Resource i learned something interesting about trauma today

[Mohkinstsis_falls]

I was reading a book called What happened to you? written by Dr Perry and Oprah. Dr. Perry devoted his life to understanding trauma after his wife got murdered, and Oprah was a victim of childhood abuse.

there was a passage in it that went something like this;

PTSD can effectively be explained by exposure to an extended period of stress, be it a loss, military deployment, abuse, accident, etc. over time, the brain becomes hyper aware to certain sensory inputs common during that time. (fireworks being as scary as gunshots to veterans for example). when you are young (25 or younger), those rewired pathways will be difficult, if not impossible to change, as the stress was incurred during brain development.

 

[Beachedwhale]

when you are young (25 or younger), those rewired pathways will be difficult, if not impossible to change, as the stress was incurred during brain development.

So when you're over 25 it's easier to change? Shouldn't it be easier before 25 as the brain is still developing?

 

[WornOutLife]

So when you're over 25 it's easier to change? Shouldn't it be easier before 25 as the brain is still developing?

That's what I wonder too!
I think traumas last forever.
For instance, my high school memories are not haunting me everyday as they used to but I still remember those hellish days from time to time and I'm already 33!! :(

 

[kitch]

My thoughts , after a life time of drinking my trauma flashbacks away and then finally beginning to comprehend them cognitively after putting together a model of what I was experiencing :

Maybe life is trauma "all the way down".

From birth onwards ...and for some even earlier.

It's how we deal with it . My understanding now is the reaction to it , fight , flight or freeze ...
The first two kind of resolve the trauma ( either successfully or not ... you survive or don't)

The freeze response ( most common in society , so as to maintain the status quo and not invite further trauma ... laying low ... maintains the trauma in a psychic / body bank account ... ) to trauma stores it and it overshadows every experience thereafter , emerging as flashbacks when similair circumstances are encountered .

The plasticity of the brain seems to be regarded as open ended ... it is plastic but also needs a "willed" awareness of an appropriate therapeutic model , so one can become aware of the physiological responses to life experiences that are flashbacks to trauma ( interuptions to a vibrant lived experience ) and encounter them with practices that can reduce ( and optimistically eliminate ) the interuption .

( For me ... social trauma means I NEVER go to concerts and hate large crowds )

Books and people I gleaned these ideas from : The body keeps the score , Robert Sapolsky and Gabor Matte (?) also John Bradshaw .

Primary beginning sources for me personally was beginning to appreciate my physiologically animal nature ... my "creaturliness" and how my guts and blood coursing reality was (all my life) not really 'in my mind' ... for me the whole real "self as a body" vision began with "the denial of death " by Ernest Becker , which is confronting on a number of counts .

It takes a while to get comfortable with a new self model , part of which is it's fluidity .
We are not set in concrete and our self view can be fluid and plastic in itself .

The world changes and so do we ... we can still hold dear ethics and morality , but we can be open to a widening horizon of "reality".

Sorry if I'm talking out of my arse ... I think I'm just affirming my own 'slightly improved' version of reality .