*Post Trauma Stress Disorder

Post Trauma Stress Disorder and Genetic Input

During a trauma we suffer stress: physical, mental, emotion stress. After, we expect to recover, over time. The symptoms can vary from person to person. ‘Strong’ people recover normally but some people, perhaps more sensitive, and possibly seen as ‘weak’ people, take longer. Some people don’t recover and they never reclaim an ‘ordinary’ life. This latter group of sufferers is now diagnosed as having PTSD – Post Trauma Stress Disorder.

With regard to the article sent to me by friend and journalist, Brenda Hanson, outlining the results of a study done on a group of PTSD suffers in Canada, reported in Thunder Bay [Variants in stress-related gene help …
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhttddcw_0cmz2rrcf&invite=r2q4vz ], and illuminating the subject of a variant gene being involved, I outline here my own observations on the subject.

It is always exciting when a new discovery is made. It is then up to us to decide whether this discovery adds to our knowledge or not, and whether it can be utilised to good effect. The scientific world looks to prove something, with clinical trials to provide data and statistics. When this backs up previously held suspicions or beliefs it is a wonderful thing. We must, at all times ask whether the new information expands our wisdom on things, rather than just making a statement that limits us.

Are the faulty genes the cause of the problem or are they the end result of a problem? To allocate the cause of any dis-order to faulty genes, we may run the risk of limiting ourselves, by halting the ever-necessary investigation into the true nature of dis-ease. We could say ‘Ah! We have found the dastardly culprit, now we can blame it and stop looking!’ But does that lead us to a healing process and a cure?

If a sufferer is told ‘It’s in your genes’ the general assumption of a lay-person may be that it’s just their bad luck and that there is nothing more they can do about it.

This doesn’t mean that the identification of a contributing gene may not be relevant. It may be relevant in identifying the person who may be more prone to the condition – QED- but not that their fate is not only pre-determined but that it is also final and fatal.

Should we not ask, when considering the cause of a disorder, to research into the possible purpose of that disorder? PTSD is a set of symptoms, not a disease from a known virus, for example. Each person who is presenting any one of, or all of the identified symptoms is a unique case and is presenting a unique, to them, set of circumstances. PTSD is possibly the acute or chronic stage of other stresses, which are coped with but at this level the person just cannot cope any longer and there is a breakdown, physically, mentally and emotionally. PTSD becomes evident after an accumulation of stress, or excessive stress. The external, circumstantial causes can be from any type of trauma.

To land conveniently on the genetic platform and announce ‘eureka!- this is the cause’, is bypassing the problem, for it requires another leap to saying it is the cure. Nevertheless, there has to be benefits of knowing the gene state.

• The presence of the gene can be a contribution to the solution

• The presence of the gene can identify the level at which stress becomes acute and PTSD

• The presence of the gene can identify groups of people who accumulate such levels of stress.

Dis-ease and dis-order is the physical outcome and end result of a disruption in the well-being, safety, life-force, spirit/body relationship and evolution of the person. It can also be the set of keys to unlock the cure.

Any one gene which is seen to be contributing to a certain condition can be looked at as the cause, but then we must ask the question ‘How did that gene become the signature of that condition?’ If a gene brings about a physical manifestation, it will be seen as the cause, but what caused it to be different.? What is the cause of its nature? What happened to it to make it different to others and create a pattern within itself to cause that condition? Is it possible that the condition itself, over generations, caused the gene to change?

Do potential soccer-playing genes, accumulating information and creating specific patterns over generations, suddenly present a soccer-player gene?

Genes are the patterns of DNA held in the chromosomes that split during fertilisation of the ovum. The accumulated information from past milennia forms patterns which shows up as a personal attribute, physical feature, character trait or defect in the person. Some are good, some are bad, all are changing. Evolution determines those that survive and those that disappear by making the person strong or weak. This is Darwinism. There is another ‘ism’ and that is that we, as incarnating spirits choose the lineage that can offer us the best circumstances for us to evolve in, as a spiritual being. ‘Spiritualism’. Either way we have a very diverse gene-pool to choose from.

Continual ‘stress’ will sift the proverbial wheat from the chaff. Some of us will weaken under stress and some of us will thrive. All humans who start demonstrating the inability to cope with stress, [hard-ship, shock, trauma, degradation, malnutrition, lack of love, etc.,] will find an opportunity to find a new approach to coping. They will seek it out, investigate, experiment, persevere and survive, or cave in and perish. And there will always be doctors, scientists, therapists and healers to help them.

At this time in history we have an opportunity to strengthen our inherent genetic patterning with some very new, innovative, ground-breaking, exciting and positive approaches, with new understanding of how the mind works, the spirit/body relationship and the role of diet and natural medicines. Perhaps we are remembering and rediscovering some very old ways, too.

In days gone by, a soldier finding himself unable to cope with the extra-ordinary stresses of the war he has to fight, the battle-field he finds himself on and the conditions he has to deal with to either live or die, will have several choices.

• He may just survive, by the skin of his teeth, and with a lot of good luck.

• He may do something extra-ordinary and be held up as a hero

• He may find he doesn’t have a choice and gets killed

• He may not cope and run away, or tries to.

• He may just survive long enough to come home, only to find his life is in ruins and his ability to recover from his injuries has gone

In the old days all surviving soldiers were heralded as heroes – some more than others and those got medals. Those who suffered ‘shell shock’ didn’t recover. Those who ran away were shot. They were branded ‘cowards’, ‘weak’, or having ‘low moral fibre’, or ‘LMF’.

I saw a TV program on the subject of heroism: why and how heroic deeds were done and who became a ‘hero’. Out of the 6 veterans that were featured, who had been awarded medals for bravery, not one of the six knew they were being brave at the time. Not one of the six had decided to be a hero. Not one of the six thought of themselves as heroes and not one of the six had their medal on display or talked about it.

Is it all about being in the right or wrong place, at the right or wrong time? Or is it about having the right or wrong genes? Or is it that at any one time any one of us has a choice? Do we know we have that choice at the time or do we just find ourselves doing something? Who we are and how we got to be that person is such a complex subject, it is a lifetime’s study.

If we believe that this one life is all there is, then nothing matters anyway; none of it is for any reason, it has no purpose; it is just an accidental occurrence and not worth discussing.

But we all know that that’s not the case. We know that what we do in any situation affects others as well as ourselves. In that case what we do is important and if it is important it’s not just for five minutes self-gratification. It must have a lasting significance, even after our passing and if that’s the case then we are all experiencing now the lasting effects of what happened before – that which others did before us.

If the genes we inherit were designed by our ancestors, everything they did to evolve those genes, to change them for better or worse, are in us now and it is up to us to do what we will with them. So what do I do if I inherit a bad gene which will pre-dispose me to cope badly with stress; what do I do about it? Roll over, give up and die? Go to a shop and but a new one? Or re-design the one I’ve got? I guess re-designing a gene takes some time, so where do I start?

What came first, the chicken or the egg? If I am past the age of passing on my genes to my offspring, how does changing my genes benefit anyone else? The Native Americans say that whenever I heal myself, I do it for all my relations: ‘Mitakwe Oyasin’. So what do I change?

I change the way I think. I change the way I view things, get a new perspective. I change the way I do things, behave differently. I can change the way I deal with things. And I can show others that I didn’t give up, that I can learn from it and in that way help others that come after me. Wounds heal. Stress can be relieved. Lessons can be learned. PTSD can be cured. Genes can change, in us and in those who learn from us.

But that is only the physical, mental and emotional side. What about the non-physical side? This, I know, is hard for a lot of people to understand. If I start talking about ‘energy’ or ‘spirit’ many people will think I am talking about fairies, or ghosts, and religion. I am talking about neither.

It is scientifically proven that we are energy – vibrating, moving, living energy which ranges across such a wide spectrum that we can only see one part, hear one part, sense another part and have no idea about the rest. Some people, like me, ‘see’ and ‘sense’ more than others and so I ‘know’ there is more to life than what we are physically aware of. [Convincing others is more difficult].

It is also proven that energy is influenced by thought and so how and what we think is a relevant point to discuss.

If someone who has a disability in coping with post trauma stress is told ‘It’s because you have a different, faulty or bad gene’, they will lose hope in ever recovering. If they are told they can be helped, hope returns. Positive thoughts return and already things are changing for the better.

When someone who understands and can communicate with the complex negative thoughts and memories in the unconscious mind and can work synergistically, i.e. using a variety of techniques together, and can say ‘we can help you’, even more hope comes to the sufferer.

And when the Power of healing – the highly charged energy – that moves, re-charges and re-enlivens every atom of that person, even in the genes, that person will feel so much hope, have so many positive thoughts, that any inherited gene that says ‘you will not cope with stress and you will not recover well from trauma’ will begin to change. The encoded information will change. Preset negative and destructive patterns will reorganise themselves and start to create a new pattern and the consciousness in that gene will be changed. The new consciousness in that gene will return to the collective consciousness after death with a different message and will then return in a new life with new abilities. It will have evolved.

The term ‘Akashic Records’ [origin unknown] describes the unlimited store of information about all life, forever, from the beginning to the end. It is a record of all lives and experience and it is also a library of all potential life and experience. It may be that the DNA in every cell in all living things holds the link to the Akashic Records and the genes are what has been selected for that life-time for that person.

When studying the aspects of ‘Past Lives’ we can tap into information that is in the unconscious memory from before this life-time. A past life scenario can play like a film demonstrating an event of a personal connection that can throw some light onto why certain circumstances are being experienced now.

‘Soul Retrieval’ is another method of healing, where lost memories, aspects of the ‘self’ can be retrieved, to awaken dormant DNA, or eliminate erroneous information that is now redundant or not belonging to the present situation. Akashic Records, past lives and soul retrieval do not belong to the scientific world and yet old cultures of the indigenous people of the world have practiced this form of healing for milenia. It is provable in its efficacy by the results. Maybe we do not have to understand it more than that. Let the researchers do some test trials on these procedures to witness the results but we have to give up for good the need to know and understand the ‘how’. We all believe the grass grows because we can witness it. We can observe it, scientifically study it and learn it’s process but we don’t really understand the ‘how’.

Another aspect is this: we are all unique. We are all born with a unique set of circumstances. No one cure-all can be 100% right for all people. Each one of us has a choice – are we going to let a trauma, a little gene and some bad thoughts and feelings get in the way and destroy us or are we going to use this opportunity to learn something, especially about ourselves, and discover something new – that the little gene can change, traumas can be healed and bad thoughts and feelings can dissipate allowing new good ones to arrive? It’s up to us.

“The nature of dis-ease holds the key to the cure of that dis-ease”

“If you want to change your life, change the way you think, because thoughts manifest according to their nature”.

An Example of gene programming: Back in time, something took place which we call ‘The Slave Trade’. Black people were enslaved by white people. According to the accounts, both personal, eye-witness and third-hand, extreme cruelty was inflicted on the slaves – not just once, but continually for some, and for successive generations. These experiences may have caused a ‘variant gene’, which was passed on and is now in the present generation, as a memory, to serve a purpose. The descendants of the slaves may experience something similar – child abuse, racial prejudice, injustice, poverty, poor social standing, and lack of freedom. If a traumatic event is experienced by someone in this generation, and they have a serious lack of ability to cope, they may be diagnosed as having PTSD. Investigation reveals a certain variant gene, in more than one case, and the gene is cited as the cause of PTSD or an increased risk of it.

It is possible that a variant gene does not CAUSE PTSD or an increased risk of it.

It is possible that the variant gene is CAUSED BY PTSD.

History repeats itself. We all know that fighting, racial hatred, greed, victimisation, cruelty, tyranny, etc. is bad, wars are bad. It doesn’t stop them happening. PTSD isn’t new – it’s as old as mankind. Maybe we are just learning to recognise the symptoms, acknowledging their existence as something we can help and change for the better, and finally seeing that Man does indeed hurt man. But he can also help man, heal man and be kind and love man.

If there is a variant gene for PTSD, or an increased risk of suffering from it in some people, there must also be a variant gene for learning, changing, heroism, healers, kindness, and unconditional love.

Wendy Salter

[original writing]