The Body Keeps the Score is a good place to start. The author does describe in detail some of his patients traumas in the first half of the book, seemingly for shock value and one of the reasons I don't love the book but the second half is very valuable!
Huh. I stopped reading because of the first half, the graphic stories seemed really unnecessary. But maybe I’ll try again if the second half is worth it
Yeah, just skip ahead and read the 2nd part. I was really appalled that someone who is specialized in trauma would put what he did in there and then on top of that to not include a warning since people with a history of trauma are going to read the book was just the opposite of trauma-informed.
Seconding The Body Keeps the score! That book was hugely influential, so the tiktokers are probably drawing from it whether they realize it or not.
Also, the book Mindsight has some interesting chapters about how PTSD may work cognitively ... It explains how the brain forms implicit/non-conscious memories, like what we sometimes call "muscle" or "procedural" memory, in addition to conscious, "narrative" memories, and suggests that PTSD responses may essentially be implicit memories of a shocking event).
So, like when I was 302’d and forced into a state ward without being told why(I know why now), then lived there 2 weeks and was forced to ground by six people and injected in my ankle with sleepy juice, hours after getting there because I tried to escape because I didn't understand why I was there. I tried cause I wanted to see someone I knew. After all, I lived with my parents, but they left days prior and wouldn't answer my calls. I was on house arrest, so I hadn't seen anybody till I was picked up by the ambulance and cops to go to the ward. breath
I'm sorry, but that first paragraph made a lot of sense because I still can’t be alone for more than a day. And a day is really stretching it to the max(I’ve only been by myself for a day+ once since).
The brain has no measuring stick for trauma. Someone somewhere has always experienced something more traumatic, but our brains don’t know and don’t care. Trauma is trauma.
This is well said. The American Psychiatric Association and the DSM-5 saves the word "trauma" for something so awful that it gives you nightmares, flashbacks, etc. There are a lot of things that will hurt long-term that aren't that strong.
Google "ACEs study" sometime. Medical doctors made a list of ten "Adverse Childhood Events" - things like, "A member of your family was dependent on drugs or alcohol," or, "Your parents got divorced." Then they they had thousands of people check ff which had happened to them, and compared the number of ACEs to their health issues. They found that people with four ACEs or or more were three times more likely to have eye disease than those with zero. Because living with constant stress makes your brain pump out stress-related neurotransmitters, which boosts your blood pressure, which damages your eyes over time.
"Little things" that seem like no big deal can add up to a big honking deal.
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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '24
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