I have already written at length about how severe and protracted childhood trauma can physically damage the brain’s development, adversely affecting both its structure and functionality, which, in turn, can contribute to the development of very serious psychiatric conditions such as complex posttraumatic stress disorder (complex PTSD) and borderline personality disorder (BPD).
In this article, I will focus in on … Read the rest
A study by Lanius et al. was conducted to cast light upon why many with individuals suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including those suffering from complex-PTSD, often find it excruciatingly uncomfortable every time the rules of social etiquette compel them to make eye to eye contact with another human being (I, myself once attempted to circumvent this problem by … Read the rest
A person who is hypervigilant feels constantly ‘on edge’ , ‘keyed up’ and fearful. S/he experiences a perpetual sense of dread and of being under threat despite the fact, objectively speaking, there is no present danger. Indeed, the person affected in this way is so intensely alert to, and focused upon, any conceivable imminent danger … Read the rest
What Factors Make The Symptoms Of Complex PTSD Even More Serious?
Anybody who has suffered from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) / complex post traumatic stress disorder (cPTSD) knows that the mental torment and anguish it entails can be extreme and unremitting.
Frustratingly (putting it mildly), such pain is impossible to describe in words to those who have been fortunate enough never to have experienced such conditions much in the same … Read the rest
The DSM 4 (Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Illness, 4th Edition) lists one of the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a ‘sense of a foreshortened future.‘ It is this specific symptom that I wish to concentrate upon in this article.
The psychologists Ratcliffe et al. (2014) suggested, based on their research, that this … Read the rest
If we have grown up in a chronically stressful and traumatic environment in which we often experienced anxiety, trepidation, stress and fear we are at high risk of developing a fundamental, core belief (on a conscious and/or unconscious level) that the world is a dangerous place and that we need to be constantly on ‘red-alert’ and ‘on-guard’ in order to … Read the rest
