TRAUMA and STRESS

by Jansen Estrup

In addition to the 'standard' stresses of our growing up we've managed over the past 100-odd years to add wartime horrors like artillery barrages, mustard gas, mine fields, fire bombing, napalm, atomic bombs, mass dispossession, agent orange and depleted uranium. Now we find that our ingenuity has been even more insidious than we imagined.

Childhood trauma and lifelong stress

Canadian Dr. Gabor Maté has pioneered understanding of behaviors which tend to cripple children as early as fetus stages if the mother is subjected to stresses such as fear, hunger, dislocation, physical or mental pain. Fetuses bathed continuously in hormones like adrenalin create children who never feel safe or are never at ease unless their brains are flooded with adrenalin or cortizol that smothers the 'feel good' endorphines like dopamin, noraprinephrine and sirotonin, natural substances designed to combat pain and allow us to belong in our bodies and minds. Children lacking these adjustment tools are prone to seeking external sources of comfort in drugs such as alcohol, narcotics, extreme sport, militarism or other risky behavior and violence.

Maté asks “What if we replaced the word 'addict' with: “A human being who suffered so much that he or she finds in drugs or some other behavior a temporary escape from that suffering”?

Child abuse and neglect, including rape and incest, is a far more serious and costly health problem in the USA than cancer or heart disease and is a lifelong limitation in workplace and social interactions.

Robert Anda, in the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) study for the CDC concluded that eliminating child abuse in the USA would reduce depression by more than 50%, alcoholism by 2/3 and suicide, IV drug use and domestic violence by a full 75 percent. Rape including incest can be reasoned to be proportionally lessened.

Dr. Maté's revealing interview called “Trump, Clinton and Trauma” can be read here:

https://www.thefix.com/dr-gabor-mate-donald-trump-traumaphobia-and-compassion-interview

Also See: The Body Keeps the Score – Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.

Physical trauma – CTE Chronic traumatic electroencephalography and other brain injury

Much research has been completed lately about this disabling injury which covers domestic violence, boxing, wrestling, football, hockey, rugby, soccer and rodeo events - usually does not manifest until later in life – and is the result of repeated blows to the brain pan, not always severe enough to be labeled concussion.

Even playful or disciplinary 'taps', if repeated often enough can can cause lasting injury. The diabolical Chinese water torture comes to mind.

An excerpt from Bryant Gumbel's HBO series “Real Sports” is available here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/09/24/hbos-real-sports-to-examine-link-between-cte-and-domestic-violence/?utm_term=.351404c0ef32

Also recommended: The Evil Hours – A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder by David J. Morris

Supersonic blast waves

Dr. Daniel Perl, a neuropathologist working with the brain tissue of Sergeant First Class Brian Mancini, discovered an entirely new kind of injury. SFC Mancini's face had been replaced after he was blown up by an IED and he made a remarkable recovery, speaking out for wounded vets and founding an organization for them. But after years of struggle he began succumbing to bouts of paranoia and despair. He recently willed his brain to science and killed himself.

What Dr. Perl found when he examined Mancini's tissue under powerful electron microscopes was not CTE, as he expected, but burn scaring in the area which joins gray and white brain tissue. It shows up brown in the scans and is the result of invisible blast waves which penetrate the skull and burn their way through the entire brain.

Research is only now beginning, but this supersonic blast wave causes scar tissue which impedes healing and corrupts normal brain function. While it is not encouraging so far as treatment goes, it does make sharp distinctions within TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) and CTE research communities.

For more info see the 01 April 2018 60 Minutes segment: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brian-mancini-brain-how-ieds-may-be-physically-causing-ptsd/

Suppose supersonic blast waves are not so new, only the improvement in photographic equipment able to detect it. Suppose that explosives from early on, even before the modern better living through chemistry era, have affected those who aimed and fired the weapons and inflicted grievous damage upon themselves, as well. We already understand how terrible the brain damage is for those who inflict pain and suffering (not to diminish that endured by the victim) especially on the defenseless. It doesn't even have to be a physical injury. Witness the incidence of PTSD on drone operators half a world away from their target, be it a festive wedding or a gathering of fighting age men. These wounds are emotional, not physical like SFC Mancini's, but they are nevertheless real and devastating.

Inflicting destruction on others inevitably rebounds upon ourselves and the society around us.

Are there similar invisible blast waves emitted by propellants of artillery rounds or missiles? Do they penetrate the helmets of soldiers and the superstructures of ships as easily as the skulls of those blown up by IEDs? What of the new military 'arts' of sound, laser and railguns? Powerful new sonar has caused death of marine mammals. What is it doing to humans? How will we be able to tell if we can only examine the brain tissue after the victim is dead?

During the Great War, Britain lauded many trench warfare poets, especially two who suffered terribly from the cruel fighting. Winfred Owen spent years in the primitive rehab available at the time. He was pronounced fit, recommissioned and sent back to the front where he was killed in an artillery barrage two days before the armistice. Seigfried Sassoon could not be rehabilitated and believed the war was still going on as late at 1939.

North America, (actually Canada) with its penchant for misremembering as a prolog to forgetting, then romanticizing any trauma, has its own trench poet. Robert Service, famous for The Bomber, Cremation of Sam McGee and Dangerous Dan McGrew, gave us this one in 1940 and we've been acting it out ever since.

JOHNNY WAYNE and RANDY SCOTT

by Robert Service

(Written from the fight scene in the film The Spoilers)

Johnny Wayne and Randy Scott

They fought and fought and fought and fought

With joy they shed each other's gore,

And then they paused and shed some more.

To bust each other's blocks they strove.

They wrecked the bar and crashed the stove.

Then with a heave big Johnny Wayne

Hurled Randy through the window pane.

So in the street and down the lot

They fought and fought and fought and fought.

So fierce they mixed it up I'll bet

Them galoots might still be fighting yet.