Tom woke up, his head pounding, and he ached all over. The dark cloud that followed him everywhere was back. The partying last night gave him a brief reprieve, but it was over. He slowly dragged himself out of bed and thought about how disappointing it was that he woke up. He didn’t realize he was playing with fire, or that alcohol and substance misuse increase suicide risk.
The nagging wish to stop living like this wrapped itself around him and through him to his core. It wasn’t the booze and pills that he wanted to be free of. It was the darkness, the pit, the vacant emptiness, the ache.
His lifestyle of repeatedly over indulging, getting high, and oblivion was the one thing that gave him minutes of relief.
Minutes when he felt good for a change.
Tom drank a couple mugs of coffee to try to clear his head, took a shower, and headed to his job. He had a degree in business management, but since the depression and anxiety had gotten so much worse, it flattened his ambition. He was just hanging on. Trying to get through the day. In fact, he held on to get through the hour…the slow, dragging minutes.
By lunchtime he didn’t know if he could get through the day, but he needed this paycheck. So he had to endure…and thought about what he would do after work to feel better. He started planning in his head to occupy his mind. That was a whole lot better than just slogging through work.
That night, Tom met up with friends he sometimes partied with. He contributed a bottle of bourbon, malt whiskey, and a case of beer he put on ice. The other two friends brought more of the same, plus some pills.
Tom hated the morning after. He always did. But the whole purpose was to construct relief. Respite from his misery. And this time was no different. He wanted to drown his pain. So he popped pills, guzzled beer and slammed shots with abandon.
However, this time he didn’t wake up with his head pounding. The “blackout” that followed all that he swallowed pulled him into a coma. One of his friends woke up from his own stupor and couldn’t wake Tom or his other friend. He called 911.
Their friend was pronounced dead at the scene, and Tom was rushed to the hospital where emergency personnel fought for his life.
After 2 weeks in the ICU, Tom began to gain consciousness. They told him his alcohol poisoning was nearly fatal, which was really hard for him to grasp. But it was even worse realizing his friend William had died that night.
Were they trying to end their lives? Had they tried to die before and — since it hadn’t happened — did they think they were indestructible? Was it really “partying” or was it flirting with death, in hopes of escaping their misery..?
These are questions that surround the growing numbers of people who misuse alcohol and substances… and die as a result. Do they realize that alcohol and substance misuse increase suicide risk?
Is an overdose suicide or an accident?
September is National Suicide Prevention Month. Research has illuminated the complicated relationship between alcohol use disorder, substance use disorder…and suicidal thinking, suicide attempts, and suicide deaths. The purpose of National Suicidal Prevention Month is to inform society and equip you to recognize risk factors among your own friends, family, and coworkers.
For a long time we’ve recognized that alcohol and substance use disorders are associated with suicide risk. And when substance use is combined with alcohol use, there is a much higher risk of fatalities by suicide.
When you consider that alcohol and substances are widely used to self medicate symptoms that may not have been addressed and treated, it makes sense to treat the symptoms and talk openly about suicidal thoughts that can be stopped by IV ketamine.
Alcohol and substance misuse are not the only risk factors for suicidal thinking or fatalities —but they can increase risk of suicide a hundred fold.
A hundred fold greater risk. That’s staggering.
When you identify these risk factors in the life of someone you care about, you can save a life by opening up conversation about suicidal behaviors and thoughts.
Talk about the symptoms that lead to self medication — because there is hope through treatment of those symptoms.
And IV ketamine can stop suicidal thoughts in a few hours. And allow you time to seek the treatment that will make your life better.
If you’re experiencing suicidal thoughts or plans, call 988, the National Suicide Hotline.
Someone who understands what you’re feeling is waiting to talk with you.
When we think about family, what does your mind conjure? A mother, a father, and a few children? Or maybe a mother and children. Or a father and his brood. How you achieve being your best self is largely influenced by your family.
Maybe your experience with family is having two moms, or two dads. You might have a foster family with a mom and several children of various races with different backgrounds.
Or you just might have developed a family of your own by gathering people in need you’ve met, who need the support of family. Maybe you needed the presence of others who needed you, and found you needed them too.
Family can come in lots of shapes and sizes. A mother and a grandmother leading the brood, or a father and grandfather, like we see on the TV show, Blue Bloods. Fact is, it’s not about whether family members are related or not, it’s about people who feel a connection to each other, who may live together or not, but feel some sort of bond and mutual support that keeps them tied together. That bond can play an important part in your being your best self.
For those who have good family relationships, thoughts of family likely bring a sense of togetherness, laughter, and warmth. These are the people you can talk to about your problems and disappointments, and trust you’ll be heard without judgment.
They’re also the ones who will share your joys and triumphs.
Fundamentally, family has your back. Or at least it’s supposed to.
But, if you can’t relate to the warmth, laughter, and togetherness, you may have a family who doesn’t know how to function with support and lack of judgment. And if that’s the case, you may be suffering from wounds and scars from your family. And those can be hard to overcome and heal.
Family members in families like this are often scarred from being hurt by damaged people. It’s easy to see that in cases like this, your family might not be a strong influence in being your best self.
Family members who were treated harshly, or even abused, and who in turn, repeat those same behaviors with their loved ones. Because of their own scars, they may not be fully aware that their behavior toward people they love could be causing deep seated damage.
What about you? Is your family life full of joy, laughter, sharing, loving, and support..? Or is it a place you feel alienated and alone, defensive and afraid..? Or if you’re grown now, what are your memories like? Positive or hurtful? Maybe you feel anger and don’t know why.
It’s possible it started when you were too young to remember, or that you do remember the pain and you can’t figure out how to get over it.
Here’s the thing. It can be a lot of work to get the therapy you need to come to peace with your past traumas, but ketamine treatment can help resolve the symptoms and the fall-out. It can help you feel better, and by feeling better you can understand your feelings and even change them. If your family has hindered you in being your best self, ketamine can help.
At Innovative Psychiatry we help people every week — who suffer from disorders like these — achieve remission with ketamine treatment. Your relationships with your family can be wonderful, or they can be extremely difficult. Sometimes, they’re a combination of both. But if you’ve been wounded, and scarred, ketamine treatment is something you can do to help you heal.
And when you come for treatment, we’ll take you to a private treatment room with a soothing atmosphere, so you can relax. We also have installed plasma cell technologyto destroy all the bacteria, viruses, and mold in the room. You can rest assured that you’re safe from infection and can focus on your treatment…and getting better.
When you’ve lived with these painful symptoms for so long, you can’t imagine you can be free of them, it’s hard to imagine how some infusions can resolve your misery, but they often can.
We’ve been doing this for years, and we know that ketamine treatment isn’t for everyone. For some people It doesn’t work. For others, it doesn’t seem to work initially, then weeks later, remission sneaks up and takes over. In still other cases, symptoms dissipate after the first or second infusion. Ketamine response is different in different people, just as everyone is different, and everyone’s brain is unique.
But the bottom line is that you are likely to transformed by ketamine treatment.
If you suffer from symptoms that interfere with your life, call us.
We want you to get better. That’s what we’re about.
“…You know, I’ve been there. It was a tough time, and I have no doubt it’s tough for you. Here’s what I did to get through it …“
If you’ve been through a great deal of sadness, angst, difficulty, and struggle, it doesn’t need to go to waste. While you can’t go back and erase the experience as if it never happened, there really is something better. And that is to share with others who are hurting, showing them how you weathered the storm. Your painful experiences can provide hope for others.
Have you ever been against the wall with no way out? Struggling to find answers and solutions? You KNOW how alone you can feel at a time like that. The fact you feel so alone seems to make finding solutions that much more bleak.
Eventually, you probably did find a solution, or else if you didn’t, you survived it and are now here to talk about it.
Others are facing the struggle you were, and haven’t survived it yet. They need to have someone to talk to just as you wished you did. When you allow that, your painful experiences can provide hope for others … IF you’re willing to share them. It’s not all that easy to expose yourself, but you can do so much good if you’re willing.
Take Melanie, for example.
She struggled with depression, and her daughter is diagnosed with bipolar II disorder. Melanie has so many stories to tell… For instance, her depression was untreated at the time she married. Her husband, Jim, was in medical school, and was always gone, studying with his study group. It was a great weight on a new marriage, and she tried to overcome her despair.
But she couldn’t shake the feeling that her husband had become apathetic about her as his wife. The pain she felt about it was more than she could bear. She’d close herself in a blanket closet and scream into the blankets so no one would hear her. It felt so hopeless.
Years later, after he finished his training, he continued to be extremely busy and away from home. A dark cloud pervaded her mind and outlook, and it seemed obvious it would never get better. She even considered suicide…
As one year bled into another, children were born and growing up. Melanie settled into a complacent frame of mind. One that helped her to not expect more from her husband than he was giving to her and the family. She knew she had married a future physician, and that his time would be in demand.
But she didn’t know his time was never going to be his own. Or hers.
Still, she hadn’t expected to be this lonely. But she had to put on her big girl panties and accept the life she was living. It took awhile of ups and downs. Getting up, falling down, and getting up again. But little by little she was able to find things to involve herself in to contribute.
By the time the kids were in high school, he agreed to see a marriage counselor with her. A friend had suggested that she be cautious about blaming him, if she wanted good to come from the counseling.
Taking her friend’s advice, she approached couples’ counseling as an opportunity to find out what her husband needed, and to endeavor to contribute to meeting those needs. She hoped that he would want to know her needs, too, eventually.
The couples’ therapy seemed to be progressing fine, until he admitted that with the distance between them he had considered pursuing women he worked with, but had never taken the first step. He truly wondered if she was involved with someone else due to her distance from him.
At a time like this, exposing your pain is harder than retaliating… but it’s still far preferable, and somehow Melanie sensed this.
But, she was devastated. The idea that he had looked at any other woman besides her–really looked, seriously thought about it–just seemed to break some aspect of their marriage vows in her mind. She wondered how they could possibly go forward from here.
With hard work, tears, and pain, the counselor and her husband helped her see that it was because of their vows that he had never acted on those thoughts. And that, if they were both willing, they were in a strategic place to begin a new level of commitment…. one that included time together, caring for each other in ways the other needed, and working every day to nurture love between them.
Well, it worked.
They planned a trip to Italy to study Melanie’s favorite artists while the kids were still in high school. After the youngest graduated, they took a second honeymoon to Denmark, to see where her husband’s grandparents had lived and to search out other relatives.
By the time Melanie was 50, she was enjoying life in ways she never had before. And she discovered she had much to share.
While they were enjoying a cruise in Alaska, she met a young woman whose husband was in medical school. This new friend seemed to be having some struggles similar to those she and her husband had so many years ago.
Since painful experiences can provide hope for others in pain, she decided to open up and talk about her own story to this young woman… and later to both of them together.
So they met for dinner as a foursome and talked about the problems that plagued their early marriage. and how close they had come to losing each other. They talked about ambition and how sometimes physicians lose sight of their family’s needs because of the demands of their practice. They spoke about her problems with depression and how her unrest fed the depression, and prolonged it.
It turned out that the younger couple wanted to have dinner with them every night for the rest of the cruise–yep!–and Melanie and her husband took them under their wing to warn them of the pitfalls ahead and how they would do it differently if they could do it over.
And even now, years later, the two couples are still friends, and have helped each other through a number of ups and downs.
When Melanie’s daughter was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, she and her husband needed lots of support. They were doing all they knew to do to help their daughter, but her condition had a way of bringing them face to face with their own powerlessness.
The young couple from the cruise stepped up to offer their support to Melanie’s and Jim’s daughter and to let her know she had friends who supported her no matter what. They wanted to give forward the kindness her parents had shown them — because painful experiences can provide hope if we share them.
So beautiful. So generous.
To say they lived happily ever after is a bit of an exaggeration… but what is happily ever after anyway, but loving and being loved, facing obstacles and tragedies together, and knowing you have each other’s back?
(Wish we all had that, right?…. we sure need it.)
At Innovative Psychiatry, we see patients with stories like Melanie’s. People whose lives and their frustration with it contributes to their depression and anxiety. We encourage them to face the truth about themselves and the other players in their life’s story and find out how to embrace their lives head-on and realistically.
Sometimes a change of circumstances can help a great deal. Other times, treatment is needed. For severe depression and anxiety, PTSD, substance use, social anxiety, alcohol use, and suicidal thinking. If the symptoms are too severe to fix through counseling and talk therapy, or don’t respond to other treatments, there may be an opportunity for a whole different approach. IV ketamine treatment may help them manage circumstances more effectively.
It’s amazing what solutions can be found when symptoms of a disorder lift.
When you come in for treatment, you’ll see we’ve taken every care care to create a space that is calm, serene, welcoming. It’s like a spa. Heated, leather recliners that adjust perfectly to let you really realx.
And while you’re here, settling in, you’ll notice an elegant little white box on the table. That unassuming box is more valuable than you might have guessed. The word Novaerus graces the front of it, as it quietly works away. And what is it doing? Well, since we’re committed to always go the extra mile, those white boxes serve as investments in your health. Using plasma cell technology, they destroy viruses, including all the COVID variants, as well as bacteria and mold. When you’re in our offices, you’re protected from pathogens that would make you sick.
Developed by NASA and the Department of Defense, these units were designed to destroy pathogens in the Space Station, and are more than sufficient for destroying those pathogens in our office. What’s important is that you’re safe from infection while you’re here, so you’re free of anxiety about flu or pandemic fallout. Focus on your treatment, and the insights you gain. It’s all part of the healing process.
You’ve lived too long with the nagging wounds and symptoms that have installed obstacles all through your life. It can be so much better for you.
If you have symptoms like we’ve described, and no other treatment has helped, call us.
Most of us realize that the abuse of young children is cruel and heartbreaking, and can scar their emotions. This is especially true of girls. But there’s more to it….
Childhood abuse alters girls’ development of the connections between neurons in the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, the parietal cortex, and insular cortex …all important parts of your brain associated with processing emotion. These experiences, are not only hurtful for the child, but damaging. And the damage can last.
Take little 18 month-old Ava:
“Stop that!!”
The sound of a slap reverberates through the store, followed by a wail. Most shoppers stop and look around. Then, they spot an 18 month-old wailing. Her huge fat tears run down both her cheeks… one of which bears a blooming red mark.
“I said, we’ll eat when we get home!! Stop that right now or I’ll give you something to cry about!!!”
One experience like this is not what traumatizes Ava. It’s that this happens all the time, every day — sometimes more than once. At times, it’s more than a slap. Sometimes there are bruises. And little Ava doesn’t understand…
With all these incidents Ava endures, she learns to withdraw into herself. And to tell herself things that help her endure. And survive.
Because early childhood abuse alters a little girl’s brain development, and delays her emotional maturity.
As a teen, Ava turns out to exhibit a short temper, and seems to lack the skill to reason through conflict. She just starts yelling. Screaming. And reaches out in anger. She slams things down. She starts cutting herself long before anyone else ever teaches her how.
By the time she’s 32, she has no idea why she’s so miserable. Why people avoid her, or why she’s always fighting with them. She can’t remember ever feeling peaceful…or confident. Or like she had it together. And she doesn’t know why.
Many of us have witnessed scenes where a frustrated mom berates and slaps her child. And many of us have been in those scenes… as the child, or the sib, or the bystander. In public. Just imagine what happens in private.
Two thirds of children experience violence by age 16– they endure physical abuse, sexual abuse, or witness violence at home or in the community.
Two out of every 3 children. Think about it.
This is not about the wonderful, attentive nurturing and cooing that helps children grow and flourish.
This is just ugly. When a scenario like this one happens with an 8 year-old, maybe you wonder… why is she pushing the envelope at her age? Maybe she best knows getting yelled at? Or always slapped? Does her parent think they’re “teaching her a lesson?”
But then you see an 18 month-old crying sorrowfully, after a sound slap. You think, this child is too young to be “taught a lesson” in a department store. (For Pete’s sake!) The look in her eyes conveys hurt and confusion. But not rebellion.
Have you ever heard a mother scold a baby, and say, “You know better than that!”
And you think…ummmm no…she doesn’t. She’s too little…
No, a newborn infant doesn’t understand harshness…and early childhood abuse alters parts of her brain and impair her ability to process emotions properly.
The same is true of a 2 year-old. If she’s crying incessantly, your gut says she needs something. She’s not rebelling. She’s relying on his caregivers to meet his needs.
So when a parent swats a 2 year-old and yells…the parent is traumatizing this toddler. She’s finding out the world is not a very safe place. Maybe she just feels hungry (or tired) and is signalling that. She doesn’t understand why she receives pain instead of nourishment.
Here’s another scenario: a 7 year-old girl only wants to be loved, supported, and protected by her parents or caregivers. However, sometimes caregivers hold motivation for things within themselves that ignore her need for safety.
Sometimes, parents, uncles, cousins, or neighbors find opportunities to cause her harm, and warn her to “not tell”…This leaves her hurt, confused, and afraid.
When abuses like these take place, she is susceptible to altered development in her brain — and to psychiatric disorders later.
Some people don’t understand the difference between discipline and abuse. (Really, you ask? I ask that, too.) Other people don’t care to even learn– they just vent frustrations on their kids.
A human person — a little human person who is a child — is a delicate organism and requires gentleness, love, and care to grow and develop well. However, some children don’t get that…. instead they get served a slap, a scream, or sometimes torture, and confusion.
And that causes damage.
Quite often the victim of abuse morphs to the abuser herself.
When an innocent child is subject to hurt, abuse, and injury, there can be serious fallout. Instead of fostering confidence, the abuse causes scars she may never get over.
But what’s the story with those scars? What’s the nature of them? How do they affect the child as she grows?
A paper published in the American Journal of Psychiatry took a closer look at girls who were abused at a young age, and the effects on their brain development and the possible development of psychiatric symptoms.
The team studied 234 girls, ages 8 – 18. Some of these girls suffered no abuse as children and ended up with no psychiatric diagnosis. These were labeled “typically developing” for purposes of the study. (And honestly, every child has a right and a need to be in this category.)
Sadly, many are not.
Another group had been abused in childhood but had not acquired a psychiatric diagnosis by the time they were studied–but remember they were studied still as children or teens; they might not have had access to care because of their ages. They were labelled “resilient.” We talk about resilience often and it’s the power to rise up again after being knocked down. Every person needs it, but not all develop it.
And for these girls, it might be the wrong word to use, because could still develop psychiatric symptoms in a year or two, or more. Related to the abuse.
The third group of girls had been abused and did receive one or more psychiatric diagnoses. They were labeled “susceptible.” These are the ones whose scars from abuse were already showing while they were still children or teens. And who are likely to need help for their symptoms in order to live fully rewarding lives.
All of these girls were given MRI brain scans, and detailed medical and psychiatric histories were compiled. Their brain scans were correlated with the abuse, their symptoms and the severity of their symptoms… then analyzed using machine learning methods that generated information about the maturation of each girl’s brain, and compared the biological and structural changes in their brains to their chronological age. The gap between where they should have been and where they actually were is referred to as BrainAGE.
The BrainAGE calculation showed whether the maturing of the brain was advanced or delayed compared to where it would have been for the child’s age. They compared the BrainAGE of girls who had suffered physical abuse or neglect to girls who had never been abused.
Of those 85 girls who were “susceptible” 38 had an anxiety disorder, 59 had a depressive disorder, 56 had PTSD, and 62 had at least two of these disorders. That’s 72.9%.
That’s huge.
Here’s the most important thing: Abuse in a girl’s childhood (regardless of whether the girl was resilient or susceptible) was associated with delayed structural maturing of the brain.
But even more significant: This lack of maturing occurred in those neuron connections used in processing emotion.
Childhood abuse alters a girl’s brain development and alter how a child will process emotions and emotional triggers. If you were a girl who suffered abuse early, wrap your arms around yourself. Take a slow breath.
Furthermore, the delayed maturing of those same neuronal connections occurred with a tendency for the girl to develop hyperarousal symptoms. Hyperarousal is often seen in PTSD and other anxiety states. It causes you to become hypervigilant, extremely sensitive, as well as distressed or even utterly disabled by whatever is happening in your environment (that may not even be a real threat).
There were more findings, but for our purposes here, it’s crucial to understand that if you’ve experienced trauma as a young child, and you feel you’re easily anxious, triggered or terrified, or others tell you that your reactions are extreme for the situation, there are reasons.
You may have had changes in your developing brain development where connections between brain cells have been altered, especially those connections involved in processing emotion.
So we have to ask, since early childhood abuse alters girls’ brains and delays emotional maturity and can result in things like PTSD … could this delayed development in certain neuronal connections respond to ketamine treatment?
Hmmm… That question hasn’t been answered. It hasn’t even been asked.
Since ketamine switches on mRNA which turns on DNA to turbo boost brain-derived-neurotrophic-factors (BDNF), the connections between the neurons in the emotion processing center can proliferate by leaps and bounds. Those restored connections, called synapses, can improve your ability to process fear, panic, and depression.
At Innovative Psychiatry, we see people every day who’ve lived through childhood abuse. They withstood it somehow. We see their deep pain, and the results of that pain in their lives and their behaviors. For those who suffer from extreme anxiety or PTSD, ketamine can be enormously effective. It’s not for everyone, of course. (There isn’t anything in medicine that always works for everyone.) But it may be able to offer you an opportunity to move beyond yourself and beyond your symptoms. It might offer you the opportunity for healing.
Wow. What wouldthat be like?
Treatment happens in our gorgeous private treatment rooms–with skylights, windows, treetops, or cozy warm quietness. You’ll sink into lovely heated recliners where it’s zero-gravity floating relaxation… and you can bring a playlist with you on your iPad or phone. We monitor you carefully. We want you to be assured that you’re well taken care of.
You also may notice a little gorgeous white box in your treatment room that says Novaerus on it. This is plasma cell technology developed by The Department of Defense and NASA. It seeks out and destroys the DNA in any little particles of bacteria, virus, or mold. This includes the delta variant (…and the mu and the new lambda variant that has entered the US).
So be confident that you can come and receive treatment and look forward to getting better. Even if you’ve known fear, it doesn’t live here.
And since early childhood abuse alters girls’ brains, if you’re that child, give yourself room to imagine what it would be like to feel better.
Luke and Sam walk home from school. Luke says, “Hey man, I’ve got some weed, wanna share a joint?”
Sam looks up, pleased at the prospect. “I have a better idea. Let’s call Dom. She’s throwing a party with brownies and cookies, too. Brownies are such a fun way to get high…” As you watch Luke and Sam, do you wonder…will cannabis harm a teenage brain..?
Lukes smiles. “M’kay…I’m game. I’ll text her.”
Luke says, “You know my dad gave me another talk. He insists weed is hurting my brain and my future. But how could it? It just makes me feel mellow, man. And it grows from the ground. It’s a plant. It’s not some poisonous chemical. I don’t get why they’re so uptight about it.”
Sam shakes his head and says, “It’s not logical, man. They’re trying explain but they don’t understand. They’re afraid of something that’s been made legal? The government wouldn’t have made it legal if it wasn’t safe…”
Will cannabis harm your teenage brain?
Talk about an age old controversy. This is one of the oldest and most intense.
Cannabis is marijuana, and can be smoked, mixed into edibles like brownies and cookies. It’s natural…grows out of the ground…so obviously it’s healthy and good for you, right? Maybe? Or maybe not…
Cannabis can harm your teenage brain…
It often starts during adolescence — 78% of people using cannabis for the first time are between the ages of 12 and 20. But cannabis is used at every age. It may not be too bad for adults in midlife, but that’s a discussion for another time. What about teens?
Today, let’s talk about whether it’s beneficial in adolescence.
A landmark study just published in the JAMA Psychiatry (credible, right?) took a look at the long term effects of cannabis use by teenagers.
The researchers behind this incredibly important long-term study point out that even though there has been more and more legalization of cannabis, there have been few longitudinal imaging studies to show the impact of its use during this formative time of life. When they speak of longitudinal studies they’re talking about following the subjects over a period of time.
To understand more, Matthew D. Albaugh, Ph.D., and his research team began imaging studies gathering MRI information for 799 European participants ages 14 and up, then again at the end of the study five years later.
The researchers found some surprising results at the five year mark. For instance, in teens who reported moderate to heavy cannabis use, there was a reduced thickness in the prefrontal cortex, both left and right.
This means there was altered development of the neurons in the left and right prefrontal cortex regions.
Now, maybe you’ve heard people say that a young person should avoid major decisions before the age of 25…. Why? Because before that the prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed. Or maybe to avoid marrying before that age for the same reason. Or maybe they used it to explain poor judgment, and impulsivity.
The prefrontal cortex is important. It empowers us to plan, make decisions, memorize and remember, and learn. Plus manage time and organize.
Think about it. What if you couldn’t do any of those things? Or do them well. How would it affect your life? Will cannabis harm your teenage brain..? Let’s not put our heads in the sand about it.
You might not be able to organize school work, or organize your job responsibilities when you’re older. You might always be kind of confused and behind, because of your inability to organize and manage time. Imagine that.
You might not learn to drive — well.
You might not feel like studying or learning… you might not be able to do all the things you could have when your parents and teachers said you ”had so much potential.”
You Coulda Been a Contender.
In fact, you might not do a good job planning your senior graduation party. Or where to go to college.
Basically, you might just forgetcollege, or a job using your mind. You might have to be told what to do and when to do it. Over and over. Picture that.
The researchers also learned that the amountof cannabis adolescents used was directly related to the amount of thinning. Those who used it heavily had the most severe thinning in the prefrontal cortex regions.
And it gets more alarming.
Since the prefrontal cortex in a teen is less developed, this underdeveloped portion of the brain caused greater amounts of impulsiveness.
The right cerebral cortex, as well as the left, are both densely populated with cannabinoid 1 receptors. They undergo their greatest age- related change in mid-to-late adolescence. Research with lab animals has shown that teens are most vulnerable during this time to the impact of tetrahydrocannabinol (which is THC, the psychoactive chemical in cannabis) on their brain structures and function.
So these effects on the brain related to cannabis use, according to this study, link teen cannabis use with a variety of negative outcomes, including psychiatric symptoms in adults.
Ok, now the logic. You’re a teenager from age 12 to age 20. Eight years of your 75 year life span are taken up by adolescence, but the decisions you make during those 8 years can alter the course of the next 55 years, more or less. Cannabis: will it harm the teenage brain?
Be Logical
Just think, if you got through adolescencewithout using cannabis, the risks of psychiatric disorders that are often increased by cannabis use are removed from your future. Those risks are gone. Plus, the impulse control that’s lost as a result…that can lead to arrest and imprisonment, or impulsive decisions like ending your life? Those risks are gone too, if you never use it.
If you stop and think about it, you need all the impulse control you can get, you know?
Studies have been lining up for years, showing that cannabis changes important parts of the brain, especially in the prefrontal cortex. And to be at our best, to have access to the best we can do, we need to stay away from those things that damage brain systems.
To develop yourself for the future, whether through college or art or creative endeavors or learning a trade, it’s all education…and you need it to enjoy a rewarding life. You need all your faculties. You need to protect your brain.
So while we can’t fix what cannabis damaged in the past, we can offer a healing experience with IV ketamine treatment that can restore the damage depression, anxiety, and stress cause. It can also help with alcohol and substance misuse.
At Innovative Psychiatry, we work with people everyday who’ve used cannabis, and report impairments they’ve become aware of. In addition, many are depressed and/or anxious. While we can’t erase the years of cannabis use, we can treat the depression and anxiety that never seems to let up. Especially if they’ve already tried other medicines and treatments.
We specialize in treatment resistant depression and anxiety, as well as substance and alcohol use disorders, bipolar depression, and PTSD…and have seen IV ketamine treatment do wonderful things for them. IV ketamine puts 100% of ketamine right where it’s needed, on the brain tissue that’s showing impairment from the pruning caused by stress.
That’s not to say that we think ketamine heals the damage cannabis can cause — but we are saying that it can be wonderful at restoring your outlook from dismal, dark, and dreary to happy, hopeful, and expecting good things.
Ketamine isn’t for everyone, but it is for most. The percentage of those who are helped is so high that chances are you’ll be set on higher ground by this treatment.
When you come in for treatment, forget about waiting rooms—we’ll meet you at the door and take you straight to your treatment room. (And what a room it is! Skylights, windows, treetops, dimmable lighting—we’ve got it all.) You’ll find yourself in a beautiful environment, and a zero-gravity heated recliner…and you’ll have privacy to make the most of your treatment. You can be at ease because we took a preemptive step and installed plasma cell technology to destroy all airborne viruses, including COVID and its variants, plus bacteria and molds. And they’re destroyed, not caught on a nasty little filter. 99.999%.
So, while we can’t fix what cannabis damaged in the past, we can offer the kind of healing and repair with IV ketamine treatment that can restore the damage depression, anxiety, and stress cause. It can also help with alcohol use disorder and substance use disorder.
So whatever has led to suicidal thoughts, IV ketamine can erase those thoughts in a few hours, or an afternoon. It can save your life. So you’ll have more life to live and recover in.
Thanks to the Delta variant, the pandemic is not over… yet. Impaired cognition has reached a crisis point for many throughout the world.
Elanna walked into the kitchen and laid her hands on the counter top. Why was she here? She looked for her phone, but she was holding it. Well, that was good, at least. She looked around for a hint…water was OFF at the sink. Well, that was good. Finally she remembered her bill she needed to pay by check. So she hurried to her desk to write the check and mail it. What had her son told her to read about…? What to do about brain fog? What was it?
The next morning she found the envelope to pay the bill on her desk. Oh NO!!! That needed to be mailed yesterday!!! So she slipped it into her purse to take it to the post office.
Then her phone rang. It was the box store to schedule delivery for her refrigerator. “Tuesday, between 3pm and 5pm? Yes,I’ll be here.”
Next, she brought in the mail, and felt relieved that at least her bill payment had gone out today, even if it was a day late. A special envelope caught her attention. She pulled at it to free it from the rest of the stack. She recognized the handwriting and eagerly opened it.
A wedding shower for her closest friend’s daughter! On Tuesday at 3:30pm. Wonderful!
She called immediately to RSVP and assured her friend she’d be there with bells on!
Remember Elanna’s bill payment in her purse…? She doesn’t….
The following day she grabbed her purse, stuffing an apple in it on her way out the door in case she got hungry. She made several stops to find just the right gift. It wasn’t easy, because she found herself distracted repeatedly by all the appealing things on display that had nothing to do with a wedding shower.
The weekend was a whirlwind of activity, and finally Tuesday morning arrived. She wrapped her gift, dressed enthusiastically, then rushed out the door for the shower. She had great fun with her friends and their daughters, everyone twittering about Hannah’s wedding.
She asked around, super casually, what they knew about brain fog… and if brain fog was a thing. One of the young women said, “It’s a mental fuzziness, an inability to think clearly, make decisions clearly, that kind of thing.”
After helping with cleanup, Elanna got home at dusk and saw a note on her door. She pulled it off and set it on the kitchen counter.
She was tired, so she picked up her laptop, and sat in the recliner with her feet up.
After a long exhale, and relief in her throbbing feet (heels are such a pain!), she noticed the laptop stilll folded closed in her lap. What was I going to do? She closed her eyes…and drifted off to sleep…then the phone rang. “Hello, I’m calling for Elanna. Would you like to reschedule the delivery of your refrigerator?” Oh no. That was today…..ugghh.
What To Do About Brain Fog… It Affects So Many Aspects of Life
The customer service agent explained she owed another $79.00 for the repeat delivery. (Yikes!). She also encouraged her to go to their website and make a note of the new delivery order number.
Elanna thought, I don’t want to go to their website..! “Can you just give it to me now?”
“No ma’am. My department delivers the appliance. The scheduling department assigns the delivery order numbers. And keep in mind that this number is different than the order number itself. This is about the second delivery. You’ll need this to give to the delivery person so you can be sure you get the correct appliance.”
Elanna looked up the website…then thought, where?? Where do I go? How do I get there? She looked at the menu and there was nothing about deliveries or delivery order numbers. Where do I go???
The phone rang again… this time it was the creditor she thought she had paid. She was sure she mailed it. Then again…
Confusion, scatterbrained mistakes, a feeling of helplessness…can be costly.
Elanna searched her purse, and there, under the stuffed apple, was a crumpled envelope. Oh no….
“I’m sorry. I forgot it was in my purse.”
“ Yes ma’am…be sure to add $25.00 to that check as a late charge.”
Frustration! What Can You Do about Brain Fog??
Elanna was so frustrated she didn’t know whether to cry or scream. But she still hadn’t written that email. She would do that right now. Write to Ben, Write to Ben, Write to Ben, she murmured to herself so she wouldn’t forget by the time she got into her email. So many unread new messages! So much junk that needed clearing out. After a quick hello, telling him about a couple of events of the week, she transitioned to her real reason for writing.
But.. her mind was blank. And she felt blank. She didn’t remember what she had meant to say very clearly…it was all mottled and tangled in her mind…like a wisp of dust floating away. She finally wrote that there was just so much going on…and closed out the email. It was quick, insubstantial, and pretty meaningless.
How frustrating!
What in the world was wrong with her? She pushed the laptop aside, and went to the kitchen for ice cream. Elanna needed a BREAK!!!
And what about you? Have you noticed your mind is foggier than it used to be? Do you think less quickly, calculate more slowly…or have trouble with creative problem solving? When you write that cover letter or that email, is it clunky and poorly composed?
Oh to be able to think again!
Actually, neuroscientists have found that this reduced cognition — what we’re calling brain fog here — is a widespread problem for people in all walks of life.
In addition, there’s a surge of concern among physicians and neurologists that we’re actually in a global cognitive crisis.
Listen up.
We now know that 50% of people who recover from the COVID-19 infection suffer from brain fog and fatigue. 50%! Many experience ongoing difficulties in executive function, cognitive control and just overall decreases in cognition that lead to disability and impaired functioning and sometimes, disability.
An over arching fear among health experts is that these deficiencies could go on and on — for years.
The cognitive skills we’re talking about include the ability to focus attention, to perceive, register information, lay down memory and retrieve it, as well as difficulties with word finding, language and reasoning.
Add to this, the fact that the world population is aging … and that will heighten this cognition crisis. Experts say that by 2060, the number of people 65 and older is expected to double.
Makes you stop and think. And gulp.
Who’ll take care of them all… errr…I mean all of us?
85% -94% of people with acute depression suffer cognitive impairment. Brain fog.
So what can YOU do about brain fog?
The Role of Psychiatric Conditions in This Cognitive Decline
Look at depression, and you’re looking at over 264 million people across the globe who suffer from it. Depression not only lowers mood and zest for life, but it also impairs cognition, attention focus, memory, information processing, decision making skills, cognitive flexibility, and executive functioning.
The fact is that 85%-94% of people with acute depression experience cognitive impairment. Once you reach remission from depression, you can still suffer cognitive impairment. 40-45% of people who achieve remission report cognitive impairment in at least one area.
This is huge.
And so pressing that neurologists are working hard to develop forms of cognition remediation therapy.
So far, cognitive remediation therapy shows promising. Combining holistic approaches to diet and health, exercise, cognitive training, antidepressant therapy, and neuromodulation seems to help.
And of course, if your treatment for depression, PTSD,drinking isn’t working for you, IV ketamine treatment could be just the ticket.
A Ketogenic Diet May be a Promising Option for Improved Cognition and Clearing Brain Fog
It could feel so good to have the fog clear.
We work with ketogenic diets in many of our patients. (One of the many ways we’re at the forefront in our field – and why we get such good results.)
Of course, some find that overwhelming, unappealing, or inconvenient. But we educate, empower, and motivate our patients to consider all their options so they can surge forward and reclaim their best selves.
We can help you leverage your gut microbiome with food rather than too many probiotics, flavonoids for improved cognitive functioning, and your own ketones as a fantastic energy source for the mitochondria in your brain (and throughout your body) — without the brain fog or food coma that can accompany carb and sugar surges.
Mitochondria are tiny organelles in the cell that produce the energy needed to power that cell.
It’s a brilliant concept, and a novel treatment approach for mood and anxiety disorders (and in our hands even in chronic anorexia!) but you rarely hear psychiatrists talk about it
But we will. Lots more to come.
Meanwhile, one option is to treat the disorder that may be contributing to brain fog with IV ketamine treatment. While we’re not portraying that IV ketamine kills brain fog, we know that brain fog that happens with some psychiatric disorders can improve when the disorder is treated.
A few studies, between 2015 and as recently as 2020, have reported sone improvement in brain fog with IV ketamine treatment. So that’s promising, too.
You’ll be able to relax in a quiet and soothing treatment room to make the most of your ketamine treatment.
At Innovative Psychiatry, many patients ask what to do about brain fog. Of course, everyone is different and the kind of brain fog and the reasons behind it are different. The work-up, the recommendations for exercise, ketogenic and metabolic diets, the lifestyle changes — are specific to you, and to your ongoing struggle with anxiety, trauma, or mood. All of these things together can make a noticeable difference.
If there is enough difference that you can write a knockout piece of copy, complete assignments and projects, draft a quick email, pick up the house — then that’s going to improve your life. And that may be just the beginning.
When you come for treatment, you’ll find a lovely, relaxing private room with a heated zero-gravity recliner to help you get the most from your treatment. Don’t let the gorgeousness fool you. We’ve installed hospital-grade plasma cell technology to remove all viruses, bacteria, and mold from the air and hard and soft surfaces…yes, including the Delta variant! So you can rest assured knowing you’re safe from infection in our offices.
Sometimes the symptoms attached to a disorder make the disorder so much more unbearable.
We look forward to meeting you and working together with you to help you know hope.
Know any men who can flip from mild annoyance to a violent rage in a short minute? Know any women who are wounded and intimidated by a man’s anger? Now if that anger is violent then it’s likely lots of women and children as well are wounded and intimidated by it. Let’s talk about the connection between a man’s violence and his anxiety.
Anxiety/alarm.
A good book written by Russell Kennedy, M.D., titled RX Anxiety, is full of great advice for men whose anxiety is expressed in violence. Dr. Kennedy explains that anxiety is experienced both emotionally …in his mind…and physically, in his body. Anxiety is produced in the mind, and alarm is the result that is experienced in his body…physically.
So it should be no surprise that since a man feels this emotion in mind and body, that it would be expressed in both his mind and his body.
But in his body… how?
One of the human physiology’s way of calming this anxiety/alarm, is crying. When we cry it rewires the brain. But what if, as a boy, they taught you to not cry?
…
Tom was edgy, irritable. He woke up in an ambulance, which caught him off guard. They said he had a blackout. Once at the hospital, ER staff rushed to apply leads to all the right spots on his chest and legs for an EKGs. And then another one. After a variety of tests, they moved him to a cardiac unit in the hospital.
Tom felt fine. What was all the fuss? Then they handed him a pitcher that looked like it would hold a quart of milk with a wide open top. The nurse instructed him to “pee” into the pitcher !?!
He blushed, grumbled, let out a few curse words and said he couldn’t “go” in that sitting position.
From that point on, everything made him madder. Madder and madder. More and more irritated.
When a lunch tray was delivered to him, he cleared it from his bedside table with one angry sweep of his arm. Food, cutlery, his plate and glass, all flew to the side of the room, hitting the chair and wall in a big mess.
His nostrils flared. “Get all this away from me!”
In his most secret place of shame, Tom felt like crying. But that was unthinkable. So he had just lashed out…
A man’s violence and his anxiety are so closely connected. A cardiac event can cause unbearable anxiety in a man, and it’s not unusual for a violent expression to follow.
“Anxiety is an early warning system to help you survive… It’s not there to harm you, but in its constant warnings, it makes you feel unsafe.” -Anxiety RX
Tom may have felt angry and irritable, and may have behaved with a lack of control. But what was really going on?
Anxiety. There is very little in a man’s life to ignite anxiety like a cardiac event. Anxiety was eating Tom up inside.
The “Straw” of Caring for Others Before Yourself Can Break the Camel’s Back
This is such a common situation for men. Men who marry young, for instance, before they’re really equipped to be providers for themselves or a family. Maybe a young pregnant wife, or the perceived need to rescue a girlfriend from an abusive family. Crises like this can seem obvious and necessary, but can lead to a man’s overload.
Or maybe parents whose special needs require unexpected and exorbitant care and financial support.
There are endless possibilities of circumstances that could add the breaking straw to a man’s back resulting in constant worry — like where will I get the money to pay all these bills? and when will I find the time to care for everyone who needs me? And fear of the fallout if he fails…
You’d think true masculinity was just calm and collected happiness. So alpha male that it needs not or worries not. But typically masculine characters are always fighting, and most violence comes from some agitated level of fear and anxiety.”
–Liev Schreiber
Add to that, the belief that a man might unwittingly hold that being a caregiver gives his life power and purpose, a sense that he matters. However, he may not grasp at all that the burden that gives his life power and purpose may also break him under the load of anxiety and violence.
A Man’s Violent Release can Easily Follow the Anxiety that Accompanies His Responsibilities
As we mentioned earlier, all these things can happen to a woman, too. But we’re focusing on men today because they’ve so often been taught to avoid showing their feelings, and to not cry because it’s a sign of weakness. (You know men like this. Maybe you are one. Or maybe you’re a woman who has seen this, over and over) And that can have dangerous results
So when the pressure builds from a mountain of responsibilities they fear they cannot fulfill, instead of crying or panicking, that man can snap and become violent.
So our goal is to help him find ways to lower the pressure far in advance of the melting point.
To help him learn to take care of himself, give himself time to release pressure through enjoyable activities, and to spend time with the people who love him most.
Sons Need to Learn Self Care from Childhood to Equip Themselves to Respond to Stress Because there’s often a Connection Between a Man’s Violence and His Anxiety-Depression
Each individual treatment room provides privacy and quiet, as well as an incredibly comfortable zero-gravity heated leather recliner — so you can be monitored during treatment, and relax deeply for the best possible infusion experience.
At Innovative Psychiatry, we’re here for you, and for the men in your life. And we love to work with and complement your your healthcare team to offer treatments that can help you or the people you love. When the anxiety is seated in PTSD or social anxiety, IV ketamine treatment can be a remarkable aid. And we can schedule your treatments so that you can to get the most benefit from the neuroplasticity ketamine offers to do the best possible work in therapy.
Above and Beyond
We have a devoted program for administering IV ketamine treatment, and have installed space-age equipment to remove viruses, bacteria, and molds from the air and surfaces. When you come for treatment, you can feel safe from risks–because we go above and beyond to keep you safe! So you can focus on getting better. The environment-purifying technology designed by NASA and the Department of Defense keeps the environmental air and surfaces free of pathogens. There is nothing else even close. We’ve taken the best steps available to ensure your wellbeing when you’re here.
Taking care of yourself, giving yourself what you need, can equip you to take care of all those responsibilities more effectively… and keep the anxiety and depression from overwhelming you.
Anxiety is not something to be ashamed of. It’s not weakness. But, like so many other things, it requires your attention to manage it, seek treatment, and be the best you can be for yourself and those around you.
Anxiety can take on a life of its own, and drive you to do things you would never normally do. If anxiety and/or depression has tried to drive you to violence before, you can kick it to the curb.
Ask yourself…”Do you prefer good times…or interesting times…?”
We’ve talked about how to recover after a crisis or trauma so you can get back up. Let’s take another step. Let’s talk about making use of your experiences so you can — and will — move forward. First and foremost, like letting go of the memories of falling short in the past. A failed grade, a missed touchdown, the end of a relationship, a project that didn’t impress your boss… or all those times you were late in picking up the kids… or forgot the cupcakes for the classroom on your child’s birthday. Or those painful devastating memories when you over-reacted to your child’s mistake and left her heartbroken. These are the interesting times: how they help you and others depends on how closely tuned in you are to the lessons to be gained and put into practice.
If you continue to revisit these moments of moral failure and apologize for them over and over, you’ll likely find yourself stuck in shame, remorse, and regret. These feelings can be so crippling. And you can find yourself immersed in interesting times… how to recover..?
Move forward and build a rewarding life. To do that, you just must find the way within yourself to LET GO of the past. Only then can you invest in the present and the future, as well.
Let go of the pain, too. A broken relationship, the memories of dysfunction, conflicts, betrayal, harsh, vicious words. All of these create scars, and scars can hold you back, tether you to those experiences and hold you in the past.
So, you have to let those memories go, release them, and embrace your experiences of today. Allow yourself to enjoy the new developments in your life.
Without these crippling memories and the pain…which tend to become the more interesting times that can help you eventually… without them you can’t learn how to exit them. To rise above them. To build your own good times with the insight that you have learned how to navigate another corner of life… because of the challenges, pain, and obstacles you worked to overcome.
Another thing to think about…and apply… is that when someone says something that annoys you, and you allow yourself to react,you’ll be the one who suffers. A big step toward letting go and moving forward is to let go of the need to have the last word, to punish the speaker with your anger, and to lash out.
It’s far more liberating to step back, put on your “logic filter” and run their comment through that. Leave your emotions locked in the closet until you have seen the situation logically, calmly, and with compassion toward yourself and the one who is speaking. Be the presence of peace in the conversation.
Build your sense of optimism on a pragmatic foundation. Rather than thinking of optimism as a DisneyWorld sort of reality, with streamers and balloons and fireworks and cartoon characters skipping around, think in terms of what has happened and the good outcomes that can emerge along with the bad ones.
Dig in to find treasures in your life. Ways you can make the world a better place for others, or just for one person. But watch for those opportunities. Watch for interesting times, how they can help you and others make better decisions on this go round.
Putting Trauma in Its Place
To move forward, there are certainly things that you can do to invite a more hopeful frame of mind. But there are also traumas and pain that have to heal and be put behind you so the “overcoming” efforts can bear fruit for you.
If you’re like most people, there were painful events, confusion, and even trauma and loss that emerged this last year. 2020 is a year we’ll not forget. Odds are, you acquired some trauma and sorrow in the process.
Avoid wallowing. Grief must be faced, then suffered, and put away soon so you have the room in your mind and heart to embrace the good that’s emerging…along with the bad.
The pandemic was …interesting. Not good times. And yet…good things happened. Babies were born, learned to walk and talk, some companies did well. Some employees excelled, and so did some students.
Look back at your resilient moments. What did you learn? Can you take it with you to next year and the year after?
Careers Have Been INTERESTING, TOO Lately… And oh yes…RELATIONSHIPS!
It’s not at all uncommon to enter a career path, and advice comes from everywhere telling you to stick it out, have tenacity and perseverance.
That’s just great advice for lots of things. But how do you know when it’s time to let go?
Well, no one can determine that but you. Whether it’s about a career path, or a relationship, or the city you live in… We know we can miss so much if we cut bait and leave before giving the current situation a chance. (At the same time, when you can see you’re going down with the ship, it may be time to swim for shore before it’s too late.)
Your heart may not want to let go, but your experience says that this is not going to recover and you need to save yourself…to try again another day. Interesting times and how they help you gather the tools you need to move forward, giving your room for more good times to enjoy your life.
Some principles apply to multiple types of situations… like relationships, jobs, projects…Here are some questions you can ask yourself as you work through your decision:
Do you sense a lack of respect for you in your environment or relationship?
And maybe most of the time you’re giving more than you take?
Do you find that you think more about the past than the present? Are you in a good ol’ days mentality?
Are you crying more than laughing far too often?
And what about anger? Is it more commonly the way you feel…or is love, contentment, and peace the way you usually feel?
Is the passion and joy gone?
Do you find you feel “less than others,” because of others’ attitudes toward you?
Do you feel physically and mentally exhausted…most of the time??
If you know what it is to be appreciated, supported to grow and excel, and you’ve been stuck in a situation for a prolonged period of time, it’s possible you are ready to let go. And move forward.
And as you embrace that purpose, you begin to gain from not only the experience, but what you did with it. Purpose, direction, and hope can build and grow in you as a result. And with hope, strength and resilience.
You don’t have all the answers, and neither do we. We’re all seeking to learn from our experiences so we can move forward in life. Because life isn’t perfect for anyone, is it? Fostering resilience is a great place to start.
At Innovative Psychiatry, we wish like you do for the good times…but keep learning that it’s the interesting times that give us more to help you.
It’s also true that sometimes choosing to face the obstacle of interesting times and push through it is overwhelming. Sometimes to face those interesting times you need depression, anxiety, and trauma treated effectively. That’s where IV ketamine treatment can come in.
IV ketamine can do things other medicines haven’t … and it can do so rapidly. That’s why we opened a separate arm of my practice that’s specifically equipped to provide IV ketamine treatment. Ketamine treatment has demonstrated repeatedly its unique ability to smash depression symptoms, sweep away anxiety, and stop suicidal thoughts in their tracks.
Because making this remarkable treatment available to whoever is a candidate for it is so important, we encourage communication from your healthcare team.
We want you to have hope.
And, because the pandemic is still making people sick, we have equipped our offices with technology designed by NASA and the Department of Defense, to clean viruses, bacteria, and molds from the air to help you stay well. We’ve taken every precaution to protect you from infection when you’re with us.
The result is peace of mind so you can focus on getting better.
We invite you to reach out for a treatment that works rapidly in most people, even in interesting times, to restore your motivation, initiative, hope…and creativity. You should have a rewarding and fulfilling life.
To the restoration and fulfillment of your best self,
June has been National PTSD Awareness Month. And June is nearly over. But PTSD awareness shouldn’t end with June. If you have PTSD, it can go on day after day…after day.
Something terrible happened. Over time, it seemed you slowly got past it. You hardly thought about it anymore. Then, in a split second, you’re there again. Something happens that triggers the memory, and you’re fighting all of the sickening feelings that just well up inside. You’re determined to break free and run. Turns out a friend is hugging you…. And you come back to yourself and feel embarrassed about your “over-reaction.” Some wounds appear invisible. But they run deep, and wide. And when they do, PTSD can be crippling, and it can take you captive in a moment.
National PTSD Awareness Month gives us an opportunity to realize that PTSD exists — more often than you imagine, and in people you’d never suspect… that it’s sometimes surprising in the way it’s triggered… and (so importantly!) that those who suffer from it have experienced severe trauma. While it’s true that two people can suffer the same kind of car crash or the same horrible domestic violence, and only one of the two develops PTSD, that doesn’t mean one is weaker than the other. The impact of PTSD has NOTHING to do with how tough someone is. There are a lot of factors that come together to predispose you to PTSD. Genetics can play a big role. And one huge new mind-blowingly transformative treatment — IV ketamine — can be exceedingly effective.
It’s important for you and for the people you know and love to learn the signs and symptoms of PTSD — for your own health and wellbeing, and to help others who suffer from it. Because since some wounds are invisible, so also the symptoms are sometimes only visible to those closest to the person suffering from them.
You may have symptoms of depression, anger, rage, irritability, suddenly becoming startled… or feeling numb and disconnected. There may be flashbacks or nightmares, or you may just find yourself reliving the terrible experience over and over. You also may have increasingly aroused emotions and mental thoughts, which can make it tough to sleep.
Ok, but there’s more to think about and watch for. Like the types of PTSD. Because all PTSD cases aren’t alike.
PTSD doesn’t accumulate traumas like depression can accumulate “reasons to be depressed.”
Comorbid PTSD – symptoms of trauma combined with symptoms of other disorders.
It’s not at all uncommon for people with comorbid PTSD to also have substance use issues. Because most people who suffer from PTSD typically suffer with more than one disorder, comorbid PTSD is probably the most common form of PTSD. Some disorders that often occur with PTSD are panic disorder and depression.
Normal Stress Response – This occurs during and following an experience that’s traumatic and stressful but before PTSD begins.
Not all people who experience a normal stress response advance to PTSD.
Acute Stress Response – Typically, someone experiences an acute stress response after a huge stress, like being frightened by a perceived predator, a near miss auto accident
…or even a frightening accident where all parties survived. But if acute stress symptoms keep coming back for a month or more, they may be transitioning to PTSD. Symptoms of acute stress response may include headache, sweating, chest pains, palpitations, nausea, and stomach pain. Acute Stress Disorder can be treated using support groups or therapy …and medication. IV ketamine treatment has shown great promise in treatment.
Complex PTSD – This describes a condition associated with more than one traumatic event.
A cluster of events, each driving its own response. And the responses can interfere with each other, drive each other, and complicate each other. Because some wounds are invisible… but still present and exhibiting deep trauma, which causes more of its own.
So… how can you know if you have PTSD? Maybe you feel anxious in the moment, or sudden sounds cause you to jump. Is that PTSD?
When most people go through a shocking or traumatic experience, they feel shaken, and off balance for awhile, but in time and with the kind of self care that helps them feeling their own pain and loss, they usually move on. Certainly they keep a memory that never leaves, but they don’t experience the torment and flashbacks of PTSD.
However, some people are deeply injured by a terrible experience, and may not improve without intensive treatment. As we’ve said before, while we don’t understand all the intricacies to explain why one person suffers so much more extensively than another, we do know there is a genetic link to this process.
If it happened to someone you love, or even to you, would you recognize the symptoms and know what to say in support? If you’re not informed and prepared in advance, you may be tempted to be irritable, dismissive, or annoyed.
First, of course, there has to have been a traumatic event. Something has happened that terrified you, you felt threatened to the point of death, and what you saw in the process was shattering.
Symptoms may emerge within a month…or they may not erupt for years. But once they emerge, they can cause severe problems socially, at work, and in relationships. Because PTSD symptoms show. Whether it’s a sudden panic attack in front of others, and you’re far too disrupted to explain, or in some other way, they make it close to impossible to go about your daily routine. Basic tasks can be impossible.
These symptoms fall into roughly 4 groups:
Intrusive memories, avoidance, negative changes in thinking …or mood, and changes in your physical and/or emotional reactions.
The symptoms you suffer may vary in intensity. With time, they may seem to disappear, then out of the blue you may be confronted with a moment that mimics that first trauma, and suddenly you’re in it. You’re terrified. You’re fighting for your life. Except that nothing dangerous or life threatening is happening. It just “feels” like it’s the same.
You can see how these moments could be upsetting to friends or co-workers. And eventually embarrassing for you.
You may wonder if you need to see a doctor. If these disturbing moments have been happening for more than a month since the original incident, then it is wise to see a psychiatrist. He or she can be very useful in directing your treatment, or referring you to additional treatment. Your psychiatrist is a specialist. Some wounds are invisible but he or she knows how to find them and treat them, to help you find your way back to a rewarding life.
If you should have suicidal thoughts, call a friend, family member, or a neighbor to spend time with you. Call your doctor to reveal the severity of your symptoms. In a crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (800) 237-TALK or text CONNECT to 741741, or call 911. Remember this has nothing to do with your mental strength or courage. The fact that you reach out for help is a great step of bravery for you to protect your well-being.
And if the thoughts are persistent, know that IV ketamine treatment can be dramatically fast working and can stop those thoughts in an afternoon. That reprieve will give you time to seek out more treatments.
At Innovative Psychiatry, we have seen IV ketamine treatment provide a wonderful lifting of symptoms and relief from PTSD to many patients. It’s nothing short of remarkable to see what this treatment can do for someone caught in the throes of trauma. Many patients find talk therapy and other forms distinctly more liberating after ketamine infusions. We like to work with your healthcare team to learn how we can help the process of restoration in your life.
IV ketamine treatment ferrets out the painful memories and thoughts and can dramatically relieve them. Just because some wounds are invisible doesn’t mean they can’t be healed.
You’ll have a zero-gravity, soft leather recliner to make your experience feel well supported and secure, and heat at the touch of a button. We want you to get better, and want to help that happen any way we can.
Resilience – The power to bounce back emotionally after a major disappointment or event.
Here we are. COVID cases have dropped dramatically…right along with COVID deaths. We’re slowly transitioning from the pandemic to what we hope will be post-pandemic. Slowly over time. It won’t be a one day change, but an advancing progressive adjustment to a less restrictive environment. Some people have stopped wearing masks. However, many of us still do. The CDC says fully vaccinated people can go without wearing masks, especially around others who are fully vaccinated. But this doesn’t apply to those who are unvaccinated. This is one of a thousand frustrations all around you. So you’ll want to stay resilient when life changes–and we’ll give you some ideas how to do that.
A crowd of employers have begun calling employees back to work. Most employers of office workers have moved their employees home to avoid spread of illness, and all those employees are beginning to go back to work little by little. It’s not that they’ve not been working, but they haven’t had a commute as they work and meet on Zoom at home.
Of course, our role is NOT to tell you when you should return to work in your company facility. Or when the kids should be back in school.
We just want to help you make the transitions ahead, embrace the adjustment within yourself that will allow you to make this change when the time is right. To help you navigate your concerns or anxiety if you face it.
You may have lost a loved one over the past year. Maybe you had to watch the funeral of a loved one over Zoom or Facetime. That must have been difficult for you. So many incidents and events were shocking. For so many people.
You may have had a baby over the last year. Did you have a COVID baby? We’ve learned that the birth of a baby during all the isolation, social distancing, and mask wearing has created such intense loneliness for some new mothers that postpartum depression has been more widespread and support has been hard to come by for many isolated moms.
One first time mom, who was weeping in frustration and overwhelmed, said, “I’ve always heard it takes a village to raise a child. So WHERE’S MY VILLAGE???” If you’re one of those parents, you will have to find your own transition and recovery. Make sure you’re fully vaccinated so you’re free to seek out friends and family to get their support, and improve your own resilience.
Then there are the children. Children who’ve been involved in distance/remote learning have displayed behavior outbursts and other forms of acting out. But on the other hand, some children thrived from the closer nurturing they felt while being home. And as they move into summer, and then repopulate schools in the fall (or whenever that will happen!) they may need guidance to help them adapt smoothly, re-socialize, and integrate in their school’s routine.
Maybe you’ve asked “Why me?” through the crises and losses the last year and a half. But when you think that way it nurtures self pity…which can be suffocating. Better to ask yourself in that instance…”Why NOT me?” Because if you’re alive in this world you’re going to have struggles, difficulties, and losses.
And you may be tempted to want to run. But resilience comes when you plant your feet, square your shoulders, and get through it. You can be resilient when life changes.
When my friend heard there was a pandemic wrapping around the world, her first thought was to get on a plane and escape it. Then she looked at the charts and maps on the internet and saw that this infection covered the globe, and there was nowhere to run. What a shock that felt like.
But by staying where we are, using personal protective equipment, and isolating ourselves, using social distancing when in public, we as a nation and as a planet have survived together.
Many say, “Failure is not an option”…but actually failure is a requirement for resilience. And in terms of the pandemic, as well as working at home, learning at home, there have been countless efforts that failed and required we try again and again to get whatever the need was to work. Stronger internet connections, getting food to people who needed it, keeping online services up and functioning well.
Here are some strategies for building resilience now:
Recognize that difficulties, losses, and inconveniences are part of life. Realize right off that all these things are not a sign of unfair punishment of you or me, but just part of life. And realize that you’ll find your way through it.
Make the serenity prayer a part of you…to accept things you cannot change. To change those things you can (or change the things you cannot accept.) And hold onto the wisdom to know the difference. So focus on where to put your attention… changing the things you CAN change. And choosing peace about the rest.
Choose Life. Choose what is good for you. Walk away from things that aren’t good for you. (Yep, we said walk away. Seriously walk away…) Then be patient and compassionate with yourself.
Here’s a challenge for you: Every day, list 3 things you’re grateful for. It will help you maintain peace and the strength to face new challenges…because you know that challenges are part of being alive too, right?
And… you know? every time there is a failure, or disappointment, or loss… once you’ve responded to it and moved forward, ask yourself, what you might learn from it… or whether someone was help from the natural fallout of it, etc. There is meaning all around you, and when you’re stressed with difficulty, it’s easy to miss it. So make a point to focus on the meaning you find in all those challenges… that will deepen those roots of resilience, too.
Stay Resilient When Life Changes — If you fall, you can snap right back up on your feet
Of course, not everyone can effectively build their own treasure chest of resilience. A disorder can make that very difficult. So we do offer IV ketamine treatment to help restore your resilience. To help your brain restore it’s own synapse connections, to take the G proteins off those rafts in the cell membrane and put them back to work. To slow down the bursting cells in the lateral habenula. And to generally help your hippocampus and amygdala function better, so YOU can function better.
So Reach Out for Resilience and the Life You Long to Build
At Innovative Psychiatry, we have the privilege of seeing people who have achieved remission from these disorders every week. Remission means you have energy to support others, to build your own life and healthy strong relationships, and to face difficulties with strength. Remission means you once again feel like the very best self you’ve ever experienced. It means you stay resilient when life changes and can snap back in the face of difficulties.
And while we’re transitioning from active pandemic to a post-COVID world, we’re not there yet. And we want you to have the confidence that in our office you’re completely safe from infection caused by any virus, bacteria, or mold. Our plasma cell technology that continually scrubs the air you breathe to keep you safe from viruses, bacteria, and molds while you’re receiving treatment with us.
Reach out for resilience. If you struggle with the disorders we talked about, reach out for the hope of remission.
