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Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: How it differs from painful memories, Why it is so difficult to treat.

March 29, 2008 on 5:59 pm | In Articles |

March 15th, 2008

What we now know that changes everything.
December 28-07

Much talked about but little understood, even by the Mental Health Community, PTSD is physiological re-enactment that attaches itself to the memory of a life threatening event.

When the brain perceives impending, serious threat, it flips on the “flight-flight” response which results in an enormous dumping of stress hormone, sticky platelets, adrenaline, increased heart rate, and blood flow to the major muscles of the body. With more blood flow comes more oxygen to the brain. The part of the brain that regulates emotion, disconnects from the analytical part of the brain as we prepare to face, or run away, from our perception of a life threatening encounter.

Uncomfortable, or unhappy memories differ from traumatic memories because we lack any physical signals or message that might have been present during the past, non-life threatening events.

So, if I remember standing at the black board in front of the class at the age of 6 while Sister Mary So-And-So probes me, impatiently, for a correct spelling of anything other than the word “yes,” I would freeze. Perspiration would occur from my underarms, my face would flush, my mouth would be dry, palms sweaty, while bits of nervous laughter from my classmates echoed from some far away and distant place.

Though there are some similarities to uncomfortable or embarrassing memories with traumatic memories; in that there were physical reactions in addition to my fear and anxiety, the distinction is that the classroom memory has no lingering emotional discomfort or physical re-enactment.

A traumatic memory, is a re-enactment of both emotion and physical responses that occurred at the time the trauma occurred. Hence, the memory is relived as if experienced for the very first time.

The trigger or cement of traumatic memories that make them so difficult for untrained professionals to treat or even understand, is basic physiology. Until we find a way to shut the brain down from signaling the body that it is again under attack, healing cannot occur.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that we now know how to block the body from responding to messages from the brain that it is again under attack from something that happened long ago.

Here’s How It’s Done.

The Veterans Administration has studied the use of Propranolol, brand name (Inderal) for the treatment of PTSD and found conclusive evidence that it interferes with the brain’s signal to the body that the traumatic event is reoccurring.

Propranolol is a blood pressure medication that slows the heart down. Key to the flight-fight response that results in “flooding” of stress hormone, et al is RAPID HEARTBEAT. If the heart is not beating quickly, then blood flow is slow, there is no increase of oxygen to the brain, there is no disconnection between the brain’s ability to connect logic with feelings and emotion, and the apparatus of “re-enactment” or “re-living” that differentiates “traumatic memory from painful memory disappears.”

Physiology, the cement that binds the re-wounding and re-living experience with the eventful trauma, once interrupted, allows the next and very necessary, but often skipped treatment step to take place.

The once defined traumatic memory is now a very painful and disturbing memory that must be healed.

Next on the blog . . .
Step-By-Step: Breaking down the most effective means of rapidly treating PTSD with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Aggressive Treatment of Symptoms.