Tag Archives: PTSD

Abuse, Acceptance, Amnesia, Health, PTSD

Trauma, And the Stories We Tell Ourselves

3 Comments

Psychiatric Take Down and Restraint

I wrote a version of this in a comment at Linda Lee/lady quixote’s Blog: http://ablogabouthealingfromPTSD.wordpress.com

Hi Linda,

Someone I met here in Brattleboro, really just an acquaintance, maybe 2 or 3years ago said, “get over it!” about the trauma I have experienced, and I found that enormously damaging just in itself. My “guide” Wendy, never tells me such things and she is fully committed to helping people who deal with great traumas. Another thing is that true is that global amnesia, such as I had and still have for a couple of weeks-long hospital stays in their entirety, (and I also have amnesia for other life experiences that were documented as having happened but are lost to my memory,)  this sort of global amnesia cannot be self-induced. You either can remember what happened or you cannot.

What I have found very helpful, and this may not be something you can or even choose to do, is this: I find that when my thoughts erupt or are triggered by something in the present, into a spasm of terrible memories, the resulting emotions and anger etc are so paralyzing and painful that I did consciously decide “I’m not going there, not until and unless it is safe for me to do so.” To that end, when I notice my thoughts turning bad, I immediately find anything to distract myself away from that terrible rut that trauma has clear-cut into my cortex. 

I know the emotions stem from the thoughts I think, and they constitute the story about them I tell myself. So if I try to tell a different story, like, for instance, “okay, that was my life then, but I am here now and if I  am happy now then all of my past including the trauma, has brought me here and I would not be here without it all, yes,  even the trauma.” BUT I fully confess that re-telling my story in a more positive way does not work when I am acutely triggered, so that is when distraction plays a huge role. 

In some sense, I understand that I cannot remain attached to my story of abuse and victimization, because in a  real way this will only lead me down that same trauma path, and even “attract further victimization and trauma”..But to explore these things requires a feeling of safety, which is not usually available, so I get relief from the thinking instead, by distractions and doing things with my mind that I love. Like studying or reading French, or listening to songs, because the verbal aspect of both tend to crowd out the insistent trauma memories. 

As Wendy says, it is a practice, like any spiritual practice, to know when your thoughts are headed down an unhelpful path way and to consciously decide not to “indulge” their wish to ruin your day! It does take a lot of practice to do this, and I would be the last to say it is easy. On the other hand, I know there is a safe place for them, for me to experience the memories and even triggers in security, and that is during my sessions with Wendy. She allows these to be as long as necessary for me to get through things, so they are usually 2-2.5 hours every time. But the thing is, knowing I can hold on and let things “in” in a safe place with her allows me to also decide NOT to let them in or to control me at other  times.

I hope this makes sense. It might not be your cuppa tea, and I dunno if you have a safe place/person with whom you could both process memories or at least let them out, but who also, by being a safe person, might allow you to go the distraction route. I myself have found it very helpful…and you know (I know you above all know!) how terribly I have been tormented by my memories of trauma.

The idea that even trauma memories are part of the story of our lives that we write or create and can de-create also helps me. Because I can decide, of, say, someone who brutalized me, well, in their story I was only a bit character, and they likely told and tell themselves something entirely different from my story about it. But I understand that these are all stories, all dramas, that are not really Truth…and if we can retell the story In such a way as to increase ours and the worlds happiness, that should be our aim. 

More to come about blame and being victimized but I have stuff to do and need to distract myself from the pain that even writing about trauma brings on. 

Love to all,

phoebe

Abuse, Health, Michael E Balkunas MD, Seclusion and Restraints, Truth

Article about Michael E Balkunas,MD !

8 Comments

I moved to Brattleboro Vermont on February 4, 2015, leaving my home state of Connecticut where I’ve lived for nearly 60 years. l had to move because of the horrific psychiatric abuses I experienced in Connecticut hospitals and my fear that if ever I were hospitalized again I would be killed.

I feel guilty, however, just getting out without accomplishing something to stop what continues to happen in Connecticut psychiatric units and hospitals.

The experience of mechanical four-point restraints – leather cuffs that are tightened around the wrists and ankles to immobilize a patient to a bed – or being isolated by force in an often freezing seclusion cell is almost universally terrifying. Nevertheless, both cell and/or restraints are routinely employed to curb loudness and undesirable behaviors at the Hospital of Central Connecticut on Grand Street in New Britain. I know this because I was subjected to both seclusion and restraints multiple times in the spring of 2014, despite a diagnosis of chronic paranoid schizophrenia, as well as PTSD that was triggered by precisely this sort of thing.

Bizarrely, the hospital psychiatrist, Dr Michael E Balkunas, treating me at HOCC challenged my PTSD diagnosis. “Patient misperceives her treatment as traumatic,” he wrote in my chart. Well, maybe so, but I don’t know how I can be accused of misperceiving three entire days callously abandoned alone, tied to the four posts of a metal bedstead at U-Conn’s Dempsey Hospital (for trying to escape the locked unit) as anything but brutality, even if it was in the 1990s. I also think it is nearly by definition traumatic to be forced to defecate in one’s own clothing while tied to a bed which is what they did at Hartford Hospital’s Institute of Living in the winter of 2013. This was after I was told to lie down and place my own limbs in the leather cuffs (“as a consequence but not a punishment”) for walking away from the very same “Side Room” that I had just been assured was “not a seclusion room unless you call it a seclusion room.”

Again, maybe I misperceived being grabbed and held face-down and nearly suffocated numerous times by staff at Yale Psychiatric Hospital in August 2013, who injected 10-20 milligrams of Haldol, a known drug of torture. Maybe this was just kindliness that I misunderstood as traumatic, maybe it was merely a “psychotic misperception” on my part? Maybe, and maybe not.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that in the ED of New Britain’s HOCC, a security guard in May 2014, grabbed me by my left shoulder immediately after he was warned by the nurse that it was my left shoulder that had a rotator cuff tear.

My New Britain chart records that I was admitted to that hospital, and to the IOL and others with a detailed Psychiatric Advance Directive, the first page of which states that seclusion, four-point restraints and forced medication invariably result in regression to “primitive states and severe worsening of symptoms.” It also makes several concrete suggestions how better to deal with me when I am upset. Even though I spent many hours on this document, Psychiatric Advance Directives have no legal clout in Connecticut and doctors can and do ignore them freely.

Perhaps because of this, HOCC staff literally forced me (“escorted me”) to seclusion and/or restrained me again and again. They took to stripping me “for safety’s sake,” and even though I put up no resistance, they had the male guards spread-eagle my limbs while still naked and put restraint cuffs on without even covering me.

Is it any wonder that what resulted was someone who would wash her hair in her own urine, defecate on the floor of her room and smear feces on the wall? Yet Dr Balkunas, the director of W-1, the general psychiatry unit at HOCC claimed that my trauma was imaginary. Why? Because treatment cannot be traumatic. He simply never got the connection between my horrendous decompensation and his so-called “therapy.” Maybe he never appreciated that he was torturing me, like a person who ripped the wings off butterflies as a child. Someone like that would not have understood how those creatures suffer either.

Health, How-to

For Sensitive Bodies and Sensory Overload: A Weighted Blanket

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When I first spent time at Natchaug Hospital, at the time when Sharon Hinton, APRN, was still the director of nursing and it was a decent non-abusive hospital (in 2011 and 2012), I learned about weighted blankets and the amazing benefits to be gained from their use when stressed, upset, and in need of self-soothing or calming. Not everyone benefits, I gather, but if you suffer from PTSD or any of these other disorders. you might find a weighted blanket useful.

  • ADHD/ADD
  • Alzheimer’s
  • Anxiety Disorder
  • Aspergers Syndrome
  • Autism or ASD
  • Bi-Polar Disorder
  • Brain Trauma Injuries
  • Cerebral Palsy
  • Dementia
  • Down’s Syndrome
  • Epilepsy and Seizure Disorders
  • Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)
  • Insomnia
  • Parkinson’s Disease
  • Pervasive Development Disorder
  • PTSD
  • Restless Leg Syndrome
  • Rett Syndrome
  • Sensory Integration
  • Sensory Processing Disorder
  • Tourette’s Syndrome

One problem with buying  a weighted blanket for most of us however is the cost. If you don’t have $400.00 dollars on hand, it can be prohibitive to get the best or even a full-size heavy blanket. I don’t know about you, but a mere lap-size thing doesn’t do it for me, even though they tout the uses. I tried one at Yale for lack of anything better, and it did nothing at all but feel like a pillow on my lap. This was ridiculous. They would have done much, much better if they had handed me a real live cat and not pretended to be doing something useful with that silly piece of fabric.

The heavy full-size blanket, on the other hand, was great. It felt like a cocoon or a huge hug that held my entire body without restraining me. I could move around in it, and yet it held me warmly and gently. Nothing kept me in against my will and I could get out from under whenever I wanted to. In fact, the nurses made me leave before I was ready. They actually took it away after twenty minutes which was silly. This was way too short and arbitrary a time in which to keep the blanket on me. I was NOT used to it by then or calmer. Not at all. I wanted to stay inside it  and needed it on me longer. But they said the protocol was for 20 minutes on and 20 minutes off so the person didn’t accommodate to the weight. Silly reasoning. Why didn’t they ask if I felt better or was calmer? Or ask me some other question.

Anyhow, here are the directions and photos for making your own homemade weighted blanket. It is quite easy and inexpensive, and you only need to do a little hand-sewing, or if you prefer, just use some heavy-duty glue (E6000 is the best), and velcro. Both ways are fully washable.

Directions for Making A 15 pound Weighted Blanket:

The first two photos show half of the “inside, or under side, of a kingsized coverlet that I sewed Dollar Store (2 for $1) microfiber washcloths onto, making pockets. (BTW pay no attention to the the shoelace ties and buttons, which never worked but were part of a first experiment…) I placed the fuzzy side of the washcloths facedown. This is important because when I glued velcro’s stiff bristled half, face up, to the blanket at the pocket tops, the microfiber washcloth gripped it perfectly, so there was no need  for the softer side of velcro on the inside of the pocket itself.

Handmade weighted blanket with microfiber pockets for rice bags
Handmade weighted blanket

Next, (see the close-up photo) I filled quart size freezer bags (a box for  $1 at The Dollar Store) with 1/2 to 1 pound of raw rice, depending on the weight wanted, and then double-bagged these. Note: my blanket has 15 pockets but I’ve found that 15 pounds of rice is actually heavier than I personally want, despite what I thought…).Depending on your own body weight, you could prefer between 10-25 pounds of rice. The chart I found said that a person weighing 112 pounds might need 10-15 pounds and a person weighing 185 pounds would need approximately 25 pounds of weight. On the other hand, the hospital never allowed anything more than a mere 10 pounds, erring on what i consider an absurd side of caution for all…So you can gauge your needs from that.

Be aware however, that despite what a 15 pound bag of raw rice might saw on its side, it usually contains much more than 15 pounds so weigh each bag you fill carefully, don’t just divvy up a bag of rice into equal parts.

Rice Bag for weighted blanket
Rice Bag for weighted blanket

Fill the pockets with the rice bags and press-seal the washcloths against the velcro. Flap the other half of the blanket (final photo) over the pocketed half and use as a twin size weighted blanket. It works fine like this, but you could add velcro to the blanket sides themselves if you  wanted to seal it up completely.

Weighted Blanket Open
Weighted Blanket Open

 

 

 

 

 

Weighted Blanket, Closed
Weighted Blanket, Folded Closed

By the way, for gluing the velcro I used the E6000 glue, outside on the driveway on a plastic sheet, on a sunny day…I would not use anything else, but don’t do it inside without plenty of good ventilation as it is poisonous and you use a lot.

Good luck and feel free to email me or comment if you need help or have any questions. Sorry if I didn’t provide enough details but I didn’t want to overwhelm you here. I would be happy to provide more privately or in the comment section if anyone is interested.

M sleeping under my homemade weighted blanket
M sleeping under my homemade weighted blanket

 

Health, Trauma

Hospital Of Central Connecticut’s Psychiatry Unit W-1: Dr Michael E. Balkunas

11 Comments

 

I understand now why Dr. Michael E. Balkunas, the psychiatrist at New Britain General Hospital (Hospital of Central Connecticut) W-1, general psychiatry, gave up on me. He decided, even after eliciting my brother’s opinion both from a professional and a personal standpoint, and Dr Angela’s equally professional opinion that I do not suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder, to diagnosis me secondarily as exhibiting that disorder.

 

Oh, he knew I had come in with an acute exacerbation of schizophrenia and that I had PTSD. He knew that I had in my electronic medical record documents stating from other psychiatrists that I do not and never did have any personality disorder, despite in-hospital “behaviors.” But I know why Dr Balkunas diagnosed one. He did it for the same reason the other hospitalist psychiatrists have done it in the past: 1) in order to justify the use of a Behavioral “Treatment” Plan that was tantamount to torture and 2) to excuse his liberal use of seclusion and restraints in instances when they went against all CMS regulatory guidelines. And 3) in order to dismiss me and call my behaviors “manipulative and devious” instead of taking me and what I said seriously.

 

 

I also suspect, for all the second shift RN Barbara’s telling me that Michael Balkunas MD is a caring man and “never gives up on a patient” that he DID in fact give up on me. In fact I suspect that he never really tried to deal with or treat me at all, that from the first time he resorted to seclusion and restraints, he knew he had opted to terminate any treatment alliance.

 

 

But how did I figure this out? Well, it isn’t as if there ever had been any kind of alliance between us. From the first day after he admitted me from the ER, when he came into my room while I was still mute, he just walked away, saying dismissively, “I won’t talk with you unless you speak.” Immediately I understood that this man was willing to jeopardize everything about me and about my treatment in order to assert his power.

 

 

The same thing came into play after I began speaking about a week later. Now the issue was that he would not speak to me, would not deal with me at all but would immediately leave the room if I became angry and spoke with anything resembling a raised voice. (Argh, this was so many shades of Amy Taylor MD at the Institute of Living last year! — and Dr Balkunas tortured me in similar ways with predictable ineffectiveness — but powerful people behave in predictable ways, right? It seems I must have threatened their sense of entitlement. Why else take it out on me? Who am I? I’m a big fat nobody! They could have ignored me or just treated and released me, like anyone else. But instead they did their damnedest to crush me and destroy me. Why? Because in the end, I think I must have triggered some underlying feelings of resentment and impotence in these two psychiatrists and you know you do not threaten to unearth the feelings of a psychiatrist, or at least not with Michael Balkunas MD or with Amy Taylor MD …)

 

I learned very quickly, but not quickly enough, that everything about the Hospital of Central Connecticut W-1 Unit at New Britain was about coercion and control. Not about trauma-informed, patient-centered care. I don’t know how other patients managed to be discharged from there within a few days, but it would never have been possible for me. Mostly because I was simply too out of control to BE controlled by people who used such methods to undermine any possible calm and stability I might have achieved in those early days. They did NOTHING to help me but take away the very coping methods and objects that might have helped me. They used the carrot-and-stick method liberally, but mostly they used sticks. The very fact that the ED staff had seen fit to seclude me, give me IM meds twice and also to four-point restrain me naked to a bed tells you something about the brutality that reigns supreme there.

 

You know the very first thing I did was give the ER and the W1 staff a Psychiatric Advanced Directive. It was supposed to help them to help me. But instead they seemed to resent my knowing myself, and wanting them to know how to help me. They reacted badly and worked against it in every way possible, instead helping me. It appeared to anger them that I knew myself, and instead of using it, they did everything in their power to abrogate each and every section of it, right up to the section where it asked them to notify my doctor and my brother when and if they used seclusion and/or restraints despite the warnings.

 

 

No one ever called anyone in each instance that they chose to restrain or seclude me, even though I begged them to verbally at the time as well, and this document, which was at the front of my chart all along, stated in no uncertain terms that I wanted both people to be notified.

 

 

It was the worst hospitalization I have ever had, and I say that having had many serious and difficult stays. I was not just a difficult patient, I was a pain in the ass, but this was a direct result of the trauma I experienced in the ED and immediately following it on the floor. If I had not been traumatized, on the unit and in the ED, I feel certain that my “behavior,” outrageous, “disgusting,” and out of control as it was, would never have been so damaged. But because everyone saw fit to go against everything advised in the PAD, and do everything they could to re-traumatize me– even after I had a conversation with a nurse about my three experiences with date rape, even after that, she decided to seclude me, involving the forcible removal of me from my room by brute guards who bodily threw me into a cell without any mean s of communication with the world — because of this, they got the regression and degeneration and worsening of symptoms that my PAD predicted would happen. What did they expect? That I would simply thank them?!

 

 

I realized, though, the Monday morning of the week he discharged me when he came into my room and asked me how I was doing, that Dr Balkunas, who “never gave up on a patient,” had given up on me. Now, my brother had indicated to him that the “kindness” Dr Balkunas was offering to me by means of involuntary commitment to CVH would be devastating and destructive to the max. I think “Balkie” had had to think about the wisdom of actually sending me there. So he also had to think about whether he actually had any tools at all to “fix me” or cure me as he had promised. Indeed he was no miracle worker and had never held out anything, NOTHING AT ALL, by way or therapy or treatment modalities beside commitment to the state hospital to help me…so without that threat he had nothing to offer me.

 

 

The man never once sat down and even talked to me calmly and caringly. I say this because when he sallied forth with his usual opening that Monday morning, How are you? (I had decided finally, with my brother’s encouragement to “play the game.”) I answered with the socially acceptable, “fake” answer, my game plan, not expecting any real psychiatrist worth his salt to accept it, but trying to “play the game” anyway, as I was desperate to be discharged. My answer?

 

“I’m fine, thank you. How are you?”

 

Balkunas really didn’t bat an eyelash, the completely social answer was good enough for him, because he had given up trying to help me. Indeed, he had never even tried. So he proceeded, “How are you eating?”

 

“Fine.”

 

“How are you sleeping?”

 

“Fine.”

 

“Well, if things continue this way and there are no meltdowns I think you can go home on Friday.”

 

 

There were indeed meltdowns, even the night before I was discharged I had a meltdown over my supper tray. But Dr B was not on the floor much and didn’t hear of those, and everyone was so sick of me that they didn’t write them up, knowing I was to go home. And I persisted in answering those three magic questions “correctly.” Socially, as I had been taught, against my will, years ago. He never asked me a single other thing, and never talked about anything else at all after that.

 

 

The day of discharge came, and the great and caring Dr. Michael Balkunas popped his head into the room. “How are you?”

 

 

“I’m fine thank you. How are you?”

 

“Okay, I will write your discharge papers now.”

 

 

The very minute he said that and turned to leave, I put my sunglasses back on, as I saw that taking them off a week prior had served its purpose and it mattered not whether I wore them from that point on or not. I still wear them today, to protect people from my evil…

 

 

Dr. Michael Balkunas may talk a great game about helping people but he has very few tools to do so and really it is all pretence. He has medications, which are by and large bogus (though he has been educated by Big Pharma for so long he fails to understand this), and he had commitment proceedings to the state hospital, unless he happens upon a millionaire family willing to spend on their family member. I was not one of those, nor worth it. CVH – for those who are not in the know, CVH—Connecticut Valley Hospital is the last state hospital and the only long term facility for adults on Medicaid in Connecticut – being sent there would have killed me and he and my brother both knew it.

 

 

The difference was that my bother was decent enough to care while Balkunas honestly thought it would be good for me to lose my life there. And that was his treatment? Bullshit. He was a bad doctor and despite the cant, he gave up on me to boot. Well, thank god he did.

 

 

But you know, I do not forgive his accepting my social “I am fine thank you. How are you” so easily. That was insulting. He was sick of me, and considered me willfully manipulative and devious, otherwise he would not have diagnosed me with the damning BPD diagnosis, which in his hospital means just that you are a PIA, no less and no more. But he might have at least pretended to be a psychiatrist and not just a social buddy. How are you? Fine thank you, How are you? What sort of answer is that? ON the other hand, if he had asked me, what could I have said? We both know I had to get out of there and there was nowhere to go but home. He was not interested in finding out how I was, in talking to me. Not from the first. All he wanted was to medicate me. Which he did. So fuck me. How are you, I am fine thank you how are you? And it wouldn’t have made a rat’s ass worth of difference if I had not been okay, which I wasn’t, so long as I said I was fine, thank you, how are you’

 

Like I said, it was a game. That was the name of it, Play the Game…

 

So fuck Michael Balkunas. He is worthless to me, and his add-on personality disorder diagnosis means less than a fig to me. He knew I had schizophrenia and PTSD. He knew the hospital was abusing me. He knows nothing about me, never spent more than 3 minutes with me on any given day. He knows nothing. And I don’t give a flying femtogram about HOCC (the former New Britain General Hospital) except insofar as they ought to ask me back to educate them and improve the situation vis a vis their abusive use of seclusion and restraints, not trauma-informed patient-centered care at all. However since even supposedly trained Nurse Manager Jessica came around to not objecting, and approving their use, I can see that it might be hopeless to do so. Willing though I would be.

 

 

Barbara, RN on the second shift. You alone were a lifesaver and a light in a dark tunnel. I wrote in the scraps of paper I called a journal of your kindnesses again and again, and I forgive your being blind to the cruelty of seclusion and restraints, because you have lived with that culture too long, You just need to be re-educated. But you saved my life. Had you not been on duty that weekend before I was discharged, I might not have calmed enough to say to Dr. Balkunas the socially acceptable “I-am-fine-thank-you-how-are- you” mantra that was the magic ticket out of there.

 

 

I know no one on W-1 remembers me with anything but relief that I am gone and a great deal of disgust and anger. Ditto for me. I still wake screaming from nightmares about the place and a great deal of anger that I don’t want to let go of. I want to hold onto it long enough to fix the situation of W1, before I forgive anyone. Then we will see.

 

 

But for now I am off to Vermont for six weeks to stay with relatives. I hope to heal. I hope I can heal…

 

 

Take care of yourself Barbara. You would do well to find a kinder and better place to work and train. I thank YOU for everything. I mean it when I say you saved my life and sanity.

 

 

Blessings on you alone, Barbara, the rest of you can FYandGTH.

 

 

Miss Wagner

Art

New Art (2)

1 Comment
Small acrylic portrait of an African-american man in glasses and a winter scarf, 3" by 5"
Small acrylic portrait of an African-american man in glasses and a winter scarf, 3″ by 5″

 

Small acrylic portrait of a white man in front of streetlamp at night. 3" by 5"
Small acrylic portrait of a white man in front of streetlamp at night. 3″ by 5″

Am working on continuation of the blog post from a couple of days ago. Sorry to take so long, but things are very stressful at the moment. The east coast heat wave broke yesterday at least, but I survived it largely without air condtioning, and that wasn’t easy. Thank heavens the downstairs community room has A/C so when I could stand other people staring at me or giving me the evil eye, I could go there to cool off.

 

I tried sleeping in the parlor downstairs as well one night, but someone found me (ah, an easy target!) and kept me up till 2:30am talking at me, until I finally went back to the 12th floor where I live, under the heat-absorbing black roof, to try to sleep in my 94°F-98°F (not including heat index) stifling apartment. Yes, I have 2 fans, but they only blow the heat around at such temperatures. In any event, sleep that night was not very successful. Even after the end of the heat wave, i have been waking every single morning with a pounding headache, dunno why and I cannot figure out the trigger…

 

Oh pore Pammy, woe is she! (Shut up, Pam, with your litany of woes! Others have it so much worse!!!!!) Sorry folks. I did get carried away a bit there and I am not generally a complainer about such circumstances…The sky is clear and cooler today and this bodes well. Every day is a new day and I am 60 and well and I thank gosh for each day that is granted me.

 

Anyhow, a new air conditioner is arriving today, along with a week of cooler weather! PBTG. But the truth is, the stone facts are, even when the temps are in the 80s, we bake, up here on the 12th floor with all the heat rising from the other floors. I asked the building manager when they were redoing the roof why they could not coat it with a white coating, but I think he just laughed at me. To do something so “different” seemed to him unthinkable. I dunno why, it would save everyone energy costs, one, and two, it is a very effective and efficient way to reflect sun rays and avoid heating the building in the summer.

 

Not to be listened to or heard is something I am very familiar with. It is why I want to write about the Dr Mary B. O’Malley’s deliberate misdiagnosis of BPD in 2003 and the damage it  has done and continues to do to me for more than a decade. In fact it can be traced directly to the torture I experienced at the Institute of Living last winter.

 

I will be writing more on that in the days to come. But due to PTSD issues, this causes extreme stress. Even as I write this my fingers are trembling and I can feel my heart race. So I need to do it in small doses and carefully. Thanks for understanding.

Brain, Empathy, Health, Health Care Reform, Memory, Mental Illness, Poetry, Psychiatric Unit, Psychiatry, Seclusion and Restraints, Trauma

Useless Psychiatric Mediation and a Poem

2 Comments

(Before I write this blog entry, I want to send this message:To certain people from Middlesex Hospital who read this and are following developments in my case against you please be aware that I know who you are and I am watching you. You do not and will not get away with what you did nor with what you are doing now.)

That said, let me tell all the others of you out there what happened at the mediation- meeting-that- wasn’t, this morning at Middlesex Hospital.

As you know, I have been wanting this meeting for a long time, but when I got there not only did I discover that they were playing the game of “Oh, I had no idea that you wanted a mediation meeting, I didn’t know what this meeting was about at all…” but that the CEO had actually cancelled on last Friday the people that he had arranged to meet with me.  So in fact the only people who came were administrators, not anyone who had treated or dealt with me on the unit itself, except the doctor who saw me for the last 11 days of my 6 week stay. He may have been the director of the unit, but he was hardly the main doctor I saw, despite what he claimed.

Anyhow, the meeting was extremely  — well, first of all, it was largely a waste of time, because NOTHING was said of interest to me. Except that Dr Grillo, the unit director, after I read what follows, actually had the gall to claim that restraints were  entirely appropriate…He said nothing whatsoever about what they did to me. OTOH, I can understand why. After all, he had already been told that we were writing the Department of Justice and the Joint Commission regarding his unit, so he must have felt supremely threatened. Naturally he could not have admitted wrong- doing. Not that any god, excuse me, doctor that I have ever met has ever admitted doing anything wrong or ever apologized. God forbid, a doctor apologize! No, that would be too hard and too demeaning for them to ever do.  Better that they go along and permit torture and abuse than that they admit that there was wrong done to a patient on their watch, much less that they personally even made so small a thing as a leetle eensy meestake…

Well, I know what they did to me and I know it was abusive and wrong, and so far, except for Dr Grillo and that lot, NO ONE I have ever met outside of Middlesex Hospital has ever ever agreed with him and said, Yes, in fact the use of restraints was proper and necessary, and they were right to do what they did to you.

So take that, you watchers from MH. I hope you tremble in your boots for torturing me so. Because you never apologized, and wouldn’t’ meet with me to talk about it, it serves you right whatever happens now. I came down there today , and it took all the courage I   could summon up to do so. I came down there, after two nights without sleep, just to meet with you and talk about what happened on April 28, 2012. But you couldn’t be bothered to deal with me, and so now you will deal with the DOJ and JCAHO. And too bad for you if that means that heads roll and some of you lose your gd jobs. I do not care any more. I tried, I tried to reconcile and talk with you about it, but you didn’t have the courage to do so, you wouldn’t deal with me, and so now you can deal with the powerful ones, and not me. Now I don’t give a damn what happens to you.

Meanwhile, this is what I was going to read to all of you, and what I did read to the hospital CEO and the administrative personnel, and what the advocates are sending along with the letter to the DOJ and JCAHO.

STATEMENT TO N-7 TREATMENT TEAM & CEO OF MIDDLESEX HOSPITAL et al.

Although I have a longer statement, I first want to read you a poem that I wrote about my experience here. It is only half a page long, but like any decent poem, it says a great deal in few words. The expression “Long pig” means a human being intended for eating.

TO MY PROTECTORS

I came to you fractured,

splintered to syllables,

all-fired to incinerate

the house of my body

where the devil lived.

But I was not nice,

not nice, not nice, no,

I was not nice enough

for balm and kindness,

or to win back my art

or my writing supplies,

so I upended a trashcan

on top of my head

and uniforms nailed

me, naked X, to a bed.

It gouged my brain.

Freight train. Tank.

Two years: still blank.

Nurses, doctors,

thieves: you knew, you

knew. You made of me

pulled pork, long pig

X-posed and pinioned,

not quite a specimen

for your knew the subject

and your objective  :

your satisfaction showed

as you struggled to hide

your smiles.

I was admitted to North-7 in extremis: confused, psychotic, and traumatized. Exquisitely vulnerable, my sole comforts were doing art and writing. These were also my strengths. Yet instead of using these to help me, you consistently employed them against me–withholding supplies as punishment when you felt I was not behaving nicely and worse, using loss of them as a stick when they were most needed. The first time this happened was on April 9th, nine days after I had been admitted. I had been using glue sticks freely to make a large collage for several days. Angry at me for yelling at her, one of the senior nurses whom I won’t name, decided to withhold them. She would no longer give them to me until, as she put it, “the team puts them on your treatment plan.” This frankly felt like such gratuitous punishment, and so unnecessary, not to mention counterproductive, that I could see nothing in it but petty revenge. Nevertheless, not myself and not in control, I screamed, “Fuck you!” and ran to my room. Luckily, Christobelle from OT, the one person who consistently treated me not only with understanding and kindness but with respect and dignity as well, came in shortly thereafter carrying two gluesticks. I do not know whether she knew of these new restrictions or not, but I was grateful.

On another later occasion, I had been using my soft felt-tipped markers, which my old treatment plan permitted me until 10pm. That treatment plan had been changed, however, and the new, more relaxed one said nothing about markers, so it seemed to me that I was now allowed markers in my room just like anyone else. However, around 10pm, someone called Bob came in demanding them. He threatened that if he had to ask, quote, “a 3rd time you’re in for trouble.” My pulse ratcheted upward. Uh, oh, uh oh. Why was he doing this? Was he deliberately baiting me, trying to pick a fight? He could so easily have discussed my understanding of the new plan. It wouldn’t have been so hard to figure out a compromise. After all, they were just Crayolas, not carbon steel knives. I was sick of the power plays, and sick of the way staff just wanted to control me instead of talk to me and of how they insisted on domination at all costs. Well, this time I was not going to give up without a fight, and it seemed that a fight was what Bob was itching for. Instead of negotiation and attempting to find a compromise, Bob reached out to grab me, which I construed as an assault. I screeched, “Don’t touch me!” Someone else grabbed me from behind. I kicked and punched. Someone told me later it was Ruth I kicked. In my journal I wrote this: “she was furious enough to lie and scream that I caused an uproar ‘every single night and I’m sick to death of it!’…”

I fought them then, clawing and screaming, trying in vain to resist, my body flailing as the chart itself notes, my heart hammering. Why were they doing this to me over a few markers?! I wanted to scream. Why were they being such bullies? They were hurting me! But of course there were several of them against the one of me and they were much stronger than I at 102 pounds so naturally they overpowered me. They literally dragged me to the so-called time-out room and dumped me on the floor, ordering me to calm down. Then they closed the door. No they didn’t lock it, but they kept me from leaving by leaning against the door.

You know, I don’t know why you bothered calling it a time-out room. No one could use it at will. And when you put me there, I didn’t ask to go – I was forcibly dragged there — and I didn’t want to stay: you kept me there by force so it was the same thing as seclusion, literally and legally. Time-outs have to be voluntary, you have to be able to come and go if and when you want to. When it is forced, it is by definition a seclusion. Period. That cold barren room was not a time-out room. Who did you think you were you kidding?

And listen, did it never occur to you that it was always your treatment of me that generated my behavior, yes, the negative behaviors as well as when I was in control? You could have found out what was going on by talking with me. Instead, you decided to dismiss everything I said and did as manipulative and acting out so you didn’t need to listen to me. Perhaps you thought this disregard was kept secret from me, but I knew it   at the time and it caused me enormous anguish. All I wanted was to be treated like a human being. All I wanted was to talk to someone and be listened to. But all you did was make assumptions. You never checked them out with me to find out if they were true and they almost never were. Assume makes an ass out of U and me…But mostly it does terrible damage when the assumptions are wrong. I was so afraid, I was so terribly afraid, but you never knew the half of it. All you did was to dehumanize me, ignore my pain and order me to shut up and be quiet. I know I was difficult for you to quote unquote “handle.” Hell, I was difficult for ME to handle. But I do not have a personality disorder. Ask anyone who knows me. Ask my family. Ask the psychiatrist who saw me from 2000 until 2009, ask the psychiatrist I see now. But you decided that you could detect borderline traits (somehow transmogrified into the full-blown disorder upon discharge…) despite the presence of an active psychosis. By decreeing that I had such a disorder, you put me in an utterly untenable position, because then you had a justification, so you thought, for taking nothing I said at face value. To me it felt like nothing less than soul murder and I will tell you that this particular form of soul murder makes a person want to die. It makes a person want to bash their brains out in public just to get someone to acknowledge them and take them seriously.

April 28.. April 28, 2010. You wrote in my chart your interpretations of my behavior that day and of what happened. Yes, your nursing and physician notes were supposed to be objective but dispassionate as they may have attempted to sound, all observation is but interpretation. I repeat: All observation is interpretation. Now I want you to know what happened from my point of view. (I know that some of you have been snooping around, reading my blog just as you did during my hospital stay, but you will have to sit through this anyway…)

At around 7:30pm, so the evening nurse reported in my chart, I “walked into the dayroom” and if one can believe this, without any provocation I “began shoving and turning over chairs. I then, quote, “picked up the patient trash can and put it over my head.” Staff ordered me to what they called the “time-out room.” Nursing notes report that I refused and, I quote, “went to bed instead.” Because I had not followed her direct order, the nurse wrote that “security was called and patient required security to carry her to time-out room as she refused to move or walk.” No, I simply lay on my bed, mute, trembling with terror when the phalanx of guards roared in.

Despite my lack of resistance, the guards physically took hold of me – unconcerned apparently with my known history of rape and of recent trauma — and took me from my bed where I was calming myself in the least restrictive environment. They physically carried me to the seclusion room and together with staff they forcibly prevented me from leaving.

This is what I wrote in my journal: “It was (freezing in that room) and they wouldn’t give me a blanket so I didn’t stay long…This only led to more goons pushing me back… this time strong-arming me and forcing me to a seated position on the mattress before quickly leaving but not locking the door.”

The nurse wrote this: “Patient refused to stay in time-out room… Patient attempted to shove staff, kicked at staff to get out of room. Patient was instructed several times to sit on mattress and stop pushing at and kicking staff. Patient refused. Seclusion door locked at 7:55pm.”

At this point both records state that I stripped off all my clothing. But the official records record only that fact, and that I then “was changed into hospital garb” and that I immediately stripped these off too. In my journal I wrote something else in addition that is rather revealing: Left alone in that room, I decided, and I quote, “they’d have to give me a blanket if I was [naked] so I quickly undressed and just hid under the mattress for warmth. This caused a stir for some reason and I was forced to put on hospital pj’s and lie down on the mattress. This would not do, not without a blanket which they continued to refuse me.” So once again I took them off and got up and tried to push through the woman barring the [temporarily] unlocked door. She called for reinforcements and they came. In fact, they came en masse.

“At this point” my journal continues, “they again subdued me and told/asked me why I was fighting. I said [it was] because I needed someone to talk to. That was all I wanted, just someone to talk to. One guard seemed taken aback. All these personnel hours wasted when all I wanted was a half hour of one person’s time? It seemed to strike him as ludicrous as it did me….

“Why don’t you just ask to use this room when you feel anxious or upset?” he then asked me.

“I do, I have!” I replied

“Well?

“They always say it has to be reserved for an emergency.”

He seemed completely flummoxed by that reasoning but there was no arguing with Policy so he fell quiet. Finally they decided to leave, telling me to be quiet and lie down.

I did. I did. But I was cold and I begged for a blanket.

“Sorry, it is too dangerous. You will have to sleep without one.””

Why was it so dangerous when I was on one to one and had an observer at all times? It made no sense. And why wouldn’t they just give me a sweatshirt and socks then? Or turn up the heat. How did they expect me to sleep, I was too cold!”

But this last categorical refusal was just too much. No, no blanket, no nothing. Just shut up and freeze. “That was it, I’d had enough! I dashed at them head-first and they parted, only to grab my arms and try to stop me. Someone twisted my right arm and held it behind my back, but I knew how to get him to stop it, so I tried to bite him and he briefly loosened his grip. I twisted my own arm back to me and my left pinky, held, closed tightly onto something, hooked so tightly it wouldn’t budge. My legs, the right one, grabbed the thin leg of a woman behind me, making her lean back off-balance and lose her grip on me. Then I switched to holding both my legs in a death grip around the legs in front of me. It didn’t matter one iota that [I had taken off my clothes again to get a blanket and] was naked…Anyhow, they eventually overpowered me.”

As one guard shoved me onto my stomach on the hard floor, his knee in my back, he muttered in my ear, “You bite me, I’ll teach you a lesson you won’t forget!” Then he mashed my cheek hard against the dirty linoleum till I was breathing dust.

I knew he was capable of hurting me, they all were. I also knew that people can die during prone restraint as the Hartford Courant and others have documented. Adrenalin flooded me, my pulse threatened to rocket out of control but I knew I had to calm down. Very deliberately, I forced myself to lie still, barely breathing.

Fortunately, when I stopped resisting, they released me and let me sit up. Someone gave me a sheet to cover me. The room cleared, except for a tech who was on 1:1 with me. She apparently was now allowed to talk with me, and for this I was supremely grateful. We conversed calmly. The door to the seclusion room had been left open, a big relief.

However, people were still talking in low voices outside the door. I heard someone trot down the hall, heard the open-and-shut of a cabinet door. I asked my 1:1 what was going on. “Don’t worry. They are just getting you some meds or making up a bed for you.”

“A bed?” I said. That gave me a bad feeling…Then I understood what was going on.  “Uh, uh. They can’t put me in restraints, I am calm and it is illegal to restrain someone who is not a danger to self or others. You know that.” I repeated it loudly, loud enough so the other staff could hear me. I began to tremble, but forced myself to remain as composed as I could, mustering all the arguments I could against the use of restraints. A nurse entered the room then and asked me to come down the hall. Did I need an escort or could I walk there by myself. “Oh I can walk by myself. But you can’t put me in restraints, I am calm.” I was barely able to speak. I felt dizzy and short of breath but I tried desperately not to show it because I was afraid that if she knew how terrified and upset I was that it would actually give them justification. Nevertheless, I followed her to the empty room — my heart went cold, I could feel urine leak — I felt like “dead man walking” when I saw that in fact they had fastened four-point restraints to the bed.

I entered the room filled with staff members and guards. I told them over and over that I was calm and willing to take PRN meds. I said I knew they were punishing me and that they knew it too. No one contradicted me. The nurse in charge ordered me to lie down on the bed. I protested. She threatened that if I didn’t “they would assist me.” I was terrified of another assault. In fact I was so terrified just of the physiological consequences of fear itself – the flood of adrenalin and painful tachycardia — that I made myself get it over with. I lay down on the bed. Gritting my teeth, I said nothing even when they pushed aside most of the sheet that covered me.

I meant to remain silent. I meant to remain completely still in order to shame them. But when they pulled my wrists right over the edges of the bed, shackling them painfully below the level of the mattress, and spread- eagled my ankles to the corners of the bed, I broke that silence and objected — vociferously. I was appalled at their barbarity but my protests did nothing. I fell silent and let them do what they wanted. Finally satisfied, they trooped out, some of them actually smiling, leaving me alone in the room. I fell asleep quickly, a narcoleptic stress reaction. Nevertheless, no one returned for an hour. They extracted a pledge of obedience from me before taking off the shackles.

“When they released me,” I wrote in my journal, “my back hurt so badly I could barely walk and…my scapula muscles felt as if they had been separated. ‘I plan to sue you for doing this to me.’ I said as calmly as I could as I left the room. Nobody reacted.”  As I wrote in my journal the next morning, “I woke in severe pain, the muscles in my chest felt torn from those that connect it to the shoulder… the pain went clear through to the scapula.”

That was not the end of it. Once you treat a human being in such a fashion, all bets are off as to how she behaves from then on. I no longer cared what you did to me after that. When you threatened me with restraints a few days later, I dared you to do it. I egged you on and so you did. My capitulation showed subsequently when I stripped naked multiple times, even voided on the seclusion room floor and smeared urine on the walls. You reduced me to an animal. I hope you were pleased with the results.

From what I witnessed, many of you — on the nursing staff at any rate– took no pleasure in your jobs. You apparently didn’t want to work in psychiatry, and wanted nothing more than peace and quiet and an easy day’s work. When one of you actually screamed at me, after that staff assault occasioned because I didn’t hand in my crayons on time, that you were “sick and tired” of listening to me every night, that was stupid and nonsensical. How can any hospitalized psychiatric patient be expected to worry about what makes a nurse comfortable?  By rights it should be the other way around.

I think what it comes down to at the North-7 secure unit is that you expected patients to meet your needs and make you happy and you tried to force us to. In my case, and in at least one other patient’s that I witnessed, you even tried to physically assault us into doing so. But what a farce. Patients in the outer unit warned me to get out of there; they told my friends they were worried staff would hurt me. They were right. By the time I was discharged, I had almost no memory of what had happened over the previous 6 weeks. It is only in the last couple of months that anything has returned to me. Yet every single day since my discharge, when I least expect it, something triggers a thought or bodily memory of my stay here and instantaneously my heart starts hammering, I get dizzy because I can’t breathe, and I tremble and cry just thinking about it because I’m right back in that seclusion room and April 28th is happening all over again…

Now, I don’t expect to recognize any of you. How could I? I still don’t remember much except those episodes I wrote about, and some little snippets here and there. I am told that some of you will be nursing staff on N-7 and some my so-called treatment team. Well, if you were my treatment team and you just turned a blind eye to what went on, for that you are just as guilty as if you accomplished the acts yourselves. Of course, the worst of it mostly took place in the evenings, in relative secrecy and when few were around. But if you knew it was happening nonetheless and If you approved, well, then, I have nothing to say except shame on all of you.

I felt helpless and utterly alone. Frightened beyond belief. No one defended me, no one helped me or came to my rescue. No one except Christobelle Payne. Christobelle treated me with compassion and kindness. She always made sure that I had gluestix and magazines for my artwork, even when your every impulse was to withhold them as punishment. I cannot tell her how grateful I was and how grateful I remain to her for treating me so humanely. I have never forgotten the oasis of kindness she provided in your North-7 desert.

Apparently no one else on the unit understood how to behave humanely or to treat patients with respect, or no one else gave a damn.

Punishment is the nature of what you did to me. You lost your tempers and you punished me.  The result was that you permanently damaged and traumatized me. I believe you did what you did absolutely on purpose and I believe you did not care what the consequences would be to me.

Some of you deserve to lose your jobs because of it and because of what I’d venture to guess you have been doing for a long time to other patients.  Perhaps you will. You all need to be thoroughly retrained, if that is even possible. Certainly the secure side of the unit needs to be completely reorganized and re-staffed. But that is not my job. You’ll find out what will happen after the Department of Justice and the Joint Commission do their thing.

I hope you remember me and what you did to me for a very long time. Unfortunately, I know I may never be able to forget you. I wish I could, believe me, I wish I could.

Appetite, Uncategorized

Do I have PTSD and some Low-calorie PTSD Comfort Food

2 Comments

I think I will start with the recipes, since that might interest everyone. First, what is more the quintessential comfort food than mashed potatoes? So this comfort food main course starts with mashed potatoes, but it adds a cholesterol-lowering “superfood” curly kale, which is not only a deep cruciferous green, and therefore anti-all sorts of cancer and a first rate antioxidant, but it is extremely low-calorie, so you can eat virtually all you want. What we are going to make is a healthy version of the Irish dish, Colcannon, a dish that many cultures have some version of. It is not only easy enough to make from scratch, but we are going to cheat, as much as we can, to make it absolutely as easy as possible. I do however insist upon using fresh curly kale, since that is the only way you can obtain all the benefits of that vegetable. Here is the recipe, but don’t stop with that because following it is a recipe for a low-calorie, sugar-free, diabetic friendly cheesecake!

LOW-CALORIE COLCANNON (mashed potatoes and curly kale plus…)

2 bunches of curly kale, or about 6-8 leaves

1 box of prepared mashed potatoes, enough for 8 servings of 1/2 cup each, though for our purposes we will be allowing each person a whole cup!

7 walnuts per person (crushed into pebble-sized pieces)

Butter-flavored salt or butter buds, or sea salt or any herbs or seasoning you like (I like Badia brand All-purpose Seasoning, but the choice is yours.)

Procedure: Chop off the Kale stems and then chop the leaves into small bite-size pieces, approximately 1/2-1 inch square. You can also use a food processor and coarsely shred the leaves too, I imagine. STEAM these in a small amount of water until tender but still a deep bright green. Do not over-cook or you will lose all the “goodness.”

Prepare the mashed potatoes without the butter or milk, using ONLY water. (If you really insist, you can add a tablespoon or two of low fat dried milk to the water but remember that this will add calories…). Add your butter salt or seasonings to taste.

Now mix the kale and mashed potatoes together in microwave safe bowl or a saucepan and add crushed walnuts. If you need to reheat at this point, you can do so either in the microwave or in the same saucepan as you made the mashed potatoes on the stove.

Ta dah! The best part of this is that you can eat 2 whole cups and only consume 300 calories, which is PDG, in my humble opinion because most people are quite full after that.

Here’s the breakdown, in case you don’t believe me.

Plain mashed potatoes without milk or butter = 70 calories per half cup.

Kale= 30 calories approximately for 3.5 ounces…essentially negligible but we will call it 1/2 C.

Walnuts= 100 calories for 7 nuts

Seasonings= 0 calories

If you eat 2 cups of equal parts of kale and potatoes, you are only having 1 cup of potatoes, or 140 calories, plus maybe 1 cup of 60 calories of kale, plus 100 calories of walnuts. So that comes out to 300 calories total.

Now for the Low-Calorie Diabetic Friendly Cheesecake. This one is unbelievable delicious and simple to make. If you want to avoid ALL fat, simply make it without the crust, or experiment with making the crust without butter. I think it should work fine.

Ingredients:

1 large container of NO-fat Greek yogurt (120 calories/C.)

1 package low-calorie, no-sugar cheese-cake pudding mix

1/2 large bag shelled walnuts

2-3 Tbs butter or oil

Approximately 1-1 1/2C sucralose or Splenda-like sweetener

Procedure:

First if you are making the crust with butter, heat the butter in a small no-stick pan on moderate heat until it begins to sizzle. Add the walnuts. Toss them for about a minute but do not let them brown or burn. Add the Splenda and toss for about a minute or two. The Splenda will not melt so the mixture will remain crumbly. It will not get particularly hot. After a couple of minutes, remove mixture from heat and pour into a slightly greased shallow bowl or platter with a lip on it. (I use a large salad bowl.) Make sure the layer has no holes or tears and is relatively thick. It should resemble a largish pancake of crumbles. About 8-9″ circumference.

For the “cheesecake”: scoop Greek yogurt into a bowl and add the package of cheescake pudding mix. Stir vigorously until mixture is nice and thick and makes hearty peaks. With a rubber spatula, spoon over the crust, being careful not to tear apart and smooth it with care. Cover and refrigerate for around 8-12 hours. Enjoy!

Depending on size of slice, you can calculate calories from these:

1 C Greek yogurt= 120 calories (4 C. per large container, so likely 1/2-1/3 C per serving of cheesecake)

7 walnuts=100 calories

1Tb butter=100 calories (Since this recipe makes a whole cake, your slice shouldn’t have more than a pat or two or 30-60 calories)

Splenda=0 calories

1 serving of low-calorie cheesecake pudding mix=35-40 calories

(My estimate from this is: approximately 250-300 calories for 1/8 -1/6 slice of the cake…)

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I will write more soon about the post topic, i.e. the personal question, Do I have PTSD? But I have written for an hour and a half already, including what is copied below, so for now I am too tired to add much more. I will only say that my results of the test at the bottom, when I took it, definitely indicated that I have PTSD, despite the fact that I did not experience a trauma involving death or the possibility of death or serious injury (as the good doctors have now decided to redefine trauma.) Note that if you take the test at the site, they will evaluate it and give you a score, which you cannot get by taking it here, though you can get some idea of how you would do just by looking at it.

Finally, I don’t know if it is really okay to “lift these” directly from another website, but as I am providing a direct link as well as full attribution, I cannot imagine that the originators would object strenuously.

The first website is PsychCentral.com and here is the link to the PTSD symptoms and diagnosis article below: http://psychcentral.com/lib/2006/symptoms-and-diagnosis-of-ptsd/

Also as is noted below, the article was written by Harold Cohen, PhD

Cohen, H. (2006). Symptoms and Diagnosis of PTSD. Psych Central. Retrieved on January 29, 2012, from http://psychcentral.com/lib/2006/symptoms-and-diagnosis-of-ptsd/

Symptoms and Diagnosis of PTSD

By Harold Cohen, Ph.D.

There are three main kinds of symptoms that clinicians look for when diagnosing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These include re-experiencing symptoms, avoidant symptoms and symptoms of increased arousal.

Re-experiencing symptoms include ways in which the person persistently re-experiences the traumatic event. These symptoms may include the following:

  • Intrusive memories of the traumatic event
  • Recurrent, distressing dreams about the traumatic event
  • Acting or feeling as if the traumatic event is reoccurring
  • Mental and physical discomfort when reminded of the traumatic event (e.g., on the anniversary of the traumatic event)

Avoidant symptoms are ways in which the person tries to avoid anything associated with the traumatic event. These symptoms may also include a “numbing” effect, where the person’s general response to people and events is deadened. Avoidant symptoms include the following:

  • Avoiding thoughts or feelings, people or situations (anything that could stir up memories) associated with the traumatic event
  • Not being able to recall an important aspect of the traumatic event
  • Reduced interest or participation in significant activities
  • Feeling disconnected from others
  • Showing a limited range of emotion
  • Having a sense of a shortened future (e.g., not expecting to have a normal life span, marriage or career)

Symptoms of increased arousal may be similar to symptoms of anxiety or panic attacks. Increased arousal symptoms include the following:

  • Difficulty concentrating
  • Exaggerated watchfulness and wariness
  • Irritability or outbursts of anger
  • Difficulty falling or staying asleep
  • Being easily startled

Difficulty in Diagnosing PTSD

Identifying people with PTSD can be difficult and this disorder is often unrecognized. PTSD is unique among psychiatric disorders in that it is identified not only by symptoms, but also by the precursor of the illness (the traumatic event). Since talking about trauma may evoke painful emotions, people often refrain from discussing past traumatic events.

When a person is unable or unwilling to discuss a traumatic event, accurate diagnosis is difficult. For example, domestic violence and sexual abuse are subjects that many persons feel uncomfortable in raising, even with professionals. For others, feelings of shame and guilt related to the event and social pressures to “deal with” the symptoms that come afterward make talking about it difficult. Additionally, persons with PTSD often have other disorders, such as substance abuse or depression. These other disorders share some of the symptoms of PTSD and can also make diagnosis more difficult.

Doctors and health professionals may also ignore the signs and symptoms of PTSD. Indeed, it has been argued that at times society turns a blind eye to the existence of traumatized individuals, denying that posttraumatic responses constitute a disorder. Indeed, PTSD has only recently been recognized by the official psychiatric nomenclature. Persons who suspect that they are suffering from PTSD should seek out professionals who have experience with this disorder.

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Then the following is an online PTSD Test, which you can also find along with other psychological tests at the link below. Note that I have NO opinion regarding the online therapy offered except to say, beware of all such offers and check everything out first…

https://www.online-therapy.com/test1.php?mID=26&cPath=155_161&osCsid=04911a5dcc299094dfc7aad79ee57901

PTSD TEST

Question True False
Do you often experience flashbacks? (A flashback is a painful or intense memory; a vivid memory of a traumatic experience that returns repeatedly.)
Do you have nightmares or thoughts frequently in regard to frightening, horrible, or upsetting things?
Have you been exposed to a traumatic event involving a real or actual death threat, a threat to your physical integrity or that of others, or experienced a serious injury that resulted in responses involving intense fear, horror, or helplessness?
Do you often re-experience the traumatic event in one or more of the following patterns: intrusive/recurrent memories; acting/feeling as if the event is still occurring; nightmares; intense psychological or physical distress once exposed to cues (triggers) that associate with the traumatic event?
Are you constantly watchful, on guard, or easily startled (extremely vigilant)?
Do you feel detached from others, your surroundings or activities?
Do you frequently have sleepless nights, or insomnia?
Do you persistently avoid stimuli associated with a traumatic event, or experience general emotional numbness?
Do you experience extreme reactions to images or sounds that remind you of a traumatic event?
Do you have persistent symptoms that increase arousal responses that were not there before a traumatic event? Persistent symptoms may include sleep interruptions, irritability, outbursts of anger, excessive vigilance, exaggerated startle-response, or difficulty concentrating.
Have the symptoms lasted for more than one month and caused significant disruption in your life, including significant distress or impaired functioning?
Do you experience night sweats often? (Note: not everyone with PTSD experiences night-sweats.)
Do you often avoid the things that remind you of the past traumatic event?
Have you experienced memory loss, or amnesia because of seeing something that reminded you of the past event?
Do you often feel emotionally numb, emotionally responsiveness, or feel deadening emotions after being triggered back to the past event?
Are you easily startled by noise?
Do you feel depressed?
Do you show a lack of interest in activities you once enjoyed?