A Cocktail of Therapies, Does It Help Our Soldiers and Veterans?

A cocktail of therapies. The thing is that many practitioners themselves stop at coping strategies and basic psychotherapies. Chronically traumatized persons will respond to these therapies and receive much needed relief from major--presenting--symptomology. By not addressing the underlying dissociated parts of the personality that drove the presenting symptoms, the survivor will be left with forever coping with and managing the structural dissociation and intrusive mental machinations.

Without appropriate interventions and therapies to address the structural dissociation, such as the Phase-Oriented approach, this can lead to post traumatic decline and periodic relapses of crisis and revictimization. The Phase Oriented Treatment modality concentrates on first, the aspects of cognitive restructuring and attaining the necessary skills to weather the stresses and resistance of reintegration of the personality.

A diagnosis of PTSD, or complex PTSD, becoming a diagnosis and broaching on borderline personality disorder. The chasm has left us with a dissociated understanding of the underlying processes driving the insanity of the one with PTSD, and branded by a fragmented trauma terminology base within the profession further impedes treatment.

Misinterpretations and a misconstrued understanding of the nature of Trauma Based Disorders, which lies on a spectrum where simple PTSD (primary structural dissociation), Complex PTSD (secondary structural dissociation), Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (DDNOS, a more elaborated form of secondary structural dissociation) and Dissociative Identity Disorder (tertiary structural dissociation) which comprise the diagnostic criteria in relation to the Theory of Structural Dissociation of the Personality. Feeding into this confusion, the DSM-IV schedule separates the diagnosis’ in differing categories with seemingly no associations or connections.

Intrinsic in this spectrum of maladaptive behavioral defensive complexes, the true nature of combat or complex PTSD rests in a structure of adopted defensive mechanisms from the evolutionary primitive portion of the brain which becomes fragmented, thus limiting the individual from accessing differing aspects of identity and complicated further by prior trauma as precipitating factors.