[Gus1234U]

in considering my PTSD, in conjunction with other symptoms remaining from a rather severe brain injury, i have concluded that PTSD IS a traumatic brain injury, and needs the same kind of recovery practices as my other losses.

i have made substantial gains in many areas of function, memory was just beginning to regroup, when i received another (in a long line of) emotional traumas. i used to be of the opinion that emotional traumas were substantially different from physical damage. but now i am reconsidering.

i learned that a lifetime of social stigma can lead to all the symptoms of PTSD, including brain changes. of course, it is very difficult to find anyone who has been the target of social stigma and has not received at least one blow to the head. such is the world we live in.

anyway, for those of you who are still thinking that PTSD is an emotional or will power weakness, and must be 'battled',, i urge you to consider that it is brain damage, and must be supported with various kinds of 'nourishment' and rehabilitation.

may we all be calm, and have the causes of calmness~!

[Skeezyks]

Thanks for posting your thoughts, Gus! I believe you're onto something here. I don't, & never will, know what happened to me. But it all started at a very early age & went on from there... sort-of like the snowball rolling downhill & getting bigger-&-bigger as it rolls along. There are a few physical things I can point to as possible contributors. But beyond that I do believe that , once the snowball got rolling, (to extend the analogy) it just took on a life of it's own. It's all a ball of twisted wire (or a debris-filled snowball?) that will never be untangled. But I have to believe that, it all had a significant effect on my brain, physiologically speaking. In my case, it doesn't matter anymore. I'm too old. It just is what it is. But I believe you are correct with regard to the need for nourishment & rehabilitation.

[vonmoxie]

I absolutely agree with you, Gus, both from what I've read and also my personal experience: that PTSD is very much physiological in nature, at least as its basis... and it's certainly traumatic injury! I just read the first 6 chapters of The Body Keeps the Score (and it surely does) by Bessel van Der Kolk, and although I've been familiar with his work for a long time, it was really enlightening to get book-sized insight into his findings. I can't think of a researcher who's had a more profound effect on my understanding and compassion, both towards others and to myself.

There is also all kinds of research that points to memories existing everywhere in the body, not just in the brain -- a situation which surely informs the phantom limb effect -- so it stands deeply to reason that just because traumatic impacts are experienced psychologically, doesn't mean that they only exist within patterns of thought.

Specifically though, the fight-or-flight response is a hardwired part of us, and in my own experience it is the impact of trauma on its functioning that most contributes to the development of a PTSD. I woke up this morning realizing at that deeper level that comes courtesy of being informed by deeper layers of consciousness, that the feelings I struggle with of being emotionally shut down have absolutely everything to do with the traumas I've sustained, with being in situations where I couldn't show any weakness, had to brace myself for too long against the unthinkable.. so that eventually those situations disabled my fight-or-flight, like a set of brakes that have been stripped down from too much overbraking at high speeds.

(The brakes metaphor I just came up with now.. pretty concurrent, though, I think..)

The answer to your question is no. A Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) occurs from a sudden jolt or blow to the head. Often when people refer to a TBI, they are mistakenly talking about the symptoms that occur following a TBI. Actually, a TBI is the injury, not the symptoms.

The symptoms of TBI and PTSD overlap, but a TBI is not PTSD.