Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

If you spend months on end in a traumatizing situation, your belief system will probably be altered due to that experience. It is that easy to fall victim to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which is an anxiety disorder triggered by a traumatic outside event. What is trauma, and why does it sometimes lead to stress? Well, "the very nature of trauma is such that it attacks our basic beliefs and challenges our processes of accommodation and assimilation" (Decker, 2008). Accommodation is the process where separate groups or persons come together to adapt, often by way of compromise. Assimilation refers to the merging of previously distinct cultural traits, sometimes to the point where there is no longer a clear distinction between the cultures. Both terms are used to describe a mutual agreement and meshing of ideas, so it follows that trauma challenges our need to come together. People suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, then, isolate themselves in their refusal of accommodation and assimilation, but they also create a need to figure out meaning. I believe that people who find positive meaning from their trauma have a higher recovery rate from PTSD than people who remain searching for meaning.

As far as war goes, many soldiers that come back from battle suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This trend is becoming increasingly apparent, and it seems that I am constantly hearing about veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan that are diagnosed with this disorder. It is easy to understand how soldiers attain the mindsets that fit into PTSD. When they enlist in the military, it is drilled into their heads that in war, other people are trying to kill them and it is their job to kill those other people. Experience in battle only backs up this claim, and the soldiers learn that the only people they can trust are their comrades fighting with them. This experience in itself gives meaning to soldiers overseas, and so it is difficult to simply forget the meaning that you have been taught and trained to accept. If the soldiers retain this mindset when they return home, they become antisocial, depressed, and altogether socially awkward. They strive to avoid anything that might remind them of a time when they felt at their best, because now they are being told that it was their worst. It is then that we label them as having a disorder, but how can they be cured of this 'disorder?'

It is beneficial for survivors of traumatic experiences to search for meaning because it causes them to stop and digest what happened to them. "Searching for meaning often involves seeking answers to questions such as, 'Why did this event happen to me?' Bereavement studies, for example, have shown that anywhere from one quarter to more than two thirds of individuals report actively searching for meaning in their losses" (Updegraff, 2008). Although the experience of war itself can be given meaning, it is a destructive meaning that keeps people caught in PTSD. In coming back from war, we ask soldiers to give up the meaningfulness they felt on the battlefield. We want them to trade in the power and glory of battle for the boring world of materialism they return to. Instead of identifying negatively with war, we should help soldiers discover a positive reason for what has happened. Finding positive meaning, a reason for their struggle and trauma, can help to bring soldiers out of this disorder.

In the material world, "exposure to violence challenges beliefs of living in a benevolent, predictable world. Accordingly, one of the major tasks that traumatized individuals face is reconciling the harsh reality of adversity with previously held, more benign assumptions about oneself and the world" (Updegraff, 2008). If the material world is no longer satisfying, the next step is to look at the transcendent world: that which is beyond our physical limits. Spirituality, the acts of prayer and meditation involves an acceptance of our fallible human nature and that there is a higher power who is not fallible. This perspective, for veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, implies that this omniscient being makes everything happen for a reason, and therefore, even if you can't see why something is happening, it will work out in the end. This realization would obviously be helpful for veterans trying to work out the trauma they suffered and move past PTSD, because it offers a reason for not only why they suffered trauma in the war, but also for why they are having difficulty dealing with it afterward. Having a spiritual outlet also allows veterans to feel like they have regained control over something, in that they can determine the style and frequency of how they pray and meditate.

For those with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder who don't find meaning, they remain feeling uneasy, depressed, angry, emotionally numb, and anxious. They keep their low self-esteem, intrusive thoughts, fear of loss of control, and nightmares (Decker, 2008). They continue to struggle with a longing to go back to war, because their lives were meaningful there, but they feel guilty for feeling that meaning. Instead, they search for a new meaning to explain civilian life but also to incorporate their experiences of trauma. Finding meaning allows people to make sense of the traumatic events, which "can rob them of their emotional impact" (Updegraff, 2008). In an experiment where participants were exposed to an unexpected positive event (receiving a $1 gift) and the experimenter manipulated whether participants were offered an explanation for it. "Participants who were given an explanation felt less excited about the gift than those who were given none. Thus, in the case of positive events, the process of making sense may come at some emotional cost. However, in the context of negative events, having an explanation should lessen the emotional impact and facilitate long-term adaptation" (Updegraff, 2008).

References:

Decker, L. R. (2007). Combat trauma: Treatment from a mystical/spiritual perspective. The Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 47(1), 30-53.

Updegraff, J. A. (2008). Searching for and finding meaning in collective trauma: Results from a national longitudinal study of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 95(3), 709-722.