Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder derived from Paranormal Experiences
First let’s look at the aftermath of trauma. Any kind of trauma. PTSD wasn’t even a thing until it was given a label in the 1970s. Before that, soldiers (and really ONLY soldiers) were termed as having “Soldier’s Heart” or “Shell Shock” in response to being severely affected by battle.
I remember a ghost-like middle-aged man in my childhood town often seen standing and swaying on the street corners always with a book held up to his nose and drooling on himself. It was whispered that he had “Shell Shock.”
We’re not talking about that level of damage here but we are talking about damage. The latest DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) has moved PTSD from the anxiety category to the new and more appropriate Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorders. Anxiety itself of course is one of many symptoms of trauma.
The way I like to think about PTSD is this:
Imagine that you took your little bedside lamp and suddenly plugged it into the high voltage transmission line outside your house. The little lamp designed for probably no more than 120 volts would be overwhelmed by a surge of 500,000 volts or more. What would happen to that lamp if it didn’t just flat out die as a result? Wouldn’t the wiring be damaged by the surge of excess voltage?
If you exchange voltage for stress, I think the picture becomes clearer as to what happens when someone is exposed to a sudden level of stress that the body and mind were not designed to cope with. The central nervous system itself becomes overwhelmed – severely burned– if you will. In addition to chemical changes, this sets up the sufferer to become to hyper-sensitive to future stressors. It just can’t handle any more.
“PTSD is a whole-body tragedy, an integral human event of enormous proportions with massive repercussions.”
― Susan Pease Banitt
I feel that PTSD is essentially a physical issue and arguably the most successful treatments are those that address the body and not the mind exclusively.
When I used to work with substance abuse clients, stress of any kind was the biggest trigger for relapse. It’s well known that substance abuse is often both caused by and is the cause of traumatic experiences and the individual’s consequent inability to tolerate stress. One result I would talk to my clients about would be the loss of the ability to discern, for instance a “little” anger versus a “big” anger. To the PTSD sufferer it all feels big. There ceases to be any nuance when it comes to stress and stressful emotions. In substance abuse, trauma often becomes a vicious cycle.
Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
If PTSD is being blown up by a land mine, then C-PTSD is hearing land mines going off night after night 10 yards away. It is generally a lesser degree of actual trauma sustained over a longer time period. It is being on the front lines of a battle versus living in a battle torn village. They are both stressors but they play out differently.
Complex PTSD while not yet fully recognized by the DSM (probably because it’s fairly common,) can be the result of ongoing domestic or sexual abuse, bullying or even childhood neglect.
Paranormal P-TSD and C-PTSD
We’ve all heard of the rape victim who not only suffered a traumatic assault but who was further humiliated and/or disbelieved entirely. The fact is that most rapes go unreported and not just due to fear of being stigmatized but also because it can be a natural reaction to trauma to simply shut down. One way of reacting to extreme stress, in fact, is to dissociate completely and leave the body – sometimes viewing oneself from without. This is a well know phenomenon especially in cases of childhood sexual abuse.
If this kind of natural response, confusion and fear of further humiliation can affect someone who has been traumatized in a “real world” way, what then of the person who has had a terrifying paranormal experience? What happens to the hunter chased off his lease by a massive, eight foot tall Sasquatch? What happens to the alien abductee taken against her will and terrorized? What about the family subjected to poltergeist activity night after night? How about the child tormented by very real traumatic dreams of a violent death in a previous existence?
These are amongst the few scenarios that it’s okay to laugh at and outright mock in our culture. You can still stand around the water cooler and snicker at Jane who claims her house is haunted by a dark shadowy presence. So Jane has a double whammy.
My guess is that the overwhelming majority just shut up.
My paranormal experiences have mostly been strange but benign. I’ve been lucky and even I have taken decades to share them publicly. I am also a sufferer of trauma although not of the paranormal kind but I understand the general “feel” of it.
What happens to a person who feels forced to keep what may feel like the most momentous thing that’s ever happened to them a secret? The thing that they most feel the need for compassion and support is the very thing they don’t share for the very real fear of further pain? What happens when that person is a child who wakes up to a figure at the foot of his bed and is told “it’s just a dream – get back in bed?”
“It’s often said that a traumatic experience early in life marks a person forever, pulls her out of line, saying, “Stay there. Don’t move.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides
It is my hope that these subjects become more and more open and that people feel more and more able to talk about their experiences openly and without fear of recrimination.
Look for future posts wherein I will be discussing ways of dealing with these situations if you find yourself in this awful place.
If you have come upon healthy coping mechanisms of your own, I’d love to hear about them!