The split between:
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
and
Flying
From my educational experience and training thus far, I have not yet read other professionals' mentionings of any discrepancies between these two experiences: PTSD and FLYING.
I refer to the 2nd experience as "flying" but clearly, that's not the term I search for in order to see if anyone else has written about this concept. Instead, I have looked for mention of the concept of flying and I have not come across any remotely related literature.
Flying will be introduced and discussed with respect to PTSD Transcendence in a brief moment.
A quick snapshot of the current accepted rationales as to why certain individuals get PTSD while others exposed to the same environmental milieu do not.
1. Oxytocin levels
The higher the innate level of oxytocin, the higher the probability of increased emotional response and internal freeze encapsulation resulting in PTSD. Also the higher probability of "fight or flight."
(The 6Fs: 1. Flight, 2. Freeze, 3. F***, 4. Fight, 5. Food, 6. Flying (different from flight)).
Higher oxyocin levels are 'base'd on Chromosome 3p25 marker rs53576 containing GG and/or AG alleles (in comparison to AA alleles).
2. Relational support
Higher oxytocin level people (approximately 37% of global population) not only experience increased chance of PTSD onset, but they benefit more from assuaging of Trauma/traumas through love, touch, empathy and interactive support from family members, friends or loved ones. If higher oxytocin level people do not receive love and support, healing hugs etc., their likelihood of PTSD onset is increased.
3. Lock and Key
If one has a previous existing life theme in which the current stressful event fits into like a lock in key, and the combination of current event and past theme is impactful enough to turn the latch, one's psychological door of trauma is opened resulting in a situationally compounded emotional reaction - PTSD.
Following are aome offered new perspectives regarding why some people may get PTSD while others do not.
4. Sympathetic nervous system carrying capacity levels to trauma.
Through the lens of biology, the difference between those who are able to fly through PTSD onset and those who get trapped in it's net may be related to one's y-axis of intensity level carrying capacity. For some people, the sympathetic nervous system activation and associated levels of released (x) cortisol may be activated at y=4. For others y may =9.. Cortisol traps the trauma experience as a memory with intensity and cause ortisol imprints that can get trigger by similar future themes.
One's threshold for acceptable internal stress (y) beyond homeostatic resting point may also play a factor in the onset of PTSD as the higher the carrying capacity of the individual's nervous system, the more tolerable the trauma level.
I would imagine this concept of nervous system carrying capacity is not fixed, rather it has a cumulative effect similar to a stretched rubber band. The more the parameters of trauma tolerance with respect to any given theme are slowly stretched over time, the less snap back PTSD potential.
I would imagine that people have varying overall carrying capacity thresholds of PTSD tolerance (x,y) as well as varying levels of theme tolerance with respect to nervous system activation. The ladder is more situational than biological in terms of individual's exposure.
5. Trauma Theme Tolerance
From a conditioned social lens, flying ability through a trauma experience may have to do with internalized conditioned beliefs and associated emotions from past experiences that counteract the PTSD exposure experience.
For example, if one were at a summer camp at the beach and a life guard saved a child from not drowning in the waves, this experience would feed a flying bank niche associated with water/death/fear.
If that same person as an adult were on a sinking cruise ship, and people around him were terrified of drowning, his life preserver encapsulated memory of the child, being saved by the life guard may provide a PTSD barrier.
This childhood scenario however would probably not serve as emotional protection of that same person if he were were trapped in a burning building as an adult due to the fact that the two scemarios most likely don't share theme relations.
Ultimately, PTSD comes down to fear of death and/or fear of people and their torture from a trapped and pained perspective (either of psyche or of body).
PTSD is the worst for those individuals trapped in a confined space while being or feeling threatened for one's life by another.
6.Flexible Trauma Contours
When these people are forced to brush up against their worst fear(s)...... And they cannot cognitively rework and redefine the trauma situation internally and/or fully accept and embrace the other side, the trauma exposure is like hitting a bag of ice against a steel wall.
To redefine perspective, shape of reality and fly in that same metaphor, one's ice in bag would melt in the bag such that when it hits the wall, it shares contours with the wall and flexes rather than fractures.
Perhaps some flyers transcending PTSD have experienced a deep spiritual connection in which there is a knowing of life and 'death' beyond and expanded from the conventional conditioning associated fears and unknowns.
Perhaps there is a letting go of the ego self and a joining with the kami of the universe. ...an acceptance of being..... whether in Being or out of Being. Perhaps there is a cognitive storyline or awareness that fits not only as an imagined (or real) separate realm, but a storyline that can also be tied into the logic of understanding in this realm.
7. Oxytocin reverse
Even though the oxytocin effects correlating to trauma were referenced above, perhaps there is also a reverse possibility.
Even though high oxytocin level people experience higher PTSD potential, this facet of the population also has a more complex inner world with schematic imagery and an ability to formulate alternative narratives.
One's ability to cognitively break free of entrapped storylines such as demonstrated in the movie "Life is Beautiful" can exponentially increase his/hey ability to transcend trauma.
If the trapped trauma is transcended and taught intergenerationally, the whole life experience would change.
8. Sleep state Integration
Another possibility regarding why some people develop PTSD while others do not may have to do with how some people process, chunk and associate trauma experiences in various phases of sleep.
9. Exercise and meditation and NSI
may play roles in abating PTSD. Also a breath work process I have named Neuro Somatic Integration.
Perhaps the reasons why flyers become flyers and why others get PTSD isn't even this complex. Thoughts?
I have had clients who have been gang raped with no PTSD onset. I have had clients who have been held to gun point with no PTSD onset. I have had military jet pilots with missiles blowing past them in florescent colors with no resulting trauma.
Yet......it is not uncommon for surrounding people who know the individual had been exposed to such a traumatic event to think that the person's anger or sadness or fear in any given scenario is connected that person's unprocessed trauma.
Of course it is important to keep in mind that PTSD can manifest at any time in one's life regardless of how long ago the initial exposure was to Trauma. It is also important to note that things and/or situations can cause PTSD that one would not typically classify as a traumatizing event. It is quite dependent upon ones internal world, life history and emotional impacts.
Also, the same things don't scare people. One's fear might be elicited by a natural disaster. Another's fear might be elicited by a psychological scenario. One's fear might be elicited by an imagined concept.
There is no one size fits all PTSD exposure theory, yet often people project their own fears onto others and assume that those individuals will have the same fears as self.
It seems that often, these flyer types of personalities' biggest risk for PTSD onset is related to therapists', friends' and families' insistence that they have PTSD rather than listening to their truth. I'm being slighly sarcastic.
A quick tangent from the last paragraph . . . . the types of personalities drawn to heroin and opiates (even before ever discovering drugs) often shut down and cease attempts at genuine connection and expression of self as they frequently feel categorized and framed into others' perspective and sense making.
Rather than these personalities realizing it is a limitation of the listener to hear the words and genuine expression .of him / herself... They often think they are not good with expression and communication and therefore stop......but their thought is simply the farthest thing from the truth.
We operate in many ways within this world as if we are all one in the same on the inside. It's simply not the case.
Back to the concept of flying. . . . Using the above 3 scenarios of: gang rape, gun point and missile flight, PTSD transcendence, as the possible result of one's ability create a new storyline and experience reality through this unique lens would undoubtedly be viewed as dissociation by most professionals.
Rather than be curious if there is anything to learn from these "Life (are) Beautiful" scenarios, therapeutic professionals are often much more interested in forcing a round peg through a square hole. Why? Because if they get "the plug" to fit, they have succeeded in their job and they can stroke their own egos for being good therapists. Good luck trying to get a therapist to admit it. Unlike most other facets of life, you'll actually need the luck beyond the given touche cheeky expression. It's not just therapists who insist on angles of overlaid peception of other.
I invite so many more possibilities of thinking and imagination to explore this flying concept of PTSD transcendence. (Call or whatever you want). ...."Wilson?" (The soccer ball)
Willing suspension of life disbelief within this realm rather than exclusively in hollywood.
I will offer two more potential explanations pertaining to the nervous system that I think may be possibiliTIES as to why some people don't get PTSD in an almost universally guaranteed PTSD evoking scenario.
10. Nervous System rerouting
I believe that just like a train can get re-routed by the shifting of TIES on railroad tracks, so too can the nervous system get re-routed. Just like the circulatory system can grow itself around coronary blockages and arteriosclerosis venules and arterioles, so too can the nevous system create new working pathways.
For example, one's nervous system vibration, frequency and route of synaptic travel that in the past was associated with anxiety in the stomach may now register in the body as extreme fatigue, or as a leg tingle. This nervous system rerouting process.....grows around the nervous system trauma block and makes new tie-ins to cognitive sense makings and neuronal junctures that are operational ....thus eliminating the trauma responses.
One would be able to detect this somatic re-routing of the body as the conscious mind would recognize the same environmentally triggering scenarios (whether internal thinking or external situations) eliciting different internal cues and sensations.
There are so many other ways of viewing trauma reslience and life in general that can radiate off this nervous system rerouting concept if one is interested in exploring new pathways of understanding.
11. Parasympathetic nervous system cushion
Lastly, in terms of the antagonistic relationship of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, perhaps some bodies remain in the parasympathetic state when exposed to stress, thus resulting in PTSD avoidance....however another set of issues might get created.....those of the psychosomatic variety.....such as oversweating or nausea.
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