9/11 postscript

This blog is a postscript to the previous one.
 http://emotionalgrowth.blogspot.com/2011/09/if-you-pick-it-it-wont-get-better.html


Yesterday was the 10 year anniversary of 9/11. A truly horrific event. By the end of the day, I found the coverage to be fairly horrific too. In the UK it was wall to wall, so goodness knows what it was like in the States.


By the time I went to bed and couldn't tune in to either of my usual late night radio stations without further coverage, I was feeling exasperated.


Pick, pick, picking at the terrible wounds.


A woman was on TV in the early evening talking about the amount of health problems amongst the 9/11 fire fighters. She mentioned an increase of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as the anniversary of 9/11 approached.


I could have wept and not at the scenes on TV and radio.


Where is the understanding of brain function and PTSD? Where is the understanding that all this exposure to the events 10 years ago can trigger PTSD?


In the previous blog I wrote about memories being stored in a memory bank, with most of the emotion removed.  I didn't write that each memory taken out of the memory bank becomes a new memory, with emotion attached and the process of filing in the memory bank starts all over again. Poor old brain. 


Wounds than may have healed could be opened up again. Pick, pick pick...


Obviously not everyone exposed to a traumatic event develops PTSD, but yesterday's overload will undoubtedly not have helped vulnerable people. Even people who had nothing to do with 9/11, but have memories that will be resurrected due to the images seen or sounds heard. This also happened at the time of Princess Diana's death.


It's so avoidable and I despair at the ignorance, even amongst mental health professionals.


For service personnel: www.ptsdresolution.org.


©RitaLeaman2011