Page 470 - Total War on PTSD Final

Some people with PTSD experience spatial dysfunction and disorientation. This phrasing means that the “Who am I” and “Where am I” pathways are disrupted. Those patients fail to pick up many surrounding environmental cues and expend more mental and physical energy to make sense of their perceived reality. They become exhausted or fatigued and eventually find it easier to “tune out” the peripheral surroundings. Their struggle to understand the environment can increase depression, anxiety, irritability, outbursts of anger, irrational behavior, and sleep problems, which can include vivid nightmares.
Biochemical changes also occur in response to disruptions in subconscious peripheral awareness. Stress chemicals reach higher levels, promoting a PTSD patient’s chronic state of “Fight of Flight”. Over time, this increase in stress chemicals can lead to adrenal fatigue, and a patient suffering from PTSD may actually lose the ability to produce adequate stress chemicals. Their “Fight or Flight” systems are activated by subconscious triggers, affecting them at an unconscious level. Some patients have actually undergone hormone testing as part of their treatment plans and have noticed a return to more normal functioning of their adrenal systems.
Eyeglasses can be designed to alter some of these pathways through a direct route between the retina and the hypothalamus. This chapter is intended as an introduction to neuro-optometric rehabilitation as one method of dealing with unresolved PTSD. For a more scientific viewpoint, please see the section at the end.
A patient with PTSD usually has a constricted visual world where the external peripheral eyesight becomes hyper-sensitized or tuned out and the internal thought processes often diminish. The overall experience is usually a more limited spatial
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