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Helpless: Can Developmental Trauma Cause Someone To Feel Helpless?

In general, someone can have the inclination to feel helpless, and this is likely to make it hard for them to live a fulfilling life. What this comes down to is that they won't feel as though they are able to do anything to change their life.

This is likely to show that this is more than just something that they feel, though, as it could be something that has permeated their whole being. It is then not just going to be that they feel helpless; they will be helpless.

Going Upwards

If something does happen and they end up feeling different, it is unlikely to be long until they fall right back down again. When this happens, it might take a little while for them to adapt to how they feel.

The reason for this is that experiencing a sense of power will have allowed them to feel good and then, to go back to how they were before will be even harder, if only for a short while. Due to this, they might prefer to stay as they are.

For Example

There are a number of things that might allow them to rise up, albeit briefly. These can include: receiving money, receiving attention, being in a relationship, exercising and having sex.

How they feel when they experience one of these things or another will be so different to how they usually feel that they might often try to hold onto the experience. When this happens, it will be difficult for them to surrender to the experience and to fully embrace it.

Other Elements

As they often feel helpless, it is also likely to mean that they will often feel down and depressed. This can be seen as a natural consequence of feeling powerless and not feeling as if they have much of an effect on their life.

When they feel this way, their whole body could feel very heavy and weighed down. They won't have anything on top of them but it will be as though they are at the bottom of a fallen building.

Looking Back

If they were to think about how long they have experienced life in this way, they may find that they have more or less always been this way. So, for as long as they can remember, they will have been out of touch with their personal power.

They could believe that they were born this way and this is then how they will always be. Based on this, they will have been born feeling powerless and there won't be anything that they can do about it.

One Outlook

However, if they were to reach out for support, they could end up being told that they need to master their mind. Their 'negative' thoughts will be the problem and, once, they are able to replace these with 'positive' thoughts, they will start to feel different.

In other words, what is going on for them up top will be the issue, not what is going on anywhere else. This mind-based approach may work or it might only work for a short while.

A Surface Level Approach

Even if it does work, it might only repress what is truly going on for them. What this comes down to is that what is taking place in their mind, along with how they feel can be an effect of what is going on for them at a deeper level.

What is seen as the problem is then a symptom of what is going on for them in their unconscious mind/body. The challenge is that if one lives in a society that is mind centred and believes that someone begins and ends with their conscious mind, the cause won't be dealt with.

Going Deeper

With this in mind, if someone has felt helpless for as long as they can remember, it can show that their early years were not very nurturing. When they were an infant and then a toddler, they may have often been left.

When they were given attention, it may have often been mssatuned care. Consequently, they wouldn't have received the emotional nutrients that they needed to be able to grow and develop in the right way.

A Loveless Environment

The only way for them to handle the pain that they experienced would have been to disconnect from themselves. This would have also caused their body to go into a shut down, collapsed state.

They would have felt helpless because they were helpless. Shutting down and not resisting what was going on would have allowed them to survive a stage of their life that was brutal; if their parasympathetic nervous system hadn't been activated and they had tried to resist what was going on, they would have probably soon died.

A Reflection of Reality

Without this understanding, how they feel as an adult can simply be seen as being irrational and as purely a reflection of what is taking place in their head. With this understanding, it becomes clear that how they feel is completely rational given what they experienced very early on.

What this illustrates is that the pain that someone experiences during their early years doesn't just disappear once they become an adult. The challenge is that if they live in a society where their history is not explored and then taken into account, this pain will be overlooked and the root of their issue/s won't be dealt with.

Awareness

If someone can relate to this and they are ready to change their life, they may need to reach out for external support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer.

Author, transformational writer, teacher and consultant, Oliver JR Cooper, hails from England. His insightful commentary and analysis covers all aspects of human transformation, including love, partnership, self-love, self-worth, inner child and inner awareness. With over two thousand, eight hundred in-depth articles highlighting human psychology and behaviour, Oliver offers hope along with his sound advice.

To find out more go to - oliverjrcooper.co.uk/

Feel free to join the Facebook Group - facebook.com/OliverJRCooper

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How Psychedelic Drugs Are Helping Veterans and Others with PTSD, Depression

When Army Ranger Jesse Gould came home from Afghanistan in 2014 after his third deployment, he was suffering, both physically and emotionally.

It took the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) 2 years to process his disability claim and diagnose him with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Gould said that the VA’s treatments for PTSD simply weren’t working for him, and he was losing hope.

So, he began a search for something that could help him.

Ultimately, he discovered psychedelics, a class of psychoactive substances that can alter perception and mood and affect numerous cognitive processes.

These include lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), methylene dioxin methamphetamine (MDMATrusted Source), dimethyltryptamine (DMT), psilocybin (psychedelic mushrooms), ketamine, and ayahuasca brew.

Gould chose ayahuasca brewTrusted Source, which is made from the leaves of the Psychotria viridis shrub along with the stalks of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, although other plants and ingredients can be added.

“It saved my life,” said Gould, who in 2017 founded the Heroic Hearts Project, a nonprofit organization pioneering psychedelic therapies for military veterans.

Gould has partnered with the world’s leading ayahuasca treatment centers and sponsored psychiatric applications with the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Georgia.

He said that he’s now aware of thousands of veterans who’ve been helped by ayahuasca brew.

“In terms of direct connection, we have served over 150, and a clinic we work with has served 450,” Gould told Healthline.

Psychedelics are ‘misunderstood’

Thomas Bandzul, a legislative counsel for Veterans and Military Families for Progress and a longtime veterans advocate, said that what Gould is doing is becoming increasingly more common.

Bandzul explains that the reason so many veterans ultimately land on psychedelics is because they work.

“MDMA, for example, is one of the most misunderstood drugs that have huge potential for doing good,” he told Healthline. “Under controlled circumstances, used under medical professionals’ care, I think this can be, and has been, of great use for the good of people with stress-related injuries.

“Too many of the issues of the past have biased the public against this drug, but I have seen people with PTSD use this as a curative in conjunction with other therapies,” Bandzul added. “I believe it has great potential.”

How the VA sees itDespite what some see as growing evidence that psychedelics can positively treat people with PTSD and other psychological conditions, VA officials haven’t given them much attention.

Gary J. Kunich, a spokesman for the VA, told Healthline that the use of psychedelic treatments such as MDMA-assisted psychotherapy and psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy are “not part of the standard of care for treatment of mental health conditions at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and is not an approved clinical treatment.“

The use of psychedelics as part of a research protocol might be permissible, he added, “but this would require Institutional Review Board and Research and Development Committee approval at the local facility.”

He continued, “The Veterans Health Administration’s Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention is closely monitoring the developing scientific literature in this area.”

When considering evolving scientific literature around innovative mental health treatments, Kunich said, the VA looks for outcomes from “rigorous and well-designed clinical trials” as well as things such as Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval or recommendations in clinical practice guidelines.

“When implementing a new, evidence-based mental health treatment, VHA puts safety of veterans first and foremost,” he said.

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New clinical trials beginning

While the VA hasn’t endorsed any psychedelics or funded any trials at the federal level, several individual VA hospitals have begun looking at psychedelics as a possible treatment alternative.

“The VA is lagging way behind with regard to psychedelics,” said Rick Doblin, PhD, the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).

“Most veterans believe that the VA should be the active voice for veterans. If there is some treatment that can help the veteran, they should be first to study it,” Doblin told Healthline. “But that is not the case. The vast majority of the funding has been from private donors.”

Doblin, who received his doctorate in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, wrote his dissertation on the regulation of psychedelics and cannabis for medical use.

His professional goal is to change the public’s perception of psychedelics. He supports the development of psychedelics as prescription medications but also for personal growth for otherwise healthy people.

Not just for veteransDoblin believes that there are many applications and uses for psychedelics that extend beyond the VA — especially for depression and other psychological issues.

By 2025, Doblin said, we’ll see a ramping up of psychedelic clinics for PTSD, psilocybin clinics for addiction, and more that will go beyond veterans.

“Psychedelics will also play a major role in community-wide addiction treatment, he said. “It will be combined with psychotherapy, as well as for couples, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), phobias, and depression.”

By 2035, he said, “many people will be telling stories about having been to a psychedelic clinic. They will have legal access to these psychedelics.”

First priority is veteransThe VA Loma Linda Health Care System in California has initiated a single-site, phase 2 clinical trial designed to test the feasibility of administering MDMA alongside psychotherapy for combat-related treatment-resistant PTSD.

MDMA will be given in conjunction with structured psychotherapy in three single-dose psychotherapy sessions in a hospital setting over the course of 12 weeks.

The overall objective of the study is to evaluate the risks, benefits, and feasibility of MDMA used in conjunction with manualized psychotherapy, on reduction of symptoms, or remission of PTSD, as evaluated by standard clinical measures, in a VA healthcare system.

“So far, only one veteran has been enrolled and treated at the Loma Linda VA,” Doblin said. “The study is for eight vets. No other psychedelic trials at VAs have been conducted.”

Doblin said that the first veteran has been screened for a trial at the VA facility in the Bronx in New York City but hasn’t yet been treated.

“We just submitted a protocol to the FDA for a group therapy study at the Portland VA, which we anticipate starting about March 2022. There will be psilocybin PTSD trials at multiple VAs, but they haven’t started,” he said.

PTSD expert changes her mindRachel Yehuda, PhD, a PTSD expert and a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, is director of the Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research and director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Division at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

Yehuda told CBS News last week that she was previously skeptical about psychedelics being of any benefit to patients.

“When I first heard about this, I thought to myself, ‘How could this possibly be a good idea?’” she said. “Psychedelics were illegal and designated by our government as being of potential harm and no medical benefit.”

However, in 2016, the FDA authorized phase 3 trials of MDMA, and Yehuda has since changed her view.

Yehuda told CBS that the results from MAPS’ first phase 3 trial “were just astounding.”

“Two-thirds of the people that were treated with a course of MDMA no longer have PTSD,” she noted.

The FDA now recognizes MDMA-assisted psychotherapy as a breakthrough approach, which could help lead it to full approval.

How safe are psychedelic trials?Are psychedelics clinical trials safe? Doblin gives an emphatic yes.

“We have medical screening to keep people safe from physical complications,” he said.

“We have lots of preparation and integration sessions, and we administer a suicide severity rating scale at every meeting with a patient to try to keep people safe from psychological complications.”

Doblin said that therapists have a code of ethics and two-person therapy teams. They videotape all therapy sessions, whether they involve medications or not.

“We have monitoring and oversight from our clinical research team to keep the data safe from mistakes,” he explained.

Source: Healthline.com/health-news/how-psychedelic-drugs-are-helping-veterans-and-others-with-ptsd-depression#How-safe-are-psychedelic-trials?