Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Via Wikipedia

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) is a psychological injury that results from protracted exposure to prolonged social and/or interpersonal trauma with lack or loss of control, disempowerment, and in the context of either captivity or entrapment, i.e. the lack of a viable escape route for the victim. C-PTSD is distinct from, but similar to, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Though mainstream journals have published papers on C-PTSD, the category is not formally recognized in diagnostic systems such as DSM or ICD.

C-PTSD involves complex and reciprocal interactions between multiple biopsychosocial systems. It was first referred to by Judith Herman in her book Trauma & Recovery and article.

Trauma sources include sexual abuse (especially child sexual abuse), physical abuse, emotional abuse, domestic violence, torture and violations of personal boundaries such as serial intimate betrayals that are discovered and denied—known as gaslighting. In situations of protracted home care of a violent, mentally ill relative or disaster workers and carers for victims of a long running natural disaster like a Tsunami, without a viable escape route, each may later develop C-PTSD as a result of prolonged exposure to traumatic stress.

• 1 Differentiating PTSD from C-PTSD
• 2 Differentiating Traumatic grief from C-PTSD
• 3 Attachment theory, BPD and C-PTSD
• 4 Child and adolescent symptom cluster
• 5 Adult symptom cluster
• 6 Treatment for adults
• 7 Treatment for children
• 8 See also
• 9 References
• 10 Bibliography
• 11 External links

"Elevator" Psychology

This is a very interesting demonstration of the power of peer pressure and maintaining one's individuality.

Neurosis Characteristics and Types

The different types of neurosis are defined by the different psychological types that characterize human beings. There are four psychological types, but they become eight because we have four introverted types and four extroverted types that use the same psychological functions in different ways.

The four psychological functions that define the four basic psychological types are based on:

1- Thoughts

2- Feelings

3- Sensations

4- Intuition

Depending on which of these four psychological functions is the basic one in your psyche, your behavior will adopt a series of pre-determined attitudes in life. This means that what you choose to do or what you do without controlling yourself is already pre-programmed...Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via: Associated Content~Christina Sponias

Depression Resources from National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

• What Is Depression?
• What are the different forms of depression?
• What are the signs and symptoms of depression?
• What illnesses often co-exist with depression?
• What causes depression?
• How do women experience depression?
• How do men experience depression?
• How do older adults experience depression?
• How do children and adolescents experience depression?
• How is depression detected and treated?
• How can I help a friend or relative who is depressed?
• How can I help myself if I am depressed?
• Where can I go for help?
• What if I or someone I know is in crisis?
• For More Information
• Citations

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom" ~ Victor Frankl

Waltor Landor on Happiness By Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D.

Here is a quote by Waltor Landor:

“As soon as we wish to be happier, we are no longer happy.”

How true this is. We are a culture driven by the motto, more is better. If we turn on the television or glance over at the magazines at the checkout line in any grocery store, we see the sensational “bling” and the “more” we are looking for. Our minds automatically say, “If I just had a bigger house, a partner, more money, a snowcone, etc… then I’d be happy.”
Author and renowned mindfulness teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh says, “There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.”
Landor’s quote echoes a millennia of teachings that say, as soon as we are reaching or grasping for something that is outside of this present moment, we get the sense that what we are or have is less than adequate in this moment. Our contentment drifts away and so does the potential for happiness right now...Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via:  Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist and conducts a private practice in West Los Angeles. He is co-author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook (New Harbinger, February 2010) He also current has a FREE Mindful Companion EBook: Top Mindfulness Quotes and How They Can Support Your Mental Health.  If you're wanting to integrate more mindfulness into your daily life, sign up for his Mindful Living Twitter Feed.

The Darker Side of Therapy - Ten Ways to Deal with Dependency

There is a dark side to therapy that nobody wants to talk about; even therapists. It’s a Catch-22 where emotionally-promiscuous clients quickly fall into dependency with their therapists and problems occur when dependency, instead of the original problem, becomes the main issue. Weaning yourself off your substitute mother/therapist can be like trying to forcibly remove a security blanket from a two-year-old or...click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via: Psychcentral.com
Exerpts from the article: "Your therapist is not perfect". "Forgive and be kind to yourself for having a biological pre-disposition towards unholy emotions but know that there is something you can do about it!"

Don't forget to take stock of your acheivements...

When you don't know what to do next, sometimes it's because you've already done more than you give yourself credit for.

No matter how far you have gone on the wrong road, turn back. -- Turkish Proverb

Fighting Cognitive Dissonance & The Lies We Tell Ourselves

If you’re interested in psychology and human behavior, you’ve probably heard the phrase cognitive dissonance. It’s the term coined by psychologist Leon Festinger in 1954 to describe “the feeling of psychological discomfort produced by the combined presence of two thoughts that do not follow from one another. Festinger proposed that the greater the discomfort, the greater the desire to reduce the dissonance of the two cognitive elements” (Harmon-Jones & Mills, 1999). Dissonance theory suggests that if individuals act in ways that contradict their beliefs, then they typically will change their beliefs to align with their actions (or vice-a-versa)...Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via: Psychcentral.com

How to Overcome Loneliness When Surrounded by People From WikiHow

Steps

1. Understand that it's quality that matters, not quantity. It doesn't matter how many people you know, but how well you know them. And more importantly: how well they know you. Or if they really know you at all.
2. Understand yourself. We all have our fair share of heartaches and hurts as we grow up. And by the time we're forty we will have lost the openness we had as a four year old, as we learned not to let certain things get to us anymore. That's only natural. But it's different when you have closed down to such a degree that you have become unable to really get "in touch" with other people. You are, in fact, locked up within yourself.
3. Find out what locked you up in the first place. Maybe you were abused or neglected by the people who were supposed to take care of you. Maybe you were bullied or left out by your classmates. Maybe you are feeling inadequate because of physical or mental disabilities, your gender, race or social background. These events and feelings can have serious consequences that you need to deal with. The good news is: you don't have to fight this battle alone.
4. Seek help. Find a therapist to talk about what happened. Yes, it seems unfair that you have to seek professional help when these haunting burdens that are ruining your life are not your fault. You tried to help everybody, regardless of the fact that you weren't a professional. If you start telling your life's story to just about anyone, you will end up being the whining and complaining one. You know from experience that that is a huge turn off.
5. Stop expecting the people around you to reach out. If you've noticed you feel lonely when you're surrounded by people, you probably have decent social skills already, hence the being surrounded by people, but those connections lack intimacy. In addition to being locked up inside you might also expect other people to initiate something that would deepen the connection, like noticing when you feel down and insisting that you talk to them about it so they can help. Instead, learn to speak up and ask for help. Say things like "Hey, I'm going through a rough patch. Can we talk about it? I think that'll make me feel better."
6. Be a little less sensitive. The same thing mentioned in the previous applies to you. If you find you're always picking up someone else's mood, saying things like: "You don't look so happy today. Is something wrong?", you must learn not to be overly sensitive to everyone else's lot, to the extent that you neglect yourself. Every relationship is a two way street, and any mature adult should be able to let you know when they're feeling bad, rather than expect you to guess all the time.
7. Learn to say no. Sometimes we feel lonely because we feel used and objectified. Perhaps you are a good listener, and people always seem to cry on your shoulder. And when they are done crying, they head out to have fun with other people. Ouch! That hurts! So next time somebody wants to cry on your shoulder, bluntly tell them no. This will make you feel like you're rude, but you're only standing up for yourself. You may lose friends over this, but they weren't your friends to begin with. They were only counting on you to listen to their whining and complaining. You need to make room in your life for people who care about you, and who can have deeper relationships with you.
   • If this step resonates with you strongly, it may be worth reading How to Overcome Martyr Syndrome.
8. Be good to yourself. If you feel happy, you will look happy. And happy people attract other people.
9. Open up. This is the scary part. When you open up to other people, you are guaranteed to have some more heartaches and hurts. But it's really the only way to connect, and deepen relationships. Start talking: about things you did last weekend, movies you saw, books you read... And when you feel comfortable, start digging deeper.  Click this sentence to continue reading this and many other interesting articles.  Via: wikiHow
   

The Ever Elucidating Engaging Eloquent Carl Sagan on the Human Brain

 

Perspectives On...

Revising Your Life
 

If we do not challenge ourselves to think new thoughts and revise our past and present ideas, our personal world will begin to shrink. This is typical of aging and a sign that one is getting old, regardless of one’s age.


Every idea and thought we have is sufficient to our needs at the time that we first think them. But all is movement, everything is changing. And if we do not change our thoughts about ourselves and about life, we no longer have thoughts that support our continuous development and growth. In fact the old thoughts inhibit our natural growth processes, and block soul from manifesting its intelligence in the present moment. We thus block our natural creativity and intuition. This is like new wine in old wine skins, as the biblical image is presented. This spoils the new wine.


It is easy to recognize people who think and feel the same way as they have always done in their relationships. Their relationships do not change and they as people do not change through their relationships. These relationships can then become boring, stifling and unloving.


We need to continuously challenge ourselves to learn, to gain new perspectives, to enlarge our vision, to rediscover ourselves because we are different today than we were yesterday. And the changes that go on within us are not the changes of mood and emotion, but of the way soul is seeking to manifest itself in response to ever-changing need in our lives and in our relationships. Soul always responds to need, so as needs change then our response must also change if we are to allow soul its natural expression.

The fundamental relationship that we have is between personality and soul; this is our most important relationship. If we do not allow ourselves to be open and conscious of soul in our lives, we will get stuck in our lower mind and emotions, and not open ourselves to the heart, to intuition and to soul wisdom.

Via: The Soul Journey

Destabilizing Old Memories With Novel Information

What if one day we could disrupt unwanted consolidated memories like those of old traumatic experiences or even unforgettable heartbreaks and replace them with novel and more pleasant ones? Sounds like a tagline from the 2004 Oscar-winning film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind doesn't it?

Published in this month's issue of Learning & Memory, a study by Winters, Tucci, and DaCosta-Furtado over at the University of Guelph, Canada have managed to bring us one step closer to making this seeminly far-fetched idea a reality...Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via:  Science Blog

UCLA Researchers Develop Biomarker for Rapid Relief of Major Depression

It is a long, slow slog to treat major depression. Many antidepressant medications are available, but no single biomarker or diagnostic test exists to predict which one is right for an individual. As a result, for more than half of all patients, the first drug prescribed doesn't work, and it can take months to figure out what does.
Now, based on the final results of a nationwide study led by UCLA, clinicians may be able to accurately predict within a week whether a particular drug will be effective by using a non-invasive test that takes less than 15 minutes to administer. The test will allow physicians to quickly switch patients to a more effective treatment, if necessary...Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via: UCLA Newsroom  A service of the University of California - Los Angeles. UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of nearly 37,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer more than 300 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Four alumni and five faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.

A More Solid Truth I Have Yet To Discover...

"The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is Fear Itself."   Franklin Delano Roosevelt-Wikipedia Entry

Characteristics of Healthy Relationships

Healthy relationships are characterized by respect, sharing and trust. They are based on the belief that both partners are equal, that the power and control in the relationship are equally shared.

Some of the characteristics of a healthy relationship are:

Respect - listening to one another, valuing each other's opinions, and listening in a non-judgmental manner. Respect also involves attempting to understand and affirm the other's emotions.

Trust and support - supporting each other's goals in life, and respecting each other's right to his/her own feelings, opinions, friends, activities and interest. It is valuing one's partner as an individual.

Honesty and accountability - communicating openly and truthfully, admitting mistakes or being wrong, acknowledging past use of violence, and accepting responsibility for one's self. Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...


(PS The site has a lot of good practical advice to keep in mind regarding healthy relationships)

Explore Your Fears

"Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, our fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if we explore them."

-- Marilyn Ferguson

In our world of duality, fear and love sit at opposite ends of the continuum. Fear belongs only to the personality because it believes in separation and impermanence. The soul never knows fear because it understands the unity of all.

When fear arises, we can invite our soul to sit with our frightened personality. What soul energies are waiting to be acknowledged? When we bring higher energies into the presence of lower energies, the lower energies are transformed.

"What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it."

-- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Via: Higher Awareness

On The Interesting Human Phenomenon of Magical Thinking

In anthropology, psychology, and cognitive science, magical thinking is nonscientific causal reasoning that often includes such ideas as the ability of the mind to affect the physical world (see the philosophical problem of mental causation), and correlation mistaken for causation. Associative thinking may be brought into play, as well as the power of magical symbols, metaphor and metonym, and synchronicity. Since, in both theory and practice, magic does not conform to Western and modern canons of causality it is therefore appropriate to ask if it is rational to practice or believe in magic. For most theorists these questions turn on the matter of the practitioner’s thought processes, intentions, and the efficacy of their practice. Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading via Wikipedia

• 1 Associative thinking
• 2 Other forms of magical thinking
• 3 Symbolic approach to magic
• 4 Psychological functions of magic
• 5 Phenomenological approach
• 6 Idiomatic difference
• 7 Substantive difference
• 8 References
• 9 Further reading
• 10 External links

MedLine Plus:

Link to MedLine Plus: Depression

This easy-to-use service of the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health provides links to articles, pamphlets, and organizations relating to depression in addition to many other health related articles and links.

Anxiety Disorders-Generalized

Anxiety disorder is a blanket term covering several different forms of abnormal and pathological fears and anxieties which only came under the aegis of psychiatry at the very end of the 19th century. Current psychiatric diagnostic criteria recognize a wide variety of anxiety disorders. Anxiety disorders are often debilitating chronic conditions, which can be present from an early age or begin suddenly after a triggering event. They are prone to flare up at times of high stress and are frequently accompanied by physiological symptoms such as headache, sweating, muscle spasms...Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

via: Wikipedia

Neurons-How They Work

This video takes you on a short, yet very informative tour through the human brain. It goes in to good detail regarding electrical and chemical connections and their relationship with brain neurons.

Agoraphobic by Dr. Kenneth Dutro

Question: I have been diagnosed as an agoraphobic. In spite of various treatment approaches I find myself housebound. I have read recently that agoraphobia and panic-related illnesses are caused by some form of chemical imbalance. Can you tell me what types of treatment are available in light of the new research about this problem? I am especially interested in more natural, drug free forms of treatment.

Answer: Feeling trapped at home is a common dilemma for those suffering from panic disorder. Your question raises a commonly heard issue with this painful condition--the question of chemical imbalance. Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

via: Self Help Magazine

Architecture of the Brain

In this lecture Elly Nedivi provides an overview on the basics of brain anatomy, working her way up the spinal column to the deepest recesses of the cerebral cortex. Using vivid slides, we learn that physically distinguishable areas of the brain are responsible for specific functions, and that you can, for instance, build maps of the cortical areas dealing with each of the senses. Nedivi explains precisely why there is a safety zone in the spine for an epidural, and also show images of the earliest stages of embryonic brain development. While there are still deep mysteries hidden inside the human brain, Nedivi sheds light on the fascinating things that are known about this very complex human organ.

Day of Mindfulness at Deer Park Monastery, CA

Thich Nhat Hanh-Paris 2006 Age 80

This day of mindfulness will be lead by the celebrated Thich Nhat Hanh and the delegation of buddhist monks and nuns.

Sunday, September 6th, 2009-8:30am to 4:00 pm (PAST EVENT)

Click this LINK to read more about the day of mindfulness at Deer Park Monastery (Escondido). And click HERE to learn about the Monastery and contact information.

This LINK is to the Wikipedia entry on Thich Nhat Hanh.

Mark Your Calendar...

Photo Via Wikipedia