Emotional problem is not an insult...

I think it is the opposite of that. It's saying that the person suffering, despite their best efforts, cannot self heal due to a mechanical problem - i.e. the "broken brain". Their brain is broken, therefore, it is not their fault that they are suffering, nor is it due to some personal weakness.

This thread is unnerving to me, a newcomer. As a support community, I did not expect to see such intense debate about core issues. Why do those who imply they are tough and others are wusses come here? I feel bad enough not being able to participate as I would like without have my failure rubbed in my face.

DDIke, you're right. This thread should probably be marked as a "trigger". I'm not sure how to do that. Does the original poster have to set the icon?

Yes, honest discussion is a trigger for some. Not for all. Maybe it might be useful to understand why it is a trigger?

There is debate within the mental health community. A lot of things are not resolved, not well-understood. I think we reflect that. Is it "support" to not talk about such things?

I think I am missing how anyone in this thread implied they are "tough" and others not. I also don't see how you have failed in any way. Lots of us are challenged by this kind of discussion -- and it can be quite uncomfortable. It can also produce learning.

Agreed. Unfortunately some people have to contend with a social drive to dominate others.

Okay, first I had no idea my ideas are "triggering".

Second, not me not somebody else implied we are tough. We do we come here? For me... it's "having more issues than National Geographic".

Third... I cannot see how am I rubbing failure into someone's face... by saying "yes, emotional problems can be serious or deep?". By saying that one's brain IS not broken, we are not different than "them" (hence going against stigma... without falling for useless and countraproductive political correctness)?

Sir pachyderm, I stand by what I said. I choose not to post excerpts in support. People seem to have made up their minds and posting excerpts would serve no purpose.

I also disagree that relations between people are the SOLE causative factor.

Finally, I understand what constitutes support is debatable. From what I am reading, I sense I am being told to shut up and get on with it.

I did not say that. Of course, people's inherent susceptibilities, genetic makeup, heredity, whatever you want to call it, are factors in how people react to experience. My brothers and I lived in the same family; how we reacted is noticeably different.

I am here to say that I have no such thing in mind. I think all people should be able to say what they have to say.

I don't think your ideas were triggering. It's just that the conversation went in a direction that became disturbing to DDIke. That was probably MY fault, though I don't particularly understand why.

My personal weaknesses have been unmasked. I shall move on.

We all have those! I too feel like moving on at times. Probably many wish I would. I haven't. I don't think you need to, either.

Here I am to stick my oar in. And I am really out of it and haven't read all this thread. So, I apologize from the beginning if I make an even bigger show of my ignorance.

My thinking is that "mental illness" can be caused by a bad childhood or by a "bad brain"" or perhaps by both. I am personally not bothered by being told I have "emotional problems."

Please don't pounce on me. I am not even going to look back at this thread. I seem to be heading into some depression as it is.......

Ditto at pachy. EVERYBODY has personal weaknesses.

It depends on how you come to deal with that.

We are here because we struggle. I rather hear words of advice or thought-provoking words that "yes, it indeed sucks, you and me and we all are doomed". And broken-brain theories seem to suggest that to me.

I wish to add something to this conversation, I hope not to offend anyone by doing so. I have CPTSD diagnosed and affirmed. This is the result of two major traumas in my life, one physical and one emotional. I have lost my left patella (kneecap) from an accident with a firearm in 1995 and in 2001 I witnessed several attempts by my partner (spouse) trying to kill herself. Then she turned on me and tried to destroy me during the divorce, she ended up with 50,000$ in cash and prizes on this wheel of misfortune. I finally had to accept the fact that I was injured, emotionally, and this was very hard to swallow. It wasn't until I came to grips with what had transpired that I was able to start healing, finally. So this "debate" is about having an emotional illness and how being called this is an injustice to some people, let us not be derailed by such minute details, let us spend more of our energy trying to heal and overcome these misfortunes. If trauma caused these malfunctions, are they not an psychological injury as opposed to a mental illness or emotional disorder. "There are a 1000 hacking at the branches of evil for every one that is striking at the root" PS

I think this is the problem with a lot of people's thinking. They think their particular issues must have the same root as other people's problems.

Myself, the major part of my issues I was born with. I know some people squirm and think "denial" but it is because they find their problems come from life and other people. But for some reason most people cannot get their heads around the fact that, in this case they cannot know others just from knowing themselves.

I have realized long ago that people can have issues from life events, from childhood and so on. When I was very young I didn't think so because I myself wasn't like that! But I let fact in, I listened to people and I had to just realize everyone has a different story.

And for some illnesses, such as schizophrenia, there has not been a connection between childhood and illness, you are much more likely to find that with someone with for example BPD. Myself and those types of anxieties I have, you have to have weak brain filters to even be able to develop, so called low latent inhibition. And yea, I was born with ASD and ADD. I didn't have a particularly stressful life to made my anxieties worse, I just cannot blame that.

So I would wish that everyone took a step outside their own set of issues and look at other with different eyes. Understand that even if you like me, come with no difficult life, other people can come with issues very much rooted in experience. And those feeling life has caused them issues, realize some people are born different.

This should be a very reasonable thing to unite around.

Although I agree that it is uncertain, there have been surveys of people diagnosed with schizophrenia who turn out in a large fraction of cases to describe child abuse. Then there are others that say there is no relationship. If you pose the question on Google, for instance, you will find some studies that say yes and others that say no. It is not clear-cut; there is no consensus.

Personally, looking at what I know about my thinking, I can see how it could well be a cause, in some cases. I don't think all these various diagnoses in different categories are all that unrelated. I think they are all connected by stress in some form, the effects depending not only on the stresses but also on the susceptibilities of different people being -- different.

And I don't think everyone in the same diagnosis are the same.

Much easier said than done trying to do all that, especially when it seems no matter what course of action you take things are unlikely to improve.

How I interpreted the saying on the picture is that a mental illness shouldn't be just seen as an emotional problem. We aren't JUST emotional, which people could interpret as too sensitive, but it's more complex than that. My hallucinations arent an emotional problem. But I do also have emotional problems too. It validates me to know its not just being weak or too sensitive, but rather a real illness in my brain. We may differ in what validates us in different ways, and that's okay. This is just what I see from the image.

A quote I came across in school tonight that's kind of relevant to all of this -

"Mental Models are the images & assumptions we carry in our minds about the world. Like a pain of glass framing and subtly distorting our vision, mental models determine what we see.
Our deeply formed assumptions & beliefs can create blind spots that prevent us from looking at situations from new angles. These beliefs become what is “true” for us, creating a framework we call our “reality”. Sometimes we get stuck in our own frameworks, boxing ourselves in. To break out of the box often requires someone from outside, to challenge our assumptions and test our realities. "
-Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline

Oh boy I don't even know where to start with this. PTSD isn't traumatic brain injury, and the research that "proves" that PTSD literately changes the brain is questionable at best, and it is not steadily considered by the scientific community to be the accurate model of looking at neurology in conjunction with PTSD. Yes, I've read these articles too, and yes, I know that anyone can find an article or even scientific journals proving their side of the debate. I just really don't buy into the whole broken brain theory...or if you prefer I could be obstinately refusing to look at it that way.

On a personal level, I think that as hard as it may be, people with PTSD are not somehow magically limited by a "broken brain" and literately cannot do something or express certain emotions. They CAN do "just that" whatever it may be, it might just be extremely extremely hard in certain circumstances. At the end of the day, it's cognitive in nature, since it's due to experiences.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't - you're right.”

-Henry Ford

Yes pachyderm, you are right about considering "why" a thread can be a trigger, or feel offensive to someone.

I know for myself that when I see someone saying, "I have had bad things happen to me too, ya just gotta learn to deal" or something along these lines, I "do" get triggered.

The truth is, for anyone who "knows me" I have been pretty tough, and always turned lemons into lemonaide. Even my therapist tells me I am very "strong" and that I try "very hard", often more so than his other patients who come to see him wanting to be "spoon fed" each time, where I have been tackling the disorder that challenges me and am always doing my homework etc. Which includes bringing in the research I have been reading IN MANY PLACES BY PROFESSIONALS UNLIKE THEDRAGON.

I get "triggered" because PTSD just challenged me so badly and I never dreamed of having to deal with the things I have been dealing with. And at my often "worst" that's all I heard were sayings that kept telling me how everyone has "bad things happen" and I need to "just deal with it". Well, I could not understand "why I couldn't "just" and it certainly wasn't my choice. And because people IRL around me were so dismissive and mean to me, it severely aggrivated the PTSD to where I got so frustrated and angry I had very strong dangerous thoughts. These thoughts were so strong, so severe that had I not happened across someone at PC that told me to hang on, it is part of PTSD and it will pass, I probably would not be writing this post right now.

It is hard to know what it is like to be that bad, to understand why so many of our Veterans make that fatal choice. And then to hear how others do "not understand" and that they "seemed to be doing so well, or managing to cope. I know that switch that happens in the brain, it is nothing I ever imagined. And I don't know "why" it happens either, I have not read anything about that yet. I "do" know they are frantically studying it because we are, as I mentioned. losing 20 per day on the average. Never, never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine experiencing something like that. And I did try to talk about it and "I was dismissed" as "just get over it and deal".

The truth is, I never imagined having to work so hard on something like this in my life. I will never, ever, look at some person who bearly comes out of their home and is "deemed some crazy person" by people who live near by, the same again. There will forever be a part of me that will understand and sympathize with that person now.

I am not one to want to "give up, give up, and assume I will never get better. I have definitely made some gains on my challenge and I do my best to be here to do the favor someone did for me if I can.

[quote=TheDragon;2941839]Oh boy I don't even know where to start with this. PTSD isn't traumatic brain injury, and the research that "proves" that PTSD literately changes the brain is questionable at best, and it is not steadily considered by the scientific community to be the accurate model of looking at neurology in conjunction with PTSD. Yes, I've read these articles too, and yes, I know that anyone can find an article or even scientific journals proving their side of the debate. I just really don't buy into the whole broken brain theory...or if you prefer I could be obstinately refusing to look at it that way.

On a personal level, I think that as hard as it may be, people with PTSD are not somehow magically limited by a "broken brain" and literately cannot do something or express certain emotions. They CAN do "just that" whatever it may be, it might just be extremely extremely hard in certain circumstances. At the end of the day, it's cognitive in nature, since it's due to experiences.

Then these Vets that are taking their lives 20 per day, should just decide "you" are right and THEY ARE NOT REALLY SUFFERING.

IF YOU DON'T HAVE FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE WITH IT HOW DO YOU KNOW? MY GUESS IS YOU HAVE NEVER EXPERIENCED A FLASHBACK FIRST HAND THAT COMES OUT OF NO WHERE AND YOU CAN'T TALK, OR ESCAPE IT.

I could have never dreamed that up, nor do our veterans or all the others that come to PC even and talk about it. Why don't you go down to the PTSD forum and tell everyone down there THEY ARE JUST IMAGINING THEIR DISORDER AND "IT'S NO BIG DEAL".

IT IS CLEAR YOU LIVE IN "YOUR OWN REALITY", BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE PUSHING YOUR LITTLE WORLD OF "DENIAL" ON OTHERS WHO ARE TRUELY STRUGGLING.

1) I have severe PTSD, and have dealt with all of the symptoms before, and still do on an on-going basis.

2) I've had close friends who are vets with PTSD, and while I don't have combat PTSD, it's more than just an academic subject to me.

3) I never said it's no big deal, I just choose to have faith in anyone who's ever suffered (and humans in general) that they have the power within to choose how they respond, think, act and ultimately, live, rather than be told that they're helpless to their brain.