How your relationship with your self? Do you or someone you are involved with have Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD)? Do you have symptoms including flashbacks, heart racing, body tension, fight or flight reactions, sleep disorders, social withdrawal, irritability, depression, stress, anxiety, sleep deprivation, functional inabilities, nightmares, panic attacks, nervousness, jitters, feeling like you’ll be attacked in your sleep, angry outbursts, impotence and always feeling something is going to happen? If you do, that’s what PTSD looks like. If you or someone you are involved with has it, you need help because PTSD causes people stop doing basic things like driving or going out of their homes, so it can have a destructive spiraling effect if you don’t deal with it.
A quote in the book, Transcendence: Healing and Transformation through Transcendent Meditation by Dr. Norman Rosenthal states, “If it's not stress that kills us, it’s our reaction to it.” Maybe you’ve had a trauma when you were young, as a child, a teen, or a young adult, or if you were in a car accident, in the military, or other high stress environments or you were a rape or robbery victim or you were part of 911, the trauma is still with you and you will have difficulty in your life and/or in your relationships if you don’t deal with it.
Stress is harmful to our immune systems. The only way you know how much damage it’s doing is when you take away the stress. Transcendent Meditation reduces death from vascular diseases by 20 %. In one study, it’s even double that. Death from heart attacks and strokes can be prevented if we are easier on ourselves. When we are stressed out, our blood pressure rises, our heart works harder to beat faster and our blood travels faster and it has a cumulative effect on our whole body because our blood vessels, which may contract and get worn away by the pressure of the blood racing through them and weakening them. Also, when we stop the stress, what’s occurring in our body doesn’t stop immediately or fast either. It takes time for the body to correct itself and return to normal.
In nature, the fight /flight response is crucial for organisms to be geared up for attack. There’s a YouTube video titled Animal at Kruger. In this video you can see the fight/flight reactions of nature in a buffalo/lion attack. When the buffalos see the lions, they flee, but a calf is caught by the lions. The lions drag it into the water and it is also caught by a crocodile on the other side. Then the other buffalos see what’s occurring and go back to get the calf. This is a great display of fight/flight response. In our busy lives, we are constantly bombarded with fight/flight reactions. This shouldn’t go on day by day, but we are bludgeoned morning till night with this because we have jobs we hate and we also have stressful time pressures on us due to deadlines we must meet, which is deadly for our bodies. People are generally getting more and more impatient. People are stressing themselves and others out. We are encountering impatience from ourselves and others daily. Society is inculcating a sense of urgency when there is none and we have different illnesses because it affects the immune system. For example, people are rushing to go to the stores to get things they can actually do without but would just like to have.
PSTD is a form of anxiety disorder. It’s in the news because many military Iraq and Afghanistan returnees have it. Many of these soldiers are nervous wrecks who have been bludgeoned away by Improvised Explosive Device (IEDs) which does physical and psychological damage, but also does closed head injury because the shock waves do bad things to the brain internally. This situation is serious because 1 in 5 military returnees has PSTD.
The recent earthquake has left some people with what they believe is PSTD. When they hear a sound or feel like a building is shaking, they are stopping and thinking, here we go again. It’s another earth quake. The situation depends on the severity of the aftermath, but I would be careful with applying the PSTD label to it because here in the East Coast we are not used to earthquakes, but in the West Coast, it’s relatively normal. There is a soldier in my book who was involved in an explosion when he was in a military vehicle in the war. When he came back home and went over pot hole while driving, he in went into a state of shock because it triggered something in him to remember the explosion event he experienced.
With PSTD, the best thing is to get help such as counseling, meditation, medication and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) , which is a form of psychotherapy where you are guided to move your eye from left to right while you think about the trauma and you can also learn to meditate. Francine Shapiro, a doctor in the West Coast created EMDR because she found that if your eyes scan a visual field while thinking about something it helped with PTSD. For example, following tennis balls on a field with your eyes helps the brains hemispheres which deal with different things to talk to each other. One side of the brain deals with emotions and the other deals with analysis and logic. After trauma we are flooded with our emotions. This means the emotional side of our brain is over working while the logical side isn’t working as much. It’s also important to know that the human nervous system is like a belt you bend hard, when you leave it, it doesn’t stop and get back to where it was immediately, it continues to vibrate for a while.
We want people to have healthier and happier lives and one must realize that you don’t’ have to go to Iraq or Afghanistan or be in a war to get PTSD. You only need to have experienced any kind of trauma. For example, rape which is a traumatic sexual experience also results in PSTD. Transcendental Meditation helps to settle down the body so you can amongst many other things sleep to recharge your batteries and recover your energy.
Caller: I was in a car accident after deer ran in front of my car. I was pinned into the car which had turned 360 degree with me facing the opposite side of the road. I was pried out of the car and I was lucky to have no injuries. Days later, I drove past the scene of the accident and I saw the deer which hadn’t been picked up on the same road and I literally felt like I had to get off the highway immediately. With the speed I was driving at, the trucks driving past me and me seeing the deer, it was a replay for me. It was like seeing the accident happening all over again. I was prescribed Lexapro which worked, but I can’t drive like I used to. So I take the back roads to avoid the highways. I even had to will myself back on to the highway because the experience made me want to stay at home and I was very nervous. Construction fender walls and merging traffic now also affect me. I was fine for 9 months, but then it started again. I’m humbled and dependant because of the experience. I went to a therapist who wanted to do EMDR on me, but I lost my job and insurance, so I didn’t get to do it then. I got a job in Tyson’s Corner that I can’t take because I can’t drive to get there. I now drive really slowly, like an old lady and I only drive in the slow lane.
Host/Guest Response: You have had a traumatic experience. Having an accident and being pinned down inside the car and having to be pried out, then going to the same place days later, reactivates the memory of the traumatic event. Then you display phobic avoidant behavior because you don’t want to go through that. Then you say to yourself, I won’t let my life be dominated by this fear. Your reasoning of thinking the slow lane is the only safe lane isn’t logical. You have to expand your comfort zone. Go and drive on the beltway when there’s no traffic to show yourself you can do it. Not all solutions to PSTD are drugs. I would advice that you see a therapist who will work with you. Therapies, distractions and behavioral therapies work very well too. Maybe you can even do a therapy where the therapist will get in the car and drive with you to help you overcome the fear, so it doesn’t overcome you. The Ross Center practices In Vivo Therapy, which is excellent for this situation. They go in the traumatic situation with you. Their phone number is (202)363-1010 and their website is www.rosscenter.com
Caller: I’m a soldier who was deployed to Iraq. I have been back for 2 years now, but before that I was deployed for 12 months, during the time I saw many IEDs and road side bombs and I was shot at. I’ve been irritable and I get angry quickly. I’m married, so I had to readjust to being a father and husband when I got back even though when I was in Iraq I was only a soldier 24/7, so it’s hard to readjust. I couldn’t even go into stores or even drive in some places because I’m so alert and always looking to see what will blow up like I had to be when I was in Iraq.
Host/Guest Response: Your story is not uncommon. There’s a reason we are focusing on PTSD. My book has been wonderful for soldiers and some of them are profiled in it. Read the stories in the book because they will ring true for you. People improve with Transcendental Meditation techniques. Meditation is good because it settles your system down without any medication. There are Transcendental Meditation (TM) centers in Arlington and Rockville where you can learn the techniques. You can contact them at the (202)714-9949 for their Rockville location. Or you can contact them in Arlington at (703)823-6933. Or visit their website at www. tm.org. Military hospitals may offer Transcendental Meditation treatments, but in my experience, many soldiers don’t want to go there because they believe it will influence their security clearance or go on their permanent record, which will affect their careers.
Caller: My baby sitter used to leave me and my brother with her son who sexually abused me. Now, I’m hypersensitive to being around men and I don’t want other people being around my children. I can’t send them to people’s houses for sleepovers or anything and I only send them to facilities where there are many employees. My husband believes I’m paranoid. I have a 3 year old child I don’t send to anybody. I’ve never been treated for this.
Host/Guest Response: In this society we can’t over protect our children, but you don’t want to over protect them and have them miss out on social interactions as well, so teach them that if anything happens, they should come and talk to you. Visit a therapist to help you deal with the issues. The better therapists are the ones who’ve spent some time in the chair themselves. Give yourself the opportunity to heal from the trauma of what happened to you. Visit www.audreychapman.com for referrals to therapists.
Source: The Audrey Chapman Show
Guest: Dr. Norman Rosenthal, world renowned psychiatrist and author of Transcendence, Healing and Transformation through Transcendent Meditation.
Guest Website: http://www.normanrosenthal.com/
Aired: 9/24/11
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