Post Traumatic what?

Many people erroneously believe that Post traumatic Stress Syndrome-or PTSD- is something that veterans of war suffer with, more or less exclusively . There is also a knee jerk reaction to associate the disorder with the Vietnam War, which makes sense as this was when it was officially given its name, although it has obviously existed throughout the history of man.

In addition a fair amount of folks that I queried were under the impression that only events of big terrorist-type-proportions, like 9/11, Columbine School, Plane crashes and the like are the kind of experiences besides active warfare that causes PTSD.. Others yet perceived it as a syndrome of vague definition, lumping it in with disorders like adult attention deficit (AADD), and seasonal affective disorder (SAD) believing it in essence, a faux disorder, one of those over-diagnosed and often self-diagnosed-maladies. Once again, not at all true!

There is in fact a huge percentage of the American population walking around with PTSD, most of whom are undiagnosed. I was one of them; Three years ago I was two years belatedly diagnosed with "Chronic Severe Post traumatic Stress disorder" by a local psychotherapist, but ironically it was a Physical Therapist/ Massage Therapist/Reiki master that was the first person to treat it successfully -- this she did using a combination of touch therapy and bodywork.
She later very responsibly refereed me to a Psychiatrist who specialized in In the end it was both treatments simultaneously.-