Synchronicity Comes In Mysterious Ways

Posted on by helpingsoul
cricket

“Jung introduced the idea of synchronicity to strip off the fantasy, magic, and superstition which surround and are provoked by unpredictable, startling, and impressive events that, like these, appear to be connected.” ― C.G. Jung, Synchronicity

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Susan has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, severe agoraphobia, panic attacks and dissociation after being robbed at her place of employment. While being held up at gunpoint, she was still able to remain composed and pack the thiefs’ backpack as he demanded.

She returned to work after a week but she remained in the fear response and couldn’t manage the constant feeling of intense danger.  She was overwhelmed and thus came to see me.

We have been working together for almost a year with some progress. Her intense fears cloud her confidence and her critical voice keeps her stuck.

She rather leap forward and “return to normal” than confront her fears with small steps.  She feels the fear and then criticizes herself for having the thoughts at all. She understandably just wants the fear and anxiety to go away.

I have used many of the techniques inside my toolbox.  I introduced mindfulness meditation, four square breathing, grounding exercises, and positive, compassionate self-talk to soothe anxiety. She is able to relax in session and regulate her fears but once she leaves my office, her attempts at home empower fear and her critical voice belittles her efforts.

The Anatomy of Anxiety

Neuroscience has helped us understand how trauma effects the brain. Physiological changes occur even before the conscious mind knows why you’re afraid. The classic fear response located in the amygdala alerts other brain structures resulting in a burst of adrenaline, a shutdown of digestion, a rapid heart rate, sweaty palms, and increased blood pressure.

The circuitry from the amygdala alerts the thalamus and the cortex, the conscious thinking portion of the brain. After the fear response is activated, the cortex and thalamus kick into gear. The thalamus processes sights and sounds and filters incoming cues and directs them either to the amygdala or the cortex.   If the data streaming in through the senses assesses there is imminent danger, the body stays on alert and the thinking part becomes limited.

Once the circuitry proceeds into an elevated stress response for a long period of time, physical, mental, and emotional aspects remain out of normal working conditions. Tools like mindfulness meditation, walking, deep breathing, listening to soothing music, and positive mantras can help regulate the stress response and return your neural circuitry back to normal.

As confidence is built in your ability to self regulate emotions, it is possible to slowly expose yourself to your fears in small doses. Susan was stuck in the stress response and had depleted her self-esteem to try and normalize her emotions.

Symbolism and Synchronicity

While we were in a recent session, I decided to have us switch chairs to engage her into a sense of empowerment. The physical change didn’t help.

But just when things seemed so unhopeful, a cricket appeared. I had been in the office all morning without a cricket in sight. I mentioned seeing the bug crawl on the floor.

Susan lit-up. She said, “My daughter and I were sitting in the backyard the other day and saw a cricket. I was about to kill it but my daughter stopped me. She said, “Mom, crickets are good luck. Don’t kill it. You’ll ruin your luck.”

Was this a coincidence or synchronicity? In Cameron’s book, The Artists Way she described Carl Jung’s term synchronicity as a fortuitous of intermeshing events. Whatever you want to call it, it helped Susan. The belief in seeing the cricket sparked her hope again.

According to many cultures, crickets are a symbol of good fortune and wealth. The cheerful chirps of crickets make us happy. Even William Shakespeare writes about the joys of crickets in his play, Henry IV. In scene IV, Prince Henry asks Poins, “Shall we be merry?” Poins responds, “As merry as crickets, my lad.”

In The Cricket on the Hearth, Charles Dickens writes, “It’s merrier than ever tonight, I think.” And it’s sure to bring us good future; John! It always has done so. To have a cricket on the hearth is the luckiest thing in the world!”

The Chinese observe the cricket as the threefold of life. Crickets lay their eggs in the soil and lives underground as lava. Then they transpire and convert into the imago.

The Irish considered crickets wise and household spirits. They understood all that was said and it was unwise to speak badly of crickets. The singing of crickets keeps the fairies away.

There is much evidence from many cultures and timespans that crickets are a symbol of good things are to come. Sometimes it’s a spontaneous symbol like a cricket that can bring positive change. I am hopeful that Susan will normalize her fears and anxieties.  Soon she will reflect back on the experience as major turning point in her life as a way to make new meaning and sense of a more expanded and renewed sense of self, compassion, and gratitude.

By the way, I never saw that cricket for the rest of the day. I believe it to be a synchronistic event meant only for Susan!

Tenth Anniversary of the Iraq War: The Personal Impact – To the Point on KCRW

Posted on by helpingsoul

Tenth Anniversary of the Iraq War: The Personal Impact – To the Point on KCRW.

Ten years ago tomorrow, the US invaded Iraq. The human cost to American veterans and their families – and the many Iraqis now desperate to leave a ruined country.

In 2003, Saddam Hussein was said to have “weapons of mass destruction.” There were hints he was tied to September 11. Eighty percent of Americans supported the US invasion. Ten years later, 58 percent say it was not worth years of unexpected combat, more than $2 trillion— and the deaths of 4500 Americans and 100,000 Iraqis. Marcos Soltero always wanted to be a Marine, and enlisted when he was 17 — two months after the Twin Towers collapsed in 2001. Linda Johnson watched both her husband and her youngest son go to war. Tomorrow, we’ll look at why the war is so widely perceived to have gone wrong. Today, we focus on the human consequences: veterans and families coping with injured brains and bodies. Was there ever a real welcome home?

Guests:
Steve Vogel: Washington Post, @steve_vogel
Elspeth Cameron Ritchie: former Army psychiatrist
Stacy Bare: Iraq War veteran
Matt Gallagher: Iraqi veteran, @MattGallagher83

Links:
Veterans Administration
2012 VA report on vets who die by suicide
Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing on timely access to high-quality care
Vogel on Army ordering reforms for mental health care treatment
Ritchie on the Army task force report on behavioral health
Sierra Club’s Mission Outdoors Program
Gallagher’s ‘Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War’
Veterans Expeditions
Johnson’s ‘To Be a Friend Is Fatal: A Story from the Aftermath of America at War’
The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies

Why Some Soldiers Develop PTSD While Others Don’t

Posted on by helpingsoul

Neuro_biol_PTSDPre-war vulnerability is just as important as combat-related trauma in predicting whether veterans’ symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will be long-lasting, according to new research published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

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Researcher Bruce Dohrenwend and colleagues at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and the New York State Psychiatric Institute found that traumatic experiences during combat predicted the onset of the full complement of symptoms, known as the PTSD “syndrome,” in Vietnam veterans. But other factors — such as pre-war psychological vulnerabilities — were equally important for predicting whether the syndrome persisted.

The researchers re-examined data from a subsample of 260 male veterans from the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study. All of the veterans in the subsample had received diagnostic examinations by experienced clinicians that included information about the onset of the disorder and whether it was still current 11 to 12 years after the war ended.

Dohrenwend and colleagues focused on the roles of three primary factors: severity of combat exposure (e.g., life-threatening experiences or traumatic events during combat), pre-war vulnerabilities (e.g., childhood physical abuse, family history of substance abuse), and involvement in harming civilians or prisoners.

The data indicated that stressful combat exposure was necessary for the onset of the PTSD syndrome, as 98% of the veterans who developed the PTSD syndrome had experienced one or more traumatic events.

But combat exposure alone was not sufficient to cause the PTSD syndrome.

Of the soldiers who experienced any potentially traumatic combat exposures, only 31.6% developed the PTSD syndrome. When the researchers limited their analysis to the soldiers who experienced the most severe traumatic exposures, there was still a substantial proportion — about 30% — that did not develop the syndrome. This suggests that there were other factors and vulnerabilities involved for the minority of exposed who did end up developing the PTSD syndrome.

Among these factors, childhood experiences of physical abuse or a pre-Vietnam psychiatric disorder other than PTSD were strong contributors to PTSD onset. Age also seemed to play an important role: Men who were younger than 25 when they entered the war were seven times more likely to develop PTSD compared to older men. The researchers also found that soldiers who inflicted harm on civilians or prisoners of war were much more likely to develop PTSD.

The combined data from all three primary factors — combat exposure, prewar vulnerability, and involvement in harming civilians or prisoners — revealed that PTSD syndrome onset reached an estimated 97% for veterans high on all three. While severity of combat exposure was the strongest predictor of whether the soldiers developed the syndrome, pre-war vulnerability was just as important in predicting the persistence of the syndrome over the long run.

The researchers conclude that these findings have important implications for policies aimed at preventing cases of war-related PTSD.

Given the seemingly potent interaction between combat exposure and pre-war vulnerability, these results emphasize the need to keep the more vulnerable soldiers out of the most severe combat situations.

Dohrenwend and colleagues also point out that the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, like the Vietnam War, are “wars amongst the people,” and they underline the need for research examining the circumstances in which harm to civilians and prisoners is likely to occur. Such research could provide important clues for preventing such devastating violations of the rules of war.

In addition to Dohrenwend, co-authors on this research include Thomas Yager and Ben Adams at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University; and Melanie Wall of the Mailman School of Public Health and Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University, and the New York State Psychiatric Institute.

The research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (Grant R01-MH059309) and by grants from the Spunk Fund, Inc. and a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Mental Health.