Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
 

The key to understanding the scientific basis and clinical expression of Post-
Traumatic Stress Disorder is the concept  of   "trauma."

The hypervigilance in PTSD may sometimes become so intense as to appear like
frank paranoia.  The startle response has a unique neurobiological substrate and
may actually be the most pathognomonic PTSD symptom (Friedman, 1991,).

C. Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness
          (not present before the trauma) as indicated by at least three of:

          1. efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings or conversations associated with the trauma;
          2. efforts to avoid activities, places or people that arouse recollections of this trauma;
          3. inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma;
          4. markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities;
          5. feeling of detachment or estrangement from others;
          6. restricted range of affect (eg unable to have loving feelings);
          7. sense of a foreshortened future (eg does not expect to have a career, marriage, children or a
          normal life span).

The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other
 important areas of functioning.

The focus of PTSD is a single life-threatening event or threat to integrity. However, the symptoms
of traumatic stress also arise from an accumulation of small incidents rather than one major incident.

Where the symptoms are the result of a series of events, the term Complex PTSD (formerly referred to
unofficially as Prolonged  Duress Stress Disorder or PDSD) may be more appropriate.

Whilst it is now widely accepted that PTSD can result from a single, major, life-threatening
event, there is growing awareness that PTSD can also result from an accumulation of many
small, individually non-life-threatening incidents. To differentiate the cause, the term
Complex PTSD is used.

A key feature of Complex PTSD is the aspect of captivity.
The individual experiencing trauma by degree is unable to escape the situation.

For individuals with PTSD, the traumatic event remains, sometimes for decades or a lifetime, a
dominating psychological experience that retains its power to evoke panic, terror, dread, grief, or
despair as manifested in daytime fantasies, traumatic nightmares, and psychotic reenactments
known as PTSD flashbacks. Furthermore, trauma mimetic stimuli that trigger recollections of the
original event have the power to evoke mental images, emotional responses, and psychological
reactions associated with the trauma.

Behavioral strategies include avoiding any situation in which they perceive a risk of confronting such
stimuli. In its most extreme manifestation, avoidant behavior may superficially resemble agoraphobia
because the PTSD individual is afraid to leave the house for fear of confronting reminders of the
traumatic event(s).  Dissociation and psychogenic amnesia are included among avoidant/numbing
memories and feelings. Finally, since individuals with PTSD cannot tolerate strong emotions,
especially those associated with the traumatic experience, they separate the cognitive from the
emotional aspects of psychological experience and perceive only the former. Such "psychic numbing"
is an emotional anesthesia that makes it extremely difficult for people with PTSD to participate in
meaningful interpersonal relationships.

Persons with post-traumatic stress disorder may continuously experience flashbacks.
During these flashbacks they relive the traumatic event and reexperience feelings of
intense fear and of inability to escape from the traumatic event. Every effort is taken to
avoid actions or thoughts associated with the traumatic event in order to prevent these
flashbacks.

Ultimately, behavior becomes erratic and hyperactive, as if the individual were constantly
defending himself. For example, the person may develop anxiety, have disturbed sleep,
and be easily startled. Over the long run this behavior can lead to complete dysfunction
with a sense of hopelessness, a total lack of self- esteem, and overwhelming fear of people.

PTSD symptoms usually appear in clusters. The major categories are:

Hyperarousal: Sleep may be disturbed. Concentration can be difficult. A person may be hypervigilant and
have an exaggerated startle response. "PTSD is an anxiety disorder," says Giller, "and comes with a
racing heart, hyperventilation, and digestive disorders. A person's physiological state is in high gear."
Reexperiencing: PTSD sufferers may have recurrent, intrusive memories. The memory may not seem to
specifically refer to the trauma, but it may be brought on by a visual image, smell, or sound that reminds
you of the experience. Dreams and nightmares may be pervasive. Daytime flashbacks in which a person
loses touch with the here and now may also be common.

Avoidance, or numbing: A stricken person may attempt to stop talking, thinking, or even remembering the
event. "They avoid people, places, and activities that remind them of the trauma," adds Giller. "People
often become isolated, and that is where agoraphobia, one of the co-occurring disorders, comes in."

I am going through a sufferage of many of the symptons mentioned above.  I have much more
research on the disorder, and as a person-human experiencing this "mental disease" at this
time I am going to try to continue to try and communicate my story.  What is difficult is that
to write and remember the story and the cause of the condition I have takes me falling deeper
and deeper into the darkness that is the trauma itself.    I was losing the concept of time.  I
was seeing almost every symptom mentioned above take control of my life and my mind.

This above writing describes what I feel the Darkness has been that I have lived the past
decade of my life.  Starting those days that my mother was killed by my step father, and
looking back I remember the moment that I begin to fall down the side of the mountain, that
I would continue to fall and bounce off more cliffs and fall into more dark crevices and hit
more bottoms than I would have thought existed in a man's life.  Death became all around
me and fear took over my life.

I am sorry that over the next years...the experience of my little brother dieing of aids
and being abandoned by his father in the year following my Mother's death,  then to
the next year when my step-father dies, as a business deal with IBM is going down,
as a girl I am seeing becomes pregnant...we all head to Texas where a conspiracy is
taking place to defraud my sister and I out of our family inheritance.  Homeless and
broke I am on the road with my the mother of my son going through a very hard preg-
nancy.  About the time that my son is being born in Missoula, Montana, I am taken
to the cleaners on a southbound train by some crooks, and Waylon Jennings is said to
be too drunk to get on the stage.

Months later it is 1994, and I am realizing that the Good-ole-boys...are stealing a few
million dollars from my sister and I and our kids.  This sends me reeling as I am
caught in a wild story that has Hollywood written all over it...in fact out of some thirty
lawyers I have talked to about my case...23 have said, "Man you should write a book,
or this would make a good movie."  I say okay.

I run to Texas to see where they have hidden a million or so and I go deeper into the
mire and finding skelletons in the Standley closet.  Wife leaves me.  I end up in the
Los Angeles County Jail for 39 days including Christmas and New Years in a hell
beyond what most men could live through one night of...I swear to God.   While in there
I begin to feel my guts tear inside.  My wife is seeing other men, while I am in jail, I
am in shock that all the days are passing and I can not get out.  I am torn up inside.
It is Christmas day and I am in a cell with four men that have all committed murder.
It is the first Christmas that I have ever missed in the 12 years I have been the father
to my Desire Sophie Lynn "Little Waterfall" Standley.  Life has become gut wrentching.

My gut is tearing.  A hernia is tearing at my gut.  I hold the pain.  I am going into denial,
depression, parnanoia...I will take the trip now through the syndrome of Post-Tramatic
Stress Disorder...while I continue to run and hide and live with my kids in the streets of
Los Angles in a new millennium.

39 DAYS IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY JAIL

This is my Hernia buldging out of my gut.

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