Why do some near death experiences cause PTSD and some cause other people to live their best lives after.
In: 12
Because trauma can make you or break you. Fear is a powerful thing. It can utterly hinder you or propel you forward. Fight or flight.
It’s how you perceive that experience. You can view it as being powerless towards your surroundings or you can view it as a special opportunity to learn how fortunate you are to survive such an experience. This is why MDMA-assisted therapy is being used for PTSD, because by working with a therapist and viewing your past experience under a different mind frame (different active neurochemical profile under MDMA/ecstasy) helps people to address their past in a more positive, open-minded viewpoint
It depends on the person.
It’s like bullying. It toughens some people up, and it mentally damages some people
Resiliency. There’s the notion of “window of tolerance” in psychology. For someone with a large window of tolerance and good support, getting a ton of stress/fear and overwhelming the system for a short while can make them stronger, if they get back to their tolerance level soon after. Anti-fragility is another label.
However, those with a crappy childhood (ie, many Adverse Childhood Experiences), the window of tolerance is small, self regulation is harder, and being thrown into a completely overwhelmed state is beyond their ability to get back to regulation. One theory is the overwhelm is stored in the body and dissociated from, but we’re still understanding this.
The first example is like testing steel and not bending it. The second is actually bending it so the steel is fundamentally weakened.
What’s unfortunate is that those with crappy childhoods usually get less support than those who have “good enough” childhoods, for a number of reasons. The Western culture also has more emphasis on roughing it out alone.
I know a person which risked his life twice.
The first one was sickness and he got out stronger.
The second one was to be almost killed by criminals while they confused him for another person. This was closer to ptsd.
There is a big difference between:
1 having your strength tested and learn how beautiful is to have a life, and to not take it for granted. To see that every moment deserves to be enjoyed. This happens while everyone you know is standing for you and even complete strangers want to save your life.
2 becoming aware that no matter what you do someone can always come and kill you at any moment. All the people you love and all the good you do is irrelevant and the strangers may possibly kill you even if you totally mind your own business.
I’m not a psychologist but it seems the second scenario is quite bad for your mental health.
In case anyone is curious, the name for positive changes from extremely stressful experiences is called post traumatic growth.
It is possible to have both PTSD and PTG at the same time or only one or the other.
Some psychologist believe many PTSD sufferers may also have PTG it may just not be as recognized as much by therapists, psychologists and patients.
a combination the severity of the situation as experienced and the preparation for it.
preparation could be a very wide array, from training, upbringing, slow increase of exposure and genetic design of the brain.
the severity is obvious… but in combination is very applicable. just yelling at a child could traumatize the person for life, wheres as an experienced war vet or surgeon could accidentally see a person be killed violently and more or less shrug it off. where as a high empathy person may need years of therapy to stop dreaming about it a psychopath wouldn’t care at all.
I had an ovarian tumor when 40. Mine was very rare as it was benign. Dr. Told me 99.9% were cancerous and deadly
Before I was a hard working bitch. After I was kinder, caring, and no longer worked 80 hrs a week. Needed some time to smell the flowers.
Latest Answers