Posted by bulldog2 on January 17, 2010, at 15:39:39
In reply to Re: Blueaberry Please come back, posted by KaylaBear on January 15, 2010, at 21:28:27
> It seems many of us are biased in some way or another. After all, many of us state our subjective experiences here to try and help one another.
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> I've been lingering with TRD, though I have not tried "every" drug. My soapbox routine is therapy. I was in therapy for years, but the wrong type. It did nothing for me. Having rentered therapy, I discovered the source of my anxiety and also gained insight into the source of my depression. So, of course I think that some with TRD may also benefit from it, and I will state this because we are all free to contribute our personal knowledge and experiences, and whoever reads about them can take what they want and leave behind what they do not want.
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> Although I would like to inform others about therapy, I still believe people should take medications. The problem is, taking medications does not always address the underlying cause. Maladaptive behavior, which some experts say changes our brain/cognition patterns (such as the author to the articles below) is not even considered by many.
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> There is plenty of research on attachment and I think some would benefit by learning about it, as I have. Especially those whose depression emerged either during or after a love relationship. The article below is not just about flashbacks of PTSD-its about patterns of relating. The result of insecure parental attachments can surface years after repression and more functional behavior. But it wears you down-it takes so much mental energy to maintain your psychological defenses. When we get older, we can lose our ability to maintain such defenses, and can experience TRD when the underlying issues are ignored for years.
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> In reading many of the posts here, largely the more descriptive ones, I sometimes feel the person who is suffering is experiencing this (antecdotally--this is especially true of those who never had depression prior to being in or after the end of a romantic relationship). It practically jumps out on the screen:
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> http://www.pete-walker.com/fAQsComplexPTSD.html
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> Psychogenesis of the PTSD Critic:
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> A flashback-inducing critic is typically spawned in a danger-laden childhood home. When parents do not provide safe enough bonding and attachment, the child flounders in abandonment fear and depression. Many children appear to be hard-wired to adapt to this endangering abandonment with perfectionism. This is true for both the passive abandonment of neglect and the active abandonment of abuse. A prevailing climate of danger forces the maturing superego to cultivate the various psychodynamics of perfectionism and endangerment listed at the end of this article. When anxious perfectionist efforting, however, fails over and over to render the parents safe and loving, the inner critic becomes increasingly hypervigilant and hostile in its striving to ferret out the shortcomings that seemingly alienate the parents. Like the soldier overlong in combat, PTSD sets in and locks the child into hypervigilance and excessive sympathetic nervous system arousal. Desperate to relieve the anxiety and depression of abandonment, the critic-driven child searches the present, and the future, for all the ways he is too much or not enough. The childs nascent ego finds no room to develop and her identity virtually becomes the superego. In the process, the critic often becomes virulent and eventually switches to the first person when goading the child: Im such a loser. Im so pathetic bad... uglyworthlessstupid...defective. One of my clients grief-fully remembered the constant refrains of his childhood: If only I wasnt so needy and selfishif only my freckles would fade...if only I could pitch a perfect game...if only I could stop gagging on the canned peas during dinner...if only I could pray all the time to get moms arthritis cured - then maybe shed stop picking on me, and then maybe dad would play catch with me.
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> Thoughts As Triggers In extremely rejecting families, the child eventually comes to believe that even her normal needs, preferences, feelings and boundaries are dangerous imperfections justifiable reasons for punishment and/or abandonment. In the worst case scenarios - where parents use childrens words as ammunition against them - the mere impulse to speak sometimes triggers intense feelings of panic. How could anything the child says not reveal his stupidity and worthlessness...not get him deeper into trouble and rejection? As ongoing neglect and abuse repetitively strengthen the critic, even the most innocuous, self-interested thought or musing can trigger a five alarm fire of intense emotional flashback. To maintain the illusive hope of someday winning parental approval, the childs anxious striving escalates, and may even become a perfectionism that is truly obsessive/compulsive.
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> Complex PTSD as an Attachment Disorder:
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> Polarization to a fight, flight, freeze or fawn response is not only the developing child's unconscious attempt to obviate danger, but also a strategy to purchase some illusion or modicum of attachment. All 4F types are commonly ambivalent about real intimacy because deep relating so easily triggers them into painful emotional flashbacks (see my article in The East Bay Therapist (Sept/Oct 05): "Flashback Management in the Treatment of Complex PTSD". Emotional Flashbacks are instant and sometimes prolonged regressions into the intense, overwhelming feeling states of childhood abuse and neglect: fear, shame, alienation, rage, grief and/or depression. Habituated 4F defenses offer protection against further re-abandonment hurts by precluding the type of vulnerable relating that is prone to re-invoke childhood feelings of being attacked, unseen, and unappreciated. Fight types avoid real intimacy by unconsciously alienating others with their angry and controlling demands for the unmet childhood need of unconditional love; flight types stay perpetually busy and industrious to avoid potentially triggering interactions; freeze types hide away in their rooms and reveries; and fawn types avoid emotional investment and potential disappointment by barely showing themselves - by hiding behind their helpful personas, over-listening, over-eliciting or overdoing for the other - by giving service but never risking real self-exposure and the possibility of deeper level rejection. Here then, are further descriptions of the 4F defenses with specific recommendations for treatment. All types additionally need and benefit greatly from the multidimensional treatment approach described in the article above, and in my East Bay Therapist article (Sept/Oct06): "Shrinking The Inner Critic in Complex PTSD", which describes thirteen toxic superegoic processes of perfectionism and endangerment that dominate the psyches of all 4F types in varying ways.
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> http://www.pete-walker.com/fourFs_TraumaTypologyComplexPTSD.htm
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> http://www.pete-walker.com/managingAbandonDepression.htm
>Great reading Kayla! I will have to read over and over to understand fully. I think when the depression first occurred is of utmost importance in the eventual outcome. Children who were battered emotionally and suffered a form of ptsd along with depression have a harder struggle ahead. The brain emotional behavior has been hardwired for so long that the circuitry is permanent and probably is as permanent as genetic traits. While new thought processes can be worked on the question is wether they can become hardwired enough to compete with the older more emotionally laden thoughts and emotions? I doubt that can be accomplished without the aid of medications.I feel that people who have suffered early childhood trauma and depression at the hand of emotionally of physically abusive parents aknowledge that as the source of their current depression. medication and talk therapy will work best in these cases.
I think people who had fairly normal childhoods within a supportive family structure may have an easier road to travel as they may have a functional base of emotional thoughts and processes. While certain events may be triggering depression now they at least have a functional emotional base of thoughts somewhere in their minds to tap into. Maybe just talk therapy will work for them or temporary round of meds.
Unforunately the childhood depressive has nothing functional to tap into. He or she has to try and rewire a dysfunctional base. Not an easy task as I can attest to. Sometimes you get the ahha moment in therapy but that does not undo the wiring of the past. It is in place and continues to play on. You can only lay down new circuitry and hope eventually that becomes the dominant though therapy. The meds are only there to aid and facilitate that process.
poster:bulldog2
thread:933246
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20100113/msgs/934072.html