Was wondering if I had PTSD.

I have been coping with a lot of overwhleming situations lately, and there has been quite a few negative triggers as well, like running into people that I have become afraid of over time, especially my father. I have been phsyically hit and strangled many times and I don't know why, but my memory of these events was triggered last month by my dad verbally abusing my sister and mother. I don't deal with them that often but I decided to take an anti-ansxiety pill to combat this terrible anxiety that overcame me. I haven't been sleeping all that well, meaning I have been waking up terribly early despite what time I go to bed and it's usually to nightmarish dreams that seem to be about memories and my tragic fall into schizophrenia. I am trying to quit smoking, with my quit date being the 25th, and they told me to cut down before I start the patches as I tried Chantix but I am getting even more worried that I will fail again and that I almost need cigarettes to keep me from being overwrought with anxiety.

I didn't have a problem with this before but it has been coming back to haunt me recently and I am not as confident about who I am any longer. I feel I have drifted from a lot of the things I used to enjoy and now it's a little paranoia but mainly anxiety and depression that have caused this.

Also I told my mother to get a divorce so I feel this horrible grudge between me and my father growing and have avoided him, hopefully for good, but still he lives there with my mom and I have been worried about the whole situation.

The nurse said I could have a form of PTSD and that she knows someone that could tell me for sure, but even if I had it, what could I do about it?

Grithnir

First off Githnir, good luck on quitting smoking. I used the patch. It worked for me well. Sounds like a good idea that you plan on using it too. I've heard terrible things about Chantix and psych problems.
You'd be surpised how much meds can help if you have PTSD. For one thing there are sleeping pills that could help you sleep and I'm sure that there are anti anxiety meds too. There are anti deppresants too.

I am already on all three meds plus anti-psychotics. There is no more room for another bottle of pills in my cabinet! LOL. I take Klonopin to sleep and at my discretion during the day for anxiety and Pristique as an anti-depressant. They say I am in stable condition but I have been getting jittery even with the use of the Klonopin. It seemed to work for the first few weeks but the jittery feelings came back again. It was triggered by my father, and now I got my ears pierced and have been making contact with other gay men, and it seems like a hostile environment for my sensitive nature. I am trying to just make friends on this website as it is more friendly. I am glad to hear someone succeeded with the patches as I hope they work, as I have tried everything else and am so sick of smoking. Today I was told by my stop smoking specialist that when you are stressed and have a cigarette it actually increases your stress level and that's exactly what I do.

Thanks for the reply.

I hope you find the support you need here at PC. Are you seeing a counselor/therapist? The meds will help, but it is usually much better if you are also seeing a therapist who can help you with your anxiety/depression/ PTSD.

I believe you can definitely have PTSD triggered by such an event. I was triggered by my father yelling at my son to stop crying when he was just a newborn, and he still does now, whenever I see him. So I try to stay away from him as much as possible. I wouldn't have him in my life or my son's life at all anymore if I could. I lost the forgiveness I once had for him. I'm not a professional, so this may not be good advice (and I may already have negative feelings about abusive fathers), but I would avoid your father like you have been. You don't need an abuser in your life. Life is short enough, why spend it unhappy? Don't think that you are wrong to ask your mom to leave your father, after all you are afraid of his violence and don't want your mother or sister hurt. Besides, he abused you. If your mother doesn't want to leave your father, talk to her on the phone or have her come out to lunch with you. Caring about your mother and sister being in the house of an abuser, can make your anxiety even more worse then just these memories are. I would say, that you will have to watch yourself. If you keep experiencing PTSD symptoms, you may have PTSD. When did it start and are you having anything other symptoms?

Well I am not sure when I started taking the anti-anxiety medication, but shortly after or around the same time is when my father verbally attacked my mother and adult sister that was just visiting for dinner. I obsessed on it the weekend after and recalled all the things he has done to me. He is a terrible person, but acts cheerful on the phone if ever I call mom and she is not there. Now I am trying to just call her cell phone. I am feeling all right now, after I got out of the house and met with society in different ways. I sort of have another syndrome of whether or not these pets that my roommate got are OK or if they need me around when I am gone, but we managed to go out all day yesterday and everything was as I left and I even took a bath. My father is the clear instigator of anxiety. I think it was after Christmas that I got anxious because of the terrible time I had with them. He is a bit of a lunatic with his hobbies being completely conservative talk radio and TV. Sometimes he even takes notes from the television. It is crazy.

I don't like your blog sky. Please don't respond to my postings.

The reason I brought up the conservative talk radio is that this is where the hatred comes that he vomits on us, after his daily dose of can fed ****. Listening to these people on Fox News or whereever they come from is the sign you want dimentia and you want it fast. We are hoping to seperate them into different nursing homes when they age a few more years so we won't have to see my mother suffer his insane political beliefs that are childish at best.

Grithnir,

You may place someone on ignore by going to their profile and under their pic there will be a link that says "User list"...something like this. It has a drop down menu with the option to place them on ignore.

If you have any other issues, I encourage you to report a post or contact mods/admin for assistance.

Sky, I wish you could understand what Grithnir is really saying. Some extreme conservatives such as his father can be very emotionally and mentally abusive. In my experience, it is either you believe what they believe or you are evil. His father's physical abuse may have even been brought on or intensified by his father's beliefs, since who he is as person is evil in the eyes of most extreme conservatives. So I believe what Grithnir has said is totally relevant in his post.

Anyway, I most agree with you Grithnir, conservative talk tv and radio is quite dramatic and crazy. They tend to be very judgmental of other groups that are not their own. They tend to be quite narcissistic. What I mean is they see so much "dirt" on others, yet they they can't see that this is actually a spec of dirt in their own eyes. For example, I remember years ago Bill O'Reily was saying terrible things about Ludacris and his music. He was saying that it is so disrespectful to women. Then come to find out Mr. O'Reily himself was sexually harassing one of his female co-workers. These people on these conservative talk shows pick apart everything that is wrong in others, and many of their statements are quite fallacious. They also believe that they are best and their way of thinking is the only way. Whoever that doesn't believe the way they think, shame on them, they are lower life forms. This does not hold true for all conservatives of course, but this is the way these talk shows are as I have seen.

My father and his parents are extremely conservative like this also. They are so "religiously" conservative that they believe President Obama is an illegal alien and the anti-christ. If I ever tried to speak up for what I believe in I was put down, cursed out, or beaten. I believe this "political abuse" is almost, if not the same as religious abuse. I'm not sure if I found the right term, what I mean by religious abuse, is when people are so extremely "religious", they follow their religious texts word for word, and then they force it on their children to do exactly the same as a kind of brain washing and mind control. They may not always succeed in this way, but they do try.

SKI
I can't help wondering about your blog link. Are you trying to trigger people with terrorist/combat PTSD? If not, in what way is this blog related to this forum?

Thanks for the support. It means a lot, and yes since he tapped into conservative talk shows his level of functioing has gone straight downhill. He seems like a zombie most of the time, mumbling to himself about everything. Pictures of Nancy Pelosi or President Obama make him fringe like he is looking at the anti-Christ because of the brainwashing aspect of the television shows plus Rush Limbaugh. I strongly believe that if it wasn't for this aspect of his life to go sour so much he would be an OK guy to be around and even have friends but he is determined to this type of self-destruction, by way of Obama remaining president for four to eight years. Meaning that it will drive him insane to capture onto the changing of time and he will be left behind in the realm of dimentia, is what I meant by my previous statement. I do avoid him, I am quite the opposite of him. I don't like the news but if I do ever watch it it's Rachel Maddow I watch.

Grithnir

sorry for the bad spelling. I meant cringe, not fringe. These terms are all jumbled in my mind. My friend Spiritual_Emergency that brought me to this site recommended an article of a book about how your family screwed you up and made you mentally ill. I want to read it someday. If circumstances were different I sometimes don't think I would have come down with such a serious form of a schizophrenia.

I feel like as you said a serious for of schizophrenia, possibly it is that the schizophrenia is now under control and the other aspects, PTSD are surfacing in your mind, the PTSD I believe I suffer had never been officially treated or acknowledged as it is difficult to tell the professionals that one can have both schizophrenia and PTSD, they can take the PTSD as a delusion in my case sadly, which from what you have shared about the violent acts of your father during your childhood and the trigger of the yelling at dinner sounds like there is a lot of things inside of yourself due to your father that have never been talked about in Therapy and thus still stuck in your mind and memories.

I would bring it up again about treatment for the PTSD, if they are willing to check into it, it would be beneficial to your mental health to talk to someone about it and work on how to combat the PTSD in hopes that your nightmares would cease or lessen. If you don't get treatment for the PTSD it could just escalate and grow inside you.

It would be something to think about. I believe with the abuse of your father you most likely are suffering from PTSD.

It is not right what he did and it is never right for someone to hit and abuse another person, make sure you know it is and would never be your fault.

I feel for you my friend and send you the best of hope in this.

Take Care,
kk101

I had talked with my nurse practitioner about it. She is moving to a new office and my roommate and myself got special permission to follow her there. She said her nurse who administers the shot I take knows a lot about PTSD and I could ask her any question I want. The counselor is up and down and sometimes it feels like we are not connecting or lucid enough for me to feel like I have accomplished anything with visisting him, but he is slightly new and new to me so it's different than my previous counselors as he is trying to help me, though he is very invesitigative which causes me to shut down a little bit. I am trying to connect with him still.

I hope you can build a better connnection with your T. It's good to see that you are getting the help you need. Sending hugs your way.