|
“It is dangerous to use our own ability to access non-traumatic memories as a standard against which we judge a trauma victim’s response.”
― David Yeung |
|
Courtesy The Traumatology Institute
Traumatic Stress
|
Stress & Traumatic Stress Injury
Human life-experience comes with a certain amount of stress. Stress upon the human-animal takes many forms. A stressor is considered anything that causes the release of stress hormones in the body. When we feel 'stressed', it's the flooding of stress hormones in the body that we actually feel. To understand traumatic stress injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a study of what stress is, and what stress does to us, is important as part of educating ourselves on way to recovering. |
It's my own studied position that what we've learned (better stated, not learned) about the issue of stress has set us up to view the subject rather flippantly. We often find ourselves in states that we call, 'being stressed out'. We know what stress feels like. What we tend to ignore is the level of negative impact that stress can put upon us when we aren't listening to it's voice, our feelings of being stressed, and responding to the alarms that these feelings are actually there to communicate.
I've had to learn the hard way that for years I'd not readily given the negative consequences of 'stressing out' the respect that stress rightly deserves. Like many I think do, when I was stressed over anything I pushed myself to keep going. The hard lessons came for me when I'd reached my personal limits. What my body was signalling was that I needed to actually stop doing whatever was triggering the stress-reactions and feelings. I pushed myself through my work as a rural paramedic, ignoring the signals my own stress response was begging me to hear. When my brain and body couldn't take another hit, I ultimately completely broke down, diagnosed after 16 years of service with Depression and PTSD.
Dr. Gabor Mate, in his book powerfully titled, When The Body Says No, puts the concept of stress in proper context:
“The experience (we call) stress has three components. The first is the event, physical or emotional, that the organism interprets as threatening. This is the stress stimulus, also called the stressor. The second element is the processing system that experiences and interprets the meaning of the stressor. In the case of human beings, this processing system is the nervous system, in particular the brain. The final constituent is the stress response, which consists of the various physiological and behavioural adjustments made as a reaction to a perceived threat.
When we're under stress, whether we're aware or otherwise, the brain is perceiving the stressful stimulus as somehow being a threat to our well-being. Having interpreted for us that a threat exists, the brain signals the body to act. The stress response is what we feel in the body.
Under the spell ignited by the perceived threat, our nervous system responds by releasing a flood of stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, which rouse the body for emergency action. What does this feel like? What do we experience as the stress response in humans?
Our heart pounds faster. The muscles tighten. Our blood pressure rises. The breath quickens. And our senses become sharper as the body prepares itself to fight or flee the apparent threat.
An example of the stress response is what we feel whenever we're startled or frightened by something unexpectedly. That sense of fright is about a dose of stress-hormones being released in the body. To understand the human stress response, considering the feeling that comes on with a fright is something we can use to understand the felt-sense in the body that is the human stress response.
It's this feeling I'm speaking about when the body is reacting to stressors coming at us in the environment, interpreted as threat.
The human stress response is all about the unconscious process that is firing the flood of stress hormones automatically that hopes to signal and compel us to act in response to stressor. The stress response is normal. It's to be expected to fire when we need it to. With a stressor defined as being, 'anything that releases stress hormones' in the body, we can experience that response perhaps several times throughout any given day.
For instance, running late for an appointment can trigger the stress response. A near miss in an intersection while driving can trigger this sense. A sudden, unexpected fall triggers the stress response. The rise of anger we might feel as a response to conflict in a political exchange-this too is activation of the human stress response.
We need this response to stress (threat) to survive. Without it, it's doubtful the human species would have gone very far. We need the stress response activating in the face of threats. However, it's wise to consider that the release of these hormones, long-term, can't be all that good for us over time. Chronic experience with stress is known to cause all kinds of damage to the human body over time. Traumatic stress ignites an intense response. This type of stress is what leads to conditions, left untreated and unresolved, like PTSD.
It is our stress hormones and brain-processes that the human body will set-off that results in one or all of these these three inner-states, informing us to act in response:
The human body, with the feelings our stress hormones released, is setting us up to either fight-flee-freeze-or submit to the stressor (the apparent threat, real or imagined) whatever that stressor may be. The felt-sense of stress in the body is therefore all about fight-or-flight being activated inside.
The individual stressors themselves that we might experience fit into two broad categories-Physiological (or physical) stressors and Psychological (mental) stressors:
We experience psychological stress towards anything we might interpret as negative or that might be threatening our ego. Psychologically speaking, perception of threat can be real or imagined. Psychological stressors are those that might be constructed via our subtle, often-unconscious processes in the individual mind.
If two of us together experience something stressful, it is how we each interpret the situation that determines how much stress we'll feel in response. What acts to stress one of us, therefore, won't always necessarily stress another.
I've learned the value of keeping in mind that humans are story-telling creatures. We're chattering away to ourselves, inside of our own heads, whether we can hear the chatter or not. At a psychological level, it is this chatter that constitutes the story or the meaning we've attached to any given stressful experience that, via the mind alone, contributes to the unique response we all have to stressful events.
Any two of us may have very different stress-reactions to the same situation, even though we've both experienced the situation at the same time, and even in the same way.
There are many such physiological/mental processes working full-time inside of ourselves. What we feel, every single emotion, be it love, pain, anger, anxiety, whatever the emotion, has basis in the workings of the human body biologically. We refer to PTSD as a mental illness. This is only part of what's going on. Yes, the meaning we attach to any traumatic experience will generate a story that ignites our sense of suffering. It's the biological processes that are actually generating what we feel, and these biological processes are triggered with PTSD every time a memory of the traumatic experiences that's caused the condition are recalled.
Quite the Catch-22. Traumatic stress implants memories of trauma deep in the brain. PTSD constantly recalls the memories-sometimes simply because something in the present SMELLS like something that was scenting the air at the time of the traumatic event.
In humans, the heart beats on it's own. Certain processes for digestion and elimination of any wastes happens without us thinking much about these processes. We know when it's time to take a pee. We're unaware of all that's gone on inside that fills the bladder.
The human stress response is one of those processes that for the most part we've little control over.
Much associated with these processes in the body are below conscious awareness. We can become aware of something like our breathing if we pull breathing into conscious focus. With breathing put into focus, we can even then take over, consciously controlling precisely how we breathe. This is actually a first step in learning to better control the stress response in recovery.
We can train ourselves to respond in specific ways to any stressor that might be imposed on us too. This takes considerable effort, right education, and much time to learn. But, it can be done. This is what learning practices of mindfulness, for instance, offers us as means for learning stress-management skills as interventions we can put upon ourselves should our anxiety panic us into feeling like we're losing control.
Learning to self-regulate our emotions is a huge part of what recovery for PTSD is about.
For the most part, the normal human stress response is an automatic response. One that's signaling a potential threat is apparent that needs attention. As an automated response, it's only with some education that we can learn to intervene with ourselves in a way that allows us to then control how the automatic stress response plays out.
In regards to what might put upon the human organism a need for the stress response we feel, we're each different, but it's helpful to know that what we consider threatening is also hard-wired within as an adaptation via human evolution. We've genetically stored along the way certain memories in our DNA. These we've little control over at all, Just as we've little control over what happens in our lives that may traumatize us.
Once traumatized in life, the entire nervous system can be reset-making any stress moving forward from trauma the catalyst for a traumatic stress response in the body. Which is why we feel as though we're in a state of fight-or-flight full-time when we're dealing with trauma's after-math in the form of PTSD.
The sum of the processes the brain manages for us includes reading the physical environment. Towards others, we're constantly, unconsciously, reading body-language and others facial expressions. These processes include as well the reading of tones of voice we take in whenever we're communicating with one-another. Everything we take in via the senses, the brain is constantly assessing in the environment for anything that represents danger.
First and foremost, as the primary goal is always about survival, about keeping us alive, where the human brain is concerned: Perceive a threat? Ignite the stress-response. This need for sorting out any apparent threats coming at us in the environment, is said to be left-over from the days when we were still highly vulnerable animals back in humanity's more-exposed to dangers, hunter-gatherer pasts.
All is well, when the stress response acts as it's biologically set-up to do.
When things go bad, as with PTSD setting into our being, it's the human stress response that is actually 'disordered' in the condition we know as PTSD.
When we're dealing with PTSD as a consequence of traumatic stress injury, the symptoms related to the condition indicate problems have developed for us where interpretation of any stress put upon us is concerned. This further indicates that our stress-response processing in the brain and in the body is frankly broken. Being broken, it's the stress response that needs repair. (The Circuitry of Fear: Understanding the Neurobiology of PTSD).
I hope I'm making things clear: Stress put upon humans can be tricky. The stress response itself is normal. We're stressed by many things and we respond to stressors in uniquely individual ways. The human body, internally, has a slew of chemical, biological, and physiological mechanisms built-in, many of which are outside of our own control where the human stress response is concerned.
When we're 'stressed' the body lets us know. We can feel it.
Unfortunately, in Western Culture, it seems we've not learned well what the feelings of stress are hoping to tell us. The stress response fires whenever there's something happening that needs our attention. Functioning correctly, the human stress response is like an alarm-bell we don't pay enough attention too. Too few of us have taken the time to learn how best to manage our own experiences with stress generally. Traumatic stress is something few even know about, unless one is wounded by it enough that we end up ill.
For some of us, needing to confront any stressor coming our way is legitimately like a walk in the park. For others of us, any stressor at all can send us off the rails, not knowing what to do to put-down the stressor-to get that which is causing the stress out of our way. In Western Culture, as I've shared throughout this writing, we've not given stress the respect that stress is due.
Stressors themselves are too as unique to ourselves as we are unique from one-another. However the science of stress proposes that the two categories (physiological/psychological stressors) be broken down even further into categories defining stressors as absolute and/or relative.
While what stresses one of us is different from what stresses someone else, the recipe for the experience of the human stress response is universal.
For a situation to be stressful it must contain certain factors that influence perception. There are four elements of threat perception that can be represented with the acronym-N.U.T.S. (No disrespect intended):
Experiencing stress is a fact of human life we can't escape. "All Life is Suffering", The Buddha said our way. I've interpreted that to mean, all of life for humans is stressful.
In fact, we need a certain amount of good-stress (Eustress) to motivate ourselves in regards to learning or performing something new. Not all stress causes us harm.
There are three levels of stress that we live with as humans:
Eustress is like stage-fright. We feel this kind of stress as part of human growth. This is good-stress. Stress that we experience while we're in a process of learning and growing.
Distress is the second form that stress takes. This comes in the negative form that is more about threat to well-being. Where Eustress motivates, distress is all about fight or flight. Distress is the body's warning system I speak of that intends to tell us that something in the environment is going on that is over-taxing our mind, body, and/or spirit's ability to cope.
We can experience distress acutely (a one-off, in the moment experience). Or, we can experience distress chronically, as we might when life-circumstances puts stress-imposition upon us long-term.
Acute Distress can come suddenly, but the stress subsides when the stressful situation is resolved.
When there is little hope or evidence available that helps us find a way to resolve such situations that cause acute distress in a timely way, Chronic Distress is imposed upon us of which the long-term consequences include much that's similar in terms of the signs and symptoms we find with PTSD. (See 11 Signs of Too Much Stress From Healthline).
The physical health consequences of chronic distress include chronic pain, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and digestive disorders. Chronic distress can lead to adult-onset diabetes, heart disease, and issues with hypertension (high blood pressure) as well.
These are the more typical forms of stress we go through that pretty much all of us can relate to. Eustress can be thought of as positive stress for humans. Distress, acute or chronic, is negative stress, impacting well-being, either short-term or long.
There's a third form of stress humans experience only those of us with PTSD might know about.
This third form of stress is traumatic stress:
This kind of stress can be most dangerous to us if we fail to be rightly supported when anything happens that ignites a traumatic stress response. It's traumatic stress, and the injury to the brain traumatic stress can cause, that's responsible for outcomes of PTSD and other issues with mental health.
It's traumatic stress (traumatizing distress) that we experience when something in the environment is going on that is perceived as a very real threat to life, to health, or to our personal sense of morality and well-being. It's traumatic distress that can be the root-cause of illness.
When these illnesses take root, it's our experience in the body with the over-dose of stress-chemistry associated with the traumatic stress response that's ultimately responsible for stealing away our sense of competence and our ability to maintain our own well-being and independence.
Traumatic distress is set-loose in the body in response to serious situations of accident or natural disaster. Traumatic distress floods our body in response to any physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. Situations like any accident where loss of life was possible as either a close-call to ourselves, or as something we've witnessed (even in hearing the story sometimes) that's happened to fellow-humans, evokes inside the traumatic stress-response.
The traumatic stress-response is POWERFUL. Left to itself, an experience with traumatic distress can cause serious, life-changing, long-term consequences.
It's important to understand that even this third, traumatic stress-response is itself NORMAL. It is the EXPECTED response in the body when one has been traumatized. We get into trouble with traumatic distress, morphing into PTSD for instance, because we've not dealt with the trauma that the response has put upon the brain in a timely enough way to ward off the PTSD consequence.
Where chronic distress releases stress hormones as a constant slow-bur, traumatic distress floods our brain and body with an over-dose of this inner-chemistry. It's those extremely frightening or horrific situations in life that trigger the over-dose-flow of traumatic-stress-response-chemistry that damages the brain, making it very difficult for us to rationally cope in response to traumatizing events.
This is a form of distress that overwhelms. Traumatic Distress causes an injury to the human brain at the time of such events, which leads to a breaking down of the human psyche (left unchecked). Traumatizing experiences can end up often completely fracturing one's previous sense of feeling safe and protected. Traumatic distress experiences have the power to tear our sense of personal identity, as well, completely apart.
Traumatic distress impacts us at all our triune layers that make us human.
Traumatic distress injures all three: Mind, Body, and Spirit.
Traumatic distress is put upon the whole-person that we are, too-often morphing into an increasingly destructive force that when not dealt with correctly can leave us in a constant, unresolved state of 'traumatization': A state that can last for some of us a life-time should we leave that untreated for too long.
This is what I mean when I refer to traumatic stress (distress) as an injury. It's this injury of traumatization that came first as our body flooded our systems with a like-over-dose of stress chemistry. With that flooding, our brain is overwhelmed by all it's taking in (super-learning) during the traumatic event itself. It's this injury of traumatic stress that can take us into PTSD, Depression, Compassion Fatigue, and Substance/Alcohol Use Disorder.
Traumatizing experiences, left to themselves, can wipe us out. To deal effectively with traumatic stress injuries, we need clinical care from trauma-informed, properly educated and specialized care providers. And, we need such help as close to the time of the traumatizing event/events as is possible to best protect ourselves from developing any long-term illness as a consequence.
I accept this understanding I've learned, as I've applied this understanding directly to my own case. It's my belief today that had my own traumatizing experiences, taken-in while working as a paramedic in British Columbia, been rightly cared for via trauma-informed clinical care and interventions immediately following the events themselves: I'd likely have avoided my own experience with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Clinical Major Depression.
Had these two conditions been kept at bay, with right, immediate interventions, I'd have avoided too, my struggle with Addictions: If there was little to self-medicate, I'd have not turned to use of illicit drugs and alcohol to manage my chronic emotional, and later chronic physical pain, as a response when these physical and emotional sufferings became too much to bear, due to lack of access to right treatment.
This is why I share this with others: What happened for me, I do not want happening for anyone else.
I offer this take of my own on stress and traumatic stress specifically, as an introduction to what traumatic stress injury is about, in hope of encouraging others to access trauma-informed help as soon as you possibly can.
Here's a link to a more in-depth article from Harvard Health.
Here's a second article from Robert Scaer.
This one goes deep into the subject of stress as well.
It's been my experience with chronic PTSD that the nervous-system is reset with the condition in such a way that the normal stress-response is over-active. It's this over-active stress-response that can then make any experience with distress at all a trigger that can ignite repeated traumatic stress-responses from the onset of PTSD forward.
Traumatic Stress Injury resets the entire nervous-system to this new-normal. Recovery therefore takes specialized care from those clinical counselors or clinical psychologists who've educated themselves in delivery of those modalities known to be most effective in treating the consequence of traumatic stress induced injury.
It is for diagnostic purposes that the most common consequence of this injury is labeled Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In as much as PTSD is, in fact, an anxiety-expressed disorder, there is a biological shift that happens in both structure and function of the traumatized, human brain. This reality is now evident in brain-scans of those who struggle with the condition.
It is the traumatic stress injury (traumatization) we've lived through that impacts us at all levels of our being-mind, body, and spirit. It's therefore necessary to find right help that assists healing of all three levels of our being if we wish to move forward, through the condition, to a place and time that we've adjusted the story (meaning) attached to the traumatizing event/events in our lives.
To get there takes GENTLE, compassionate, well-specialized clinical care in my experience.
Don't allow the stigma that is attached to this issue (being labeled with other mental illnesses for purposes of diagnosis) hold you back from accessing care that has the potential to result in an end-game experience we call today, Post Traumatic Growth through right recovery.
Please See The Videos Below To Hear From Dr. Robert Sapolsky on Stress and From Pioneers In Trauma Treatment. These sources Go Deeper Into the Subjects of Stress and Traumatic Stress.
Knowledge is power. I view recovery, in the end, to be very much about drafting inside as brilliant a sense of personal self-awareness as we can possibly achieve.
Here's a link to a helpful article, written by Maria Popova of Brain Pickings, that discusses the value of drafting, as well, a mindset intent upon the prospect for human growth as we recover. The article is based on the work of Carol S. Dweck, PhD: Mindset-The New Psychology of Success.
I believe this state of mind can carry us well as we face the story of our personal traumas in life with the professional help of trauma/violence-informed, clinical care.
To find a counselor or psychologist in BC, follow the image links shared below.
Badge of Life Canada links to helpers across Canada here.
I'll move on from here to discuss the specific conditions that traumatic stress (distress) can lead to.
Please Follow This Link To the Next Page: What Is PTSD?
Darren Michael Gregory: Curator-The Trauma Recovery Blog.
I've had to learn the hard way that for years I'd not readily given the negative consequences of 'stressing out' the respect that stress rightly deserves. Like many I think do, when I was stressed over anything I pushed myself to keep going. The hard lessons came for me when I'd reached my personal limits. What my body was signalling was that I needed to actually stop doing whatever was triggering the stress-reactions and feelings. I pushed myself through my work as a rural paramedic, ignoring the signals my own stress response was begging me to hear. When my brain and body couldn't take another hit, I ultimately completely broke down, diagnosed after 16 years of service with Depression and PTSD.
Dr. Gabor Mate, in his book powerfully titled, When The Body Says No, puts the concept of stress in proper context:
“The experience (we call) stress has three components. The first is the event, physical or emotional, that the organism interprets as threatening. This is the stress stimulus, also called the stressor. The second element is the processing system that experiences and interprets the meaning of the stressor. In the case of human beings, this processing system is the nervous system, in particular the brain. The final constituent is the stress response, which consists of the various physiological and behavioural adjustments made as a reaction to a perceived threat.
When we're under stress, whether we're aware or otherwise, the brain is perceiving the stressful stimulus as somehow being a threat to our well-being. Having interpreted for us that a threat exists, the brain signals the body to act. The stress response is what we feel in the body.
Under the spell ignited by the perceived threat, our nervous system responds by releasing a flood of stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, which rouse the body for emergency action. What does this feel like? What do we experience as the stress response in humans?
Our heart pounds faster. The muscles tighten. Our blood pressure rises. The breath quickens. And our senses become sharper as the body prepares itself to fight or flee the apparent threat.
An example of the stress response is what we feel whenever we're startled or frightened by something unexpectedly. That sense of fright is about a dose of stress-hormones being released in the body. To understand the human stress response, considering the feeling that comes on with a fright is something we can use to understand the felt-sense in the body that is the human stress response.
It's this feeling I'm speaking about when the body is reacting to stressors coming at us in the environment, interpreted as threat.
The human stress response is all about the unconscious process that is firing the flood of stress hormones automatically that hopes to signal and compel us to act in response to stressor. The stress response is normal. It's to be expected to fire when we need it to. With a stressor defined as being, 'anything that releases stress hormones' in the body, we can experience that response perhaps several times throughout any given day.
For instance, running late for an appointment can trigger the stress response. A near miss in an intersection while driving can trigger this sense. A sudden, unexpected fall triggers the stress response. The rise of anger we might feel as a response to conflict in a political exchange-this too is activation of the human stress response.
We need this response to stress (threat) to survive. Without it, it's doubtful the human species would have gone very far. We need the stress response activating in the face of threats. However, it's wise to consider that the release of these hormones, long-term, can't be all that good for us over time. Chronic experience with stress is known to cause all kinds of damage to the human body over time. Traumatic stress ignites an intense response. This type of stress is what leads to conditions, left untreated and unresolved, like PTSD.
It is our stress hormones and brain-processes that the human body will set-off that results in one or all of these these three inner-states, informing us to act in response:
The human body, with the feelings our stress hormones released, is setting us up to either fight-flee-freeze-or submit to the stressor (the apparent threat, real or imagined) whatever that stressor may be. The felt-sense of stress in the body is therefore all about fight-or-flight being activated inside.
The individual stressors themselves that we might experience fit into two broad categories-Physiological (or physical) stressors and Psychological (mental) stressors:
- Physiological stressors are those stressors that put physical strain upon our body: (i.e.: very cold/hot temperatures, physical injury, chronic physical illness, or chronic physical/emotional pain).
- Psychological stressors are those events or situations that impact us via our own thinking. This thinking can be conscious thought, or can be below conscious awareness. We can sense psychological stress, for instance, in the presence of certain other individuals that for whatever reasons, trigger a stress response. We can sense psychological stress when we take-in certain comments made our way that cause the ego stress-induced discomfort emotionally. We can experience psychological stress triggered by our thought processes while we're stuck in traffic, which threatens to make us (heaven-forbid) late for an appointment or for work.
We experience psychological stress towards anything we might interpret as negative or that might be threatening our ego. Psychologically speaking, perception of threat can be real or imagined. Psychological stressors are those that might be constructed via our subtle, often-unconscious processes in the individual mind.
If two of us together experience something stressful, it is how we each interpret the situation that determines how much stress we'll feel in response. What acts to stress one of us, therefore, won't always necessarily stress another.
I've learned the value of keeping in mind that humans are story-telling creatures. We're chattering away to ourselves, inside of our own heads, whether we can hear the chatter or not. At a psychological level, it is this chatter that constitutes the story or the meaning we've attached to any given stressful experience that, via the mind alone, contributes to the unique response we all have to stressful events.
Any two of us may have very different stress-reactions to the same situation, even though we've both experienced the situation at the same time, and even in the same way.
There are many such physiological/mental processes working full-time inside of ourselves. What we feel, every single emotion, be it love, pain, anger, anxiety, whatever the emotion, has basis in the workings of the human body biologically. We refer to PTSD as a mental illness. This is only part of what's going on. Yes, the meaning we attach to any traumatic experience will generate a story that ignites our sense of suffering. It's the biological processes that are actually generating what we feel, and these biological processes are triggered with PTSD every time a memory of the traumatic experiences that's caused the condition are recalled.
Quite the Catch-22. Traumatic stress implants memories of trauma deep in the brain. PTSD constantly recalls the memories-sometimes simply because something in the present SMELLS like something that was scenting the air at the time of the traumatic event.
In humans, the heart beats on it's own. Certain processes for digestion and elimination of any wastes happens without us thinking much about these processes. We know when it's time to take a pee. We're unaware of all that's gone on inside that fills the bladder.
The human stress response is one of those processes that for the most part we've little control over.
Much associated with these processes in the body are below conscious awareness. We can become aware of something like our breathing if we pull breathing into conscious focus. With breathing put into focus, we can even then take over, consciously controlling precisely how we breathe. This is actually a first step in learning to better control the stress response in recovery.
We can train ourselves to respond in specific ways to any stressor that might be imposed on us too. This takes considerable effort, right education, and much time to learn. But, it can be done. This is what learning practices of mindfulness, for instance, offers us as means for learning stress-management skills as interventions we can put upon ourselves should our anxiety panic us into feeling like we're losing control.
Learning to self-regulate our emotions is a huge part of what recovery for PTSD is about.
For the most part, the normal human stress response is an automatic response. One that's signaling a potential threat is apparent that needs attention. As an automated response, it's only with some education that we can learn to intervene with ourselves in a way that allows us to then control how the automatic stress response plays out.
In regards to what might put upon the human organism a need for the stress response we feel, we're each different, but it's helpful to know that what we consider threatening is also hard-wired within as an adaptation via human evolution. We've genetically stored along the way certain memories in our DNA. These we've little control over at all, Just as we've little control over what happens in our lives that may traumatize us.
Once traumatized in life, the entire nervous system can be reset-making any stress moving forward from trauma the catalyst for a traumatic stress response in the body. Which is why we feel as though we're in a state of fight-or-flight full-time when we're dealing with trauma's after-math in the form of PTSD.
The sum of the processes the brain manages for us includes reading the physical environment. Towards others, we're constantly, unconsciously, reading body-language and others facial expressions. These processes include as well the reading of tones of voice we take in whenever we're communicating with one-another. Everything we take in via the senses, the brain is constantly assessing in the environment for anything that represents danger.
First and foremost, as the primary goal is always about survival, about keeping us alive, where the human brain is concerned: Perceive a threat? Ignite the stress-response. This need for sorting out any apparent threats coming at us in the environment, is said to be left-over from the days when we were still highly vulnerable animals back in humanity's more-exposed to dangers, hunter-gatherer pasts.
All is well, when the stress response acts as it's biologically set-up to do.
When things go bad, as with PTSD setting into our being, it's the human stress response that is actually 'disordered' in the condition we know as PTSD.
When we're dealing with PTSD as a consequence of traumatic stress injury, the symptoms related to the condition indicate problems have developed for us where interpretation of any stress put upon us is concerned. This further indicates that our stress-response processing in the brain and in the body is frankly broken. Being broken, it's the stress response that needs repair. (The Circuitry of Fear: Understanding the Neurobiology of PTSD).
I hope I'm making things clear: Stress put upon humans can be tricky. The stress response itself is normal. We're stressed by many things and we respond to stressors in uniquely individual ways. The human body, internally, has a slew of chemical, biological, and physiological mechanisms built-in, many of which are outside of our own control where the human stress response is concerned.
When we're 'stressed' the body lets us know. We can feel it.
Unfortunately, in Western Culture, it seems we've not learned well what the feelings of stress are hoping to tell us. The stress response fires whenever there's something happening that needs our attention. Functioning correctly, the human stress response is like an alarm-bell we don't pay enough attention too. Too few of us have taken the time to learn how best to manage our own experiences with stress generally. Traumatic stress is something few even know about, unless one is wounded by it enough that we end up ill.
For some of us, needing to confront any stressor coming our way is legitimately like a walk in the park. For others of us, any stressor at all can send us off the rails, not knowing what to do to put-down the stressor-to get that which is causing the stress out of our way. In Western Culture, as I've shared throughout this writing, we've not given stress the respect that stress is due.
Stressors themselves are too as unique to ourselves as we are unique from one-another. However the science of stress proposes that the two categories (physiological/psychological stressors) be broken down even further into categories defining stressors as absolute and/or relative.
- Absolute Stressors: Are stressors that everyone exposed to them would interpret as being stressful. These are objective stressors that are universal (i.e.: earth quake happens, a tsunami, or the events of September 11th 2001).
- Relative Stressors :Are stressors that only some exposed to them would interpret as being stressful. These are subjective stressors that cause different reactions in different people (i.e.: time pressure at work, traffic-jams, paying taxes, writing an exam).
While what stresses one of us is different from what stresses someone else, the recipe for the experience of the human stress response is universal.
For a situation to be stressful it must contain certain factors that influence perception. There are four elements of threat perception that can be represented with the acronym-N.U.T.S. (No disrespect intended):
- NOVELTY: The perceived threat is something we're experiencing that's new and that we have not experienced before.
- UNPREDICTABILITY: The perceived threat is something we had no way of knowing would occur.
- THREAT TO THE EGO: The perceived threat is something in which our competence is called into question.
- SENSE OF CONTROL: The perceived threat is something we feel we have little or no control over in regards to the stressful situation that's 'happening to us'and is unwanted.
Experiencing stress is a fact of human life we can't escape. "All Life is Suffering", The Buddha said our way. I've interpreted that to mean, all of life for humans is stressful.
In fact, we need a certain amount of good-stress (Eustress) to motivate ourselves in regards to learning or performing something new. Not all stress causes us harm.
There are three levels of stress that we live with as humans:
Eustress is like stage-fright. We feel this kind of stress as part of human growth. This is good-stress. Stress that we experience while we're in a process of learning and growing.
Distress is the second form that stress takes. This comes in the negative form that is more about threat to well-being. Where Eustress motivates, distress is all about fight or flight. Distress is the body's warning system I speak of that intends to tell us that something in the environment is going on that is over-taxing our mind, body, and/or spirit's ability to cope.
We can experience distress acutely (a one-off, in the moment experience). Or, we can experience distress chronically, as we might when life-circumstances puts stress-imposition upon us long-term.
Acute Distress can come suddenly, but the stress subsides when the stressful situation is resolved.
When there is little hope or evidence available that helps us find a way to resolve such situations that cause acute distress in a timely way, Chronic Distress is imposed upon us of which the long-term consequences include much that's similar in terms of the signs and symptoms we find with PTSD. (See 11 Signs of Too Much Stress From Healthline).
The physical health consequences of chronic distress include chronic pain, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and digestive disorders. Chronic distress can lead to adult-onset diabetes, heart disease, and issues with hypertension (high blood pressure) as well.
These are the more typical forms of stress we go through that pretty much all of us can relate to. Eustress can be thought of as positive stress for humans. Distress, acute or chronic, is negative stress, impacting well-being, either short-term or long.
There's a third form of stress humans experience only those of us with PTSD might know about.
This third form of stress is traumatic stress:
This kind of stress can be most dangerous to us if we fail to be rightly supported when anything happens that ignites a traumatic stress response. It's traumatic stress, and the injury to the brain traumatic stress can cause, that's responsible for outcomes of PTSD and other issues with mental health.
It's traumatic stress (traumatizing distress) that we experience when something in the environment is going on that is perceived as a very real threat to life, to health, or to our personal sense of morality and well-being. It's traumatic distress that can be the root-cause of illness.
When these illnesses take root, it's our experience in the body with the over-dose of stress-chemistry associated with the traumatic stress response that's ultimately responsible for stealing away our sense of competence and our ability to maintain our own well-being and independence.
Traumatic distress is set-loose in the body in response to serious situations of accident or natural disaster. Traumatic distress floods our body in response to any physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. Situations like any accident where loss of life was possible as either a close-call to ourselves, or as something we've witnessed (even in hearing the story sometimes) that's happened to fellow-humans, evokes inside the traumatic stress-response.
The traumatic stress-response is POWERFUL. Left to itself, an experience with traumatic distress can cause serious, life-changing, long-term consequences.
It's important to understand that even this third, traumatic stress-response is itself NORMAL. It is the EXPECTED response in the body when one has been traumatized. We get into trouble with traumatic distress, morphing into PTSD for instance, because we've not dealt with the trauma that the response has put upon the brain in a timely enough way to ward off the PTSD consequence.
Where chronic distress releases stress hormones as a constant slow-bur, traumatic distress floods our brain and body with an over-dose of this inner-chemistry. It's those extremely frightening or horrific situations in life that trigger the over-dose-flow of traumatic-stress-response-chemistry that damages the brain, making it very difficult for us to rationally cope in response to traumatizing events.
This is a form of distress that overwhelms. Traumatic Distress causes an injury to the human brain at the time of such events, which leads to a breaking down of the human psyche (left unchecked). Traumatizing experiences can end up often completely fracturing one's previous sense of feeling safe and protected. Traumatic distress experiences have the power to tear our sense of personal identity, as well, completely apart.
Traumatic distress impacts us at all our triune layers that make us human.
Traumatic distress injures all three: Mind, Body, and Spirit.
Traumatic distress is put upon the whole-person that we are, too-often morphing into an increasingly destructive force that when not dealt with correctly can leave us in a constant, unresolved state of 'traumatization': A state that can last for some of us a life-time should we leave that untreated for too long.
This is what I mean when I refer to traumatic stress (distress) as an injury. It's this injury of traumatization that came first as our body flooded our systems with a like-over-dose of stress chemistry. With that flooding, our brain is overwhelmed by all it's taking in (super-learning) during the traumatic event itself. It's this injury of traumatic stress that can take us into PTSD, Depression, Compassion Fatigue, and Substance/Alcohol Use Disorder.
Traumatizing experiences, left to themselves, can wipe us out. To deal effectively with traumatic stress injuries, we need clinical care from trauma-informed, properly educated and specialized care providers. And, we need such help as close to the time of the traumatizing event/events as is possible to best protect ourselves from developing any long-term illness as a consequence.
I accept this understanding I've learned, as I've applied this understanding directly to my own case. It's my belief today that had my own traumatizing experiences, taken-in while working as a paramedic in British Columbia, been rightly cared for via trauma-informed clinical care and interventions immediately following the events themselves: I'd likely have avoided my own experience with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Clinical Major Depression.
Had these two conditions been kept at bay, with right, immediate interventions, I'd have avoided too, my struggle with Addictions: If there was little to self-medicate, I'd have not turned to use of illicit drugs and alcohol to manage my chronic emotional, and later chronic physical pain, as a response when these physical and emotional sufferings became too much to bear, due to lack of access to right treatment.
This is why I share this with others: What happened for me, I do not want happening for anyone else.
I offer this take of my own on stress and traumatic stress specifically, as an introduction to what traumatic stress injury is about, in hope of encouraging others to access trauma-informed help as soon as you possibly can.
Here's a link to a more in-depth article from Harvard Health.
Here's a second article from Robert Scaer.
This one goes deep into the subject of stress as well.
It's been my experience with chronic PTSD that the nervous-system is reset with the condition in such a way that the normal stress-response is over-active. It's this over-active stress-response that can then make any experience with distress at all a trigger that can ignite repeated traumatic stress-responses from the onset of PTSD forward.
Traumatic Stress Injury resets the entire nervous-system to this new-normal. Recovery therefore takes specialized care from those clinical counselors or clinical psychologists who've educated themselves in delivery of those modalities known to be most effective in treating the consequence of traumatic stress induced injury.
It is for diagnostic purposes that the most common consequence of this injury is labeled Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In as much as PTSD is, in fact, an anxiety-expressed disorder, there is a biological shift that happens in both structure and function of the traumatized, human brain. This reality is now evident in brain-scans of those who struggle with the condition.
It is the traumatic stress injury (traumatization) we've lived through that impacts us at all levels of our being-mind, body, and spirit. It's therefore necessary to find right help that assists healing of all three levels of our being if we wish to move forward, through the condition, to a place and time that we've adjusted the story (meaning) attached to the traumatizing event/events in our lives.
To get there takes GENTLE, compassionate, well-specialized clinical care in my experience.
Don't allow the stigma that is attached to this issue (being labeled with other mental illnesses for purposes of diagnosis) hold you back from accessing care that has the potential to result in an end-game experience we call today, Post Traumatic Growth through right recovery.
Please See The Videos Below To Hear From Dr. Robert Sapolsky on Stress and From Pioneers In Trauma Treatment. These sources Go Deeper Into the Subjects of Stress and Traumatic Stress.
Knowledge is power. I view recovery, in the end, to be very much about drafting inside as brilliant a sense of personal self-awareness as we can possibly achieve.
Here's a link to a helpful article, written by Maria Popova of Brain Pickings, that discusses the value of drafting, as well, a mindset intent upon the prospect for human growth as we recover. The article is based on the work of Carol S. Dweck, PhD: Mindset-The New Psychology of Success.
I believe this state of mind can carry us well as we face the story of our personal traumas in life with the professional help of trauma/violence-informed, clinical care.
To find a counselor or psychologist in BC, follow the image links shared below.
Badge of Life Canada links to helpers across Canada here.
I'll move on from here to discuss the specific conditions that traumatic stress (distress) can lead to.
Please Follow This Link To the Next Page: What Is PTSD?
Darren Michael Gregory: Curator-The Trauma Recovery Blog.
Find Trauma Informed Family Clinical Counselors Here
|
Find Trauma Informed Family Clinical Psychologists Here
|
|
|
|
More About Traumatic Stress: The NORMAL Human Response to Perceived Abnormal (Traumatizing) Events
“The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
Disclaimer: These materials and resources are presented for educational purposes only. They are not a substitute for informed medical advice or training. Do not use this information to diagnose or treat a health problem without consulting a qualified health or mental health care provider. If you have concerns, contact your health care provider, mental health professional, or your community health centre
Darren Gregory © 2018. All Rights Reserved
