Fascinating study on PTSD

[Arkady]

This isn't immediately political, but is so fascinating, I had to share:

http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...y_study_people_with_ptsd_have_irrelevant.html

It looks at the different ways those who suffer from PTSD and those who don't recall a shared traumatic event. In a nutshell, those who went on to experience PTSD have a tendency to recount events (the one that gave them the syndrome and other less traumatic ones) in ways that intersperse it with external details, like random biographical information, statements of emotion, pointless context, etc., while those who don't experience PTSD tend to have more of a "just the facts" approach to recounting information.

This really rings true to me, because I've had a couple fairly dramatic shared traumas in my life that haven't particularly haunted me, but have been a problem for others. This has gotten me ridiculed as "Spock" for my cool approach to recounting the danger and my unperturbed attitude towards the trauma. I even had an ex accuse me of being autistic, because I was so detached from it, while she ended up seeing a therapist about it. It wasn't that I didn't feel anything about it, though -- just that I compartmentalized it, so that I was able to recount it in an orderly, contained way, and it didn't leak out into my life unbidden, later, whereas for her it seemed to send tendrils into all different parts of her mind, tugging on them unbidden.

I can see why either approach to integrating past trauma into your memory could have evolutionary benefits. Integrating it more fully throughout you mind and personality could be a survival benefit, in that it keeps the danger closer to the surface, putting you better on guard for protecting yourself against it -- for example, someone who once got mugged and will always after be on high alert for signs of danger, encouraging him to stay away from dark alleys and dodgy strangers, and thereby making him less likely to be a victim in the future. But, on the other hand, compartmentalizing the danger, while it risks making a person complacent, also keeps improbable threats from dominating life in a way that may be more evolutionarily problematic than the risk of a repeat performance -- for example, the rape victim who can never again get close with a man, so dies childless.

In the wake of 9/11, I was surprised by how very rattled so many people got -- including people who lived far out in rural "flyover country" and were about as far beneath the Jihadis' radar as it was possible to be. I worked in Boston, DC, and a highrise in NYC, and flew regular commuter flights out of Logan (source of the planes that hit the WTC), but once I'd gotten in contact with my wife and the few other people I knew well who might have been affected, and made sure they were OK, my agitation dropped right down to rational levels, and I didn't think twice about getting on another plane out of Logan once the flights were going again, whereas some coworkers of mine were enduringly rattled -- avoiding planes, moving hard right politically (for a time) and thinking somehow 9/11 had "changed everything." Perhaps that was like a mild PTSD, and perhaps it was less about their personalities than about how their memories work when integrating traumatic experiences.

 

[connieb]

This isn't immediately political, but is so fascinating, I had to share:

http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...y_study_people_with_ptsd_have_irrelevant.html

It looks at the different ways those who suffer from PTSD and those who don't recall a shared traumatic event. In a nutshell, those who went on to experience PTSD have a tendency to recount events (the one that gave them the syndrome and other less traumatic ones) in ways that intersperse it with external details, like random biographical information, statements of emotion, pointless context, etc., while those who don't experience PTSD tend to have more of a "just the facts" approach to recounting information.

This really rings true to me, because I've had a couple fairly dramatic shared traumas in my life that haven't particularly haunted me, but have been a problem for others. This has gotten me ridiculed as "Spock" for my cool approach to recounting the danger and my unperturbed attitude towards the trauma. I even had an ex accuse me of being autistic, because I was so detached from it, while she ended up seeing a therapist about it. It wasn't that I didn't feel anything about it, though -- just that I compartmentalized it, so that I was able to recount it in an orderly, contained way, and it didn't leak out into my life unbidden, later, whereas for her it seemed to send tendrils into all different parts of her mind, tugging on them unbidden.

I can see why either approach to integrating past trauma into your memory could have evolutionary benefits. Integrating it more fully throughout you mind and personality could be a survival benefit, in that it keeps the danger closer to the surface, putting you better on guard for protecting yourself against it -- for example, someone who once got mugged and will always after be on high alert for signs of danger, encouraging him to stay away from dark alleys and dodgy strangers, and thereby making him less likely to be a victim in the future. But, on the other hand, compartmentalizing the danger, while it risks making a person complacent, also keeps improbable threats from dominating life in a way that may be more evolutionarily problematic than the risk of a repeat performance -- for example, the rape victim who can never again get close with a man, so dies childless.

In the wake of 9/11, I was surprised by how very rattled so many people got -- including people who lived far out in rural "flyover country" and were about as far beneath the Jihadis' radar as it was possible to be. I worked in Boston, DC, and a highrise in NYC, and flew regular commuter flights out of Logan (source of the planes that hit the WTC), but once I'd gotten in contact with my wife and the few other people I knew well who might have been affected, and made sure they were OK, my agitation dropped right down to rational levels, and I didn't think twice about getting on another plane out of Logan once the flights were going again, whereas some coworkers of mine were enduringly rattled -- avoiding planes, moving hard right politically (for a time) and thinking somehow 9/11 had "changed everything." Perhaps that was like a mild PTSD, and perhaps it was less about their personalities than about how their memories work when integrating traumatic experiences.

I have seen the same thing just with regular depression. Some of my friends and people like myself can handle a depressive incident like the death of a loved one and get through the services and move on and keep on keeping on. Some people though loose a loved one and all hell breaks loose and they can't barely function. Recently I lost my grandmother after a relatively short battle with cancer. And, sure, I shed a few tears at the memorial and cried when I found out and may tear up a little here and there when something comes to mind that she will miss or my kids will miss with her. But, there were people at the service who were friends and cousins who were seriously loosing it. Like - dude.. she had cancer... we knew she was going to die. She was crying in pain for weeks. She is better off... get a damn grip.

Like you I compartmentalize. That was that - and the rest of my life beckons. I have kids that need me. A husband that doesn't really need me but you know at least says he does.. work, friends, etc. Life is good - I can dwell that I lost someone I was very close too and who was instrumental in my life and ignore all those other important things... or I can honor her memory by making happy memories with the people I still have. I don't understand those who would choose to wallow in grief. And, I have to assume its biology because why would anyone choose that?

I have long subscribed to the notion of "fake it until you make it". When life is a bitch you just pretend like its not, put on your best damn happy face, and go about your business, trying to get better. Eventually one day you do realize that you are just better. It doesn't hurt as much, its not as sad.. it just is. But, I have found that those who can't do that - are the talkers. Always with the talking about it, bringing up the past, reliving the past, going out of their way to do stuff to stir up the memories like opening the picture album, etc.

I would tend to think that the evolutionary biology woudl favor those who compartmentalize. I know just because I don't dwell on something that its not in the back of my mind waiting until I need to recall that. But, when life really was a drag of never ending drudgery of finding food and water and shelter, I don't know how those that crack up managed to survive.

connie

 

[Arkady]

I have seen the same thing just with regular depression. Some of my friends and people like myself can handle a depressive incident like the death of a loved one and get through the services and move on and keep on keeping on. Some people though loose a loved one and all hell breaks loose and they can't barely function. Recently I lost my grandmother after a relatively short battle with cancer. And, sure, I shed a few tears at the memorial and cried when I found out and may tear up a little here and there when something comes to mind that she will miss or my kids will miss with her. But, there were people at the service who were friends and cousins who were seriously loosing it. Like - dude.. she had cancer... we knew she was going to die. She was crying in pain for weeks. She is better off... get a damn grip.

Like you I compartmentalize. That was that - and the rest of my life beckons. I have kids that need me. A husband that doesn't really need me but you know at least says he does.. work, friends, etc. Life is good - I can dwell that I lost someone I was very close too and who was instrumental in my life and ignore all those other important things... or I can honor her memory by making happy memories with the people I still have. I don't understand those who would choose to wallow in grief. And, I have to assume its biology because why would anyone choose that?

I have long subscribed to the notion of "fake it until you make it". When life is a bitch you just pretend like its not, put on your best damn happy face, and go about your business, trying to get better. Eventually one day you do realize that you are just better. It doesn't hurt as much, its not as sad.. it just is. But, I have found that those who can't do that - are the talkers. Always with the talking about it, bringing up the past, reliving the past, going out of their way to do stuff to stir up the memories like opening the picture album, etc.

I would tend to think that the evolutionary biology woudl favor those who compartmentalize. I know just because I don't dwell on something that its not in the back of my mind waiting until I need to recall that. But, when life really was a drag of never ending drudgery of finding food and water and shelter, I don't know how those that crack up managed to survive.

connie

I compartmentalize when it comes to depression, too. When I lose someone very close, I'm wrecked for a day or two, but quickly get back to normal, with the sadness only coming in brief waves after that, when some memory or incident triggers it. I never sink into a prolonged funk like others, since I'm good at not dwelling on it. It seldom even disrupts my sleep patterns.

I suppose that, in light of how widespread each form of coping is, there probably are evolutionary benefits to each, in different contexts, or they would have been bred out of us in one direction or another, by now. Possibly a society functions best when there are some of each kind -- a few "PTSD" types who act as the society's early warning system to prevent it from falling back into the same danger, a few "Vulcans" who can operate at a high level even when all the normal people around them are falling apart, so the tribe can keep functioning even at the point of greatest adversity, and then a lot of people in between, who can be pulled from one mode to the other by those at the extremes, as the conditions dictate.

I mean, think of it in terms of a small extended-family group of a hundred hunter gatherers -- the conditions humans evolved in for most of the history of our species. Picture some trauma like the tribe crossing a swollen river and a half dozen members being drowned in the process. It would probably be beneficial to the tribe to have a few people so traumatized and preoccupied by it that even a decade later they can hardly bring themselves to cross deep water. That encourages the tribe, as a whole, to avoid unnecessary risks that would repeat that loss... they might search a few miles upstream and down to find a better crossing to placate the PTSD sufferers. But you'd also want a few who completely compartmentalized the event to the point they were perfectly capable of hunting, gathering, and building shelters just hours after the initial tragedy, while the bodies of their loved ones were still floating downstream somewhere. A good mix of both types would give the group a survival advantage over tribes where everyone has genes for one or the other type of behavior.

 

[freyasman]

Meh...