Am quite concerned about someone who had a traumatic experience a while back that was personal rather than Armed Forces based. If you are able to comment then I would very much appreciate that. Thank you
I was diagnosed with PTSD after being robbed at gun point. I didn't really notice it until maybe 3 or 4 months later when I started having really bad anxiety followed by depression. They tried to put me on anti-depressants, but they just made me feel worse. I decided to work on my problems on my own. I still struggle with the anxiety on a daily basis, but my depression is a lot better. I'm lucky to have such a wonderful partner who is very patient. I hope whomever is suffering gets better soon.
My therapist (ex-therapist if you will, because I don't see her anymore) said "Trauma" is individual to each person and not all people that have or are diagnosed with PTSD have been through battle or a similar trauma. (such as being robbed at gun point ^^^) Some people have had PTSD or symptoms of this and can't easily pinpoint the trauma, because of the way many people bury memories or mental pain/anguish/anxiety. I have symptoms and she and the psych doc classified me as PTSD along with major depression and generalized anxiety. I was medicated briefly with Cymbalta which almost killed me (Serotonin Syndrome) when my dose was doubled to 120mg /day. Since then I was in therapy until recently when my therapist quit to take another job... My coping mechanism it to just stay home all the time, except for trips to the store on occasion... If the store is crowded I skip it and come home. I can go and see my Father and Sister once a week. Other than that? No partner, no friends, no social interaction. Certain things one can not just "snap out of" and it bugs me when people think you can.
Thank you all for posting - I truly appreciate your honesty. MQ - that must have been absolutely awful I truly can not imagine how that made you feel but it does sound to be that you have a great inner strength:love: T, I don't know what to say really - other than I am a caring person and reading your post, which I thank you for, almost made my heart burst:love: Big love from me xxx
I was in two car accidents within a few months in 2006. The first one I was laying down in the back of my ex's Equinox and we were rear-ended at a stoplight. Other than a light concussion I was alright. The next (only a few days after his car was back) we were hit head on (in the same city - 45 minutes away from home.) My ankle was broken and I suffered brain damage. I never dealt with anxiety before these accidents, and am still on medication (which does help) to this day. A lot of the anxiety was caused by having seizures for several years, and never knowing when they were coming. However, for a little over a year I could hardly stand riding in a car. I just knew someone was going to hit us. I was diagnosed with PTSD a few years after the accident. It seems trivial to suffer from it from a car accident, while it's something so common for people after being in severely intense situations.
I had alcohol poisoning when I was a teenager. I almost died and I could actually remember everything about it, including the moment I realized I was probably going to die, up until the moment I passed out. For weeks after I kept having flashbacks -auditory hallucinations to be more specific - of hearing my mom exactly the way she sounded when I woke up in the hospital. She kept saying "its okay, everything's going to be okay," in her soothing mom voice. Afterwards I would be sitting in class or hanging out with friends and all of a sudden out of the blue everything around me would fade to the background and I could just hear her voice so perfectly. I didn't realize until a few years later that those flashbacks were probably symptoms of PTSD.
PTSD is more common than people think, any traumatic experience can trigger those symptoms. Unfortunately military personal usually have more concentrated traumatic experiences, than civilians. I've had a couple flashbacks to a traumatic experience in my life, and even though at the time it seemed life threatening. My continual acceptance of eventual death and the knowledge/experience of that "i'm going to die, NOW, OHHH FUCK" feeling - the embracing of those two things (i think), have led the flashbacks to stop. Haven't had one in years, or maybe my maturity on the event make it go unnoticed. Addition Question: Have any of you had a smell trigger a flashback or a reflexive emotion reaction to a previous experience?
^This summed me up perfectly. I basically cope with mine the same way. My old lady and I have a friend or two that come around every once in a while, and then I have you guys :2thumbsup:
I guess seeing a therapist might be good I've heard that one of the ways that PTSD is treated is to re-enact the traumatic experience a bunch of times in a safe environment.
If anyone tried to do that to me, I just might punch them in the face...so I advise they be very careful with that therapy.
BTDT. Goes back to when I was a little kid. You see, "back in the good ole' days" 6 year old boys were expected to forgive & forget when their mommy takes him and his sister for a drive in the mountains and then talks about driving off of a cliff so she can "float among the stars". Or later when he's 8 & she wraps him & his sister in a blanket telling them when the authorities do an autopsy on you two they will see that you had full stomachs so they can't say that you two were abused, while she was loading her shotgun. She never could understand why I laughed when she'd call me a "son of a bitch". Some people just can't see the irony. Then, years later, when she was found to have a brain tumor. That explained it all, or so I thought. She went into surgery as a psycho-mommy and came out as a con-artist & thief. Fuck it. Fuck her. And then, as a kid with no fucking way to understand a goddamn thing about any of this, I was expected to share all of my deep down memories and fears with a man I didn't even know at school? I guess the school district forgot the time before him it was a woman. I trusted her, and she thought it was funny. Stupid c***. Amazing. The teachers couldn't excuse my emotional (usually anger) outbursts. And then the mormon church and family blamed me for her having a brain tumor. I'm the one that needed hospitalized. I'm the cause of it all. Fuck them. If they wanna blame me for everything then they can blame themselves for their own stupidity. THAT, OP, is where PTSD comes from.
That's exactly how I TRY to "cope" - I stay home as much as I possibly can. Unless I HAVE to go somewhere, 99% of the time I'm at home. Never heard of that treatment before. Going to ask my therapist about it, even though I would never allow myself to be treated that way. It would be impossible even if I wanted to do it - my PTSD is from multiple incidents and people were killed. My heart goes out to everyone who is suffering from PTSD!
I found EEG Neurofeedback to be the best for me. EMDR is a bad deal for people with multiple traumas. Even Dr. Shapiro, the creator of EMDR, says so. If you decide to go that route, you better have someone her office specifically referred you to.
I saw something about it on tv. They were using this to treat vets with ptsd. It was almost like a video game, except there was no game to play. They dressed in fatigues, carried a fake gun, and looked at scenes that reminded them of their experiences in war.
I think that the idea is that over time, the stress level goes down. I think that they do something similar with phobias. You get exposed to what you are afraid of a little bit at a time, until you aren't afraid anymore. I don't know if it's any good, but that's just what I heard.
It's possible that it could help in some cases, I would imagine it could do more damage for others... It's just a creepy concept. Working through to the other side of your disorder by acting it out is what the Psych Doc in the old horror flick "Don't look in the Basement" was doing... Didn't work out too well for him.
Tyrsonwood, do you have a tremendous amount of anxiety with your ptsd also? I've always been a nervous person even as a kid, but my ptsd makes it even worse! Somedays my anxiety is so bad I have chest pains and stomach aches all day to the point where I can't even eat anything, it sucks!
