Addressing Traumatic Stress

https://www.yahoo.com/news/israeli-mental-first-aid-method-offered-attack-victims-031528325.html

Mental preparedness requires planning for the overload of psychological stress. Some scenes, when accumulated, can cause mental fatigue and loss of proficient functioning. One example would be seeing many dead while on a evacuation route to that shack in the hills.

The above link tells of an Israeli program involving aspects of mental preparedness.

One of the better quality US Government agencies I've run into - it has an obsolete name - is SAMHSA of the Department of Health and Human Services. SAMHSA published a mental preparedness pamphlet I handed out last Saturday at our Eastern Virginia meeting.

Read the above link and recognize that mental first aid is no less important than some types of physical first aid.

"He who has a WHY to live can bear almost any HOW." Nietzsche

 

I made a deal with myself a long time ago. I decided that no matter what I come around a corner, roll up on, or step into a room and see, I’m okay with it.

It’s a boring way to live life, but a great way to do business.

 

I like this a lot. Fear and stress are mind killers. Learning how to deal with them isn't all that hard. As it said in the article both of them have their roots in feeling hopeless or helplessness. If a dam breaks and starts flooding an area and you find someone sitting with their face in their hands crying in fear you don't help them by sitting down with them and holding them trying to comfort them. You drag them up and tell them to get to the higher ground unless they just WANT to drown. Once they start running they won't be helpless anymore.

Sometimes instead of rising water, the flood is emotions but the same effect is true. PTSD in part is like a drug addiction. If you are injured a drug that helps relieve your pain is ok. If you just keep taking it though you eventually are not taking it to feel better. You are taking it to keep from feeling worse. Withdrawal is often worse than the original pain that the drug helped you with.

When you are involved in any kind of long term recurring stress or trauma your body will "Help" you deal with it by flooding you with all sorts of endorphins. These are the things that make you stronger, faster and almost impervious to pain both physical and mental. In the end, becoming dependent on these naturally produced drugs to deal with your stress is a form of drug addiction.

When you leave and there is no stress you should be relieved and chill out but if you overused this built-in drug dealer too much you will instead go into withdrawal. The effect of PTSD is very much like withdrawal from a drug except that you never took the drug and nobody ever told you to expect this or how to deal with it. Being an adrenaline junkie is as real as heroin addiction.

The fact is that you would have been better off if you had been offered some help BEFORE the stress and trauma came into your life that would help prepare you to effectively deal with it without spending all your time scared to death and denying it.

There are all sorts of ways to deal with stress. People that deal with death at any level have to learn how to distance themselves from it in their mind. Learning how to take a life is something that takes some adjustment. Lots of people can't kill an animal up close and personal without feeling the pain of a life taken. Shooting something in the distance isn't the same as holding it while you cut its throat.

People at war often sort of lie to themselves about how little they feel when they kill someone or see someone killed. If you ever really get to the point where you feel nothing you have more to worry about than PTSD. This does happen and there are people that begin to like it and eventually don't care who they kill. fortunately, these people are rare and there is a possibility that this was there before they ever went into battle.

To pass through the valley of hell and limit your damage you first have to accept that really bad things happen and there is nothing that you can do to prevent it. Then you have to accept the pain and that it hurts. Mourn and then move on. Think about what happened and if you can think of things to make it better next time try to do it. If you did the best things and your best then accept it and move on.

The past is GONE and you can choose to some extent what you remember. If you lost a buddy when you remember him or her remember the things that made them special to you and not dwell on their passing. The present is a gift, enjoy it!! Try not to let the loses in the past or the worries about the future steal away the gifts of the present. The future is unknown. Make preparations and then wait and adjust when it gets closer. All the worrying in the world won't make your future a bit better. All it does is ruin the present. Worry is what people do that are not thinking about preparing for the future.

 

Very interesting article. Thank you for sharing. I would like to learn more about it. Are there any courses like this offered in the U.S.?

 

Many courses and half-day/day-long seminars are available. I take all the free ones. They have various names such as "psychological First Aid", Mental Preparedness", "Preventing PTSD". These seminars are frequently-enough offered at health fairs, area health districts, etc. I've even taken a couple of courses on learning to recognize teens displaying suicide traits.

I mentioned SAMHSA - without elaborating - . It's name is now a misnomer. They do much more than substance abuse. SAMHSA = Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. It's part of the monstrosity US Dept of Health and Human Services. Web research SAMHSA. The paths to finding local area seminars should show up; probably telling you to contact your local public health dept - various names throughout the fruited plain.

For actual courses, eg measured in weeks or academic semesters, here, too, yes, of course. They typically cost $.

There are several good books, eg Disaster Psychology, Disaster Psychiatry. Both are expensive but both are available via local public library inter library loan program for cost of $4 (four dollars).

At our last Saturday meeting, I gave out the SAMHSA pamphlet titled "Psychological Issues for Older Adults in Disasters". It's one of the best pamphlets I've read on this specific subject. The BEST of their pubs for my personal focus as to what I do is SAMHSA's "Field Manual For Emergency Responders". It's small, fits in a small vest pocket and is loaded with quality info. I carried my personal copy to my meeting last Saturday.

One of the 2 page SAMHSA "flyers" is titled with, obviously same subject, "Compassion Fatigue". Hand out too many Granola bars under the bridge waiting for the storm to fade out and Granola Distributor can become a psychological casualty just by the seemingly benevolent efforts of "helping others".

......

I have no agenda to all this. Most of the public sector agencies I deem - trash - less their ulterior purpose to serve as welfare programs for the unemployable.

SAMHSA is good.

 

Wow!!!

There is probably some truth to a busy stressful life...and no off switch. Now that I think of it ...many such people I know who are on the go...go....go..... have turned up with illnesses...some of them fatal in the end.

Thanks for rounding out this awareness.

Watcherchris
Not an Ishmaelite

 

To the best of my knowledge there is no medical diagnosis that would say stress causes cancer, but we (wife and I) are certain that it happened to a very close friend of ours. She was going through a terribly stressful time and ended up with bone cancer. She survived, and everything worked out, but nobody will ever convince me it wasn't the stress that caused the cancer.

 

Morgan,

It's not called a medical diagnosis and it's still not correctly named but it's the:

"stress theory of disease". This is in contrast to the "germ theory of disease". Many of the doctors I do volunteer field work with say it's frequently a combination of both "theories" causing the infirmity.

 

I have no scientific basis for my opinion, but I would certainly agree. There is a direct correlation between stress and disease that we just don't understand yet.

 

We can imagine that there are more than a few reasons for the saying, "Stress Kills."

Aside from the obvious reasons that stress can kill us (heart attacks, etc.), there have been so many people who lived healthy and fit lifestyles that would seem "cancer-proof," yet many have succumbed to cancer. According to some astute published observations (including the ones in the book, Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds, by Kelly A. Turner, Ph.D.), prolonged stress/underlying conflicts was one of the most common denominators among the "healthy and fit" crowd who died of cancer.

Even in the face of extreme SHTF situations, I believe that keeping my mind fit with the right attitude will help me beat cancer longer than if I had a sucky outlook on life...


.

 

Stress not only kills, but it can also make your life a misery and not worth living at all! So many people get trapped in a high stress, high paying jobs trying to support a lifestyle that they never have time to enjoy.

 

Stress kills, talk to your doctor about it they know. They don't have a pill to give you for the stress so they treat the symptoms, BP pills, cholesterol pills, chemo, and far too many other treatments to list. Some are more immune to stress and others have found ways to relieve the stress. Deal with your stress or it will deal with you.

 

No way to measure it, but I wonder how much stress is work related? When 46% of the country is still living paycheck to paycheck, and 61% don't have enough saved to last a six month crisis it is no wonder that the stress level is off the charts.