Treating Anxiety vrs Complex Trauma

I noticed this article and felt the members here would find it very interesting and validating.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/apos...182704340.html

// It is extremely difficult for the rational brain to be convinced “that won’t happen,” because it already knows that it HAS happened, and it was horrific.

Those living with generalized anxiety often live in fear of the future. Those with complex trauma fear the future BECAUSE OF the past. //

Wow, I've been diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder and this is exactly what my brain tells me: "It HAS happened. And it was horrific."

That's very good and true, people have tried in the past to treat me for GAD as a thing in itself many times, usually using CBT and I just find it doesn't help, I know all those techniques inside out, it doesn't stop me being on alert all the time.

Now I understand why meditation does not work for me......I am in constant need of having heightened awareness of my environment and to my nervous system closing my eyes and going deep into my mind until the world around me fades away is not safe.

I have the same problem in yoga, on the rare moments when I am able to let go I immediately startle because I suddenly feel lost, exposed and panicky. But I think it is something I want to try and get through so I am keeping it up. Ultimately yoga and meditation should be beneficial but there are just additional barriers to work on which require particular techniques. For example when I am doing yoga relaxation on my back which is a particularly triggering position I keep a bolster pillow close by and when I feel exposed place it over my belly to ground myself, and sometimes curl up to it on my side.

I am glad this article has helped in understanding the difference. When I read this article it really hit home with me, even with how I TRY to explain that I get triggered because YES I am dealing with something that most definitely has already happened and it was bad enough to traumatize me where I did not know how to stop it and it caught me off guard and was very toxic and unexpected.

I can also SO RELATE to the shame where I choose not to engage in someone or something because I have already been hurt by doing so. The constant I get from others is "you need to just ignore and do it anyway", but as much as I want to the person or thing is SO TOXIC and had caused some personal damage to me in someway that I don't want to be anywhere near this person or situation. The shame comes from how badly triggered I get, to a point where I am in physical pain as well as emotionally challenged to a point where I can suffer for a few days in a way so many do not understand and insist I just control of just get over as well as all the other "just" comments.

Okay, I'll bite. "Those living with generalized anxiety often live in fear of the future. Those with complex trauma fear the future because of the past."

What if the past trauma has locked the outcome of the future?

"First and foremost, a traumatized person must be living in a situation which is 100 percent safe before they can even begin to process the tsunami of anger, grief and despair that has been locked inside of them, causing their hypervigilance and other anxious symptoms."

What if it is impossible to ever find a situation where you can be safe ever again because your past will always come back to haunt you? If you're always looking over your shoulder, makes it kind of hard to move on, in that case...

Being more aware for me is simply being more aware of the futility of my existence, which has been amputated by being stupid when I was 16. Thinking about the future, and the reality of my situation does nothing for me but make me despair all the more because the reality is, my future is bleak.

(((Michael2Wolves))), one of the symptoms of PTSD is to not see a future did you know that? It's a deep feeling but it's not actually "fact". Are you getting therapy?

No, for a variety of reasons, but primarily because it's very difficult for me to trust psychologists after one used her position to threaten me with indefinite civil commitment for not being able to remember a trivial detail from many years prior, and her boss knew about it but wouldn't back me up or discipline her.

Plus, I'm on medicaid, and no psychologists near me take it.

Nor will I ever willingly go into a hospital or institutional setting. Never. I will take my chances, thank you.

Third, if I have PTSD, it's deserved. Crazy, right? Well, irl, not so much. That self-hatred has lead me on a fascinating journey of brinksmanship with myself that has devolved into self-harm with fists whenever I screw up bad enough at something and it sparks my rage. This results in situations like abandoning something as soon as I see the odds are no longer in my favor. I don't do things anymore unless I can be absolutely assured of success. I am very particular about the way I like things, too. It seems I have become strangely analytical and critical in my old age of 38 whereas in my youth, I would have said I was a right-brainer.

And honestly, you'd think being right aout one's situation and position in the universe all the time would be amazing--it's really, really not.

Really? - I have a diagnosis of CPTSD and actually deeply feel that myself but hadn't realised it was seen as a symptom. Where is that listed?

I have never read that. I had my first therapist ask me where I see myself in the future and I said I was never suppose to live this long (I was only 43) because I had every intention of killing myself so I never ever planned for the future. It was so hard for me to plan anything other than the next day.

Very interesting. I am past that now and I do plan for the future but it is hard for me to visualize a future.

I just blinked and thought I wrote that, I could have

Oh, I am surprised a few of you did not know this is a symptom of PTSD.

Let's see if this link works,

Complex post traumatic stress disorder (complex ptsd, pdsd, shell shock, nervous shock, combat fatigue), symptoms and the difference between mental illness and psychiatric injury explained

That's fantastic thanks, it's funny I went through a whole list of symptoms with my psychiatrist just last week and she diagnosed me with CPTSD anyway but we didn't discuss that because even though now I think of it this is exactly me it just wasn't something I'd thought of as part of it (tbh I always planned to kill myself at 50 then gradually each day it gets put off one more day, so I literally live one day at a time, now I'm 57 but it's been hard to get to this point).

((Carmina)),

Well, maybe NOW you can finally work on "healing" so you can find your way towards having more quality to your life. You deserve to heal

Complex PTSD doesn't seem to go hand-in-hand with mental illness, according to that link. I have the hypervigilance, but I also have raging mental illness of one sort or another. Can one have both mental illness and CPTSD?

I can think of a few things that I experienced while incarcerated that could have easily caused PTSD in anyone. There are things that I have never told a living soul that I endured while incarcerated, nor have any intention of doing so.

Which brings up another question that probably deserves its own thread: Is the mental illness that can arise in people while incarcerated for lengthy periods of time, manifesting often as PTSD-like symptoms upon release, deserved as part of their sentence?

I've had people tell me, "Well, if you didn't put yourself there, you wouldn't be in the situation you're in now." You'll never hear me claim I was innocent, but does that abrogate my right to complain about my current situation that has resulted from both the incarceration and the resultant mental illness? Does that also negate the injustice of mental illness being afflicted upon me by incompetent, lying, manipulative therapists using their position to inflict suffering upon those they deem deserving of it simply because they can and will always get away with it?

I feel most days like Mad Max after he was put on a horse with his hands tied behind his back and sent off to die in the desert.

Actually Michael, it has been recognized that individuals who are incarcerated can be traumatized and even develop PTSD challenges. Anyone put in a situation where they are trapped and can't escape and experience abuse can end up struggling with mental health challenges that can add extra challenges to their ability to find a "healthier" place in humanity once that person finishes their sentence and is released. It is no secret that a lot of individuals that end up incarcerated had/have mental health issues that contributed to whatever they did that caused them to be incarcerated in the first place.
Sometimes the individual committed crimes because that individual had a severe addiction problem where they ended up stealing or even selling drugs to support their own addiction problem.

That is me too!

It’s really hard for me to close my eyes and relax or meditate unless I know that I’m completely by myself. I sit up so late at night because I can’t really relax until I know that everybody in the house is asleep.

ETA: I totally relate to the reference by Carmina about yoga. At the end of the class when you are supposed to close your eyes and relax just stresses me.

I can relate to this too.

It’s not that I don’t want a future. I’ve just never been able to picture one. I’ve always just existed and felt like I didn’t belong here.

But that doesn't answer my question. Do I deserve this fate, PTSD or whatever, and all? Or don't I?

Does an inmate deserve to suffer with PTSD because he put himself in prison by poor choices? If yes, that means that mental illness/suffering is just, and is an unspoken part of sentencing, anything that happens inside to cause PTSD, that, too, is an unspoken part of the sentence you deserve, and once you're released, you will be a pariah for the rest of your life--because you deserved it. Shouldn't have done the crime if you can't do the time, right? You have zero expectation of help because you put yourself there.

If no, then that means that our level of civilization has fallen to barbarism and utter hypocrisy. Doestoyevsky said, "You can judge the level of civilization within a society by the manner in which they treat their prisoners." What does that say about us?

My problem(?) is, I intrinsically feel that I deserve my suffering, and when I am enraged, I tend to lash out at myself physically to specifically cause more pain and suffering because that is what I deserve. I don't care that I leave bruises. I hate myself that much. And even when I cannot fathom the cause of failure, my brain will go over each aspect of the cause of failure looking for some way in which it was my fault, because it's still my fault that I put myself in this position, and it's a part of my Pattern that I am trapped in with no way out due to the choices I made when my brain hadn't even finished growing. If I deserve it, does that not negate my right to call for, and expect, help?

And is it CPTSD? Or PTSD? Because the former usually only occurs in people with no mental illness history, according to that link. Or does it even matter anymore? At this point, I'm not sure I care. Maybe I should just resign myself to it because it's part of my fate.

Sorry, I don't mean to trigger anyone. I hope I didn't...

Does anyone "deserve" that? Who says?

Fallen? Was it ever different? As a society we just have not learned enough about human nature and how to manage it, using more knowledge about how it works. Progress on that front can be extremely slow, as you may have noticed. Does not mean that nothing progresses.

I compare the development of knowledge of human psychology to that of the physical sciences. Before they got to the stage they are now, very similar things took place in our understanding of the physical world. Vast confusion and major controversies. Now understanding of human psychology needs comparable development. It can happen. It seems to be happening. In fits and starts. Very slowly.

We are working on it here.

I thought lashing out at oneself was just a way to prevent the surprise that takes place when someone else does it. To anticipate so that when it happens it won't be so shocking...

CPTSD happens as a result of an extended period of trauma, where the person's system is overwhelmed and cannot find a way to rebound. Typically in childhood, where coping mechanisms are not well developed. It is an inevitable part of childhood, not the child's "fault". Children are not adults. You cannot correctly expect them to be (as my mother, of course, did).

I wouldn't read too much into that article, it has some useful points and was eye opening in some respects, but is also making a number of assumptions and claims I am not sure I would agree with or are supportable by the evidence myself (eg all CPTSD depression is 'reactive' on a biochemical level). It's trying to draw too clearcut a distinction between 'mental illness' and 'psychiatric injury' when I think in reality it is hard to draw a line between the two and as the article itself says many people with CPTSD will have been given mental illness diagnoses at some point even if it is arguably erroneous so they certainly will have a mental illness history. I have a long history of depression and GAD, OCD and various other mental health symptoms; the diagnosis of CPTSD helps tie them all together in a way that makes sense in the context of my personal history, and accounts for other symptoms like diminished future and startle reflex that I couldn't make sense of before. Personally I think a lot of things that get classed as mental illness are the result of trauma in various forms and don't buy into the heavily reductionist pseudo scientific theories medical model psychiatrists espouse. It's also important not to confuse symptoms with 'disease entities' - psychiatry tends to conflate them far too readily.

So, then I probably do have CPTSD. I did thirteen years straight, from age 20 to 33, after spending 3 years fighting in court. So yeah...most of my formative years. But then...maybe I should just suffer in silence and accept it because I put myself there, right?

*sigh*

There are no easy answers.

You probably had some help getting there...

True.

So you were 17 when you comited this crime?