Return from Chaos: Treating PTSD | Peter Tuerk | TEDxCharleston

Peter Tuerk, the director of a VA PTSD program, introduces how we process experiences and trauma. Using examples from his research, he describes how it's possible to process memories and their associated meanings to overcome a traumatic incident. When active avoidance impedes natural recovery the most effective healing is facilitated through treatment designed to limit avoidance and to assist with the processing of relevant information.

[MrSofuskroghlarsen]

Sending my love to anyone who experiences PTSD and those that experience some of the symptoms. 💚

[onemondaynight]

I'm a trauma therapist. I explain theories of trauma to clients every week. This explanation is so concise and clear, I'm adding to my mode of explanation. Thank you!

[beverett]

This talk is a good, simple explanation of PTSD. People understand cancer - your body is at war. They know it will take time, treatment, and energy for your body to fight the disease. They understand if you’re not able to function at 100%. People understand injury. If you lose a limb, it will take hours of physical therapy, hard work, and major adjustments in your life to deal with the physical trauma. People understand why you’re changed. Most people do not understand that mental and emotional trauma can be just as debilitating. If your mind doesn’t work, you can’t function.
With PTSD, your mind is at war with itself. Anything that has a connection to the trauma is a trigger that can put you back in that traumatic experience. Places, sounds, smells, people, dreams, even thoughts can all be triggers - emotional land mines everywhere. Hit a trigger, and you relive the trauma mentally and emotionally. You want to avoid those land mines, right? You avoid people b/c they may make a comment that’s a trigger. You avoid sleep b/c you have nightmares. You may avoid silence because when it’s quiet, you think, and your mind is full of triggers. You’re constantly anxious. Emotionally, you’re all over the place from numb, to angry, to sobbing in a corner. You can’t concentrate enough to accomplish anything. All of this makes it extremely difficult to function in the world.

PTSD is not something you can just get over. With physical illness or injury no one expects you to just “will” the cancer away or for your arm to magically grow back. Like cancer, it requires treatment and time to recover. Like a traumatic injury, PTSD requires therapy and hard work to adjust to the trauma. Thanks for helping people understand.

[pearljamin]

39 years. My whole life, if you can even call it that. I am endlessly grateful to the people I’ve never even met that have saved my life by making this information available. It was impossible before I knew what it was or that people have been able to treat it. I couldn’t even identify that the abuse, neglect, homelessness, parental void, and every other struggle that made my childhood was “trauma”. I truly believed it was just life, and people had it worse. That I was a horrible person because I wasn’t just getting over it. People told me I was a survivor, a fighter so it’d be fine. I should just get over it. I never wanted to be a fighter. I am so sick of fighting, especially myself. I’m going to live one day thanks to complete strangers 💚

[trxpjvo]

I've never even grasped the concept that PTSD may not be a permanent disorder for me... until just now. Thank you, Dr. Turek.

[TheMorden]

My whole life from infancy to now has been controlled by PTSD. I was only a few days old when my mother started to pinch, probe and whatever she could think would hurt me in some way. And she was good at it. Not knowing any better, I transferred that unloving relationship to anyone who was capable of hurting me...which was almost everyone in my environment from very little to my now 81 yrs. But, let me tell you that I have found a way to love myself which is not an easy developed multiplicity. I began to find other parts of myself who developed in spite of everything, an awesome ability to love me and lots of me!!

[andchip.s]

PTSD is not just in the forces, believe me I know first hand, my trauma like many others in the comments, stems from childhood, were my innocence was ripped away, I take it one day at a time. For people trying to help there family member or friends with PTSD, the best thing you can do is *just be there* for them, let them talk to you, Its like the old saying "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.

[jonathanpredonzan]

To every person dealing with PTSD, I cannot recommend enough reading the amazing book " The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma" by Bessel van der Kolk M.D. It has helped me so much

[tacooflove]

I have also heard this be described as a nervous system disorder where your constantly in a fight or flight situation and you have to recall yourself back to where you can relax because you can’t relax and still be in a state of hyper awareness. So retraining your system to relax over time helps get rid of it. Such as meditation and yoga etc etc

[roseemme]

As A 18-year-old girl who has PTSD I realized that a lot of people fail to realize that PTSD isn’t just from terrifying events it’s more than that. a lot of people who have PTSD went through childhood traumas and I have been going through it since day 1. My family was very toxic negative neglectful and pressuring and even had child predators and rapists that weren’t reported. But for years I kept my mouth shut, kept my distance and my family didn’t quite understand why I felt and acted the way that I did. I couldn’t really even explain it, but I knew that there was something wrong when my legal guardian would kick me out of the house and tell me to get myself together. Every time I tried I didn’t understand what I was doing wrong to help the situation and why I wasn’t getting better it wasn’t till a years later that I was diagnosed with PTSD and depression. My family understands a little bit now but they still haven’t tried helping my situation because I don’t think they know how.

[memoir]

The 1st 7 minutes was one of the BEST explanations of PTSD I've ever heard! Very understandable and relatable. The "going to the store to buy milk" routine was a perfect example of how a normal routine can be changed to something perplexing or traumatic, making things more difficult to process and sort away. Thank you sir

[kirstinstrand]

I'm so sorry there are do many of us dealing with PTSD or CPTSD. Meditation is about the best method I've discovered to stay in the NOW, instead of obsessing over bad memories. Alan Watts has a video on meditation and so does Eckhart Tolle. It's
Important to meditate each day. There is no need to meditate hours/day -
start with 5 minutes and build up to 20 minutes. You will notice, in time, that your mind and emotions get quieter.
Please try it. Life is a
struggle and I've found consistent meditation to be most useful.

[rymeow]

I don't usually open up about my PTSD which developed years after my deployment to Iraq. However, I felt like this was a place where whatever I write is anonymous enough that it wouldn't matter. Every week I am on the phone with the VA crisis line which has turned into the only thing that actually calms my thoughts down. I feel this overwhelming sense of causing harm to those around me and myself. The crisis line mellows me down enough to get threw another week. I don't step outside of my house in fear of sniper attacks.. I don't drive the speed limit to avoid being a target of attacks or possible IED's. I always take different routes and I am constantly sweating bullets when I am outside my home. I have surrounded myself in the woods with camera systems everywhere. The worst part of it for me is having a daughter who want to spend time with her dad but, when she's here I shut down as a person. Then when she leaves I punish myself for not being better and doing better. I don't open up about it in real life, because I feel targeted and exposed. All of my appointments have been telehealth since 2016. For most people the pandemic altered the way they lived and for me its been business as usual. I've been waterboarded and tied up and beaten. I have been run over by a car and shot at. I have been actively searching for ways to cope or get better but, I haven't found anything that works or that I can do without panic button always being pushed internally. I'm not sure why I'm writing this. I guess its because this video is from 2015 and no one will see it or care.

[BruceSanchez]

I am a Correctional Officer in Melbourne and I went through PTSD, my claim was accepted by the insurance company after an investigation that lasted 28 days, received professional help that it was just a joke, I then took massive action and I started to research on my own, I dug deep into the human brain how it's been programmed, I started to understand why we think what we think and how to manage those thoughts and stress and take advantage on them.
That happened early 2020 before COVID, and today, August 2020, after just a few months not even half year, i am having the time of live, I have allowed myself to learn from that experience with PTSD and also, I have started to help other brothers in blue who are struggling with the same nightmare as I was.
I have become a coach out of my work hours, to Emergency and Law Enforcement Personnel because when I was dwelling on that dark place I couldn't find exactly what I needed so I became my counselor, my therapist my coach and I met other coaches around the world, sharing my story, being vulnerable and trying to break the culture of silence that exits among Law Enforcement Officers.
My first step to get out of that situation was changing the way I was communicating to myself, understanding that we don't own what we think, we don't own what we feel, we are not feelings, emotions or thoughts, they come and go, we are above and beyond any emotions, feelings or thoughts. We tend to get attached to labels such as depression, stress, anxiety, etc those labels disempower people and is very easy to fall into those traps and make them mean everything, but that's the way we've been programmed to live in, I am seeing it every day with the Officers I am currently helping. We might be different in many aspects of life but at core.... We all the same, we all have the same basic needs, we all want to be good enough so we can be loved.
I trust this little story of my life can inspire you or at least can make you see that we can overcome everything in life, sometimes we need someone to guide us, someone who's been there before.
Regards
Bruce Sanchez

[vanishreebhatt]

I feel heard and validated. Thank you for this video. I have come a long way since my traumatic relationship about 6 years ago with a much older, vain and vile man, and my mother figure who kept emotionally abusing throughout childhood. I m in a much better place. Thank you ❤️

[berithlilja]

Trauma can consist of several layers of defense that need to be peeled off like an onion. A faster and more efficient way is to start by sitting safely and closing your eyes. Think about the trauma, where it feels in the body, the body is in flight fighting or playing dead where emotions are disconnected. What feeling does it evoke in you, fear, anger or emptiness? Search for who you were before by looking for the good in you, safe, happy and alive. The subconscious can then be helped by the conscious thought of who we really are and release the alarm button that has been pressed and where the amygdala lacks time perception until we have solved the problem / shock

[Yourlovelyghost]

As someone with childhood PTSD this helped me understand a bit more about it. I've been dealing with it for 5 years now from physical abuse, and ive often been told to stop exaggerating, to just forget about everything that happened to me. I wish more people thought like this person, life would be a bit better. (I'm still a kid, and no one really listens to what Im going through, they act like everything I went through was a lie. I've never been able to find actual good advice to live through it all.)

[alicehatzoglou]

Very well and aptly formulated! Thank you for sharing.

[ss]

right off the bat this described it so well.

[clintpot]

Acupuncture and float therapy help expel the trauma of the memory from the mind, body, and emotions. Highly recommended for PTSD.