The Language of iPTS
It's evident that PTS is experienced differently by children and grandchildren of parents with PTS. They have a specific language that identifies this difference. They use English, but theirs is a different version, and not commonly understood by general and mental health practitioners.
This process chart illustrates the cultural construction of the primary language theme that underlies all motives for people with PTS, and those raised in families with PTS. It forms the structural foundations of their understandings of the world around them and their place in it. It describes what living with PTS is to them, and how they deal with it.
Each of these themes collectively describes a common set of terms, words, phrases and utterances that are used by people with PTS in their lives to attempt to portray their experiences to others.
When others fail to fully grasp these meanings, it challenges the person's sense of normality and identity.
Copyright 2017-2025 Dr Ken O'Brien
Practitioners and professionals need to understand that there are generations of experiences embedded into these meanings. Cases of PTSD were recorded by the Egyptians and Romans. These collective experiences form collective understandings, that form the collective language of PTS.
There is a process of internalising the guilt that many feel through not being able to live up to their own expectations of themselves. There is a parallel process occuring at the same time of externalising the shame that many feel through not being able to live up to the expectations of others (such as parents, peers and employers).
One group of themes describes a need for control, while another describes a fear of loosing control.
These two tables illustrate how these language themes translate into secondary behaviours and social responses.
They are an important tool for assisting them to understand the embedded history within the meanings behind these terms.
