Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world? • Hacker News Board

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#201

Post by clairity » Mon, Apr 27, 2020, 10:55 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #194

clairity wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

poor little chihuahua. hopefully someone took a chance on it! my dog also shook and was frozen scared when i first met her. she took a few minutes to take a single timid step forward. but she wasn't profoundly broken like a pair of similar-looking 6 month old siblings that were there at the same time (found in a separate hoarding situation). i saw each of them separately, and neither made any positive movements in th…

A trick I've subsequently learned is that if you crouch down all the way, many small dogs like to hide in the 'cave' made by your shins. In general shrinking yourself makes most dogs like you a lot more, but the little dogs will bee-line for your legs.

yes, crouching makes you smaller/less threatening. puppies/little dogs at the dog park (when that was open) use it as a little fort against the bigger dogs. much fun =)

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#202

Post by coffeeling » Mon, Apr 27, 2020, 11:04 PM UTC

papeda wrote: post #3

On a related note, a while ago I read a little about how ancient families coped with the deaths of their children. My takeaway, pretty much cribbed from this article [1], was that such deaths produced less trauma than they would today because: (1) More families lost children. This lessened the trauma because a family could talk to other nearby families who had experienced the same thing. Those families would also be…

One interesting thing that pops up on reddit every now and then is that pregnancy going wrong is surprisingly common, yet it's not talked about that way at all - most people talking about it seem surprised that it's actually somewhat common. It's like pregnancy going wrong is reserved for specifically infertile/something people, rather than the dice roll not being 9 wins to 1 loss in the first place.

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#203

Post by jbotz » Mon, Apr 27, 2020, 11:33 PM UTC

PTSDthrowaway wrote: post #129

I am an United States Navy Corpsman and a veteran of a combat deployment. I am very thankful to see comments here disputing the author's claim that there are no signs of PTSD in the ancient world. I do not have the classic "first page" symptoms from the DSM-V, as I like to call them. These are the flashbacks, intrusive memories, noise sensitivity - the common image of classic PTSD. I believe I do not have them becaus…

> [traumatic events] only return to bother us if there is some behavior that was contrary to the individuals values.

Or perhaps, a bit more generally, if the event causes a significant degree of cognitive dissonance. This would include behavior by one who later suffers PTSD, as you say, but it might also include events that were simply totally outside what a victim expected could possibly happen to them.

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#204

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 12:46 AM UTC

derefr wrote: post #171

sharkweek wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My (limited, so please correct me if I’m saying something dumb) understanding here too is some people are just wired different and can handle more traumatic situations than others. My therapist had me read a book called The Highly Sensitive Person by Dr. Elaine Aron after I told him I was struggling with things I felt a “normal” person should be able to handle just fine. The book made a lot of interesting points abou…

> some people are just wired different and can handle more traumatic situations than others. I've heard it hypothesized that ADHD is adaptive/selected for in some contexts, because people with it are more resilient to stress, i.e. it takes more to make them scared/shocked/traumatized, just like it takes more to excite/motivate them. And so such people can respond "normally" to stressful situations where the other peo…

[deleted]

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#205

Post by king_panic » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 1:14 AM UTC

Udik wrote: post #139

king_panic wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact opposite of your conclusion is true. Acknowledging someone's emotion gives them permission to feel it, and eventually let it go. Dismissing someone's emotion is denying them the permission to feel it, and let it go. Feelings we don't allow to be felt are never released. This is true of PTSD at one bound, and the anxiety someone can feel day-to-day, over what seems like absolutely nothing to the casual obser…

It's interesting that both you and the other commenter took the second option for a dismissal of the grieving person's emotions. Which is not, and there is no indication in the text that it is one. It does acknowledge the pain (also by explicitly sharing a personal experience) and then proceeds to reframe it into some common occurrence that can be overcome in due time. I think the keyword here is "common". Negative e…

Yes it's very interesting that two people came to the same conclusion of dismissal when there is no indication of dismissal.. it's almost like there is indication..

Commonality does not make negative emotions less terrible. A support group doesn't make a condition more or less common. A support group makes you less alone, which is another way of saying you feel your emotions are validated and youre relationship to your emotion changes in that group. Some people need a support group to change their relationship to an emotion.

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#206

Post by areoform » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 2:58 AM UTC

_wovb wrote: post #84

crazygringo wrote: post #50

Excellent counterpoint from r/AskHistorians (paragraph breaks added for legibility): [1] > Cross-cultural psychologists have observed that, regardless of cultural background, people who suffer persistent emotional disturbances in the wake of a traumatic event exhibit intrusive memory symptoms in some form. Here in the US, these are closely related to what we commonly call "flashbacks." For the Romans, people experien…

Thanks for this. I’m a trauma therapist, I work with many people who have PTSD. Reading this article all I could think was: Trauma is a sophisticated concept. As a society and species, we are pretty “trauma naive” in that we have just recently come to this understanding of the very complex web of psychological, somatic, emotional, sociological, intergenerational, and cultural aspects of this experience. Because of th…

Hey palimpsest, I can’t see an email on your profile, is there a way to get in touch?

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#207

Post by __blockcipher__ » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 3:05 AM UTC

clairity wrote: post #152

kristiandupont wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>fearful/cautious of men My ex neighbor rescued a wonderful dog that had been tied somewhere and left to die, in Spain. He brought her to Denmark and she has mostly recovered with the weird caveat that she is now racist. Southern-european looking people (black hair/beards) make her really angry or nervous.

glad she found a much better home! i worry about my dog being slightly racist too, as she tends to react more to black/brown folks relative to white/asian folks, but i may just be projecting my own implicit/latent racism there.

It’s very common. Growing up I had a dog that absolutely hated Mexicans because we had a Mexican gardener and the dog was very territorial. As you could imagine, it was difficult to get enough exposure to extinguish the reaction.

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#208

Post by acituan » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 3:28 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #172

acituan wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree about being trauma naive as a society. Having a scientific understanding of trauma is separate from having phenomenological understanding of trauma, and I believe we have a large amount of knowledge and wisdom about the latter. I also believe there is a large repertoire of psychotechnologies that helped people to be trauma resistant or helped them if they had PTSD. We just lost contact with many of them an…

I took an exercise class a while back and the instructor came in one day shaking. On his way to class there was a bad motorcycle accident. Guy didn't die but had life-altering injuries, and the instructor was first on the scene. It was bad. He was vibrating when he came in. I finally convinced him to do some extra shake-out exercises like we already do which helped a bit. After class our timing didn't line up, I was…

Sounds like you did your best to be of support. I’m curious about the particulars of the shaking exercise you recommended. I have heard of one called TRE (trauma release exercises), perhaps something similar?

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#209

Post by acituan » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 3:32 AM UTC

ben509 wrote: post #142

acituan wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree about being trauma naive as a society. Having a scientific understanding of trauma is separate from having phenomenological understanding of trauma, and I believe we have a large amount of knowledge and wisdom about the latter. I also believe there is a large repertoire of psychotechnologies that helped people to be trauma resistant or helped them if they had PTSD. We just lost contact with many of them an…

> there is a large difference between modern warfare technologies and historical warfare in terms of the loss of control it induces Certainly, in historical warfare, you faced off against an enemy. There were far fewer devices that could be highly lethal and completely unseen. Even stuff as simple as IEDs is awful, but airstrikes, artillery, etc. probably contribute to that sense of no control. And the counters to th…

Well said. Though as I was re-reading your comment I remembered the incidence of PTSD among drone operators. Even though they have the perfectly controlled physical environment, they seem to be negatively effected too. I doubt their triggers are similar (like fireworks reminding gunfire) though.

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#210

Post by Udik » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 8:00 AM UTC

king_panic wrote: post #205

Udik wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that both you and the other commenter took the second option for a dismissal of the grieving person's emotions. Which is not, and there is no indication in the text that it is one. It does acknowledge the pain (also by explicitly sharing a personal experience) and then proceeds to reframe it into some common occurrence that can be overcome in due time. I think the keyword here is "common". Negative e…

Yes it's very interesting that two people came to the same conclusion of dismissal when there is no indication of dismissal.. it's almost like there is indication.. Commonality does not make negative emotions less terrible. A support group doesn't make a condition more or less common. A support group makes you less alone, which is another way of saying you feel your emotions are validated and youre relationship to yo…

Or maybe you have come to identify validation of grief with its sacralization, and you don't accept someone saying at the same time "I understand you, it has happened to me as well" and "it will pass, there is a bigger picture in which this becomes less relevant".

> Commonality does not make negative emotions less terrible.

There is a saying in Italy: "a shared misfortune is half a joy".

There's a recognized therapeutic value in literature. Reading novels doesn't validate your emotions- reading is unidirectional, there is nobody telling you "I understand you" from the pages of a novel. But you get in contact with characters who suffer, confront problems, overcome them or succumb to them. You can see their inner life, and recognize a commonality of human experience.

Conversely, social media are notorious for making people depressed: it can be as unidirectional as reading, but since people tend to show only the positive aspects of their life, it can make you feel your own life is especially bad.