Restraining Orders and PTSD

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can sometimes contribute to restraining orders when a normal disagreement or argument in a relationship causes the person with PTSD to flashback to the original trauma. Here are my experiences with a person I got into a relationship with who has PTSD.
Her and I met, and I swear my life changed the minute I met her. I think we fell in Love with each other nearly instantly. I know I did. Everything was fine between us, until she would break plans we had, and I would scream and yell at her. This caused her to avoid me, causing me to scream and yell even more. I did  not understand PTSD, and thought she was deliberately avoiding me to piss me off!  I called her some truly awful names in the beginning of our relationship to "punish" her for what I thought was her deliberate avoidance of me. I did not understand PTSD, nor did I have the anger management skills I later acquired. ( I am still working on those). Now that I understand PTSD much better, I realize my yelling scared the heck out of her, causing her to get restraining orders against me. Though in my mind these restraining orders were not needed, since no actual domestic violence really happened, I realize now in her mind they were needed, as I have learned to understand PTSD better. My advice to our readers is as follows. IF you have a propensity to scream and yell when things do not go your way, do not get into a relationship with a person suffering from PTSD. What may seem like a harmless argument may send them to call 911 on you, and a visit from the police and a restraining order will be the likely outcome. If your relationship partner has PTSD, and you wish to continue in the relationship, you must get a  handle on your anger. While it is not good to scream and yell at anyone, it is truly devastating to a person suffering from PTSD. Imagine for a minute the most frightening thing that ever happened to you in your lifetime ? Then imagine being constantly reminded of it by your partner every time they scream and yell at you! This is what life is like for a person afflicted with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Because of my recent heart attack, I have had to try and cut out all stress in my life. Anger can kill me, so I have had to forgive some people I was angry at. I was angry at my ex girlfriend for obtaining several restraining orders against me that gave me a criminal record, and hurt my business. Now that I understand PTSD much better, it was a lot easier for me to forgive her.
Here is an article about PTSD I found on the Internet.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) develops after a terrifying ordeal that involved physical harm or the threat of physical harm. The person who develops PTSD may have been the one who was harmed, the harm may have happened to a loved one, or the person may have witnessed a harmful event that happened to loved ones or strangers.

People with PTSD may startle easily, become emotionally numb (especially in relation to people with whom they used to be close), lose interest in things they used to enjoy, have trouble feeling affectionate, be irritable, become more aggressive, or even become violent. They avoid situations that remind them of the original incident, and anniversaries of the incident are often very difficult.

Most people with PTSD repeatedly relive the trauma in their thoughts during the day and in nightmares when they sleep. These are called flashbacks. Flashbacks may consist of images, sounds, smells, or feelings, and are often triggered by ordinary occurrences, such as a door slamming or a car backfiring on the street. Even a normal argument in a relationship can trigger a flashback. A person having a flashback may lose touch with reality and believe that the traumatic incident is happening all over again.


Not every traumatized person develops full-blown or even minor PTSD. Symptoms usually begin within 3 months of the incident but occasionally emerge years afterward. They must last more than a month to be considered PTSD. The course of the illness varies. Some people recover within 6 months, while others have symptoms that last much longer. In some people, the condition becomes chronic.

PTSD affects about 7.7 million American adults, but it can occur at any age, including childhood.  Women are more likely to develop PTSD than men, and there is some evidence that susceptibility to the disorder may run in families.  PTSD is often accompanied by depression, substance abuse, or one or more of the other anxiety disorders.

^{There is some new research being done on treating PTSD at Emory University that just came out a few days ago!  Here is a video all about it.} 

^{Here is some more information on this Emory University study.}

Thursday, February 24, 2011

PACAP and PTSD

A team of researchers from Emory University and the University of Vermont have found a link between a hormone released during times of stress and the development of post-traumatic stress in women. The researchers studied 64 people who were, in turn, taking part in a larger research project, the Grady Trauma Project which is a study of 1,200 low-income people living in Atlanta who have high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The 64 participants completed questionnaires on their life histories and provided saliva and blood samples to be analyzed. The study found that women with high levels of a hormone called pituitary adenylate cyclase activating polypeptide (PACAP) had PTSD symptoms five times higher than women with lower-than-average levels. PACAP acts throughout the body and brain affecting central-nervous-system activity, metabolism, blood pressure, pain sensitivity and immune function.

Hopefully, this research will lead to PACAP Inhibitors, and maybe even lead to an answer for people also suffering from chronic pain, as well as irritable bowel syndrome.  Here is an excerpt from the University of Vermont paper where a PACAP Inhibitor was used to combat Anxiety.

But what if PACAP is cut off? In one experiment, May and his colleagues were able to block the peptide by fifty percent using another peptide, a so-called antagonist, that gummed up the PACAP receptors in the rats' bed nuclei. As they describe in a review article in the Journal of Molecular Neuroscience, this put a major damper on the rats' anxiety behaviors during a seven-day stress test.

Problem is, this PACAP antagonist had to be mainlined into their brains. "Peptides are not small molecules," says May, "as a general rule they don't cross the blood-brain barrier very well and are quickly broken down in the bloodstream." (The blood-brain barrier is the body's nifty trick of separating circulating blood from cerebrospinal fluid in the central nervous system. It helps protect the brain from infection and toxins, but it can be a devil for drug development.)

So May began to wonder if something else might block PACAP.

"Then Victor came across a paper where a company described a small molecule antagonist that blocked PACAP," says Hammack, "A small molecule that won't break down orally and will get across the blood-brain barrier." The company was working in another area entirely, looking for ways to stimulate PACAP receptors, but May saw potential in their failure.

So he picked up the phone again, this time to chemistry professor Matthias Brewer. "He approached me to see if I could make that kind of molecule," says Brewer, "which I could." Indeed Brewer and his students were able to make some dozen variants of this molecule to test. He then delivered the compounds to May to make sure they exhibited the same PACAP knockout that the other paper had described -- and "to see which one would do the best job binding to the receptor," says Brewer.

The molecular testing proved positive in May's lab -- so now it's back to the rats in the psychology department. "Can we mimic the things I see in my culture dish in a real animal?" says May. "If yes," he says, and if "everything falls into place, we might be in touch with a pharmaceutical company."

And, yes, working with UVM's Office of Technology Transfer, May and his colleagues have taken out two provisional patents on their anti-anxiety work -- just in case you were worried.
More information: Read more about the contributions of students, including Spencer Scholz '11, to this project in the original article, which appears in the fall 2010 issue of Vermont Quarterly magazine. The full issue may be viewed online at alumni.uvm.edu/vq
Provided by University of Vermont

When we are in fear, we experience a flight or fight response, and our adrenal glands are triggered. This sudden release of adrenaline can also manifest itself by the body's sudden emptying of the bowels. Some call this being 'scared shitless'. I very well remember my ex  girlfriend doing fine, then getting a phone call from someone that stressed her out, and having to blow. Her PTSD was unpredictable, and one never knew what kind of stress would send her into a flashback, or to the toilet, IF she had time to find one. No one should have to live their life this way, and the original trauma was not her fault. I hope this new research proves to be successful, and a cure for PTSD is on the horizon.
I have also seen where PTSD and it's adrenaline release is attempted to be controlled in current drug studies using some selective Beta Blockers. My ex girlfriend is forced to take Xanax to combat the anxiety from her PTSD. I sure hope this research leads to a cure for PTSD, and other anxiety disorders. I am quite sure both PTSD and severe Anxiety lead to Restraining Orders, as the flashbacks to the original trauma and uncontrolled Anxiety lead to needless Police Intervention in some relationships.