PTSD Symptoms from Abuse & Bullying

This information was, in my opinion, so important for EVERYONE who has EVER been bullied -- whether as an adult or a child, online or off... verbally or emotionally abused, teased, put down, invalidated, smeared or slammed -- I am putting it here on my personal blog.

I have, far too often, heard people I think should know better say -- "PTSD just PROVES [that person] is mentally ill."

PTSD is NOT Mental Illness --
it is Psychological Injury.

When we start to remove the stigma -- more people who need treatment & support will get it.

If John McCain had become President? We'd have had a man in the White House who has PTSD. Think about it.

Common features of Complex PTSD from bullying

People suffering Complex PTSD as a result of bullying report consistent symptoms which further help to characterize psychiatric injury and differentiate it from mental illness. These include:

• Fatigue with symptoms of or similar to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (formerly ME)
• An anger of injustice stimulated to an excessive degree (sometimes but improperly attracting the words "manic" instead of motivated, "obsessive" instead of focused, and "angry" instead of "passionate", especially from those with something to fear - like their abusers/ accusers)
• An overwhelming desire for acknowledgement, understanding, recognition and validation of their experience
• A simultaneous and paradoxical unwillingness to talk about the bullying (click here to see why) or abuse (click here to see why)
• A lack of desire for revenge, but a strong motivation for justice
• A tendency to oscillate between conciliation (forgiveness) and anger (revenge) with objectivity being the main casualty
• Extreme fragility, where formerly the person was of a strong, stable character
• Numbness, both physical (toes, fingertips, and lips) and emotional (inability to feel love and joy)
• Clumsiness
• Forgetfulness
• Hyperawareness and an acute sense of time passing, seasons changing, and distances travelled
• An enhanced environmental awareness, often on a planetary scale
• An appreciation of the need to adopt a healthier diet, possibly reducing or eliminating meat - especially red meat
• Willingness to try complementary medicine and alternative, holistic therapies, etc
• A constant feeling that one has to justify everything one says and does
• A constant need to prove oneself, even when surrounded by good, positive people
• An unusually strong sense of vulnerability, victimisation or possible victimisation, often wrongly diagnosed as "persecution"
• Occasional violent intrusive visualisations
• Feelings of worthlessness, rejection, a sense of being unwanted, unlikeable and unlovable
• A feeling of being small, insignificant, and invisible
• An overwhelming sense of betrayal, and a consequent inability and unwillingness to trust anyone, even those close to you
• In contrast to the chronic fatigue, depression etc, occasional false dawns with sudden bursts of energy accompanied by a feeling of "I'm better!", only to be followed by a full resurgence of symptoms a day or two later
• Excessive guilt - when the cause of PTSD is bullying, the guilt expresses itself in forms distinct from "survivor guilt"; it comes out as:
  

• an initial reluctance to take action against the bully and report him/her knowing that he/she could lose his/her job
• later, this reluctance gives way to a strong urge to take action against the bully so that others, especially successors, don't have to suffer a similar fate
• reluctance to feel happiness and joy because one's sense of other people's suffering throughout the world is heightened
• a proneness to identifying with other people's suffering
• a heightened sense of unworthiness, undeservingness and non-entitlement (some might call this shame)
• a heightened sense of indebtedness, beholdenness and undue obligation
• a reluctance to earn or accept money because one's sense of poverty and injustice throughout the world is heightened
• an unwillingness to take ill-health retirement because the person doesn't want to believe they are sufficiently unwell to merit it
• an unwillingness to draw sickness, incapacity or unemployment benefit to which the person is entitled
• an unusually strong desire to educate the employer and help the employer introduce an anti-bullying ethos, usually proportional to the employer's lack of interest in anti-bullying measures
• a desire to help others, often overwhelming and bordering on obsession, and to be available for others at any time regardless of the cost to oneself
• an unusually high inclination to feel sorry for other people who are under stress, including those in a position of authority, even those who are not fulfilling the duties and obligations of their position (which may include the bully) but who are continuing to enjoy salary for remaining in post [hint: to overcome this tendency, every time you start to feel sorry for someone, say to yourself "sometimes, when you jump in and rescue someone, you deny them the opportunity to learn and grow"]

Fatigue
The fatigue is understandable when you realize that in bullying, the target's fight or flight mechanism eventually becomes activated from Sunday evening (at the thought of facing the bully at work on Monday morning) through to the following Saturday morning (phew - weekend at last!). The fight or flight mechanism is designed to be operational only briefly and intermittently; in the heightened state of alert, the body consumes abnormally high levels of energy. If this state becomes semi-permanent, the body's physical, mental and emotional batteries are drained dry. Whilst the weekend theoretically is a time for the batteries to recharge, this doesn't happen, because:

• the person is by now obsessed with the situation (or rather, resolving the situation), cannot switch off, may be unable to sleep, and probably has nightmares, flashbacks and replays;
• sleep is non-restorative and unrefreshing - one goes to sleep tired and wakes up tired
• this type of experience plays havoc with the immune system; when the fight or flight system is eventually switched off, the immune system is impaired such that the person is open to viruses which they would under normal circumstances fight off; the person then spends each weekend with a cold, cough, flu, glandular fever, laryngitis, ear infection etc so the body's batteries never have an opportunity to recharge.

When activated, the body's fight or flight response results in the digestive, immune and reproductive systems being placed on standby. It's no coincidence that people experiencing constant abuse, harassment and bullying report malfunctions related to these systems (loss of appetite, constant infections, irritable bowel syndrome, loss of libido, impotence, etc).

The body becomes awash with cortisol which in high prolonged doses is toxic to brain cells. Cortisol kills off neuroreceptors in the hippocampus, an area of the brain linked with learning and memory. Chronic high cortisol levels can also cause uncontrollable weight gain.

The hippocampus is also the control centre for the fight or flight response, thus the ability to control the fight or flight mechanism itself becomes impaired. Most survivors of bullying experience symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome and/or Fibromyalgia.

Stress
Stress is on everybody's minds these days. However, whilst almost everyone seems to feel "stressed", most people are unaware that stress comes in two forms: positive and negative.

Positive stress (what Abraham Maslow calls eustress) is the result of good management and excellent leadership where everyone works hard, is kept informed and involved, and - importantly - is valued and supported. People feel in control.

Negative stress (what Maslow calls distress) is the result of a bullying climate where threat and coercion substitute for non-existent management skills. When people use the word "stress" on its own, they usually mean "negative stress". I define stress as "the degree to which one feels, perceives or believes one is not in control of one's circumstances". Control - or people's perception of being in control - seems to be key to susceptibility to experiencing PTSD.

The UK, and much of the Western world, adopts a blame-the-victim mentality as a way of avoiding having to deal with difficult issues. When dealing with stress it is essential to identify the cause of stress and work to reduce or eliminate the cause. Sending employees on stress management courses may sound good on paper but coercing people to endure more stress without addressing the cause is going to result in further psychiatric injury.

Stress is not the employee's inability to cope with excessive workload and excessive demands but a consequence of the employer's failure to provide a safe system of work.

Stress is known to cause brain damage
Dr John T O'Brien, consultant in old-age psychiatry at Newcastle General Hospital, published a paper in March 1997 entitled "The glucocorticoid cascade hypothesis in man" (and presumably woman), helpfully subtitled "Prolonged stress may cause permanent brain damage".

If Dr O'Brien's research proves correct, then those who encourage or perform such stressful acts as smear, threat and coercion might soon find themselves on the wrong end of a string of expensive personal injury lawsuits.