i re-watched the first episode of black sails last night and i can’t stop thinking about how anne is introduced; it’s night and she literally steps out from behind jack and her hat is obscuring her face and her shoulders are hunched…but then in the final scenes of the finale she’s standing tall in the sun and you can see her whole face and her eyes are so bright and she gets the last line of dialogue, calling on the crew to ready the ship to sail away. and just…thinking about how her character arc was centered around grappling with past trauma and realizing that she’s deserving of love & care……
PTSD is a chronic illness and depending on your history, it might never be gone completely. Especially if that trauma was ongoing and happened young, before your brain is fully formed. And thats pretty much any age under 25.
25!? Yeah. So the reason the shit that happened when you were a pre-teen or a teenager? That’s why it’s still not ok. That’s why you might not be experiencing your expected results from therapy, because it’s not enough to treat your trauma as though you are/were an adult.
Popular theory states that it’s only in early childhood development that ongoing trauma or abuse* forces physical and permanent changes in the brain, because it’s still forming.
But the fact is that human brains aren’t fully formed until adulthood (which can be between 18 and 25 – the same reason you can’t get car insurance till then and why they say you shouldn’t drink) and this extreme trauma forces the brain into what is essentially a ‘reset’ state, where it then adapts to the environment of constant abuse and is harmed in exactly the same way. (*Abuse can be physical, sexual, emotional, mental, or environmental (neglect, emotional neglect etc), and/or being witness to extreme ongoing abuse of someone else.)
So what’s the damage?
Well there is a few things that happen.
Trauma affects what children anticipate and focus on (y’all are children till you’re adults in terms of brains remember), and how you can view and understand the information that you receive.
Changes in how you perceive threats because of trauma end up being expressed in how you think, feel, behave and even how you regulate your biological systems.
This presents in problems with
self regulation (being able to start or stop doing something when you think you should, overeating or over-doing anything really is a good example of this)
aggression against themselves and others
problems with attention and dissociation
physical problems (I will expand upon this later)
difficulties in self concept (who am I, what am I, believing you have worth, believing you are a person, etc)
and the capacity to negotiate satisfactory interpersonal relationships. (Why do I keep ending up in abusive relationships, why can’t I make friends or connect with people etc)
Trauma is so powerful because the amygdala starts functioning almost immediately after birth; children rapidly are able to experience fear and assess danger. Babies get scared even when they can’t think properly because of this.
Basically, early abuse and neglect can affect the development of the limbic system which makes individuals with traumatic histories to become highly sensitive to sensory input, which is known as hypervigilance.
Your amigdala is part of the limbic system that controls instinct, your “lizard brain” that keeps you safe and controls your “fight, flight, freeze, or feign” instinct. (The amigdala and the limbic system are so heavily affected by this hypervigilance that I am going to write a whole nother post just on it’s effects on the body.)
SO. We now know PTSD from your developmental years is more damaging than if the same abuse occured later in life.
That’s why regular therapy focusing only on CBT might not be enough, that’s why you might not be fully recovered when you feel like you should be. And there are heaps of us with this shit. So you’re not alone, and now that we know why, we’re going to get through it.
I’m capping this off with some important notes:
ongoing abuse of any kind between the ages of ‘born’ and 25 will result in the same physiological and mental damage as abuse as a child
Abuse can be emotional, physical, sexual, or environmental. It can be from a caregiver or from a relationship you chose to enter. Abuse is abuse is abuse and it affects us profoundly.
Many of you reading this might actually have been told (like me) that because of your PTSD symptoms you must have also experienced abuse that you don’t remember as a small child. This is not necessarily true. (NOTE: for some people it might be true as well. do not use this to invalidate people or i will come for you. This part honestly is here because you have no idea how relieved I am to know that there doesn’t have to be more horrible memories lurking in my head)
Trauma affects our ability to process information, to retain information, and to process threats. This means that sometimes everything is a threat (hypervigilance) and sometimes we don’t know what is abusive because that’s our normal.
Being constantly surrounded by potential threats results in hypervigilance. Hypervigilance is when you are so hyperaroused (sensory arousal not sexual) that you are trying to anticipate the reactions and read the emotions of the people you interact with to be prepared and stay safe. It is constantly being in a crisis state, and it is exhausting. You know when you’re so wired you’re trying to see out the back of your head and you can hear which room your neighbour is walking to? That.
This shit makes you physically sick. Asthma, allergies, immune disorders, fibro, lupus, chronic fatigue, osteoarthritis, osteoperosis, gastrointestinal disorders, migrane, vertigo, vomiting and constant nausea are some of the possible physical symptoms.
Mental health wise you get depression, anxiety, self harm, dissasociative disorders, and DID.
That’s it for my intro to PTSD from trauma during developmental years. Which I need to find a shorter name for.
Next up I’ll be discussing the physical changes that this trauma causes in the brain, and how it affects our bodies.
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Black Sails Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Hal Gates/Admiral Hennessey Characters: Admiral Hennessey (Black Sails), Thomas Hamilton, Hal Gates Additional Tags: The Whole Fluff and Nothing But the Fluff, wherein the McGraw-Hamiltons have a cat, and Hennessey would like his bed back Series: Part 9 of Graced Summary:
“Are you trying to get Admiral to move?” Thomas’ voice comes from the hallway, and Hennessey looks up.
“You seem to believe I could be so fortunate as to persuade a cat to – wait. Admiral?”
I am an ER nurse and this is the best description of this event that I have ever heard.
FEMALE HEART ATTACKS
I was aware that female heart attacks are different, but this is description is so incredibly visceral that I feel like I have an entire new understanding of what it feels like to be living the symptoms on the inside. Women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have… you know, the sudden stabbing pain in the chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the chest & dropping to the floor the we see in movies. Here is the story of one woman’s experience with a heart attack:
"I had a heart attack at about 10:30 PM with NO prior exertion, NO prior emotional trauma that one would suspect might have brought it on. I was sitting all snugly & warm on a cold evening, with my purring cat in my lap, reading an interesting story my friend had sent me, and actually thinking, ‘A-A-h, this is the life, all cozy and warm in my soft, cushy Lazy Boy with my feet propped up.
A moment later, I felt that awful sensation of indigestion, when you’ve been in a hurry and grabbed a bite of sandwich and washed it down with a dash of water, and that hurried bite seems to feel like you’ve swallowed a golf ball going down the esophagus in slow motion and it is most uncomfortable. You realize you shouldn’t have gulped it down so fast and needed to chew it more thoroughly and this time drink a glass of water to hasten its progress down to the stomach. This was my initial sensation–the only trouble was that I hadn’t taken a bite of anything since about 5:00 p.m.
After it seemed to subside, the next sensation was like little squeezing motions that seemed to be racing up my SPINE (hind-sight, it was probably my aorta spasms), gaining speed as they continued racing up and under my sternum (breast bone, where one presses rhythmically when administering CPR).
This fascinating process continued on into my throat and branched out into both jaws. ‘AHA!! NOW I stopped puzzling about what was happening – we all have read and/or heard about pain in the jaws being one of the signals of an MI happening, haven’t we? I said aloud to myself and the cat, Dear God, I think I’m having a heart attack!
I lowered the foot rest dumping the cat from my lap, started to take a step and fell on the floor instead. I thought to myself, If this is a heart attack, I shouldn’t be walking into the next room where the phone is or anywhere else… but, on the other hand, if I don’t, nobody will know that I need help, and if I wait any longer I may not be able to get up in a moment.
I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair, walked slowly into the next room and dialed the Paramedics… I told her I thought I was having a heart attack due to the pressure building under the sternum and radiating into my jaws. I didn’t feel hysterical or afraid, just stating the facts. She said she was sending the Paramedics over immediately, asked if the front door was near to me, and if so, to un-bolt the door and then lie down on the floor where they could see me when they came in.
I unlocked the door and then laid down on the floor as instructed and lost consciousness, as I don’t remember the medics coming in, their examination, lifting me onto a gurney or getting me into their ambulance, or hearing the call they made to St. Jude ER on the way, but I did briefly awaken when we arrived and saw that the radiologist was already there in his surgical blues and cap, helping the medics pull my stretcher out of the ambulance. He was bending over me asking questions (probably something like ‘Have you taken any medications?’) but I couldn’t make my mind interpret what he was saying, or form an answer, and nodded off again, not waking up until the Cardiologist and partner had already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon up my femoral artery into the aorta and into my heart where they installed 2 side by side stints to hold open my right coronary artery.
I know it sounds like all my thinking and actions at home must have taken at least 20-30 minutes before calling the paramedics, but actually it took perhaps 4-5 minutes before the call, and both the fire station and St Jude are only minutes away from my home, and my Cardiologist was already to go to the OR in his scrubs and get going on restarting my heart (which had stopped somewhere between my arrival and the procedure) and installing the stents.
Why have I written all of this to you with so much detail? Because I want all of you who are so important in my life to know what I learned first hand.
1. Be aware that something very different is happening in your body, not the usual men’s symptoms but inexplicable things happening (until my sternum and jaws got into the act). It is said that many more women than men die of their first (and last) MI because they didn’t know they were having one and commonly mistake it as indigestion, take some Maalox or other anti-heartburn preparation and go to bed, hoping they’ll feel better in the morning when they wake up… which doesn’t happen. My female friends, your symptoms might not be exactly like mine, so I advise you to call the Paramedics if ANYTHING is unpleasantly happening that you’ve not felt before. It is better to have a ‘false alarm’ visitation than to risk your life guessing what it might be!
2. Note that I said ‘Call the Paramedics.’ And if you can take an aspirin. Ladies, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!
Do NOT try to drive yourself to the ER – you are a hazard to others on the road.
Do NOT have your panicked husband who will be speeding and looking anxiously at what’s happening with you instead of the road.
Do NOT call your doctor – he doesn’t know where you live and if it’s at night you won’t reach him anyway, and if it’s daytime, his assistants (or answering service) will tell you to call the Paramedics. He doesn’t carry the equipment in his car that you need to be saved! The Paramedics do, principally OXYGEN that you need ASAP. Your Dr. will be notified later.
3. Don’t assume it couldn’t be a heart attack because you have a normal cholesterol count. Research has discovered that a cholesterol elevated reading is rarely the cause of an MI (unless it’s unbelievably high and/or accompanied by high blood pressure). MIs are usually caused by long-term stress and inflammation in the body, which dumps all sorts of deadly hormones into your system to sludge things up in there. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let’s be careful and be aware. The more we know the better chance we could survive to tell the tale.“
Reblog, repost, Facebook, tweet, pin, email, morse code, fucking carrier pigeon this to save a life!
I wish I knew who the author was. I’m definitely not the OP, actually think it might be an old chain email or even letter from back in the day. The version I saw floating around Facebook ended with “my cardiologist says mail this to 10 friends, maybe you’ll save one!” And knew this was way too interesting not to pass on.
Female heart attacks are much different, and most people don’t know it!
This is so much more helpful than the fucking lists that basically describe everything that happens during a really nasty panic attack and then tell you to go seek help as if you don’t have an anxiety disorder that does this to you on a regular basis and can afford to go to the emergency room.
“Calm down, little cat – I’ll be with you in a minute.”
You are a goddess among women.
“Yes dear, I know.”
I have never been happier in my life.
“You’ve already been fed, sweetheart. Don’t think you can trick me.”
Miranda is the most wonderful owner a cat could wish for, and Thomas is determined that she knows it. It’s the least he can do — after she has been instrumental in securing for him true happiness.
Happiness, who is at this moment, still hiding beneath the sofa.
Are you alright under there?
His answer is swift, if unbelievable.
Fine.
Forgive me, Thomas miaows back, but you might be a little more convincing if you would emerge from under the sofa.
Maybe later. When she’s gone.
Thomas sighs, unable to keep from flicking his tail in irritation. Finally, he has a partner, a beautiful ginger companion to share his cardboard boxes and the lovely heated cat bed Miranda bought him last Christmas, and yet time that they should be spending doing things of that sort is currently being squandered, and all thanks to a misunderstanding!
Miranda is a very nice woman —
SHE PUT ME IN THE BATH! I’M WET!
Well, Thomas miaows. I’d be more than happy to help you dry off, if you’d just come out?
In the name of everything soft and warm, he doesn’t even know this gorgeous cat’s name yet! Currently, all he can see of him is a pair of bright green eyes, blinking slowly.
She was only trying to help, Thomas huffs. Honestly, she should have just left it to Thomas. When he thinks about the sunny afternoon he could have spent happily grooming his new love — but that’s beside the point. She won’t do it again, he assures.
A pause. Then: Do you promise?
On everything I hold most dear, Thomas purrs.
“Oh — good boy, James — I’m so proud of you!”
James. A beautiful name, for a beautiful cat.
I’m Thomas, miaows Thomas.
Yes, replies James. I know who you are.
And I know who you are, now. But I already knew what you are.
James bristles slightly. And what is that?
Lovely, Thomas purrs. You’re lovely.
James’ whiskers twitch adorably, and he edges forward until their noses bump together — Thomas can’t help purring.
Meg's Mumbles 