Entrenched fear such as experienced by PTSD afflicted people can be paralyzing. In his recent NY Times an Opinion piece Professor Richard Friedman of Weill Cornell Medical College describes a a study from the Journal Biological Psychiatry that works by offering a means of altering emotional memory, the associations we have between various stimuli and experiences and our emotional response to them. According to Dr. Friedman,
“It has been an article of faith in neuroscience and psychiatry that, once formed, emotional memories are permanent. Afraid of heights or spiders? The best we could do was to get you to tolerate them, but we could never really rid you of your initial fear.”
The current standard of treatment for phobias of this sort involves desensitization (or “exposure”) therapy: under safe conditions, a repeated presentation of the feared object or frightening memory. Alongside his toxic memory the patient logs a new unthreatening memory in his brain. The problem though is that with any exposure to the frightening trigger his old fear reawakens with increased intensity.
In the study a group exposed to a tarantula in a glass jar for two minutes before being given a beta-blocker called propranolol (commonly prescribed to patients for performance anxiety) outperformed control groups getting either propranol or exposure therapy alone. Despite having been induced to be arachnophobes this group was able to touch the tarantula within days.
Moreover the effect held: by three months and for long after, many could comfortably hold the spider in their bare hands. The explanation is that in blocking the effects of norepinephrine (a chemical similar to adrenaline) in the brain subtracts stress from memory reacquisition, thereby enhancing learning. Blocking norepinephrine in other words prompts mental reconsolidation by disrupting the way a memory is put back in storage after it is retrieved.
How wonderful is that? And consider the implications for treating PTSD.
Sure, but we offer the following caveat: Homeopathy addresses the very same problem more efficiently, less expensively, in deeper and in more natural fashion:
- As opposed to relying on a “middle man,” the in between measure of pharmaceutically softening up memory so that fear can be unlearned, homeopathy directly awakens a response already in place that is only waiting to happen;
- In place of a costly traditional pharmaceutical the correct high potency homeopathic remedy, inexpensive to begin with needs be give only seldom to achieve its deep effect;
- Arranging to create exposure to a triggering event is dispensed with in homeopathy;
- The homeopathic effect will be lasting because it is more deep, permanent in fact. A correctly prescribed homeopathic addresses buried issues predisposing the traumatized individual to his or her specific fear. But other, seemingly unrelated symptoms improve as well. For example, an individual whose arachnophobia treated with the homeopathic snake remedy Crotalus Cascavella will notice adjunctive improvements including fear of being alone, despair that he or she will never get well, and reduction in general body tension (especially of the neck).
If you have PTSD, talk to your homeopath about trauma-specific remedies.