War and battlefield aftermath

This episode explores what is frequently not spoken about. War is an unfortunate event where there are no winners. Those who survive wars carry deeper wounds and at times never really get to ever live life normally. The brain doesn’t forget some of the experiences and continues replaying some scenes over and over again, affecting different aspects and quality of life way longer that when the actual experience happened. Some of these are highlighted in this story that I hope will bring some enlightenment to anyone who can relate and the courage to live through this difficult reality to many. 
#ptsd #nightmares #trauma #war #combat #sleepdisorders #sleep #therapy 

Transcript

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Welcome to another episode of the Sleep Lab Story. If you're new here, thanks for choosing to spend this time with me. And if you have been here before, welcome back and thanks for being consistent and continuously supporting my channel and my ideas. Today's episode is a very sensitive one, and I hope anyone who could have gone through something similar or going through it now to bear with me for any triggers it might cause and any uncomfortable feelings it might also arouse in you. And uh for that my trigger warning for this episode it's um based on deployment, uh military life and the um experience like PTSD. That is one of the themes that is going to be explored in this uh episode, which uh PTSP BTSD is one of the most uh disruptive symptoms that causes uh sleep disorders. We'll talk about trauma, nightmares, hypervigilance, family struggles, diagnosis treatment, and recovery. So if any of this is something that's already going to trigger you, um you can skip this episode so that um the rest of the part of the opposite are not going to cause deeper wounds or to scar deeper wounds. So the story is about a veteran I will call Nia. It's not based on any real occurrence or anything I experience in real life, but I'm just using this to highlight and educate on some of the struggles and um experiences those in this line of duty go through. So Nia is currently retired from the army. Although she returned home years ago, part of her remained trapped in a war zone. This becomes very evident every time she closes her eyes. Nia was 24 years old when she was deployed overseas, and however, years after retiring from active duty, the battlefield still followed her, especially at night. For most people, sleep is a refuge from realities of the day. For years, sleep became a threat. Night after night, month after month, sleep stopped feeling restorative. Instead, it became something to fear and preferably avoid. But as we know, sleep is like adept, we must all be. Like you can't skip it forever, you can't say I cannot sleep. At some point, it catches up with you in one way or the other. Lack of sleep affected every part of Nia's life, her relationships, family, work, the ripple effect of trauma on families and community. Yeah, one person has it, the next person next to them, the partner or the children or siblings. Then with time the whole family feels it, with time the whole family um reflects this into the community they are in, and with time the whole community gets affected by something that could have been avoided. For years, Nia avoided seeking help, often blaming herself that maybe she ain't trying hard enough, and as it with invisible wounds like trauma, it stayed hidden well under the disguise of many other things. You know, physical wounds, on the other hand, would have showed up on the surface and required or attracted attention. This something like this is that's not seen or never visible, that's um causes mostly shame or the hesitation to just talk about it because most of the time the reaction would be like, Ah, but you look fine, but you don't you don't show it, but it doesn't seem like that's something could be going through, so that was the case for me as well. And this went on not long though, because eventually she reached a breaking point. After going for several nights, barely sleeping, and feeling the weight of non-restorative sleep during the day, she knew she had to change something. She could barely attend social events or even do the usual hosting, like having guests over family, friends, which she had actually quite enjoyed. So performing simple tasks, tasks, things she had already been doing before, things that actually could bring her joy became a burden as she could barely concentrate and kept forgetting simple details. She knew something had to change even more when close family and friends kept noting to her how her moods would shift suddenly. At this point, Nia had done a lot of baganing with herself and knew she risked losing a lot more in terms of the people around her who are all supportive and willing to work the journey with her. Through recommendations from a close friend, she got connected to a sleep specialist because most of these symptoms and her complaints were more like you know, the lack of sleep during the day feeling sleepy or tired and still not being able to like sleep to actually recover that feeling or you know, feeling tired but not being able to sleep to get out of that trap, that trap of being tired. So the specialist first um intended to get her sleep opinion optimized, and um the first step involved taking the medical history which were done both through questionnaires and oral interviews as it should be um the routine in a in a sleep like sleep lab setting. And since we live in an era of data-backed medicine, an overnight stay at the sleep lab was necessary in order to have um uh documented evidence on the diagnosis. And um some of the key points, I mean um most of the times in any um issue involving sleep disorders, alone for the medical history and and um previous tests or previous uh visitation visitation to physicians, one can already point in the direction which the diagnosis could be going, but uh be using evidence or collecting data like for the overnight flip study at times just helps to rule out every other thing that it could not that it's not every other thing, so it's not about doing the guesswork. I mean the guesswork is usually can already be done already from the medical history, but the real treatment or the recommendation, the tailored uh therapies are based on the data that has to be collected during an overnight study. Some of the key points noted from NIA, like nightmares, insomnia, exhaustion, and emotional withdrawal, as well as hypervigilance helped lead to the diagnosis, which brings at times um a sense of relief and at times also a sense of confusion. So for NIA's case, her diagnosis at that point was PTSD and significant sleep disturbance. Trauma can keep the nervous system stuck in survival mode, leading to insomnia, nightmares, and um also fragmented sleep. And all these pour into one's day, like into the day. Poor sleep. Yeah, like uh fear disrupts sleep, poor sleep increases anxiety and leads to obesity or like weight gain, which in turn causes snoring, and then snoring results to sleep disruption, like a continuous cycle, you know. So Nia began trauma-focused therapy as well as treatment for snoring simultaneously with the aim of breaking this vicious cycle of you know repeating things, one causing the other, the other causing the other, you know. So in some cases it's necessary to to especially when it's evident, to face to like f approach the point, the point pains and deal with them simultaneously, if especially the conditions are both or rather whatever the symptoms are affecting the patients in an extreme case that one cannot wait for the other to be treated. Healing isn't about forgetting, but rather teaching the brain to adapt to our environment, it no longer needs to be on survival mode throughout. So NIA's family also learned about all the parts playing a role in NIA's struggle, and that had disrupted their lives too. You know, the same way I'd mentioned before. At times even more than one can imagine, and at times it's hard it they might not be saying it or it's hard to put things into word, but the immediate family members or immediate people around the person suffering of the patient usually do get a good portion of that or uh get some really serious consequences, also. And so they too, when those around Nia, they become a part of the recovery process. Compassion grew as understanding replaced confusion. Recovery arrived gradually, one better night at a time, persistent nightmares and sleep disruption, as well as mood and behavioral changes after trauma are actually recognized symptoms. These are not, I mean it's not a sign of a weakness, and because it's a physiological reaction, the body reacts to what it saw or what it remembers, and these consequences at times eat up much much later into one's life, even at times that maybe one doesn't think that they this can show up again, but it does show up, and help is usually available. The shame or fear or feeling, like I mentioned, Nia felt like blaming herself or that she's not trying hard enough, or also lack of talking about issues like this in the community or in the society, makes those maybe going through it feel like I've never heard of this, maybe why am I the first one or am I the weaker one? So there's a bit of shame around that, and recovery is possible, and help is also available. So if you know anybody who could be going through something like this, or who could who have gone through this, or who this episode could be of um help to, I would like to remind us that no one has to carry the burden alone, and that um you can share this episode that those who are going through it can know that they can get help and they can get also a way out of something that looks could be looking like a vicious cycle. Thanks for tuning in into this episode, and don't forget to share, subscribe, or leave a comment in any of the platforms you could be listening from. Thank you so much for spending this time with me and have a good time and take care. Till next time.