PTSD 4th Degree of Love

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 24, 2015

"Completeness comes when the greatest love is allowed to live on"

Until they are able to see that the basis of their actions came from love, they will not be able to make peace within themselves and with everything they believed to be true. They will question what is "wrong" with them because they are not told what is right within them. They will assume they are to suffer as they are because no one told them they can heal and live a better quality of life still able to serve others and help them heal as well and then "completeness comes" when the greatest love is allowed to live on.

Johannes Eisele / AFP / Getty Images
In this file photo from August 23, 2011, US soldiers protect their faces from a rotor wash as their wounded comrades are airlifted to Kandahar Hospital. The Obama administration says they may take out all troops from Afghanistan by 2014.

We can understand when someone goes through something really awful because we can imagine what it would be like if it happened to us.

Who gets PTSD?
Anyone can get PTSD at any age. This includes war veterans and survivors of physical and sexual assault, abuse, accidents, disasters, and many other serious events.

Not everyone with PTSD has been through a dangerous event. Some people get PTSD after a friend or family member experiences danger or is harmed. The sudden, unexpected death of a loved one can also cause PTSD.

We cannot imagine what it is like coming back from war, being a member of law enforcement, a firefighter or any other emergency responder. We have a hard enough time just trying to recover from what happens to regular folks.

Maybe we just expect them to be tougher than we are. After all, they were trained to do their jobs. And that is the biggest barrier to removing the stigma once and for all of us. Consider the fact that civilians have a lot of help with surviving traumatic events because of the work done trying to help veterans and you're a lot closer to understanding this than others.

The men and women actually deciding to do these jobs for a living are needed but all too often we overlook just how human they are.

They do it because they care more than the rest of us do.  In other words, they are ready, willing and able to face any danger for the sake of others.

John 15

11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

But there is a greater love and that is being willing to lay down your life for strangers. We should all be amazed by that level of love but we dismiss what we do not understand.

They hurt more because they feel more. There are different levels to everything, especially what is left behind the trauma itself. When researchers do not consider this, they think they will discover the key to treating them by ignorantly conducting studies on rats as subjects. All their efforts have failed because the wound that comes with this depth of love is beyond their ability to begin to understand.

It is not just the event, but emotions they carry causing the deepest level of damage.

There are degrees of burn wounds. While most know 1, 2, and 3, there is another lesser known fourth-degree burn,

a burn that extends deeply into the subcutaneous tissue, completely destroying the skin, subcutaneous fat, and underlying tendons, and sometimes involving muscle, fascia, or bone.

With PTSD there are also different levels from different events, yet few have researched the difference between those who put their lives on the line to save others on a daily basis and this one strikes a deeper level of grieving.

There are also different degrees of PTSD, but they call them levels. How The VA Evaluates Levels Of Disability

(1) A mental condition has been formally diagnosed, but symptoms are not severe enough either to interfere with occupational and social functioning or to require continuous medication .............................. 0%

(2) Occupational and social impairment due to mild or transient symptoms which decrease work efficiency and ability to perform occupational tasks only during periods of significant stress, or; symptoms controlled by continuous medication .................. 10%

(3) Occupational and social impairment with occasional decrease in work efficiency and intermittent periods of inability to perform occupational tasks (although generally functioning satisfactorily, with routine behavior, self-care, and conversation normal), due to such symptoms as: depressed mood, anxiety, suspiciousness, panic attacks (weekly or less often), chronic sleep impairment, mild memory loss (such as forgetting names, directions, recent events) ............................ 30%

(4) Occupational and social impairment with reduced reliability and productivity due to such symptoms as: flattened affect; circumstantial, circumlocutory, or stereotyped speech; panic attacks more than once a week; difficulty in understanding complex commands; impairment of short- and long-term memory (e.g., retention of only highly learned material, forgetting to complete tasks); impaired judgment; impaired abstract thinking; disturbances of motivation and mood; difficulty in establishing and maintaining Effective work and social relationships ………………..50%

(5) Occupational and social impairment, with deficiencies in most areas, such as work, school, family relations, judgment, thinking, or mood, due to such symptoms as: suicidal ideation; obsessional rituals which interfere with routine activities; speech intermittently illogical, obscure, or irrelevant; near-continuous panic or depression affecting the ability to function independently, appropriately and effectively; impaired impulse control (such as unprovoked irritability with periods of violence); spatial disorientation; neglect of personal appearance and hygiene; difficulty in adapting to stressful circumstances (including work or a work like setting); inability to establish and maintain effective relationships ...................................... 70%

(6) Total occupational and social impairment, due to such symptoms as: gross impairment in thought process or communication; persistent delusions or hallucinations; grossly inappropriate behavior; persistent danger of hurting self or others; intermittent inability to perform activities of daily living (including maintenance of minimal personal hygiene); disorientation to time or place; memory loss for names of close relatives, own occupation, or own name …………………..100%

So what should be done? They need to actually listen to the men and women and finally take into account what they have been saying all along. It is not just the event that afflicts them but the depth of their ability to feel all of it.

The National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Research Quarterly took a look at this with a report on TRAUMATIC LOSS AND THE SYNDROME OF COMPLICATED GRIEF by M. Katherine Shear, M.D. and Krissa Smith-Caroff, B.S., Department of Psychiatry, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh.

While the report focused on the loss of a loved one,

Bereavement is a major life stressor, long known to be associated with onset or recurrence of psychiatric and/or medical illness.

That "bereavement" can strike those who risk all for the sake of someone else but cuts even deeper when the emotional connection is spread out to everyone they encounter. They need to be treated differently based on the cause of the wounds they carry.

Jacobs and Prigerson (2000) reviewed studies conducted in the area of complicated or traumatic grief. Because there is no DSM IV diagnosis for such a condition, the authors looked for studies of separation anxiety, psychotherapy of pathologic grief, high-risk bereaved persons. Findings include observations that both psychodynamically oriented treatments and behavioral/cognitive treatments hold some promise. The potential of two different therapies to help raises the possibility of different therapies for different people with different problems or symptoms.

In summary, bereavement is a major stressor that can result in physical and mental health problems. When a loss is sudden and unexpected, or is experienced as such, and when a death is violent, the loss may be traumatic for the bereaved person and a painful and debilitating complicated grief reaction may ensue. We urge clinicians and researchers to attend to the recognition and treatment of such individuals

Yet grief does not live in a simple mind but within the walls of a soul. The emotions carry the highest degree of suffering beyond what research concentrate on. How can some understand what "bereavement" does at the same time others do not understand what it does to those carrying PTSD?

Recently, this reluctance has lessened and there is growing interest in better understanding grief related disorders. DSM-IV includes a diagnosis of bereavement-related Major Depression two months following a loss. Also new in DSM-IV is the statement that learning about the death of a close relative or friend from any cause, including natural causes, qualifies as a stressor for PTSD, as long as the death was sudden and unexpected. However, there are no operationalized criteria for “sudden and unexpected,” leaving this to subjective judgment. Inclusion of such losses in the PTSD category is questionable (Breslau & Kessler, 2001), though some authors have found that violent death of a loved one does cause a PTSD response similar to trauma exposure (Green et al., 2001). In her study, Green found that young women who lost a loved one had higher rates of acute stress disorder, intrusion symptoms, re-experiencing of the trauma, and impaired school performance than those who experienced no trauma and also more than women who experienced a single physical assault.

They grieve because they loved so much they were willing to die to save someone else. Why can't this be understood?

How does a soldier survive combat, doing everything possible to save others including strangers yet return home only to not be able to find the one reason to stay alive?

1 Corinthians 13 New International Version (NIV)
If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

The face they see in the mirror is connected to all the evil they saw humans are capable of to the point where they think they have become evil. They questioned the existence of God when He allowed all of it to happen because they are not seeing what else was there. The simple fact they were able to grieve, shed a tear, do what they did, was all based on limitless unselfish love.