The person who wrote their theory at your link has nothing to back it up and in fact it is utter insanity to think that PTSD is nutrition based.
"This explains why it is so difficult to treat PTSD, because you need to think outside your box....."
There is no legitimate research that supports the inane original link you provided. The link in the above post goes to a "page not found" so it's out of date and has no basis in fact.
PTSD is treatable. I had PTSD with very suicidal leanings several years ago and cured mine through meditation - not through nutrition. To even think that PTSD is nutritionally based is utterly insane and a direct slap in the face of those who are dealing with it. The original link has no concept whatsoever of what PTSD even is.
Meditation does cure PTSD, but you must meditate - daily with a time commitment. In all healing, you have to want to be healed. Here's a woman who spent more than 8 years in psychiatric hospitals and cured all her "insanity" through meditation which included:
Dual Axis 1: Manic Depression, or Bipolar Disorder 2 and Schizo-affective Disorder co morbid with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. (http://intentions.wordpress.com/about/)
Even mainstream doctors are accepting meditation. There are a zillion forms of meditation and to say that they don't work is preposterous. I use the kind that is based on grounding and brings you as spirit into your body to take control and rid yourself of energies that are controlling you. The most effective form of meditation is based on grounding.
Your link doesn't even have the word meditation in it. Nice try.
Thanks for your validation. I use a meditation that is based on grounding, running energy, and activating and clearing out the chakras - while also recognizing that I am spirit and so is everyone else on the planet. My meditation posture is sitting, hands at my side in a relaxed position, feet flat on the floor uncrossed, and turning within. I won't go into a lot of details because I don't wish to invite invalidation if it doesn't meet the expectations of other meditators. However, if you go to the link that I provided about a woman who was incarcerated and declared insane who healed through meditation at http://intentions.wordpress.com/about/ you will find that she uses a form of meditation in which she "melts into" herself. That's similar to what I practice except that I allow all energies that are not me to flow down my grounding (a connection you as spirit make between your first chakra and the center of the planet). Grounding is a flow, a dumping ground, it is not static and you will only let go of things that are blocking you.
My PTSD healing was not easy and I don't in any way want to imply that it was. My source of pain had been there for decades and I never knew it and once I got in touch with it I denied it was there until - I began to re-experience my pain all over my body in vivid detail. I think that anyone who knows they are dealing with PTSD knows exactly what I mean. My body did not want to meditate. It tried every which way to turn away from my pain but I forced myself to sit and look at what really happened in my life. It took me a long time to actually get through it, but after a month or two of facing and admitting it, the journey became easier. It is something that I will never forget yet there are no longer any triggers or fear or anything else associated with it other than a memory. I counseled for about six months and never told my counselor or anyone else that I contemplated suicide. I knew that if I did I would be incarcerated. I also refused all offers of medication - and an offer of hypnosis from my counselor. I learned self-hypnosis many years ago but what I've learned since then leads me to believe that it does more damage than it does good, and in the hands of the wrong person - including experienced counselors, it can cause severe problems.
My pain originated in early childhood. We rationalize all sorts of debilitating things that happen to us in childhood because we think our world is normal, and generally it isn't. Then when we reach adulthood we once more rationalize events in childhood as "it didn't really hurt" or "others had it worse than I did" and all sorts of excuses - anything except admitting that we/I as an individual had pain. I am an ex-Marine front-line rifle carrying combat veteran of Korea, and later in my service time survived an airplane disaster in which the pilot was killed in the crash. I will take both my combat and air experiences many times over rather than go through my childhood difficulties - any day. I can relate to anyone who had abuse in childhood, either male or female. Yes I had to deal with my military experiences too but they were much easier than the childhood experiences.
Best to you in dealing with your PTSD.
Thanks for the comments.
I don't consider myself strong, though I do consider myself stronger because of my experiences and I can relate to the world around me much better because of it. I view the process as never ending and I certainly haven't arrived yet, though I've pretty much drained the emotions from the experiences.
I don't combine a "mindfulness" to my meditation, I use spiritual techniques for releasing things that I don't want in my reality including pain and hate (have had loads of that). Sometimes my meditation will be simply allowing myself to run my earth and cosmic energies which clear out my chakras, and some of the time I'll focus it on healing projects. Here's a summation of the kind of meditation that I practice:
http://www.youtube.com/user/CDMPsychicInstitute
Thankyou for the clarification on the meditation you practice,107689. I have bookmarked the link you've sent to view at a later time. Unfortunately my mouse, keyboard and speakers all went kaput within a 2 week timeframe, and my speakers are now the last to be replaced!! ):
Your experiences and healing journey are commendable yet it is your personal journey and not all journeys are the same. Nutrition alone will not heal PTSD. I do agree with your assessment of medications. Before the introduction of SSRI meds I was given a 10 pill prescription for 5 grain (a low dose) Valium and discovered that it made the world go away much better than martinis - without the hangover. After taking the first one in the morning and ruining my whole day I used them recreationally in the evening and once they were gone I swore I'd never again take a mood altering drug, and I haven't. The Valium was long before my PTSD showed its face.
Shortly after my PTSD erupted full force by re-experiencing my childhood abuse along with the ability to only sleep in 20 and 30 minute stretches due to horrible nightmares, I took a three day seminar at Esalen with Edith Eger who is an Auschwitz survivor.
On her arrival at Auschwitz, Edith's father was separated from her and sent to another camp and she never saw him again. Her mother was taken directly to the ovens and she knew that same day that her mother was going up in the smoke that was emanating from them. Edith spent a year in that concentration camp where she was permanently crippled by a German soldier who hit her in the back with the butt of his rifle. She obviously did not have an easy time.
After the war Edith married another Holocaust survivor and immigrated to the United States where she raised a family. At age 40 she began college for the first time in her life at the University of Texas where she received a PhD in psychology and she had been practicing her profession for thirty years by the time she taught the seminar.
The seminar had only 5 or 6 attendees so there was a great deal of time to ask questions and to get to know Edith. Her own healing journey was one of self assessment and didn't involve drugs or nutrition. She took responsibility for everything that happened to her in her life, including her Auschwitz experience. By that I me she recognized that she had personally created everything that had happened to her and then through her inward journey learned why she had created that experience. Although I didn't know her beliefs before the seminar, it was something that I also believed (still do) for myself so I greatly appreciated her view of healing and growth. Edith was about 16 at the time of her incarceration and had trained as a ballet dancer for several years. When Dr. Mengele (infamously known as the doctor of death) learned of her dancing ability he asked her to perform for him, and here is a quote from Edith recalling her experience while dancing:
"Edie said as she continued to dance, "Dr. Mengele discussed with the guards who should die next. I prayed. Not for myself, but for Dr. Mengele, so he would not have to kill me. It was then that I began to pity the Nazis; they were more imprisoned than I. Somehow I would survive, but they would always have to live with what they had done."
Edith told how she had had to forgive Hitler, the guard who crippled her, and all of the Germans in the concentration camp as a part of her healing journey.
I believe very much the same way that Edith does, that we create our own reality and that we have to take responsibility for everything that has happened in our lives and forgive everyone else while at the same time forgiving ourselves for our creations. That is my core belief and I use meditation to do just that and meditation and nothing else cured my PTSD. By the way, I was on the front lines in combat in Korea and I'm an air disaster survivor in which another person was killed. Yes, I've had to deal with those experiences as well using my meditation. I'd like to also add that my PTSD erupted in full bloom within a week of the love of my life leaving me. I discovered that life experiences can do that. Today there are no triggers of any kind that can rekindle either my PTSD or military experiences.
I'd like to point out one last thing. My PTSD was from childhood experiences - within my family. During childhood one has to rationalize the world about them, and that's what I and many others do with pain. It is that rationalization and denial that creates the setting for PTSD, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and many other ills - and it has nothing to do with nutrition. One of Edith's many little sayings was "If you repress you will depress" and I found that to be true. You have to experience all of your emotions from anger and hate to joy and enthusiasm in order to experience life pain free. That doesn't mean trouble free, it just means pain free.
You can learn about Edith Eger and her experiences here: http://www.heroicjourney.com/pages/about/edieeger.htm
"As to meditation, I regard this as a "management technique", (please look up term at our search engine) which is different from a "cure". It is a technique that needs to be done at regular intervals, like taking drugs, but does not permanently "cure" the illness. We have a "relaxation therapy" at our web site (look up) that is similar to "meditation"."
That is simply not true. I have cured several mental and physical manifestations from PTSD to long term depression, anxiety, panic attacks, heart palpitations, atrial fibrilation, and other things with meditation alone, and I'm not the only one. Many have done the same thing.
When you turn within and recognize yourself as the eternal spirit that you and everyone else is, you can then take control of your reality as spirit and you can heal all sorts of things. The major problem is that we in our Western Society are all programmed that we are bodies and not spirit.
The woman who I have mentioned before was taught that she was an eternal spirit at age 7 and she survived Auschwitz - weighing 40 pounds and buried by corpses when she was found. She took responsibility for her incarceration, forgave Hitler, the Nazis and all Germans in her camps. Taking complete responsibility for everything that has ever happened to you and forgiving all of it - externally and internally, is the key to all kinds of healing.
Edith Eger's profile is at: http://www.heroicjourney.com/pages/about/edieeger.htm
Jurplesman, first of all, I am glad you are better after your own terrible traumas. I can't imagine the horrors you wrote about.
I still, though, cannot even move closer to your hypoglycemia theory.. I am very glad and amazed your diet helped you get better, but it is still very hard for me to believe that this was the sole cure-all. You do seem to acknowledge later on, in another post, that some sort of emotional/psychological healing is beneficial as well, but I think you see it as a second to the nutritional.
So, did you use any type of therapy method on yourself, or was it truly & soley nutritional?
In my opinion, our whole being should be treated as one. What affects us emotionally, affects us physically, and vice versa. What I am trying to say is that a good plan to cure PTSD, must also involve some kind of heavy duty therapy - counselling, EFT, neurofeedback, meditation, whatever is effective! I am a very firm believer in that it is the BRAIN that rules the body, not the other way around! My last visit with an alternative doctor believed, this as well. He said most everything is rooted from the brain. And, so, mine was rooted in the central nervous system as verified by a diagnostic machine.
I thought your question about why some people experience PTSD and others don't, was interesting, because I recently read a free PDF article by Deirdre Fay, and she commented on this very thing.I personally thought her answer was very sound, because my own PTSD was initially triggered by a head trauma, which then catapulted me having to (no option here!) deal with years of repressed childhood abuse. You don't have to agree with what she says, but I'm going to cut and paste a portion of it below..
As a last comment, I would like to answer your question myself and this is based on my own experience,and other sufferers I have come to know. I think that people are more prone (please know I am speaking generally)to have PTSD or any other mental illness because: They are not connected to other people, and do not have a good network of safe people (friends,family,support groups) who they can openly and honestly share,talk to, and confess to. These same people can be lonely, and do not feel loved, do not feel loved for who they are, and don't feel supported... In summary, as human beings,we have a deep need to 'be known', to love and be loved, and to be supported and connected. I cannot express enough that without being bonded to others, life can be scary.
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Here is Deirdre Fay's article:
Why some traumas are harder to deal with than others
As we’ve learned more about trauma, we’ve found there is a profound difference between adult‐onset and childhood trauma. When someone grows up with a relatively stable childhood, they show greater resilience in dealing with a later traumatic event, such as a car accident, rape, or war. If a person had a chaotic or abusive childhood, however, the picture is quite different. Without secure and safe adult relationships to help them buffer life’s difficulties and make sense of the world, the child will grow up to have less resilience in handling a traumatic event later in life. Think of it this way. Let’s say little Mary is running playfully and then suddenly falls and scrapes her knee. Mary’s immediate response is to cry and to look for a parent, caretaker, or someone to comfort her. Her caretaker soon comes to her aid and tends to her hurt knee. Little Mary’s nervous system calms and her young, developing mind stops being flooded with stress. This scenario is repeated daily throughout childhood all over the world. The attachment research shows the intricate internal dance that happens when a child is reassured and soothed.
Simple, isn’t it? Now let’s take a look at what happens to little Marcie in the same scenario. She falls, hurts her knee, and cries. Unfortunately, her adult caretaker is involved in a phone conversation, or working on the computer, or trying to take care of the rest of the family. When little Marcie falls, her caretaker either ignores her or yells at her in anger. Or even worse, the caretaker might respond with violence. What happens to Marcie when this gets repeated over and over, when her caretaker consistently fails to comfort her? Obviously, she learns that no one will take care of her, that she’s on her own. What’s less obvious is how she has to learn to override her own physiological systems. For a child, the natural response to distress is to cry and to turn to an adult for help. But if she can’t cry and can’t rely on an adult then she has to find another way to deal. Her mind might find a creative and ingenious solution: to cordon off, or compartmentalize the distress and continue on. The powerful result for little Mary is that her distress gets integrated. She realizes that when bad things happen, she gets comforted, and life goes on. Life doesn’t overwhelm her. For little Marcie, though, it’s a different story. Over time, this consistent lack of adequate caretaking creates discord and causes her to compartmentalize, rather than integrate, how she experiences distress. Little Marcie has to continue functioning in the world, so the hurtful feelings and negative thoughts get shoved into an internal box. It’s a phenomenal coping technique. The problem, however, is when this compartmentalized material gets triggered by something and breaks out of its box, and shows up later in life through behaviors and symptoms. (We’re learning more about the relationship between attachment and trauma. Some wonderful work is being written about this and I’ll write another paper to address this specific subject in the future. Make sure you are on my mailing list to get upcoming information.
Email me at dfay@meditation‐ptsd.com to get on my mailing list or sign up at http://www.meditation‐ptsd.com.)">http://www.meditation‐ptsd.com.)">http://www.meditation‐ptsd.com.)
I'm of the opinion that Jurplesman has worked through his/her PTSD with much more than nutritional fixes, whether they wish to admit it or not. Time and space is a great healer, and discussing it with others helps a lot too, regardless whether those others are professionals or not. In that process you are admitting that you have pain which is the first step in emotional healing. To deny the pain will simply continue your condition. I think that reading books when you can narrow it down to your condition is very helpful too. That said, one can then find articles outside of the mainstream which are neither researched nor peer reviewed and with them you can prove anything.
I too had a great deal of childhood abuse by adults, sexual, physical, and spiritual. One of the things I had to deal with is learning whether my PTSD and other pain was real or imagined. I have many vivid memories from early childhood that I have never forgotten (one in particular goes back to six months of age), some I have repressed. I learned that memories can be implanted by counselors without their even knowing it and avoided hypnosis like the plague because that's one of the worst violators. During my reading I think I read about eight books on memory and in the process discovered the False Memory Syndrome Foundation which claims to defend individuals falsely accused of sexual abuse. Within that foundation there are several who are in fact sexual abusers and are using the foundation to hide behind when in fact there is no clinical diagnoses called false memory syndrome. During my meditations memories and pictures began to come up which I denied - until they became so real that I re-experienced them. This happened when a great love left me and I learned that things like that can be a trigger. I couldn't sleep for more than 20 or 30 minutes at a time because of the horrible nightmares and feelings that I was still being abused. Anyway, I learned as much as I could about the origin of the PTSD and all the other abuse that I had during childhood and used it in my meditations. I did get through it all, but it took time and space. Like I've said before, I'll take my combat and air disaster experiences many times over rather than to once more go through what I experienced in childhood.
Glad you're still keeping at it.
I agree completely with your posting of why some people experience PTSD and others don't. Deirdre Fay's article is outstanding. Much of it is what I've learned and experienced. Yes, you need to have sound nutrition but that's only one small contributing factor in present time and has nothing to do with what happened in past time.