For some, experiencing trauma may act as a form of cognitive training | Hacker News Reader

For some, experiencing trauma may act as a form of cognitive training

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34 points_Microft16 comments

Here's the paper that the article is talking about: http://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2018-34715-001.pdf

thank you

I am doubtful of the study methods but not my field I will have to read again, I am commenting because I endure complete days stuck in miasma recollection of decades past thst was obliterated from my memory until further trauma unlocked it. I believe there's something to the headline conclusion, from my own experience. When i am not knocked to bits by the assailing memories, I find increasingly i can modify my way of thinking and experiencing daily existence (life is a abstract i think i glimpse like a mitafe, occasionally) and i have not only found this a profound new agility, but become increasingly adept at appreciating the people i meet who also have experienced varying degrees of trauma, whom I fibd I can get myself on a wavelength with almost now with minimal or no consciouss effort. Although inevitably some people will unburden the most excruciatingly self serving nastiness, I have found that people are open to me who i wouldn't before have been able to get a conversation with wherein the they are personally able to communicate insights and i can hold in pattern and positively nidge and steer back to where theydigressed due to the upsets subject of their talk, with no notable friction which existed distinctly.. this change, the latest of years of considerable cognitive adjustments i have been through, happened since a breakdown just two weeks ago. For my anecdotal life, therefore, I am willing to give this some credence.

Is this sort of "cognitive training" useful to anyone but infantrymen? It seems the rest of us should forget as little as possible.

The article repeatedly says things like for some; mild trauma; at least for this group of people who successfully made it to university etc etc.

This feels like another one of those "well, duh" studies. Some people who experience mild traumatic experiences are able to learn and adapt and become better in some way for them. Others suffer, who experience similar, more, or less, traumatic experiences have different outcomes.

> People who do not recover well from a trauma and who develop chronic PTSD may perhaps have general deficits in inhibitory control, or an impaired ability to adapt control mechanisms over time, perhaps in part because of a genetic variation in cortical plasticity, Hulbert and Anderson suggest.

I mean, obviously: there has to be a neural-genetic manifestation.

I guess I just feel like there's a lot of "science news" lately that sums up to things like "dogs have four legs and seem to want to hang around humans".

I wonder, with more and more people going to university and going on to do a PhD, it seems like we're running short on ideas to write papers about.

Throwing rigor and the scientific method out of the window and relying on "everybody knows that" can not be the solution, so we will keep getting results that some people think are obvious. The difference is that what was an assumption before will be actual knowledge thereafter.

if mild trauma is basically daily occurrence its not trauma in my book

I don't want to relate highlights of my traumatic experiences, but i have only gotten past the shock stage on one event, five years afterwards. This is the breakdown my comment above references. I will throw this one here in case of need, but I have always been told I am, surprisingly to me a good listener. If you're experiencing the repercussions if shocks in your life interfering with work and hurting you or your stability, worrying family, and think i may be able to even just be a link to unburden and offer, only based on my understanding of you, but informed by three decades of start-up life i'm certain was caused by heightened worry and need for combatting challenges and securing my emotional life around work, I have time if someone needs, quite a bit next few weeks

I should only say that obvious fair caution applies, I'm just a random on the Internet, albeit i can point you to the usual profiles and personal references who will pick up and not ignore your call. So if you think you could benefit from this individual's often extreme perspectives I've been becalming and leaening from all my life, (and won't dream of introducing as distractions from your needs) I am pretty much available to reach most hours around the clock for the time being, as i hop around to try and pitch a new gig I'm shift working and so definitely awake in your time zone inside the next twenty four hours. I understand existential angst about PL philosophies of a new tech lead you can't abide by as equally as collateralisation of a structured debt financing of a early stage too nearly pre revenue... I kinda been (knocked!) around the block maybe can help save you a lap or two. I hope this isn't taken badly here im unsure about this sort of comment on HN, but i figured is a article that might attract somebody exhausted and even desperate for hope around the corner. That's why I clicked, despite i have been assiduously fine tuning my own life models lately, rather than scrabbling for anything I can hold on to.

edited typos, little cleanup i rushed the comment from my reaction/ thought, sorry for earlier messy text.

"It seems the rest of us should forget as little as possible."

Given the realities of life, I would presume most, by the time they reach middle age are mentally scarred one way or another.

I'm not sure of your life exeriences but as a soon 40 year old I would have enough nightmare stuff to severely mentally handicap me unless I had some way of coping with it. Moving on and not caring too much about ones personal history is sometimes a great strategy.

If you're correct, I'm not looking forward to my 30s. (I'm 29)

I'm not actually hoping people would suffer :)

I don't have statistics, but quite a lot of people are directly or indirectly affected by substance abuse, mental problems, illness, suecides, accidental or natural deaths or just plain bad luck.

Unless one lived alone in a padded room I find it unlikely one is not touched by a calamity or another within ones lifetime. But that's ok, just let grief do it's work, try to pick up the pieces and then carry on living.

I agree with fsloth, but if you've made it to 29 without seeing some shit, I think you're the kind of person likely to make it to 40 without seeing shit either.

I'm not sure of your life exeriences but as a soon 40 year old I would have enough nightmare stuff to severely mentally handicap me unless I had some way of coping with it.

There are some things I have to work hard to properly remember. I'm not sure this difficulty remains productive after the initial phase of emotional reactivity.

Counterpoint; trauma is so difficult to forget that the relatively small footprint of forgetting random, unessential facts just doesn't compare to the benefit of being able to forget something you would otherwise get into PTSD-style thought-loops over. Don't think about the time a close relative passed away; think about the types of torture John McCain went through. Do you think he could have come back and been the man he was if he couldn't lock some of his memories away?

And there is no "initial phase of emotional reactivity". It's a continuous spectrum of reactions and reactions to those reactions. Real trauma is like being hit by a train, or getting cancer. Yeah, you'll recover, but you'll never quite be as healthy as you were before the event even if your recovery is miraculous.

It's a continuous spectrum of reactions and reactions to those reactions.

That's life, period.

Yeah, you'll recover, but you'll never quite be as healthy as you were before the event even if your recovery is miraculous.

I'm not quite a former war prisoner, but I'm objectively a more effective person in many ways because of what I went through. I am worse off some ways, too, sure. But again, that's life. Little comes free.

I want to remember.

But if the cue word appeared in red, they were told to avoid both thinking about and saying the response word for the next four seconds.

Antifragile.

Is it possible to tell the difference between a human being and a Markov chain word generator? In some cases, no.

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