSan said about semantics this then sounds the same.
But why not let us all look at the wording itself, as LeSan is trying to get us to do, and come up with alternatives? Here are my first thoughts, bearing in mind that I have no problem with the post part;
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Confusion
Turmoil
Unrest
Complaint
Syndrome
As I said these are just my first thoughts and ramblings but let us begin from somewhere and bounce ideas off each other, maybe we need to change the whole thing? I don’t know but I thank you all for making me ponder this.
Warm Regards to you all.
and sorry it’s such a long response