I've moved my blog to a new site, powered by WordPress.  You can visit the new site at: www.catshuler.com/blog.

I feel the need to remind myself why I blog (or, at least, why I should blog).  I'm feeling a little listy, so I'm going to this in bullet point format.

I have found, that living under circumstances of chronic traumatization, of sustained abuse, has made me a better critical thinker and has increased my ability to understand the needs, emotions and motives of other.  But this could be a mythos created by me to make sense of my disorder and pain.  Still, I think that those who suffer chronic traumatization as children, and thus during crucial brain development, experience a different development of mental capacity.  Forced to live in a mode of hypervigilance and to consider at all moments the thoughts and motives of those perpetrating the abuse, abused children learn a sort of “double consciousness,” WEB Dubois’ name for the state of mind possessed by oppressed groups:

Last week I got the Kindle 2.0.  I was psyched about its release and have been comparing the old Kindle with the new one.  I'm working on a review comparing the two, but for now I have a note on Amazon's Kindle customer service.  It rocks.  My Kindle 2.0 was injured during my fall.

Well, once again the universe steps in and prevents me from blogging (or getting additional work done).  In the early morning hours of Wednesday, March 4th, I suffered an atonic seizure causing me to fall and hit my head on the ground.  Fortunately, the person who I had just said goodbye to heard me collapse (just a thud; I didn't cry out).  I was knocked unconscious and suffered a three and a half inch gash above and around my left eye.

I am once again reading trauma (and trauma-related) blogs.  Michael Sullivan's blog, Recall: An Involuntary Soldier's Story, is teaching me a lot about the military.  Though this blog isn't explicitly about PTSD, it does address issues of war, which I believe to be inherently trauma-related.  So here are a few things that I've learned:

From Day 41:

As I struggle to find the sample set (representative trauma blogs) for my dissertation, I have been able to separate the bloggers into three categories based on their rhetorical strategies for dealing with trauma. One set of trauma bloggers discuss the intimate details of their traumas, clearly focusing on the internal struggles of PTSD.  The other set of bloggers seem to externalize their trauma by focusing on the political aspects of post traumatic stress disorder without revealing a large amount of personal information.

This may come as a surprise to some,  but I like deflecting attention away from myself.  At least, I like deflecting attention away from certain aspects of my self.

In my research on PTSD blogs and due to my own tendency to keep up with PTSD-related news, I keep coming across articles regarding a "pill" for treating PTSD.  It's not a new idea; a bit of research into it reveals articles as far back as 2004.  So, why is it suddenly popping up everywhere now?

Let me start off by saying that I know this will sound cynical, and while what I am about to say is not optimistic , it is, sadly, supported by the data.  According to the NYTimes the army is opening its doors to immigrants.