At one point a psychiatrist wanted to put me on a mood stabilizer too. He wanted to use Lithium though. I never tried it because I really didn't want to do drugs tbh.

((Johnny)), just because it seems like this drug is "helping" you does not mean that you have bipolar or something is "wrong or bad".

Hun, PTSD is not "just" an anxiety disorder either. PTSD also has "emotional swings" to it, especially when someone has c-ptsd and is slowly "working through it in therapy".

You have been talking about your father and your past a lot lately, this is going to bring forward a lot of "challenging emotions" in you. With complex-PTSD, while working through these difficult childhood experiences, often what happens is "emotional flashbacks" where you really "feel what you had felt back then". People who struggle with complex PTSD get very confused for a while because of how these "emotional flashbacks and even deep depressive feelings and thoughts can come forward just as if you are reliving that time in your childhood". This is not just "remembering" which is what many people do "not" understand, this is different and can present days of feeling "low, emotional, confused, depressed, and worthless".

Honestly, it took me a while to understand it myself too. I began to recognize that once I began working through my past in therapy, it opened up a door to things coming forward that I had never realized I could "re-experience" the way I have.
For example, I began to "relive" the way I got so "exhausted" once I got off that horrible/terrifying ride on the school bus every day. It was as though I "was" that child all over again, and it really disoriented me. I have relived those days right down to the "pattern" of how those days affected me in a pattern.

Here was a typical day for me back then that started right away in Kindergarten. I would climb on that bus behind my older brother. As soon as he got to the top step they started in on him, picking and chanting and bullying. It was not long before they began to pick on "me" because I was "the sister" and it was such an emotional challenge for me to find a seat to sit down without getting turned away because of being connected to my brother. By the time I got to school I was very stressed out and had to find a way to somehow "calm down" and "try to listen and learn". I had a hard time paying attention because I was so "traumatized" by that bus ride to school.

I was always "tired" at school and experiencing "anxiety" back then, only I didn't know what that meant, only that I had to somehow manage. Then there was the bus ride home, more constantly bullying and I had to study my brother's face because I had to know when he was "ready to explode" because after we got off the bus, often my mother was still at work and I had to have a quick plan to run and hide somehow as he would take his frustrations on "me".

By the time it was "bed time" I struggle to actually "go to sleep" because I was so "wound up". I twittled my hair all night long just to try to "relax so I could sleep".
I always hated the mornings because every morning I was very "tired" and always took me time to get up, try to manage a head full on knots and find something to wear for school. Then the cycle began all over again with the bus. What 5 year old has the capacity to understand all that. Plus, the fact that my parents were constantly disciplining my brother which only "made him worse". It was already "so bad" in my environment that trying to tell my parents that my brother was also sexually abusing me was "out of the question" as I genuinely felt if I did that, that he would end up "killing me".

That was my life my entire childhood right up to my teens. The one thing that saved me was that my parents got me a pony at age 11 and as soon as I got off the bus I would get on that pony and get away from my brother and ride down the road and into the woods where he could not catch me/follow me.

Before I got the pony I used to run from my brother and climb up a huge evergreen tree and sit there until my mother got home from work. My brother never found me there, but every single time I prayed he would not think to look for me up that tree. I almost died of pneumonia because often I was "freezing" up in that tree at least 40ft up. I have also relived the pneumonia where I was put in a bath of ice in and effort to get my temp down from 105.

I was so tired in school that I often held on as long as I could and then would go to the nurses office where I felt safe and could actually "sleep". I have had "flashbacks" where I am running through our house shutting doors behind me with my brother chasing me, I was terrified. I had no idea I could so "vividly" relive that just as if it is happening in the "now".

Johnny, it takes time to finally "work through" all these things that come forward where you really "feel" that child in you in a way people do not understand can happen.

However, you "can" get to a point where you can "finally" process these things better and "slowly" get to a point where you begin to "gain" on "reliving the emotions and anxiety and feelings of fear, or worthlessness" that come over you as I am describing. It takes time to understand what is "happening" and that it can be very lonely as most people simply do not believe how difficult and very "real" this challenge is.

It really sounds to me that you are at the point where you are working through these "emotional challenges" as you are discussing and remembering your past. I have been observing you, and I can see where you are. You need to be "patient" with this part of "working through" PTSD, it will "slowly" ease up as you deal with it all with your "adult mind and reasoning skills that you did not have as a child".

You are still in the first stage of healing, but also touching on the "Remembrance and Mourning stage of PTSD recovery.

You should get Judith Herman's book, "Trauma and Recovery" so you can better understand "the stages of PTSD recovery" and understand "the healing path" so you don't feed into it or determine these "low feelings" as something you "will always feel or have to feel". It is up and down for a while, cycles that resemble Bipolar, but it is "not bipolar". However, it is not unusal to have a "mood stabilizer" be recommended and have it "help" to some degree.

(((Big Caring Hugs)))
OE