Diagnostic reality of PTSD, PTSS - disorder or symptom?

"There are no races." a good friend said to me, we were enjoying the sun, sitting in his yard "there are only language groups" and he paused. I thought about that for a while. He had a point. A neat way to express the truth.

"And" I added,  "some people are socially indoctrinated and have internalized political, ideological or religious identities crafted by external agencies, so that they think that races exist....."

We are all people.  Racism was invented by British Christian Oligarchs as a tool of social division.

Fact : The vast majority of us are good, lovely vulnerable people, and we are all to some extent traumatised and oppressed because we live within  this war making social power system.

Consider PTSS and PTSD.

Post Trauma Stress Symptoms: What the person presents.  The person is wounded, shocked, traumatised and distressed and the lack of environmental safety and psychological resolution leads to long term symptoms of distress. Understandably so.

Post Trauma Stress Disorder: What hierarchy of violence presents as it refuses to address the trauma it generates and refuses to do anything to prevent further trauma or help resolve the issues arising - that is a deeply disordered behaviour pattern for any human culture. The labelling of the victimised is disordered. 

The system claims the traumatised suffer a disorder. "There's something wrong with you!"

The Survivors says "no, these are the symptoms of my trauma and I am even distressed that you suggest that I am disordered - your system of power that generates so much trauma is what is disordered!"

Quite a difference, eh?

"Given the kind of family, community and society you were born into, and everything that happened to you, it is no wonder you feel the way you do."

"There are things that happen in that child's life that should not have happened, and things that did not happen that should have happened, and that is a big part of why they feel the way they do. How can we help that child in his or her distress?"

What would be your diagnosis?

The wisest response and probably the most efficacious answer would be best based on what evidence we are aware of that can is verified, as a matter of due diligence, with a careful eye to  all the possible outcomes.

This is a current 'diagnosis' I am working on.

Make of it what you will.

1. We live in a social power system that is Hierarchically Violent, in as much as the effects of what psychologist and writer David Smail calls  the activity of 'distal power' trickle down, and afflict the population. Power is exercised by a few, who control immense institutions, and direct those in ways the ordinary citizen can rarely counter. States start wars, cut social care budgets. Who pays the price?

The Origins of Unhappiness - a new understanding of personal distress by David Smail

"It is the main argument of this book that emotional and psychological distress is often brought about through the operation of social-environmental powers which have their origin at a considerable distance from those ultimately subjected to them. On the whole, psychology has concerned itself very little with the field of power which stretches beyond our immediate relations with each other, and this has led to serious limitations on the explanatory power of the theories it has produced. 

To illustrate this, typical cases of patient distress in the 1980s are examined. The decade when the right-wing of politics proclaimed there was no such thing as society gave rise to psychological distress across social classes, as long-standing societal institutions were dismantled. 

This is as much a work of sociology, politics, and philosophy, as it is of psychology. Fundamentals of an environmental understanding of distress are outlined. A person is the interaction of a body with the environment."

2. Lateral Violence is a term that describes the displaced anger and outrage that ought to be directed at those who orchestrate oppression, but is instead directed at peer groups. This dynamic is manipulated by Power Establishments in the processes of 'othering' : Racism, Misogyny, Islamophobia, Homophobia, Zionism, Neo-Liberal bullying of the vulnerable and the poor do not emerge from ordinary people, they are stimulated by potent forces within media and institutions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_violence

3. An unresolved trauma has the potential to create or generate patterns of behaviour that are in effect coping mechanisms,  that can become distorted, dysfunctional and unhealthy over time. The pressure of lack of safety drives this most of all.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181836/ - paper on how trauma affects our brains

https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2007/05/brain-function -  "Exposure to trauma may create enough changes in the brain to sensitize people to overreact to an innocuous facial gesture years later, even in people who don't have a stress-related disorder, says new research. It appears that proximity to high-intensity traumas can have long lasting effects on the brain and behavior of healthy people without causing a current clinical disorder. But these subtle changes could increase susceptibility to mental health problems later on." 

4. Europe, and many other places have been the site of almost constant wars for over 2000 years and these wars are still 'celebrated' by each nation state in their self created national myths - this suggests the trauma remains unresolved. The grass roots have been subjected to a long series of wars driven by the 'perceived needs' of Power Establishments, which are in essence institutional bully systems that compete with each other, using war as a tool of policy. Europe has yet to recover from that dreadful history. The same can be said of Canada and North America and many, many other places. The inter-generational impacts of that trauma still percolate through our communities and nations.

5. The most obvious way to resolve trauma patterns is to be honest about what happened, to allow the person or the people who were traumatised to tell the truth, to create a situation of safety where the traumatised person or people know that they are safe, and to be clear as to the social and material situation within which the trauma/abuse occurred and address that. Justice and assurances that the abuse, oppression and war will cease and a peaceful future is determined are part of resolution of the trauma patterning.

This is what Gabor Mate and the Native Peoples, and the Survivors of clerical predatory abuse of children who confront the Vatican and others as in Ireland are seeking. And this is what women subjected to sexual assault are calling for - honesty that leads to safety that leads to prevention of future harms.

What is left then is living with the symptoms of trauma, and being cared for with that in mind, such that the symptoms abate and living can continue with less distress and more security and love.

6. It is fully human to face this. That is what it means to be fully human, to refuse to be dehumanised or to dehumanise any other, for any reason. Ever. That is fully human.

7. The mainstream system has always obliterated or denied or assimilated those cultures that were more egalitarian because their existence provides evidence of an 'alternative' or 'alternatives' ( the older cultures were much more diverse than the mainstream culture claims to be) way of life that is more gentle on people, more nurturant and indeed more sustainable, happier and humane.

PTSS , PTSD,  Post Trauma Stress Symptoms, Chronic Trauma, Intergenerational Trauma. all these terms are varied ways of observing what our experience means. They are not labels; they are directions, themes, narratives, patterns and the individual cannot be correlated with the general pattern, each experience is uniquely that if that particular person.

More care is need in the public discourse on matters of importance to our collective community, our shared realities and experience.

Let us rest, and let us heal. As a cry from the heart, not as a demand or expectation. It is what it is.

"There are no races." a good friend said to me, sitting in his yard; "there are only language groups"

I think he has a point. We're all human beings living within social cultural systems predicated on leveraged power, power that protects itself with extreme violence. That hurts everyone.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

WHY we hear so few Survivors voices in the Public Domain.

There is a term for this coercive behaviour  towards children, which is typical within 'traditional education systems' : Poisonous Pedagogy:

"Poisonous pedagogy", is described by these theorists as what happens when a parent (or teacher, nurse, or other caregiver) believes that a young child's behavior demonstrates that the child is infected with the "seeds of evil", and therefore attempts to weed out the evil, either by emotional manipulation or by brute force. Simple examples include the beating of children as punishment for lying, or mothers who refuse to feed their newborn until a set time, in order to "teach him patience, which will be useful for him in later life".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisonous_pedagogy

And on top of that is a Hierachically Violent social power system, which requires pathologically dysfunctional people to maintain, defend and expand that power system. Hence the coercive education. 

It's a form of deep conditioning to ensure a constant supply of willing participants, though they do understand that it's not the perfect system, and some children escape, some breakthrough and others are utterly broken, whilst the majority just conform and internalise the values of the system.

And then there's the few that will become the one's most suited for power. With the least empathy, a thread of intentional brutality and the greatest ability to manipulate others. They are 'spotted' and groomed for power.

Distal Power has a great influence on ALL our lives, and the further removed from it one is, the greater the vulnerability. the greater the adverse affect, with little ability to protect oneself.

ALL Institutions of Power will seek to protect themselves from 'scandal' - the problem for them being the exposure of the truth, rather than the outcomes for those who have been victimised : The Vatican (Ireland, America Sexual predation of children within Catholic Institutions), The Canadian Protestant Churches,(Indian Residential Schools) The Australian State and the Australian Churches (Stealing Aboriginal Children by force and placing them in Boarding Schools).

This list must also include the people's of Iraq, Afghanistan, South America, South Africa : all the 'inquiries' that have been National Political events controlled the voices of the Survivors, filtering them so only those approved spoke in the public domain, and these Inquiries focussed on reconciliation and settlement over prosecution. They carried out massive, expensive, well advertised campaigns to say 'Sorry'. In order to protect their power. They paid out billions in civil damages. In order to protect their Power.

It is a common pattern, a constant thread through the entire historical record covering the past 5000 years in Hierarchically Violent Societies that grew through conquest. Through violence. Extreme violence.

Here's a psycho-dynamic theoretical outline of how such cultures emerge from the human story. What I wrote.

http://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/two-poles-of-society-everything-in.html

The REAL story is the Survivors story - they were there, they have the most pertinent insights in all of this. And they are still not being heard, not being listened to, not being understood.

Be they Survivors of child abuse, war, police brutality, bullying in schools, offices etc etc etc... be they aboriginal peoples, the environment, the elderly in 'care homes', teens in 'secure care homes', people who have been sectioned...

They all know more about this than anyone one else.
Which WHY we hear so few Survivors voices...... in the public domain, in the 'News' etc etc ..

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe

More Notes on an Intergenerational PTSD thesis of Cultural History, Power and liberation.

I have determined, with 54 years of living experience, and with 25 years of research, that we Human Beings are biologically mandated to experience this Earth life, and to appreciate it fully and to nurture the biological world from which we have emerged. We are alike all other creatures in this.

This piece is a follow up from my previous piece on the evolution of PTSD cultures and Ideologies.

As a conscious human being, there emerges a combination of sensation, gratitude, wonder and love that is innate, it comes out of the lived experience of optimum biological health, and it feels to me that this 'spiritedness' can only be truly seen when it is articulated in behaviour, in relationships and in outcomes. It is not independent of human agency. This is a spirituality with no name, with only the experience, the behaviour and the outcomes to articulate it.

And so, when it comes to 'healing' and the Church's 'response' to Survivors, their Christianity is irrelevant. The Church's faith is irrelevant. Their beliefs and concepts are not the issue. The lived experience, and it's meaning are what matters.

Faith or belief is NOT material to the case of abuse, of cover-up, of intimidation, obstruction of the Law and it is most certainly NOT material to the healing process of ANY Survivor (even if a Survivor chooses to have Faith) in psychological, emotional, physical realities and and in our relationships - these abuses and harms Survivors speak of are matters of medicine, law, psychology and biology, not matters of faith.

These issues are frequently clouded, because that's partially the way unresolved PTSD based Cultural and Institutional Structures behave; they create masks and pretence, within and without, in it's denial state, as a bulwark against the truth, and it's implications with regard to their status in Power.

There are many cultural masks, some intentional, some emergent, some inherited as one culture subsumes another. It can seem complicated, yet it is simple.

The study of simplicity and complexity in biology has lead to discoveries which suggest that Civilisation is complicated, rather than complex.

This is because Civilisation as we know it is standing on a variety of constructions, crutches created in moments of crisis, in the attempt to shore up areas of action and behaviour where the natural biological mandate exposes, as it sometimes does, those actions and behaviours as being pathological, dysfunctional and damaging.

This crisis management or 'fire fighting' keeps happening because the problems remain unresolved and thus the 'organic structure' that is created becomes more and more complicated and less complex.

Behaviour and action tend, in these circumstances, to become increasingly homogenised. 

This desire for uniformity, this cultural insecurity, binds so much energy up, (energy that needs to flow freely so that nutrients are available to all biological systems, energy that human beings could use to make living together a nurturant experience) that ill-health and disease have become the norm, and the medical and ideological suppression of any visible symptoms of distress that might indicate the pathology the primary concern of Power.

That's the environmental problem described in a nutshell.

It's also our social problems described at base. In the most simple terms possible.

That the Religious Institutions are at all permitted to 'provide support services', which are ideologically driven by Christian Faith, to Survivors, is part of this necessary suppression and it is also irrational and it is certainly cruel. It's irrational because Christianity is not the issue here. It's cruel because that's an obvious distraction tactic. A tactic.

The adherents of Christian Ideology will of course deny this is the case, and quote their Faith's concepts and texts, and point to their charitable work, etc., by way of mitigation.

However the reality is that these Institutions have seen the outcomes for Survivors, and non-Survivors -those who died before they could speak out, those who died in situ.(of the abuse or neglect, wilful or otherwise). There is more than a few centuries of detailed authentic disclosures, historical data that is reliable, that show that this behaviour  occurred worldwide. They knew all along. They know.

And, knowing what they knew, having continued their Institutional behaviour, it appears that they have accepted those outcomes though they do not suffer them, and that this acceptance was deemed essential policy even it it was not fit and proper!

They are therefore participating, by inaction, by protective action and by the acceptance of those harms without seeking to prevent the harms, in the criminal offences as secondary to their status, and are liable.

What's their Faith got to do with it?

It's immaterial.

I am surprised it has taken me so long to fully and clearly articulate this ............We are human beings, and our experience of sensory sensitivity is intense, and if we are hurt, and repeatedly hurt, individually and collectively, we do feel it, and our behaviour does, of course alter, it does change, and so too would the outcomes of our behaviour. This sensitivity is biologically mandated not least because as biological organisms we emerge from within a dynamic living system, where change is constant, and that sensitivity is part of how we observe those changes and respond to them to maintain the nurturant behaviours that determine well being, optimum health. Some people call this 'creativity' - I call it common sense.

The changes in behaviour are outcomes emerging from experience and from how we humans - as animals - experience our environment, based on form, our embodied nature, and consciousness, the awareness, sensitivity, perception, language and decision making processes that can be articulated as the active mammalian we are, emerging as part of Earth's biology. This is a fundamental biological reality.

Think of new born babies, infants, children ... how sensitive!

What kind of Community would, understanding that this sensitivity is indeed a biological mandate, most ably nurture that sensitivity into maturity? What kind of Society would fulfil this biological mandate?

And what kind of Society would undermine this biological mandate?

Whatever Society it is, there will be a number of apparently interdependent causal factors that are themselves effects... and it is those interdependency cycles that we need most to be understood, if we are to return to Societal behaviours that reflect and respond appropriately to that biological mandate.

In short, we are born into an Institutional Culture whose underlying psychology is unresolved chronic PTSD. We have no choice as babies, infants, children and adults but to adjust our senses so that we can survive, let alone thrive, in this psycho-social setting.

The behaviour of Governance at it's very core is merely the behaviour of wounded, damaged and damaging children who have become adults without resolving key areas of their woundedness, who behave like someone in distress, affected with Chronic Intergenerational PTSD, in ways that are similar in dynamics, promoted and dressed up as a State, a Religion, a nationality or an ideology, or just a drunk and violent parent or partner.

Seen at that level it is tractable. It is a problem that can be resolved. Our biology mandates that there is a solution., And it's not mutating to grow metal hard scales, and talons and extra large incisor teeth, so that we become more biologically mandated to surviving in a state of constant conflict for survival. The 'struggle for survival' myth, so beloved of David Attenborough.
 
There is a solution.

I keep in mind, whilst I discuss these matters, all those centuries of war in Europe, with each generation traumatised, with every unresolved symptom integrated into the building of social infrastructure, each unresolved generation birthing a new generation with that PTSD as their background .....

It's not an 'evil conspiracy', though it does involve some seriously organised nasty, nasty behaviour, experience and horrific outcomes, on a wide, wide scale; words cannot suffice how nasty the truth about this is. It is natural enough to be fearful of looking directly into this horror.However it has to be said that Fear is also a teacher; on a personal level when one is looking at one's own fears, or on the wider level, when a community looks at societal fears.

Note how often fear is triggered by the stream of mainstream 'news', 'reports' and 'documentaries' and how little real information is provided. Is this fear a teacher? Or is it a bully?

The child that Survives adopts behaviours that help the child to make it through, yet which are unhealthy for an adult. One must respect that. One cannot 'push' someone out of their fear, and the same applies to whole Societies.

When the child or Survivor feels safe, that's the time for looking at the event or events, the experience and the real honest meaning of it, as a discipline of self healing. 

Those that do resolve their issues, who deal with their fears must also be respected.

And so how to help the child within to feel safe again?

Possibly by developing, through exploration, a personal process of first noticing that one can take care of oneself, the adult that is safe, in the present, and then offering that to the child within, as a support, not to do anything.... just to be a first witness, an adult who cares, who is present, who will listen and hear and understand.

And let the child's response emerge.....

Let the child tell his or her story...

So that it can be understood, so that the child can finally hear those words they needed to hear at the time,  so that learning how to prevent it in the future is enabled. Without that how can one feel safe again?

That's the basic process.

That's what needed to happen then, and needs to happen now. And if the actors in the past are not available, for whatever reason, then this is another potential route... the individual need not be trapped..

This process deserves widespread support, and the primary support is a cultural acknowledgement of it's biologically mandated basis.

It's not easy, it takes time. For many the trauma is deeply grown in over time....

At the same time, in political situations there is an inherent contradiction facing people seeking liberation from an oppressive situation - the oppressed, who are dehumanised by being oppressed, in seeking liberation are seeking to re-humanise themselves, and they will only succeed when they are also seeking to liberate the oppressors from their dehumanised state, in effect to humanise the situation between and around them. That, at least, must remain as central intent, and area of constant exploration and praxis and the preferred outcome.

This is notably absent in Syria, in Iraq, in Libya, in Chile in 1973, in Indonesia in the 1960s onwards and in most places where the oppressed have taken up arms in a struggle for liberation. The 'rebels' or 'insurgents' or 'saviours' (the USA/UK Governments that have supported 'rebels' invaded to 'bring democracy') irrespective of their ideological position, appear to be intent on destroying those who they say are the oppressors rather than reaching a position of negotiation by which the situation of oppression is resolved. For the most part they are hoping to replace one form or oppression with another.

This is what Paolo Friere discusses in Pedagogy of The Oppressed.

Natural Child, Natural Society: assuming that both are cause and effect at the same time.

Freedom to be empathic, safe to be empathic.... offer that to all children.

I think the way to accomplish this is everybodies business; it is a collective action, a collective need that must be met and it's crucial to state that there is also a personal respons-ability, and responsibility, associated with this, because we are biological organisms operating in a biological reality. Neither Institutions nor individuals can avoid this work and claim they are mature or nurturing.

We all live in a shared reality, not a yellow submarine. Science and common sense assert this on the basis of evidence.

We are embodied within a mutually interdependent reality. Science and common sense assert this on the basis of evidence.

A fundamental in biology is that there is no waste, and another is that all healthy biological process lead to nurturing the environment, nurturing more life, in the short, median and long-term.

All actions seed more life. That's the basic biology, most fundamental premise emerging from Biology Sciences....

That's my primary intellectual driver. Biology emerges as a dynamic, through the action of responsive organisms that are learning all the time.

This is a long work, over generations..... aspects of it must be contextualised, understood and options or actions must be tested in the present, and over that intergenerational timescale... because others not yet born will have to pick up the mess.

Given that particular fact, that others will have to clean up the mess we leave behind, how rude and immature it is to avoid that responsibility, once it has been clearly identified?

How dangerous? How toxic?

The evidence for punishment is that punishment tends to create the desire to avoid punishment more often than to behave a certain way, naturally enough. That's therefore only a partial and usually time limited success.

Harmful behaviour should not be avoided, it ought to be confronted head-on, especially where children's lives are adversely affected, directly or indirectly.

Preventing harmful behaviour cannot be achieved through punishment. It can only be achieved through honesty, through dealing with what actually happens, and through making changes in our fundamental psychology that reflect understanding, empathy and where necessary, remorse for actions taken that have caused harm ought to drive reparations.

All of which we do not see in The Catholic Church as an Institution, or amongst the Catholic Hierarchy of individuals... for example read the recent comments by a Catholic Archbishop who proclaimed that the floods across the globe were a judgement by God, on 'our' behaviour (not the Bishops behaviour) with regard to sexuality, marriage and so forth.

"The psychology of any given family, community or society is both revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat the children AND the most vulnerable people in that family, community or society." 

This mus become clear as a matter of choice.

 

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe