Re: PTSD....what exactly is it? Looking for info.
I'll start with 1900 on...
From the early 20th century, men and boys did not cry, women were soft and domesticated, and things were pretty much put in a box, put into a corner, covered up, and left there to just be there. They were only looked at on the anniversary of whatever was in that box in the corner, covered up and hidden.
The same behavior was pretty much handed down through the 50's, then the 60's, and even into the 70's and part of the 80's. About the early 80's our society decided it was time to drop the bar of excellence, it was ok for men to feel their feminine side(cry and bitch like, uh, lil bitches), and then it just started to snowball into the 90's and early 21st century.
Then a few Special warfare Soldiers(and others, but these men from Bragg made the highest impact) came back from Afghanistan and killed their wives or girlfriends or someone else.
Now PTSD, or the pussy disease from not enough Green Beans or the PX running out for your favorite DVD started come into vogue.
Now we see that, hey, no bullshit, it don't matter how hard you are(A78063), but now, as a Veteran of however many deployments, you do one of two things. You box it up, put it in a corner, cover it up, hide it, and open it once a year or whenever something reminds you of it(OH, that;s that darn PTSD, that reminder that brings that fucking box right to the front of your mind, WIDE FUCKING OPEN), OR, you, as a Veteran, go find someone, a group of like minded individuals who BTDT with a facilitator, and you see what you can do to hopefully try to set 'self' at least a little right. That's just the mental stuff.
AS to your body's homeostatic responses, here's your PTSD in effect. You walk into a crowd, or a crowd forms around you. You get a little bit 'aware', then hyper vigilance hits, and that pesky anxiety(OH, THAT's what that is!) hits full effect because FEAR is pushing those adrenal glands full force because the mid brain is going FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK and sending an electric signal down through the spine to everything that will listen, and the posterior brain, mid brain, and cortex are spazzing out trying to get you to use the most primal behaviors to GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE. That is classic PTSD Anxiety Disorder, mild, moderate, or severe, and yes, I tried to make the language easier to understand instead of using my vocabulary correctly as I would when speaking to a fellow student or professor.
AS humans, and as Veteran's, we are all trying to look at this thing, especially when OUR FRIENDS have it's effects, and figure out how best to deal with it. Me personally, if I EVER have to chase down a friend over the phone because of some perceived shit hitting the fan, I am just going to have to drive there and do something about it myself. THIS is the behavior WE ALL NEED TO DO. WE are our Brother's KEEPERS. Some of us are fine, some fucked a little bit, some fucked a lotta bit, and some just so AFU that professional assistance is required.
Me, I am looking to a laboratory to figure this stuff out, essentially under my own damn microscope. I want to find the chemical answer that governs more than just the adrenaline and other signal based endocrine outputs.
