09/30/2023
If adult military service volunteers, who are trained, and provided with tools, skills, and community support to face scary stuff are a whopping 47% more likely to develop heart failure from PTSD... What could the statistics possibly be for survivors of chronic childhood trauma and abuse (C-PTSD)???
What if the combat you faced was with the people who are supposed to love and protect you, rather than an "enemy," or someone you don't have to rely on for your very survival?
We don't like to talk about childhood trauma, and we like to say "just get over it already," or "kids are so resilient," but those experiences literally formed our little nervous systems to constantly look for danger, and never be able to rest or feel safe, whether we can consciously remember the trauma or not. The body remembers, because it wired itself for extreme survival.
That constant unhealed stress causes disease at astronomical rates. And yet, I have never heard of being asked by a medical professional, "What were the conditions of your childhood? Were you safe environmentally, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually?"
What I've heard plenty of stories of is, "You're a hypochondriac. There's nothing wrong with you. Why are you wasting my time? Why can't you accept that you are fine?" Or, "Lose 50 # and if you still feel like crap, then we'll talk about it."
Well, right up until, "You are too young and smiley to have this kind of cancer/heart disease/autoimmune disorder/etc... How can this be?!"
Regardless of where PTSD or C-PTSD originates, we need to foster community support, to provide one another the safety to get emotionally uncomfortable, and to hear one another's stories without judgement. We must learn to hold space, and allow for our humanity and fragility without shame.
Our fears, traumas, and needs for survival make us feel alone and misunderstood, but the reality is that those are the things we all bear in common, separately.
Our stories vary, but the common meeting point in them all is a need to belong, to feel safe somewhere, with someone, the need to be relevant and have purpose... The need to be loved simply because we exist.
THAT is healing.
THAT creates resilience.
And resilience is the healing agent that offsets those astronomical risk factors of trauma.
We need to be in it together, but we've got such Lone Ranger mindsets.
I'd like to see this change.
In a study of more than 8,000 Veterans living in Hawaii and the Pacific Islands, those with PTSD were more likely to develop heart failure over about a seven-year follow-up period.
