(no subject)

[urocyon]

Interesting. Trying to link a few recent trains of thought, I took the lazy route and hit Google before the books. This time, it did turn up something interesting, an entry I hadn't seen from erynn999, which closely paralleled my infant considerations of the geilt/PTSD analogy and provided a good bit of food for thought.

Comments

[erynn999.livejournal.com]

I've been checking out some of the journals on my friend-of list who aren't on my friends list and read this post today. I'd be quite interested in hearing your thoughts about imbas, geilt, and PTSD, if you'd care to share them with me. We could chat about that here or in my LJ, as you prefer.

[urocyon-c.livejournal.com]

It took me a while to notice similarities between PTSD and geilt. Then again, I managed to avoid thinking much about PTSD until recently; only since my mood has been relatively stable the past couple of years--I'm also bipolar--has it not been shunted to the side in triage. It became terribly obvious that I still wasn't doing very well, and the finger kept coming back to that long-neglected diagnosis; a very possible explanation was comforting, in a way. I suspect that PTSD has been behind some difficulties I'd blamed on the mood disorder--it's hard to tell, the way they seem intertwined at times,

The "guys in the basement" actually made the first connection for me. A day or two before I made the LJ entry, a thought popped into mind that I had been geilt in my own house for several years--didn't qualify anymore, but was for some time. I'd never thought along these lines consciously--though the concept of the geilt had always seemed to make a good deal of sense to me--and besides a touch odd, it seemed melodramatic at first. After a little consideration, the idea did appear to have some merit; I could see a number of similarities.

You expressed the points I thought of in your post better than I could, and a number I hadn't considered. Two of the main ones I considered were controlling stimuli in the environment and minimising interaction with people, which can be very stressful. I was just beginning to mull things over, and reaching the conclusion that the geilt can be viewed as a good model of people who have been through trauma and needed to withdraw--hadn't gotten all that far with it--when I ran across your post.

I wish I had more to add on the topic; perhaps when I'm not so tired. :) Thanks for your comment.