Following yesterday’s conclusions to their logical end might, just might add up to mean that medications which work for the treatment of migraines could also be efficacious for PTSD. It’s interesting to think about anyway. I mean, if we could treat, say, the flashbacks separate to the rest of PTSD it would give us the ability to more readily desensitise someone with this disorder to triggers. That is to rapidly de-condition them to factors in the environment which remind them of their traumatic experience.
In a flashback you experience a kind of pseudo-hallucination of fragments of your past, sometimes across all senses, in response to environmental cues reminiscent of traumatic experience/s. It’s something like looking at the world through a glass window after a heavy rainfall. A film is over everything that distorts the shape and nature of things so that you don’t exactly know what’s what anymore, and there’s a point where you can’t quite be sure if it’s still raining or not. Imagine that, except the film that’s layered across everything comes from your past, yet manages to still seem somewhat unfamiliar.
One current theory behind PTSD flashbacks argues that de/conditioning theory is in operation. A great deal, indeed most of our daily experiences add to or alter the way in which we view/experience a particular situation, person or thing. The brain processes these experiences, contextualises them and lets us understand them. So when we experience something in a particular way, that perception becomes fairly fixed. Unless we expend special effort to change it then it’s very likely to re-occur each and every time we encounter that same cue.
See the images below as examples:
How many faces do you see? Give it some time, and you’ll spot more than one.
Or try this one:
Do you see a couple in an intimate embrace? Or can you spot the small, black dolphins? Young children don’t see the couple at all because it isn’t part of their knowledge base yet.
The particular way we see something to begin with often gets generalised beyond that one situation, person or thing so that with flashbacks you conflate past and present experience because it is so charged. It is such a powerful experience that even vaguely similar cues, experienced as long as decades after the original traumatic experience, are understood using the same template in the brain. And it’s a template which is much more resistant to change because it isn’t stored as regular narrative memory but rather in bits and pieces that you don’t always have access to through verbal channels. This reinforces the sheer terror underlying the flashback, which in turn reinforces that particular pathway in the brain. The ability to directly defuse flashbacks would make the task of desensitisation to trauma significantly easier, not to mention adding immeasurably to our understanding of PTSD, neurological trauma and migraines.
Yes, it would be helpful if the ‘desensitizing’ happened more quickly. If flashbacks could be dealt with sooner. It could save sanity, marriage, even life.
My PTSD cost me a marriage. And two kids. And a home. And countless hours of writing bad poetry. But that’s all. How many are in institutions? How many are in graves?
That’s enough, I should think, LouCeeL!
It’s so true though – PTSD costs society, and individuals all too dearly. It’s bad enough that it went unrecognised for so long. I mean you read the PTSD ‘bible’ by Judith Herman and you see how it has come into the fore of research and then been forgotten repeatedly over the past century or so. The least that can happen now, you’d think/hope, is that they’ll pour what resources are available into finding a rapid, long-term effective treatment. It has the public attention now so there’s no reason not to, especially in light of the sheer statistics we’re talking about. 1 in 5 Veterans at double the risk for it, and countless sexual assault, rape, natural disaster, terrorism, accident victims to boot.
I hope the pharmaceutical companies start paying attention to the statistics because there’s a whole lot of money to be made. Meds aren’t always the answer but gee it’d be nice if there was just one specifically for PTSD.
I am taking an antipsychotic partly for the anxiety and intensity of my flashbacks. However, I am not psychotic. This goes in line with what you are thinking about hallucinations/auras and flashbacks…I think? Or am I hallucinating.
Yes, probably but it’s by way of a happy accident I reckon. The meds they currently use, off-label, to treat PTSD (antipsychotics, beta blockers, a couple of older generation antidepressants and mirtazapine) are about symptom management, rather than treating the cause or designed to act to prevent further ingraining the traumatic response. Interestingly enough the beta blocker commonly used to treat PTSD (Inderal) is also used to prevent migraines – so again w. the possibility of a link.
I’m hoping that if the similarities are there between these neurological events then they’ll be able to target and treat the causative mechanisms behind flashbacks, as they do with Depression, migraines etc. It seems like there should be at least one medication specific to PTSD treatment by now.
One day, CK, I will be doing research in this very field… I want to focus more on mood disorders– such as BPI & BPII & major depression– but if I can throw some research on anxiety stuff in the mix, then PTSD will be covered, too.
One day…
@Ash. That would be great to included PTSD. It is facinating how the neuropathways get grooved in with trauma and then the flashbacks set them in further. My understanding is that you can’t change to groove, but you can form new neuropathways to lessen or remove the symptoms. I’m glad you have dreams of doing this and hope others do too…like now.
That’s awesome, Ash =)
We seem to know just enough for it to be a v. exciting field, and not quite enough that there aren’t huge discoveries right on the horizon.
Ash, I’m happy to hear a person committed who plans to help others. Way to go and much gratitude.