Ask the Therapist
Surgery and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Hello dear therapist,
I was very pleased to read about the possibility to have expert advice on a very personal and disturbing problem:
I am 75 years old and 12 years ago I underwent a by-pass procedure that eliminated a very severe angina-pectoris.
Subsequent to this surgery I have had a period of acute and uncontrollable panic that subsided in time and faded away.
About 6 month ago I was diagnostically catheterized for a suspected return of cardiac problems.
This last procedure did connect me somehow with the long forgotten events of so many years ago and I suffer now panic bouts and inability to cope with stresses of any kind.
Could you please clarify for me this happening and direct me to related literature (web or paper), I shall be more than obliged.
It sounds like you may be suffering from latent Post Traumatic Stress. Features of PTS often include panic, panic attacks and a feeling of being overwhelmed by stress. It sounds latent because it did not effect you until your surgeries. The surgeries were somehow a trigger for the panic and intolerance of stress and may have activated some unconscious complex that you were
harboring. What might be important for you is to discover how this "event" with which you have been "put in touch" is related to the stress, trauma, invasiveness, sense of loss of control, issues of mortality, etc., that one might commonly associate with major surgery. If you are experiencing "flashbacks" to the "event" in question or dreaming about that event or having dreams that have a sense of that event, these are called "intrusions" and would further support the conjecture of PTS.
As for resources, if this description sounds accurate, you may look into PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, although I am not suggesting this as a diagnosis) on the Internet or there is a lovely book called the "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Handbook", which includes some activities, etc. for working with PTS.
