I, Too, Remember That Feeling. You Are Caught Between All That Was And All That Must Be. You Feel Lost.

My kink? Knowing all the information

Oh, they are so adorable

baby animals blog

Following Trauma

More than 2.6 million servicemen and women have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan since September 11, 2001. Many veterans return home from their service with symptoms of post-traumatic stress, depression, chronic pain and traumatic brain injury. These symptoms are also common among civilian trauma survivors.

Now researchers from Harvard Medical School and other institutions will embark on a five-year-long project, the Aurora study, to better understand and treat these disorders.  The research will utilize the efforts of 19 institutions and more than 40 scientists.

Trauma survivors will be enrolled in the study in the immediate aftermath of trauma and followed longitudinally for one year using sophisticated adaptive sampling methods to perform a comprehensive, state-of-the-art assessment of genomic, neuroimaging, physiologic, neurocognitive, psychophysical, behavioral and self-report markers.

In addition to its unparalleled scope, the study differs from previous studies in that it will assess neuropsychiatric effects of trauma broadly rather than focus on only one or a few diseases.

“We want to be patient-centered and not diagnosis-centered,” said Samuel McLean, lead principal investigator of the study and an emergency medical physician at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Read more 

Funding: The five-year-long project is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.

Raise your voice in support of expanding federal funding for life-saving medical research by joining the AAMC’s advocacy community. 

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So this happens. Particularly zoning out, and it seems more intense now that I've been on medication. Sustaining concentration on anything is difficult.

I tend to crochet to keep myself grounded. But even then, I'll become enamored with the texture or my progress and I'll stop and dissociate. Even writing this reblog was more difficult than it should have been.

Are You Dissociating?

Dissociating is one of the most common responses to abuse and trauma. It involves feeling numb, detached or unreal and (while it happens to everyone once in a while) is experienced more frequently and severely in survivors. Dissociating people vary widely in symptoms and may experience any or all of the things from the following list.

You may be dissociating if you:

find yourself staring at one spot, not thinking anything

feel completely numb

feel like you’re not really in your body, like you’re watching yourself in a movie.

feel suddenly lightheaded or dizzy

lose the plot of the show or conversation you were focused on

feel as if you’re not quite real, like you’re in a dream

feel like you’re floating 

suddenly feel like you’re not a part of the world around you

feel detached and far away from other people, who may seem mechanical or unreal to you

are very startled when someone/something gets your attention

completely forget what you were thinking just a moment ago

suddenly cover your face or react as if you’re about to be hurt for no reason

can’t remember important information about yourself, like your age or where you live

find yourself rocking back and forth

become very focused on a small or trivial object or event

find that voices, sounds or writing seem far away and you sometimes have trouble understanding them.

feel as if you’ve just experienced a flashback (perhaps rapidly) but you can’t remember anything about it.

perceive your body as foreign or not belonging to you

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Little victories on depression

At the end of a national park rainbow, the gold you’ll find will be the stunning features of the landscape. Discover the national park treasure at the end of these colorful beauties. 🌈