The treatment of choice for PTSD is prolonged exposure which was primarily
developed by Edna Foa. This procedure focuses on facilitating the individual
processing rather than avoiding traumatic memories and the stimuli that trigger
such memories. TM might be useful as an ancillary therapy to help person reduce
the chronic level of SNS arousal that is often associated with PTSD e.g a
pronounced startle response.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb wrote:
>
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Michael Jackson wrote:
> >
> > After much thought, I think I would still recommend
> > something other than TM for PTSD relief.
>
> As would I, having done a bit of research on PTSD
> in the past year. The condition or syndrome known
> as post-traumatic stress disorder revolves around
> an inability to get over experiences and impressions
> from the past, and live in the present, as if these
> impressions were no longer a ruling factor.
>
> Nothing I have seen in my over-46-year-experience
> with TM suggests to me that it enables people to do
> this. To the contrary, I find that most long-term
> TMers are more locked into and ruled by impressions
> from the past than normal, everyday, non-meditators.
>
> Recent research has shown that there is a one-to-one
> link between people displaying neurotic behavior and
> their risk of developing PTSD. Neurotic behavior is
> defined as "a type of personality behavior in which
> people experience high degrees of anxiety in response
> to everyday events, and thus tend to overreact to
> those ordinary events." That seems to me to be almost
> a definition of the long-term cultic TMer, at least
> in my experience. How is *cultivating* this behavioral
> pattern supposed to help those already victimized
> by it?
>
> I personally suspect that PTSD can be best treated
> by something that enables its sufferers to be as present
> in each present moment as possible, with as few "trigger
> points" reminding them of the past as possible. If TM
> worked as it was described in its marketing brochures,
> it would help to do this. But all one has to do to tell
> whether the marketing brochures were telling the truth
> or not is to watch what long-term TMers tend to *focus*
> on. Is it the present, or the past? I rest my case.
>
