A list of (expensive) pseudo-science.
Studies surrounding CBT (and the field of psychology as a whole) are not replicable. They are, almost always, based on converting qualitative metrics (how you feel) and filtering them through a designed survey in order to convert these qualitative, subjective abstractions into something that resembles something quantitative and scientific. The result is a field has with a ~40% replicability rate in it’s most “prestigious” journals. So, yes, the “professionals” have PhDs and use the doctor salutation. They’re not scientists. They’re just pretending.
Want to know what you almost never see in the studies investigating the effectiveness of these “therapies”? Life outcome investigations. “Do patients doing CBT actually recover from their depression, as measured by educational attainment/employment/regaining employment?” Good luck finding a study indicating that any significant subset of “depressed” people got over their issues as a result of the CBT itself with a HARD LIFE OUTCOME as the point of investigation. It’s all subjective feelings filtered through qualitative 1 thru 10 surveys. Patients never improve. They stay on the $200/session revenue stream forever and get a lifetime prescription to go with it, often for a nebulous “condition” that is basically synonymous with descriptions of the normal human condition. “I feel anxious” gets you a script. Outside of panic attacks, it’s a normal feeling. “I have trouble focusing” gets you an amphetamine script. It’s a normal feeling. “I lack motivation and purpose” gets you an SSRI, with nary a blood test or a scan of the brain. Again, a perfectly normal part of being a human. Psychotropic intervention in this field is barbaric and pseudoscientific. If there is any justice in this world, it will be held in the same esteem as lobotomy in the future.
I'm still not sure what is pseudoscientific about "People with psychological problems can learn ways of coping with the problems, thereby relieving their symptoms."
That's what CBT is...
The assessment of the success of CBT is also pseudoscientific: a qualitative evaluation.
The result is a field with 40% replicability of journal results.
And you share a meta analysis of these pseudo-scientific “studies”. Add another layer of abstraction to the nonsense.
That's completely fair, and I don't want to interact with that at all.
Have a nice day!
If I say I feel shitty all the time, and then I go to therapy, and I say that I feel less shitty all the time... why is that invalid data?
That's actually exactly how they measure the efficacy of many psychological and psychiatric interventions for chronic mental health conditions, to the point of it being almost laughable, like if you managed to get a job or get better grades, that must mean you are doing better, everything else be damned. But I suppose that's the most objective metric there is.
"They stay on the $200/session revenue stream forever and get a lifetime prescription to go with it"
This is anecdotal, but every psychiatrist I've been to has attempted to titrate down the dose or remove a medication from my regimen if I've been on it a while, and observe if the improvements from those can be maintained.
Similarly, most of the therapists I have worked with proactively suggested reducing the frequency of sessions once they've observed improvement.
"often for a nebulous “condition” that is basically synonymous with descriptions of the normal human condition. “I feel anxious” gets you a script. Outside of panic attacks, it’s a normal feeling. “I have trouble focusing” gets you an amphetamine script. It’s a normal feeling. “I lack motivation and purpose” gets you an SSRI, with nary a blood test or a scan of the brain. Again, a perfectly normal part of being a human."
It's attitudes like these that contributed to me failing to seek the proper mental health treatment until later in my life, until my very real, very observable, non-nebulous conditions reached a life-threatening degree.
Something that is "normal" for some people some of the time can be disabling or life-threatening if experienced by someone most of the time. Most people experience physical pain at some points in their lives, but if you are in serious pain nearly every day, you would be right to seek treatment — and no, we don't have perfect tests for all kinds of pain either.
The fields of psychiatry and psychology have many problems, but being a pseudoscience is not one of them.
Replicability is the measure. You don't get to opinion your way out of this.
40% replicability = not science.
By no stretch of any imagination are those studies replicable. And the diagnosis process is even worse —- no quantitative blood test, no scans, no nothing. Just ask the patient for verbal self-assessment, and prescribe. It’s a massive joke from start to finish.
In the hospital the other day, the nurse asked "how are you doing" which is an essay question. I didn't feel like answering essay questions, so I just stared at her awhile. Later that day, I was diagnosed with 'catatonic schizophrenia' and earned an increased dosage of Ativan because the doctor said I didn't answer the nurse satisfactorily.
She was a class-A scammer. She cheated on everything. She took me to Disneyland and tried to reuse the tickets. I took her to the Prom and she tried to return the wrong dress to the rental store. Walking around town, she would walk me into lamp posts. She mocked me and ridiculed me and I kept coming back for more.
I'll never forget her profession as a Pharmacy Technician. There is no coincidence that her status as a legal drug dealer and scammer brought her into my life. Every day she dealt with leeches, IV bags, PRNs, and Scheduled drugs. Every night she handed me a wine cooler or two and put an art film on the VCR. Unfortunately my parents and teachers were powerless to intervene at that point.
> I was sexually assaulted
and
> Of course I was totally into it
Not hard to see why your comments have been downvoted to death.
The SOP for every psychiatrist I've ever seen (and that's probably nearing 100 or so by now, over 30 years, 3 states and a dozen clinics) is to medicate until the patient is responding well, and to never ever even suggest that the patient should slow down, reduce or stop any medication. Because if the patient did so it would represent a clear and present danger and obstacle to recovery. The patient is seriously mentally ill and must take medications w, x, y and z for the rest of his life. Unless one of them creates a lot of side effects and then we'll tinker endlessly with new and different medications until he stops complaining so much of side effects, and/or he's too doped up and sleepy to care anyway.
It is absolutely preposterous for any psychiatrist to suggest that a patient titrate off drugs "to see what happens" or "just in case they've recovered". That's antithetical to their treatment methods which specify that chronic psychiatric illnesses must be treated with daily doses of medications with vague primary effects that can never be stopped.
That's harsh.
You seem to want quantitative studies to prove the efficacy of methods that treat _psychological_ problems. Depending on the disorder, researchers can often only rely on patient assessments. Whether or not someone attained education or employment would be difficult to correlate as a direct effect of any specific treatment. Methods like CBT serve to give the patient a set of tools to approach their problems, and in the real world are often combined with other treatments. They're not silver bullets, nor do they work as well for everyone, since they do require a conscious effort from the patient.
It's like with meditation; some people claim it has transformed their lives, while it has little effect on others. There's little quantitative evidence to prove its efficacy. Should we dismiss the practice entirely because of this?
It’s meant to be harsh. They’re mass-prescribing poorly understood psychoactive drugs based on unscientific assessments. They’re giving young children amphetamines for normal behavior (disliking school). They are kooks, and I have as much regards for them as I do for those that performed lobotomies.
Charles Whitman, U Texas, 1966, was on psychoactive medications such as Dexedrine; it's no coincidence that he was compelled to murder lots of people from that tower, not because of mental defect but because of drugs he was on.
Nancy Reagan was right. "Just Say No." I listen to Nancy Reagan.
I'll just say that I wouldn't dismiss an entire field of study based on wrong actions by some, or even a majority, of practitioners. Psychology and psychiatry do help many people, and it's the best we can do for many psychological issues. Can it be abused and wrongly applied? Sure. But it's not pseudoscience, and its practitioners aren't "kooks".
The mind is an abstract concept, and we don't yet have the knowledge of how it interacts with the brain, a physical entity. If we did, all psychological issues would be studied and treated by neuroscience instead. In the meantime, we need branches of research that are not as well defined as traditional "hard" sciences.
If by “alternative viewpoints” you mean unrepeatable non-science, then you’re absolutely right! Repeat your results and I’ll take you seriously.
> it's the best we can do for many psychological issues
You can’t make this claim without repeatable results
> The mind is an abstract concept, and we don't yet have the knowledge of how it interacts with the brain, a physical entity
This attitude is exactly how the lobotomy came about. “Let’s just mess with the brain (which we don’t understand). It’s the best we can do!”
Kooks!
I wish there was enough coverage and recognition to have multiple pathways, or some kind of effective gated treatment going to something like CBT or over to something like Janina Fisher's empirical work practically extending IFS in a nearly universally palatable way (seriously, I'm very impressed with her work and it's among my favorites that I've ever read in the field. I keep coming away with stuff that blows my socks off. Clinically-discovered gold! :D)
If that were true, wouldn't that prove his point?
But it's a point I somewhat agree with. I've personally tried different kinds of therapy for my issues, years at a time, and I can say with certainty that my time was wasted. I also personally know multiple people who've had similar experience.
One reply I can imagine is "but maybe you didn't put enough effort/spend enough time" - in which case I'd like to ask, in what way does that argument differ from the religious argument of "if God doesn't help you, you didn't pray enough"?
Another reply I can imagine is "it doesn't work deterministically, psychology/psychiatry is not an exact science" - in which case it would prove the original comment's point. It might as well all be bloody hogwash, and yet people recommend it all the time because it's "science".
I guess I'm biased but I very much lean towards methods that force interconnection while providing emotional pain numbing/relief (Ketamine), or more high-flying methods that force the brain to a higher temporary state of functional connectivity and by some of the consequences of massively increased entropy, chip away at the problem.
I guess the other part is that seems to be soft form of the conservation of energy when it comes to the information of grief and grief processing. Unprocessed grief has to go somewhere and oftentimes it's where you'll see people after a few decades completely break down from the overload (and in the years it takes to decompress and manually process the grief -- Pete Walker is one expert that I refer to who's pretty well-respected all around).
I guess it's up to one's belief as to whether the neuron group on the other side of the ganglion nerve block is conscious enough to suffer. I've had enough experience with DID persons to be extraordinarily uncomfortable with any kind of extended "walling off" strategy, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant on the surface that part of the brain may be.
That said I quit marijuana early this year. I think overall my anxiety has decreased. I believe I may have been masking emotional problems, and quitting marijuana made it easier for me to process them. However if someone is having nightmares, they may consider smoking indica before bed. It may always depend on the strain, but I believe indica is unlikely to trigger panic attacks.
I used to be a daily smoker, then something in my body just flipped. I have a couple friends where the same thing happened in their early 30s.
I've gotten bad anxiety from smoking too much in the past, but these are different. Full blown panic attacks with heart-attack-like symptoms and crushing fear. (My cardiologist checked me out, it really is just panic attacks).
It did used to be great at preventing nightmares for me (and it was fun). Sure, sleep quality was worse than ideal but I almost never had an ideal night of sleep. But now I've tried too many times to find "the secret" to stop me from having panic attacks, nothing works and it's just made me become anxious at the sight/smell of weed.
FWIW:
1. I think it's genetic. Anxiety seems to run in my family. We are descended from Holocaust survivors. I think it is plausible that that one event produced strong evolutionary selection pressure in favor of paranoia and anxiety.
2. It gets better as you get older (at least it has for me).
3. Anxiety is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you're afraid of being anxious, that makes you more anxious. Meditation helps. Quiet and/or white noise too.
Good luck.
It's... interesting genetics.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2011/sep...
> How might the traumatic experiences of a pregnant woman be transmitted to her unborn children? Research published over the past 10 years or so suggests that this probably occurs by epigenetic mechanisms. Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene activity that are not due to changes in DNA sequence. Epigenetics reveals how genes interact with environmental factors, and has been implicated in many normal and abnormal brain functions.
> A key study in this emerging field, published in 2004, showed that the quality of a rat mother's care significantly affects how its offspring behave in adulthood. Michael Meaney of McGill University and his colleagues found that rat pups that had been repeatedly groomed and licked by their mothers during the first week of life were subsequently better at coping with stressful and fearful situations than pups who received little or no contact.
> They further showed that these effects are mediated by epigenetic mechanisms that alter expression of the glucocorticoid receptor, which plays a key role in the body's response to stress. Analysis of the pups' brains at one week old revealed differences in DNA methylation, a process by which DNA is chemically modified. Methylation involves the addition of small molecules called methyl groups, consisting of one carbon and three hydrogen atoms, to specific sites in the DNA sequence encoding a gene.
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Grandmaternal stress during pregnancy and DNA methylation of the third generation: an epigenome-wide association study - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5611722/
> Stress during pregnancy may impact subsequent generations, which is demonstrated by an increased susceptibility to childhood and adulthood health problems in the children and grandchildren. Although the importance of the prenatal environment is well reported with regards to future physical and emotional outcomes, little is known about the molecular mechanisms that mediate the long-term consequences of early stress across generations. Recent studies have identified DNA methylation as a possible mediator of the impact of prenatal stress in the offspring. Whether psychosocial stress during pregnancy also affects DNA methylation of the grandchildren is still not known. In the present study we examined the multigenerational hypothesis, that is, grandmaternal exposure to psychosocial stress during pregnancy affecting DNA methylation of the grandchildren. We determined the genome-wide DNA methylation profile in 121 children (65 females and 56 males) and tested for associations with exposure to grandmaternal interpersonal violence during pregnancy. We observed methylation variations of five CpG sites significantly (FDR<0.05) associated with the grandmother’s report of exposure to violence while pregnant with the mothers of the children. The results revealed differential methylation of genes previously shown to be involved in circulatory system processes (FDR<0.05). This study provides support for DNA methylation as a biological mechanism involved in the transmission of stress across generations and motivates further investigations to examine prenatal-dependent DNA methylation as a potential biomarker for health problems.
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Intergenerational effects of maternal post-traumatic stress disorder on offspring epigenetic patterns and cortisol levels - https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/10.2217/epi-2021-0015
> Aim: To investigate the association between maternal post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during pregnancy and offspring DNA methylation and cortisol levels. Materials & methods: Blood genome-wide DNA methylation and cortisol was measured in the youngest child of 117 women who experienced sexual violence/torture during the Kosovo war. Results: Seventy-two percent of women had PTSD symptoms during pregnancy. Their children had higher cortisol levels and differential methylation at candidate genes (NR3C1, HTR3A and BNDF). No methylation differences reached epigenome-wide corrected significance levels. Conclusion: Identifying the biological processes whereby the negative effects of trauma are passed across generations and defining groups at high risk is a key step to breaking the intergenerational transmission of the effects of mental disorders
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And specifically about Holocaust survivors - Study finds epigenetic changes in children of Holocaust survivors https://www.research.va.gov/currents/1016-3.cfm
> The researchers focused on FKBP5, a stress gene linked to PTSD, depression, and mood and anxiety disorders. The results suggest that Holocaust exposure had an effect on FKBP5 methylation—a mechanism that controls the gene's expression—that was observed in parents exposed to the horrors of the concentration camps, as well as their offspring, many of whom showed signs of depression and anxiety.
> ...
> She says the researchers pursued this study because offspring of Holocaust survivors "said to us in clinic, 'we are casualties of the Holocaust and need treatment.'" Her team tested blood samples of 32 Holocaust survivors and 22 of their adult children for methylation of intron 7, an area in the FKBP5 gene. For a control group, they analyzed Jewish parents who lived outside of Europe during World War II—most were U.S.- or Canadian-born—and their offspring.
> Interestingly, Holocaust survivors and their children showed epigenetic changes at the same site of FKBP5 intron 7 but in the opposite direction. Survivors had a 10 percent higher methylation than the control parents, while the Holocaust children had a 7.7 percent lower methylation than the control children.
Of course, more relevant is to keep from methylating new DNA, and there we can actually make choices that matter.
And from there, the related cites and papers.
This is something that is active research as other diseases are also "turned on" by incorrect methylation. DNA methylation in human diseases - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6147084/
1. Have things to look forward to.
2. Pay attention to nutrition, health, rest, breathing, exercise.
3. Meditate. Socialize.
4. Occasionally when anxiety grows, breathe, visualize yourself performing a repetitive yet fun activity (like swimming laps, chopping vegetables.. whatever takes focus). Your heart rate will drop and things will calm down.
Sometimes when your heart is racing, it's possible you just have pent up energy and you need to crank out some pushups and squats at 3am. Such is life.
Am I completely overthinking this?
If we are talking about emotional stress coupled with a slight increase in heart rate, I would not be concerned about doing exercise. Quite the opposite -- I think a quick jog around the block can do wonders.
The key is to be able to do the exercise without bringing additional stress.
For example, I might suddenly get hit with a feeling of terrible loneliness, even though I am with my partner or among friends. Instead of telling myself "hey, listen, you are not alone, stop feeling lonely!", I tell myself "this is a memory of a moment where you really were left alone. poor me. thank you for reminding me of that past horrible moment, now that i am fully capable of giving it the loving attention that it deserved back them but didn't get".
This process takes some effort to learn, and accepting that you are still learning and not already perfect at it is a key part of the practice. But even small moments where it "works" in my experience finally actually resolve stored up emotions, so each time an unpleasant emotion comes up it hits me less and less. It is not important to understand exactly what triggered it, or what the past traumatic memory is. Do not ask yourself, just be, and open your heart.
There are many different descriptions of techniques. The one I like the most is "Feeding your demons" by Tsultrim Allione.
>“There is a medication that a lot of them are on called Prazosin, which is actually a blood pressure drug, but it doesn’t work for many patients, has a lot of side effects, and also decreases your athletic performance. And in the military, athletic performance is very, very important.”
>Robert Guithues knew Prazosin well — after he returned from Afghanistan, it was one of the 30 pills he was taking daily to help with the injuries he sustained while deployed, including PTSD and nightmares. But sleep was still elusive, and he knew there had to be a better solution than the drugs, which he feared were doing more harm to his body than good.
Anyway, if this has happened your entire life, I wonder if there is really anything you can do about it. That seems distinct from trauma-induced. This seems to describe my sister. From as early as I can remember, so at least when she was as young as 3, she was waking up in cold sweats pretty regularly having dreams the entire family except her was murdered in the middle of the night. Myself, I can't remember ever having a single nightmare my entire life, and I served in the Army during Iraq and Afghanistan and even outside of the military had a few near-death encounters. Some people are just a lot more predisposed to worry than others. It's not necessarily a bad trait, either. I'm reasonably sure the high number of near-death experiences for me is because I'm way too prone to idiotic risks because I never believe anything bad will happen. And always surviving just reinforces that even though I know rationally I just got lucky. Humanity exists right now because my ancestors were mostly a lot more anxious than I am.
The Trauma of Love happens when the connection that the child does manage to maintain with his mother after the Trauma of Identity is not in effect a clear, loving connection, but rather a connection that is painful, unfulfilling, manipulative and persecutory.
These traumas form the foundation of our life, our ability to grow up with a healthy, stable psyche, or not. All later experiences that constitute a trauma are always, also, a re-stimulation of these early, pre-verbal, pre-memory events."
I also had a period of getting panic attacks in my early 20s. One thing that was/has been super helpful for my anxiety and general well being was starting a daily meditation practice. The Tibetan teacher Mingyur Rinpoche also had an anxiety disorder and had panic attacks as a child, and is a very clear teacher, if you're ever looking for someone to explore that with. I had had a lot of meditation experience before starting it, but I found his `Joy of Living` course to be very good (if a little basic at first). [1][2]
Epigenetics in the wild: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-parents-rsquo...
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[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabor_Maté
First of all buy yourself high-quality CO2 meter for ~$100 and make sure that CO2 not going over 1000 PPM while you sleeping. Every single time I sleep in closed room with bad ventilation where CO2 getting over 1200-1500 PPM I will wake up in terror. You can't imagine how many people I knew had terrible quality of sleep due to bad ventilaton and never realise it.
Second thing if nothing else works. Try strictly-scientific lucid dreaming practices: record as much of dreams is possible in a diary for several months, do deep breathing before sleep, etc. Looking at your hands every now and then is required and slightly weird, but it totally worth it. Once you get lucid in a dream once and preserve memory of it will become much easier to deal with nightmares.
Lucid dreaming cost nothing even though some REM sleep tracker like one in Apple Watch is useful. Though beware of bullshit.
- Your normal city air CO2 is 350-500 PPM.
- Humans exhale CO2.
- In closed unventilated bedroom CO2 have nowhere to go.
- Air isn't being mixed when you sleep too.
- In few hours PPM can grow to 2000 or higher.
- Cheap air conditioners either dont have fresh air ventilation at all or dont have sufficient efficiency to compensate for two humans breathing.
You can google actual numbers elsewhere. Solution usually consist to sleeping with open windows or getting proper fresh air ventination system.
Try me. How many?
How many tried the intervention you recommended? How many saw a benefit? How many did not?
I've been living in both nothern country where people dont tend to open windows because it -10C outside. And I also lived in SEA where expats literally live with windows constantly closed and conditioner on all due to high temperature and humidity.
I guess in US owner of 150+ m2 / $500,000+ house will never have problems like bad ventilation, but people with worse living conditions and small appartments certainly can certainly have such issues.
But understanding the effects of CO2 in more every day situation seems more complicated. It is also hard to find good rules of thumb about guidelines about when to look more deeply and pay to get measurements.
But I haven't found high-quality studies that talk about residential settings. My Google results seem to be populated with companies trying to sell stuff. So based on maybe 30 minutes of research, I remain practically skeptical.
I'm interested in learning more, Starting with the chemistry and, ?, airflow properties of CO2 in air, and then working up to biology. Would you mind sharing high-quality resources you recommend?
I personally might be more sensetive than others, but real issues start when PPM going over 2000. Two sleeping people in small room with bad ventilation can easily bring it as high as 2500 in 3-4 hours.
Also if you're cooking on gas in small appartment and have bad ventilation you can easily bring it to 3000-4000 in much shorter period of time.
Might be worth a trip to Oregon :)
Although I still have persistent nightmares it changed my understanding of other people and their perspectives to the point my anxiety in a lot of situations has vanished.
I don't think people should go nuts with them but I do think it's a good idea for some people with anxiety to find a clean pleasant care-free place to try them. Even if it just allows them to spend a few hours immersing themselves in completely different thought patterns and potentially gain something from them.
I'm not necessarily DX'ing but I wish someone had pointed me at some resources when I was just starting to ask the inkling of the same questions. I'm getting to do the work at a much younger age that I see not many people doing until the end of their lives, though it is sort of hell being young and all.
Pete Walker's book on Complex PTSD is an amazing read regardless for anyone in the community, I'd say without diagnosing that as a potential avenue -- take a read of a few snippets, see if they resonate with you (or trigger massive denial/distraction chains), and just work your way through the book slowly if so. The techniques in there can help anyone with even "just" an internal (or otherwise) critic. :)
Hope this helps, the brain is an interesting place and we've only gotten some really good resources for misc conditions that don't externally seem to fit a particular mold. I'm starting to believe that every trauma reaction variant is some exemplar mode of some superset of possible adaptive coping mechanisms, and that in reality the dx and treatment of these things can be much more on point than the diagnosis of "anxiety" or "depression", which I'm viewing more and more as exceptionally frivolous and misleading as a standalone diagnosis (instead of as a descriptor, or a modifier), and is oftentimes as effective as diagnosing someone with "a fever" or "chills and aches". Doing so would alienate the person (in my eyes) and would take a place in a/the diagnosis "slot" that could hold something more informative to their actual base condition (instead of being a rather shallow observation with practically zero actionable value.... And we wonder why a variety of treatments for depression, for example, have low-30's success ratings across multiple stages of trying different treatments! I can't remember the exact numbers but the 4-5 stage...STAR study, I think it is, was one of the biggest and rather disappointing. The future seems somewhat promising but still too far away.... ::( )
Knowing _why_ is the very extremely hard part. :))))
I have a high baseline anxiety and pretty much no memory of anything pre 8 (except for very small fragments). When I’ve come across amnesia part while reading “Body keeps scores”, it frankly frightened me (and still does) of what might be lurking in my past.
It can even be minor, little things that can cause memory splits in children for survival sake. These splits set the ground for future splits.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48655845-who-am-i-in-a-t...
As I've been healing more and growing as a person, my extended and close family, which unfortunately are extremely dysfunctional, have pushed me away more and more. It seems like most people have a story like that, which is why I do have hopes that journeywork and related spiritualism, or at least some kind of vehicle, social or otherwise, with that kind of strong effect comes forward in the coming years.
Thanks for putting the book down too, now I'm really interested to read it. :D :))))
Anywho.
Don't rush the process please, of whatever it is. Your body and brain are probably right in some way. It's okay to practice breathing and what Pete Walker talks about in his book, or my go-to starter for anyone even near the topic -- Janina Fisher's "Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors". So good, very little triggering too which is excellente by me.
The main book people read on Polyvagal therapy that's really popular and well rated us good too, I think the author may have been a Susan? That's a good follow-up but more a rider-on/adjunct to me of a very specific "okay how do we get the body in a more continuous kind of safe state. :D :)"
C-PTSD actually requires a lot of work to properly diagnose, whereas GAD tends to be "Anxiety: The Condition", which allows a clinician to diagnose in an insurance company and report friendly way. It can help a person start their journey but is a shallow diagnosis.
Generally C-PTSD is a plethora of things -- internal fragmentation (~1 in 12 or so people are diagnosably plural afaik from the studies I found [i.e. osdd, which no one seems to really know about, to did], though most plurals will never find out about their plurality as it is exceptionally stealthy. Also it's a spectrum meant to hide itself from the brain's "user", as it were, so the subtlety of spectrum disorders adds to the mix), difficulty in relationships (it is in the trifecta of "social stuff trouble conditions" of ADHD, autism, and, well, cPTSD), generally at least occasionally unstable emotional state (which can be entirely internal) which oftentimes is hypersensitive to environmental triggers, and a need for control of relationships and environment (not necessarily evil top hat villain manipulation, this can even be just using a fawn trauma response in constantly giving up self to an extraordinary amount to keep the peace, keep relationships, etc).
Everything seems to be on a co-spectrum, cPTSD is just a map marker for a family I'd contest. It has a ton of overlaps with BPD, for example. cPTSD is differentiated from DID in that the different parts of the brain in cPTSD are not considered especially distinct, but there's also some tricky DID business people's brains can play to stuff certain nearly independent parts of a person away so they'd look more like a low-level cPTSD kind of automatic trauma triggered/autonomic response, etc.
I'm not a clinician, etc, etc, hope that helps from a technical perspective some. Feel free to ask any questions you might have. :)
Really glad you liked Pete's book. Janina Fisher's "Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors" is my other greatest of all time book in the area that I recommend. It's my first go-to over "The Body Keeps the Score" just because somehow Dr. Fisher has a method that works palatably with someone from even "low-grade" trauma to even what I think would be some polyfragmented DID systems, in some kind of Jedi-mind trick set of tools that works really well while dodging most of the myriad of situational triggers that are unique to each trauma survivor. I highly recommend it if you're interested, it adds a flip side of compassion and self-team building that I think Walker's book can go a bit harshly on as it seems to be more centric on the part of the brain experiencing daily life as the reference for others to be compared to. Both books are fantastic and balance each other out, I just started my second read on Fisher's book and am trying to wrap up Walker's. Give that one a go if you're interested, the audiobook is the cheapest!
Happy to chat about the topic, I love and am passionate about this field as you can guess. :D :)
I see others here talking about high anxiety, and I hope that you're able to find a solution for your issues, but your baseline anxiety level sounds like it's orders of magnitude higher than mine. I'm not trying to brag, I just want to share in the hopes of getting some idea of "average person" - am I perhaps far less anxious than "normal"?
My anxious thoughts lead directly to physiological changes, increased heart rate, shallow breathing, sweating etc. Based on the people in my life without anxiety, they can have similar thoughts as me, even "anxious" in nature, but they don't seem to have the physiological response that I do, as an anxious person. What do you all think?
If so, you can create impossible illogical situations and force yourself to wake up. Breathing under water, flying so high the overview effect saturates your ability to generate fake ground, jumping and sticking in the air. These are all examples of things you can do that demonstrate to yourself that you’re dreaming.
Vitamin B and zinc are known to help with inflamation. Magnesium as well. Deficiency dawned on me when I was much calmer with red bull which is the only energy drink with vitamin b complex and magnesium.
Haven't found much on it apart from: most neurotransmitters are made in the guts, so what we eat does matter.
Some additives in fast food can weaken the blood/brain barrier, so stuff that made it through the gut/blood barrier get in the brain and activate the brain's immune system.
about an hour of just 10m sauna-> 1m cold water for a few circuits followed by some relaxation in a hottub or steam room lowered my anxiety and has slowed my brain.
also, chill on the caffeinne and reduce alcohol.
I'm a vet with ptsd so i take every fruit of mental wellness i can
One book that may be of interest to you:
Born Anxious, by Daniel P. Keating: discusses epigenetics and how methylation can predispose certain individuals to higher baseline levels of stress and anxiety.
Other books which may not be revelant to you, but would perhaps be of interest to others reading these comments:
The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk: Talks about the imprints trauma leaves on the mind and the body, and shines a light on how ineffective and misguided many of the mainstream, frontline treatments offered to people with histories of trauma are. (Just because you don't meet the criteria for PTSD, doesn't mean you haven't experienced some form of trauma.)
Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve, by Stanley Rosenberg: I haven't finished this one yet, but it discusses the three fight/flight, social engagement, and freeze/depression states of the nervous system, as described in the Polyvagal Theory put forward by Stephen Porges. I've been told by a clinician with a career in working with trauma survivors that the Polyvagal Theory is a key piece of the puzzle in treating trauma. Even if you're not dealing with the effects of trauma, I think you may still find this book interesting, as it describes how we can get locked into states of anxiety one the one hand, or lethargy on the other, finding it difficult to simply relax and be present for our lives.
Author Gabor Maté - I'm not sure if he has any books concentrating specifically on anxiety, but his work seems interesting. Episode 1869 of The Joe Rogan Experience, where he was the guest, was quite illuminating.
Molecules of Emotion, by Candace B. Pert: I haven't started this one yet, but it talks about how the body and mind/brain/nervous system aren't as separate as many of us may like to think. It sounds interesting.
Some lifestyle changes that may help with anxiety and other mental health conditions, including depression: (completely anecdotal, I am not a doctor, etc.)
* Regular, vigorous aerobic exercise, e.g. running five kilometres three times per week. Can't run five kilometres? Check out 'Couch to 5K.' I find that vigorous exercise seems to help 'burn off' anxiety and stress and make it easier to relax. (as recommended by Keating in Born Anxious.) Additionally, depression often goes hand-in-hand with anxiety, and "the efficacy of exercise in decreasing symptoms of depression has been well established." (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC474733/)
* Yoga: teaches one to listen to and befriend one's body. When one is constantly anxious and on alert, the body can tend to be constantly tense, ready for action.
* Diet: the so-called Mediterranean diet seems to be quite healthy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7536728/ I'm not sure if eating healthy has been shown to help with anxiety, but can it really hurt?
I'm healthy, exercise nearly ever day. I avoid eating several hours before bedtime.
I was diagnosed with GAD (general anxiety disorder) but I don't take any meds. I'm slowly coming to the realization that my baseline anxiety level is way higher than of the average person. For no apparent reason.
It's frustrating but I'm trying my best to figure out a long term solution.
edit: grammar