Triggers and Causes

Asthma is often triggered by environmental factors such as dust, air pollution, pollen, and mold. It is a respiratory condition that may develop early in life due to genetics, or later in life due to an illness.

Asthma itself is characterized by an inflammation of the lungs. At the same time, the airways, or bronchial tubes constrict. A person's stress level may contribute to airway inflammation. Stress can trigger a flare-up of preexisting asthma. Stress can cause you to become short of breath, thus leading to other asthmatic symptoms, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

Various forms of stress can contribute to stress-related asthma, as it depends on a person's own tolerance and personality. Asthma symptomsmay be caused from stress at work, home, or in a relationship.

Risks

Stress asthma is likely to occur in individuals who are under regular stress and who are predisposed to asthma. If a person does not already have asthma, they are unlikely to experience stress-induced asthma symptoms. This can sometimes be confused with wheezing related to anxiety from stress.

A regularly anxious individual with asthma may, however, suffer from stress-related asthma symptoms more often than other asthmatics. This is due to the fact that such an individual is more sensitive to everyday stress.

CPTSD targets have been misdiagnosed by some mental health professionals as having other disorders and blamed for the symptoms they experienced. Traditional psychiatry saw sufferers as being weak. Usually, the abuser has SPD, Sadistic Personality Disorder, which is included in the DSM-III. The hallmark of the SPD is that the person enjoys inflicting cruelty on others.

Proposed Criteria for CPTSD

The criteria include:

• Repressing or suppressing memories of traumatic events and/or dissociation, feeling detached from them
• Feelings of sadness, helplessness, shame, guilt, hopelessness, despair, stigma and being different from other humans
• Perceiving perpetrator as having absolute power
• Isolation, mistrust and/or a search for a rescuer
• Nightmares and unwelcome flashbacks of the incident and/or abuser
• Thoughts of suicide and/or explosive or hidden anger

Survivor of CPTSD Speaks of Childhood

Shawn is a divorced single mother and a very successful career woman who sought counseling because of her mother’s continual psychological abuse and the unpleasant feelings Maltilda caused, feeling like an omnipresent dark cloud of pain. When Shawn was a child, Maltilda, continually degraded and criticized her. “Why can’t you be like so-and-so?” What would your cousins or the neighbors think…?” “You’re naughty.” “I don’t like you.”

Maltilda used to slap her across the face for no reason, and, after she was hospitalized for depression, told Shawn the psychiatrist told her she should slap her across the face any time she wanted to because she caused the disorder. Shawn was eleven. When Shawn was a teenager, Matilda gave her a bloody nose and, when she told Shawn she was a robot, devoid of emotion and Shawn protested, banged her head against a wall.

The girl looked at functional families, yearned for normalcy and wondered why Maltilda was the way she was. The family enabled the SPD because of her guilt-trips, pity parties and headaches. The woman was clever and extremely manipulative. Shawn never told anyone about the abuse because Maltilda taught her that if she did, people would know she was a liar and a bad girl. Shawn used to write about how she wanted someone to help her, which she hid from Maltilda.

CPTSD Survivors and Continual Abuse

Shawn married and was divorced from a male with SPD who also abused their son. When she tried to stop his abuse, she got a smile from husband and the boy suffered more. It’s easy for survivors of CPTSD disorder to fall into a trap of more abuse because many have low self-esteem and feel powerless in the relationship.

Maltilda continued to psychologically abuse Shawn and did her best to gather support from others by pity parties, guilt trips and lies. Maltilda’s mother, Irene, cried when she spoke about her daughter’s abuse as did others. After Irene, Shawn’s father and his father died and her brother, diagnosed as having Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Intermittent Explosive Disorder (acting out anger in destructive ways) while married to his fifth ex-wife, and her sister weren’t communicating with her, Matilda focused her abuse on Shawn.

Prognosis for CPTSD Survivors

While survivors can attain healthy self esteem and heal from most of the pain, the flashbacks and nightmares remain as problems. Shawn still sees or hears something that triggers unwelcome and unwanted flashbacks. She reported having nightmares about Matilda and, after sleeping a few hours, decided to stay awake because she experienced three of them and was afraid there would be more.

She counsels people with CPTSD and tells them that the shame isn’t theirs, but is the abusers,’ which with the help of her counselors, she was able to understand. Unfortunately, the flashbacks and nightmares are experienced by other survivors and the abusers won’t end their work.

Articles Related to CPTSD

People who found this article interesting might want to read What is the Proposed Criteria for Adult C-PTSD?, along with What Is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? and Sadistic Personality Disorder SPD in DSM-III.

Sources:

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR, (American Psychiatric Association, 2000).

Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life, Susan Forward, (Bantam,1990).