Fireworks And Ptsd Quotes

Okay, let’s see. Jake Tucker, ex-Marine, PTSD survivor, single—surprising right? I’m a sucker for hot blondes who puke all over me after I pull them from burning vehicles. I also like long walks on the beach where I tackle unsuspecting women to the ground to save them from rogue fireworks, and I singlehandedly took out a cut-throat razor last week with my stealth moves.

Because the amygdala can become hypersensitive, chronic stress can make you more jumpy and anxious. This is why a war veteran with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will hit the floor and cover his head when he hears the loud blast of fireworks. Before he has a chance to think about it, the blast reminds him of an improvised explosive device (IED) exploding or a gunshot. His amygdala triggers the fight-or-flight response—a false alarm. When you experience severe trauma or excessive chronic stress, the once-cooperative partnership between your hippocampus and your amygdala becomes skewed in favor of the amygdala. This is because the hippocampus is assaulted by excess cortisol and glutamate when the amygdala is pumped up. Cortisol and glutamate act to excite the amygdala, and the more it is excited, the more easily it is triggered.

To add to the problem, it turns out your neural pathways cement themselves in the case of traumatic events. The result is that some people respond to reminders of stimuli, a condition known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This trauma-induced reprogramming of the brain explains why it's impossible for many veterans to enjoy Fourth of July fireworks, for example. Their limbic system, the creamy nougat center of the human brain where our memories and emotional lives are housed, has coded “explosion” with “danger,” and so when these veterans hear fireworks, they react as they would, as any of us would, to a bomb going off nearby. From the outside, this condition may appear simple to correct. They're fireworks, not bombs, after all. But neuroimaging proves that when people are merely reminded of trauma, blood flow ramps up in the brain structures associated with extreme emotions and decreases in the areas associated with communication. The sufferer essentially becomes trapped in their own fear, at the mercy of neural patterns. The good news is that writing therapy, along with other mindfulness practices, including dialectical behavior therapy, art therapy, yoga, Qigong, tai chi, Alexander Technique, and meditation, allows you to reprogram your brain. You can literally change your mind.