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-Zoppo t1_iv45i4p wrote

Ancient tribal cultures with would often see schizophrenia induced hallucinations as neutral entities, whereas in modern cultures with people living in cities those hallucinations are hostile entities, so there might be reason to suggest modern life gives us a view of the world where the world is inherently scarier, because hallucinations are often an externalization of the fear we feel inside (to put it simply, the person suffering a hallucination is not afraid because of the hallucination, they're hallucinating because they're afraid, but it's also not that simple). I believe I read the part about hallucinations in tribal cultures vs cities in "The Body Keeps the Score" a very long time ago.

And certainly, modern society is a lot more complex, financial anxiety is really harmful in particular because if we're in that situation we often have no way out (i.e failure of flight or fight). I would be surprised if this didn't make us significantly more prone to PTSD, CPTSD, and disassociative disorders that result from overuse of freeze/submit (but probably not 'cry for help' in this context) states that follow the failure of flight or fight.

I think what we're seeing is it becoming more common as a symptom of modern society, but it's also difficult to say how much of it is additional and how much of it is awareness. This is a field that is rapidly expanding in how much we know as it has had a lot of focus in recent years.

For the specific question, yes there has always been long term effects, perhaps a better but far more difficult question is how frequent were the occurrence of those effects in the past. It is a natural symptom from our evolution, so it must have always been possible for us to experience PTSD at our current stage. We also wouldn't have evolved this response without it being so present - our mind does a good job of protecting us, but modern society seems to be less compatible with this.

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[deleted] t1_iv4y0b9 wrote

Do you have a source for the tribal hallucinations being neutral and urban schizophrenia producing hostile ones? Not arguing, just curious i’d be interested in reading that

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-Zoppo t1_iv50s6z wrote

I'm sure I read it in The Body Keeps the Score - I have a copy but it's really hard to search so I tried to Google hoping it would be referenced. The closest I got was "Culture shapes the expression of traumatic stress" (from that book) and a few other references that suggests he did focus on culture at some point. I recall distinctly he also mentioned that those suffering hallucinations often became Shamans or similar.

I wish I could say with absolute certainty it was that book, but I'm about 95% there. Whatever I was reading at the time also delved into how hallucinations affect people with sensory issues - auditory hallucinations manifesting as phantom hands speaking sign language, or how people blind from birth never have auditory hallucinations.

While googling to validate what I said, I did come across an interesting article here that might interest someone with a genuine curiosity for this topic. I skimmed over it, work has me overloaded and burned out so even trying to locate stuff like this feels a bit overwhelming right now. I did notice how I can't search that page for the keywords 'fear', 'panic', 'terror', 'scare/y' so I suppose it doesn't focus on those aspects of it.

The Body Keeps the Score is an indispensable resource, so I'd recommend reading it regardless, but unless someone challenges what I'm writing here I probably wont go looking for it specifically (my apologies).

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[deleted] t1_iv6266a wrote

That’s awesome thanks! Don’t have time to read the full article atm but the abstract supports what you were saying should be really neat, looking forward to it. Cheers!

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shooflydont OP t1_iv6bbtz wrote

This reply is incredibly insightful. I appreciate it. It’s funny - I am currently reading “The Body Keeps the Score” which prompted me ponder these questions

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