Clinician's Guide to PTSD: A Cognitive-Behavioral Approach, by Steven Taylor

[rachelmanija]

Reading for one of my trauma classes. I’m not summarizing the whole thing, just bits I found especially interesting.

Chapter One: Clinical Features of PTSD. Nothing new here.

Chapter Two: Cognitive and Behavioral Features of PTSD.

Amnesia. People rarely have global amnesia for traumatic events (not even knowing it happened or having no memories

Comments

[nancylebov]

I wonder whether the degree of self-blame for not doing something effective and heroic is a human basic, or amplified by living in a culture with lots of action-adventure movies.

[rachelmanija]

Good question! I have no idea.

[asakiyume]

- Not taking into account that when all options are bad, selecting the least bad is a highly moral choice.

--this is one, too, that's not popular to think about in the general media. We don't like solutions to things that are only meh, or are actually kind of yuck. . . even if the alternatives are way worse yuck. And this is especially hard to deal with as one can never be sure about alternative courses of action, so if a course taken seems not good, it's very hard not to fall into thinking that some other course would have been better. (I'm talking more for general things, though, not for actual sudden, traumatic events. For them, I think it may actually be easier to come to realize you took the best of a number of bad options--once you are primed to realize the mental trap you've been putting yourself in.)

[mount_oregano]

- People with PTSD often think their symptoms mean they’re “going crazy.”

I've suffered from minor but real PTSD after a terrorist bombing here in Madrid nine years ago near my home. To this day, if I hear an explosion, I get excessively frantic to know what happened. But we had all been carefully warned by mental health authorities that we'd probably suffer something like that, so when it happens, I'm still frantic but I know it's okay to be frantic, it's a normal thing. Some of my neighbors and friends have similar sorts of over-reactions, and we all understand that we're fine.

Counseling works, even counseling via newspapers and television.

[rachelmanija]

Yeah, it's basically caused by our natural drive to attempt to learn from experience. It may not always work in our best interest, but it's completely normal.

I'm glad counseling via media was helpful!

[shveta_thakrar]

This is awesome. Thanks, Rachel.