Also, your reaction to the "stress breakdown" has been typical of PTSD as for the time line you went into "fight mode". That is not the same as "bipolar" Mowtown. A person doesn't all of a sudden present with bipolar disorder. Your history is not saying that about you either. That is why it was important that the professional that treated you take more time to hear your history.

If you listen to that video I posted, you will recognize that what that man is discribing about PTSD, is more of what you were experiencing. The thing about PTSD, or what is discribed as "complex PTSD" too, is the history of "stress" that takes place and how a person who has a long history of stress, is more prone to a "stress breakdown" that is PTSD.

Many people who seek a "calm" do so because that is really what is needed, as you can hear in the video. Otherwise what happens is the person gets worse because they continue to experience the cortisol build up and supression which they don't understand.

When I experienced a stress breakdown myself, I begged for rest and greif counseling. I was not "treated" correctly for a "stress breakdown", because I was only further traumatized with the environment I was in, pushed into drug treatment and surrounded by individuals that were very mentally ill. I was also consistently intruded on every 15 minutes, so I was consistently startled and never got a true nights rest in that environment either. My own family was also mean to me, my sister came in to visit me and threatened me with "I better get with it" or I would lose everything, which is totally the wrong thing to say to anyone who is experiencing a complete stress breakdown known as "post traumatic stress".

I was kept in the psych ward for way too long too. I had to spend Thanksgiving sitting at a table with strangers who were all dealing with extreme psychological illnesses. My family never came to visit me that day either, no comfort/caring/tenderness that a person experiencing a "stress breakdown" deserves. I WAS locked up against my will, I WAS treated like a CRIMINAL. I also experienced "shock with constant chills" and to top that off my room's heat was malfunctioning and the other patients all knew I had the "cold room".

No one explained to me what was wrong with me NO ONE. When I finally literally BEGGED my older sister to help me get out of that place and my husband came to pick me up, he did so and was in no way "nice/caring/understanding/comforting", instead he was very "angry" and that drive home with him was "horrible".

Anyone who dares to say that I do not have "real PTSD" is being totally disrespectful. I now have "chronic PTSD" and luckily I have a therapist that has validated that for me.
I am also very "intimately" aware of the dangerous suicidal thoughts too. I was "alone" with that too, and also punished for talking about how badly I was dealing with those thoughts too, even told to go ahead, and even had a loaded handgun stored in a night stand next to my bed too. I really believed that I was an "expensive burden" too and that it would be better for my whole family if I did not exist to burden them.

I would not have made it had I not met a vet here who explained this unbelievable darkness I was in either. I would not have made it had this vet not helped me to reach out to the therapist I had been seeing but not yet fully trusting. Finally this therapist made it a point to sit with my husband and tell him that what I was dealing with was "real" and was not my fault and that he better take steps to remove that gun and help me and not be mean to me.

I think that what you should do Mowtown is have a therapist that knows what you are experiencing and can sit with your family and explain to them that you are not a criminal and what you struggle with is not your fault and is real and that you deserve the help you need so you can work through it.

My therapist really "helped" when he did that for me with my husband. But it still took a while for my husband to "get it". My own daughter would not talk to me, and finally one time my husband got her to at least be part of a Mother's day breakfast at a restaurant. Unfortunately, that restaurant was very busy/noisey and triggered me severely so I had to go outside and get away from it. I quickly looked for someplace quiet and ended up sitting in a little allyway, shaking, embarassed, confused, and crying. I did not know about that challenge with PTSD, and when I was in that allyway, I had no idea what to say, how to explain it to my husband/daughter/inlaws that were there that day. I could not stop shaking and was so embarssed, praying that no one would see me in that allyway, trying to figure out what was happening to me. Here I was experiencing PTSD from a trauma, and now traumatized from the PTSD that I did not understand, and I remember not knowing what to say to my family once they began to wonder where I went and found me in that allyway. I did not know how to explain something even I did not understand myself.

It is "wrong" that someone should struggle that way and not have the family around them told about it, have it explained to them so they don't react badly to the person who is genuinely struggling and scared and confused.

Time and again all I hear is how others deal with that same challenge and it is just not fair that people who struggle this way not have help from a professional that can tell their family members what it means and "how" to be supportive and not "blame the person struggling".

I have a great deal of respect for anyone who is struggling with this challenge too. Everyone I have met was a survivor of some very "stressful" things that they lived through in their lives too. And "everyone" I have met deserves to "heal" with support and respect too.

OE