Somatic Symptoms of C-PTSD: An Overview

Psychological trauma can affect individuals in various ways, both mentally and physically. One of the ways it can manifest physically is through somatic symptoms, which are bodily sensations or symptoms that have no apparent medical basis.

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) is a mental health condition that develops as a result of prolonged exposure to traumatic events, such as child abuse, domestic violence or ongoing trauma in adulthood. The somatic symptoms of C-PTSD can be debilitating and deeply affect an individual’s quality of life.

The following is an overview of the somatic symptoms that individuals with C-PTSD may experience:

Chronic pain: A significant number of people with C-PTSD suffer from chronic pain, including headaches, migraines, neck pain, back pain and joint pain, among others. Trauma-related pain can arise from various causes, such as somatic memories, muscle tension, or heightened arousal. Over time, such pain may affect an individual’s physical functioning, potentially leading to disability.

Gastrointestinal distress: Those with C-PTSD may experience gastrointestinal distress or functional digestive conditions. Trauma disrupts the regulation of the HPA axis, affecting the gut’s function and leading to problems like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), chronic constipation, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. These issues can significantly diminish an individual’s quality of life and trigger unpleasant emotional reactions, such as anxiety and depression.

Respiratory distress: Breathing difficulties, such as shortness of breath, hyperventilating or choking sensations are common among those with PTSD. People may experience these symptoms during flashbacks, when they feel triggered, or even when they try to relax. With C-PTSD, these symptoms may be more severe and chronic, causing feelings of panic or detachment that can make daily activities challenging.

Cardiovascular problems: Trauma can impact the nervous system, causing physiological changes that affect the cardiovascular system. People with PTSD are at an increased risk of developing heart problems such as arterial disease, hypertension and stroke. The chronic stress of C-PTSD can exacerbate these conditions, leading to potential health complications down the line.

Sleep disturbance: The stress and anxiety associated with PTSD can profoundly influence sleep patterns. Nearly all individuals with C-PTSD report symptoms like insomnia, nightmares or night terrors. Insufficient or poor quality sleep can lead to daytime fatigue, mood swings and physical exhaustion.

Sensory processing issues: Traumatic events can permanently alter the way an individual perceives sensations such as sound, touch and sight. Individuals with C-PTSD may experience hyperarousal or sensory overload, making it challenging to tolerate certain stimuli. Alternatively, some people may develop hyposensitivity, resulting in a diminished sensory awareness that may negatively influence their quality of life.

Dissociation: Somatic symptoms are not always experienced in the context of physical pain. They can also manifest as a sense of detachment or disconnect from reality. This feeling is known as dissociation, and those with C-PTSD often report experiencing it. It can cause memory problems, the feeling of being disconnected from the body or extreme emotional disengagement.

In summary, traumatic stress disorders are debilitating conditions that can have lifelong effects on an individual’s mental and physical wellbeing. Individuals with C-PTSD may experience a range of somatic symptoms that can affect their quality of life. By raising awareness of these symptoms, we can improve early detection and help those suffering from C-PTSD receive proper treatment.

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Equatorial Mentality Vs. Polar Mentality

There are many different ways of dividing the people of the world into two groups. Men vs. women, East vs. West, K-selected vs. r-selected, industrialised vs. developing, whores vs. gangsters. This essay introduces another: equatorial mentality vs. polar mentality.

Equatorial climes, as anyone who has been to the tropics will know, are hot. Sunlight beats down directly from above. Near the Equator, it’s often above 20 degrees Celcius even at night. Sometimes living there can feel like living in a greenhouse.

Polar climes, by contrast, are cold. Sunlight strikes the surface of the Earth from the side. In wintertime, cities above the Arctic Circle have days where the Sun does not rise above the horizon at all (the “Polar Night”). This is where the real tundra begins, where the climate can only support small trees and bushes.

Contrary to popular belief, there’s more to the global temperature gradient than the simple fact that polar climes tend to be less sunny. For example, some cities in the Congo and Equitorial Guinea get only 1,500 yearly sunshine hours, whereas even Stockholm gets 1,800. The intensity of the sunlight is more important, particularly the intensity of sunlight per square metre.

Not every latitude of the surface of the Earth receives the same intensity of sunlight. Near the Equator, where the rays of the Sun strike the surface of the Earth at right angles, the sunlight is the most intense. The further one goes from the Equator to the poles, the more obtusely the sunlight strikes the surface, and the less intense it becomes.

The fact that the intensity of sunlight varies depending on latitude has immense ecological consequences – and, thereby, ethological consequences.

Because the sunlight is more intense at the Equator, and because the food chain is based on sunlight, the intensity of life is also greater there. Strong sunlight and warm temperatures are the most conducive to life, and so the Equator tends to feature jungles and rainforests that are teeming with insects and animals. This life must compete against other life for space to live.

At the Equator, therefore, the immediate challenge for anything living is against other living beings. Nearer the poles, by contrast, the immediate challenge is against the environment. There is much less life per square metre, and so much less danger from predators and parasites. The main dangers there are the cold and lack of easy food supplies.

This means that a different set of behaviour patterns had to evolve to meet the challenges of equatorial climates, as compared to polar climates. These behavioural patterns evolved alongside particular mindsets. There is an equatorial mindset that is more compatible with equatorial behaviour patterns, and there is a polar mindset that is more compatible with polar behaviour patterns.

The equatorial mindset doesn’t think ahead. There are no winters near the Equator, so there is no possibility of freezing to death. As such, there is no need to stack firewood for the winter, or to build a solid, warm, airtight house. Fruit is plentiful all year round in the tropics, so there’s no need to plan for the long-term storage of it. As such, there is no evolutionary pressure selecting for long-term thinking.

The polar mindset, by contrast, is always thinking ahead. It has to. Polar winters will kill everything not prepared for them. It’s common for Northern Europe, parts of North America and parts of Northern Asia to experience winter temperatures below -30 Celcius. What’s worse, winters in such places can last for six months. Anyone who doesn’t plan adequately for such weather will die.

These contrasting mindsets explain the contrasting impressions that some people make on each other.

The equatorial mindset is that, if there’s nothing to do, just chill out. Tomorrow will be much like today so, if there are no pressing matters, one should just take it easy and not risk overexertion. This is why people in Equatorial countries are often found sleeping during the middle of the day.

This is often interpreted as lazy by the polar mindset. The reality, however, is that when it’s hot, it can be dangerous to use too much energy. Heatstroke is an ever-present threat in tropical regions. Anyone who pushes themselves too hard is liable to pass out. So taking it easy whenever possible makes sense near the Equator.

The polar mindset, by contrast, is to always keep oneself busy. Sooner or later, winter will come, so if there are no pressing matters, one should prepare. Chop firewood, fix the house, gather food – and do it now because it will soon be too cold and dark. This is why people in Europe, North America and Northern Asia work long hours. The polar mindset doesn’t feel comfortable unless it’s working.

This is often interpreted as neurosis by the equatorial mindset. ‘We only have one life, so why not relax and enjoy it?’ reasons the equatorial mind, which doesn’t understand why the polar mind works so hard when the final reward for all of us is death. The hunger of the polar mind to achieve things and to impose order upon the world seems inhuman to the equatorial mind.

Like feminine and masculine, the equatorial mindset and the polar mindset will often clash. The polar mindset tends to accumulate more money, and this provokes resentment in the equatorial mindset. The equatorial mindset has a tendency to act impulsively, and the violence and theft that results provokes resentment in the polar mindset.

The equatorial mindset vs. the polar mindset is one of the great divisions in the human species, and understanding it goes a long way to understanding human behaviour.

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Biology Denial

One of the most influential social phenomena in the modern world is also one of the least understood. It is the widespread denial of the laws of biology and of the biological reality in which the human species has evolved. Although this might seem, to some, to be an academic point, denial of biological reality can have an immense impact on a person’s values and political opinions.

The reality is that human society and behaviour is primarily a biological phenomenon.

Psychologists today know that all the warring and aggression shown by humans in today’s society is little more than adaptations to a biological past where violence was commonplace. In a state of Nature, resources are scarce. Because of this scarcity, it can happen that multiple creatures desire them. When that happens, conflict is the inevitable result.

The same is true of co-operation and love. It’s been well established, ever since the publication of Edward O. Wilson’s The Social Conquest of Earth, that it’s impossible to make sense out of human history without understanding that the human species evolved sociality for the sake of overcoming survival challenges.

Human society, then, is most easily understood as a web of mutual aid that increases the survival and reproductive opportunities of all of its members. The more cohesive groups drive out the less cohesive ones. The Rambo-style individualist doesn’t survive a state of Nature, because one serious injury will kill him. The tribe that works together, on the other hand, can easily recover from non-fatal injuries to individuals.

However, this neat and elegant explanation for much of the complexity of the world does not appeal to some. There are some out there who deny that human behaviour is analogous to primate behaviour, or that human behaviour has evolved to meet survival and reproductive challenges in the natural world, or that significant biodiversity exists within the human species, or that ethology and evolutionary psychology are valid approaches that can make accurate predictions.

This insanity is known as biology denial.

As it turns out, there are several reasons why a person would deny biological science.

One of the most common reasons is narcissism. This is particularly true when it comes to evolution by natural selection. Many people don’t like to think that they evolved from a common ancestor with today’s monkeys. They prefer to think of other animals as a different category to themselves, something categorically lower.

This is related to another major reason to deny biology – religious reasons. The fundamentalist religious nutter believes that Yahweh created the entire Universe, perhaps as recently as 6,000 years ago, and therefore there’s no such thing as evolution. As anyone who knows anything about biology can tell you, if you deny evolution you deny all of biology. This is the reason for the “never say dinosaur” strain of Christcuckery.

The main reason why people deny biology is for political reasons.

This is most obvious when it comes to the subject of race and IQ. Every primary school student learns that there are no two things within Nature that are exactly the same – no two snowflakes, no two cats, no two mountains, no two races. Because biological life evolves to fill different ecological niches, the characteristics of life within those niches is always different.

On the subject of race and IQ, however, the truth is just about the most politically incorrect subject that it’s possible to speak of. As per Ibram X. Kendi, one of the world’s foremost biology deniers, “the races are meaningfully the same in their biology and there are no genetic racial differences”. Anyone who disagrees is cancelled.

In reality, Blank Slate Theory (what Kendi is pushing) is a form of biology denial, because it denies the heritability of natural characteristics. This goes against the available evidence, which is why Steven Pinker was able to meticulously and comprehensively demolish it in his book The Blank Slate. That biology denial can reach pathological proportions is evident from the magnitude of the evidence in favour of heritability.

Because biology denial is political, it varies in intensity depending on the aspect of biology under discussion.

Some people deny it totally. One notorious case involves a university student who believed that the reason why men are stronger than women is because they are encouraged to play more sports as children. Most children figure out when very young that there are significant physical differences between men and women. That an adult might deny this is incredible.

The modern transexual fad is another example of biology denial. Some heterosexual men are getting called bigots for preferring biological women over biological men pretending to be women, as if there was truly no difference between the two.

That men are naturally more violent than women, on the other hand, is accepted without question. That this heightened propensity towards violence necessitates exclusion of males from female spaces is, likewise, accepted without question. Any degree of biology can be denied, but whether it is depends on who would benefit from the denial.

All are equal, but some are more equal than others.

The ultimate end effect of biology denial is delusion and suffering. As Philip K Dick wrote: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” Westerners are now discovering that human biodiversity is a real thing, and that immigrants from low-IQ nations can’t simply be educated to behave exactly the same way as everyone else.

Biology deniers are so twisted up in their irrational thinking that they believe Asian immigrants to America to have white privilege. Asian students in America frequently find themselves having to get better grades than non-Asians to access the same privileges. Sometimes they need to get even better grades than white students.

Biology denial can only lead to inaccurate perceptions of reality, and thereby to a failure to accurately predict human behaviour, and thereby to political policy that harms instead of helps. Had it been widely understood that intelligence was genetic and that some human populations are an entire standard deviation or more less intelligent than whites, the mass immigration of cheap labour from the Third World to the West might never have happened.

At time of writing, biology denial is one of the greatest threats to our ability to wisely navigate the ship of civilisation through the challenges facing us.

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The Basics Of Understanding White People

Although New Woke dogma has it that all of the different human racial groups are precisely identical on all measures of psychological ability and aptitude, the VJM Publishing reader knows this to be crap. A proper understanding of human biodiversity demands that the unique nature of each of the various racial groups is understood individually. This essay explains.

White people are from the northern reaches of human civilisation. Near the Earth’s poles, sunlight strikes the surface at an sharp angle, resulting in much weaker sunbeams than near the equator. Also near the Earth’s poles, the seasonal variation is much more extreme, leading to extremely long and harsh winters.

The combination of weak and sometimes non-existent sunlight means that the skin of the inhabitants of the northern reaches evolved to be white. Light-coloured skin is an advantage in polar regions because it is more sensitive to sunlight. This makes it possible for light-skinned people to absorb enough sunlight to generate their Vitamin D requirements, something that dark-skinned immigrants to Northern Europe struggle with.

The polar climate not only explains the physical expression of white people, but also our psychological expression.

Psychologically speaking, the closer one comes to the poles the more autistic people become, and the closer one comes to the Equator the more psychotic people become. This is most clearly expressed by the polar populations behaving in a more orderly fashion, and the equatorial populations behaving in a more disorderly fashion.

The manifestations of this distinction are obvious. Polar societies are clean, tidy and regimented, with a strong rule of law, and the houses of people who live in these societies tend to also be clean and tidy. Equatorial societies, by contrast, are dirty, shabby and chaotic, and so are the everyday lives of the inhabitants of those societies.

This increased propensity for order in polar societies is mostly an adaptation to the cold climate. Cold weather punishes disorderly behaviour. Anyone who goes outside without the right clothing soon becomes sick. Anyone who doesn’t maintain their house to a high standard freezes. Anyone who fails to chop enough wood or store enough food for the winter dies. In the cold North, an inability to impose order upon one’s physical environment means death.

Following from this naturally high level of orderliness, white people are great at any cultural expression dependent on order. Anglo-Saxon legal culture has created many of the world’s most peaceful and least corrupt jurisdictions. Northern European science is responsible for most of humanity’s technological and medical advancements. The combination of Anglo-Saxon and German engineering built spacecraft that took men to the Moon.

However, there’s a flipside, and it’s why we cannot simply say that more orderly cultures are superior to less orderly ones.

White people are terrible at spirituality. No white person has ever founded a mainstream religion (although we’ve tried with Elementalism). The founders of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism were all from equatorial climates, and this is even true of the founders of the Abrahamic death cults. For most white people, spiritual talk is mental illness, and spiritual people are insane.

This lack of spiritual aptitude is our great weakness – so great that it has destroyed us and any chance we had of living happily.

Most religious white people superstitiously worship Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef, believing this ancient rabbi to be God in human form. This mindless adulation of a long-dead rabbi would be laughable were it not for the fact that white people will happily kill other whites who refuse to bow the knee. Events such as the Thirty Years War saw some six million whites killed by their fellows over different interpretations of Abrahamism.

Truly spiritual white people, such as the users of traditional spiritual sacraments like cannabis and psilocybin, are shunned by their societies. White autism has rendered the average white person incapable of understanding or appreciating true spiritual insight when presented with it. As such, most white people are entirely cut off from the divine.

This spiritual weakness has had a range of devastating effects. Worshipping Rabbi Yeshua does nothing to alleviate one’s natural fear of death. As a result, our prodigious intellects are chained to animalistic desires. We use our minds for little other than acquiring wealth in the mistaken belief that our unhappiness comes not from spiritual poverty, but from not owning enough stuff.

White people take enormous amounts of psychiatric medication because we are deeply unhappy. However, we are not unhappy because our outer worlds are disorderly, but because our inner worlds are disorderly. Our hearts are not in tune with God, as the hearts of psychotics are. Understanding this godlessness is the key to understanding white people.

In the same way that blacks ought to become more autistic, and thereby more capable of imposing order upon the physical, white people ought to become more psychotic, and more capable of imposing order upon the metaphysical. The way forward for whites is for us to overcome our natural autism and learn to connect more deeply to the world behind the appearance of the physical.

If you enjoyed reading this essay/article, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2020 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019, the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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