Post-traumatic stress disorder is sometimes referred to as post-traumatic stress injury, viewing the autonomic nervous system as desensitized and in need of regulation.

“if we understand that the autonomic nervous system the seawing back and forth or this Push Pull between the sympathetic fight ORF flight and parasympathetic rest and digest Loosely speaking systems are always at play in us when we sleep more parasympathetic when we're alert and calm more sympathetic and when we're stressed or having a panic attack extremely sympathetic if we understand that as a biological system which it is that deploys hormones and shapes our patterns of thinking and what's available to us in our memory and Etc then ptsi post-traumatic stress injury I I feel like it liberates us a bit to understand that yeah this autonomic system has been disrupted in a way and if I think about the autonomic system as a seesaw which I often do and I think about the Seesaw having a pivot point with a with a hinge it's almost like the post-traumatic stress injury is to create the tendency for that hinge to be too tight and sometimes that makes it more like dissociative and we're exhausted and kind checked out and maybe it creates the hinge to be too tight such that we're more on the sympathetic excuse me sympathetic the way I uh for those listening I'm using my hands but you don't have to to see it to understand that the the the alertness system is locked in place it's hard to get out of that and I almost feel like the the injury that is post-traumatic stress injury is a tightening down of the hinge with the Seesaw tilted too much to one or the other side”