Expressions 3

I have to post 5 times before I can chat and I have no idea what to say. So I will be just talking. I feel immobilized lately. More than that I feel like I can do nothing, if I want to paint it gives me anxiety, if I want to eat it gives me anxiety, if I try to sit on the couch it gives me anxiety.. everything is wrong, I don't know how to deal with the leftovers of the traumas. I'm not even sure If I am positive what they were. Was it molestation by a family member that made me this way? Was it my absent father who lied twice to say I would see him only to sit still waiting all dressed up all day alone? Maybe it was my step-father's drunken attempt to choke me to death.. maybe it was none of those things, but how much time I spent alone to care for my younger siblings with no direction or guidance. Now, I sit here wondering how do I find the strength in myself to make my fake smiles feel real?

Welcome to PC Seeker5. Do you have a therapist you are working with?

What you are describing are symptoms of PTSD and the lack of desire for certain activities you once enjoyed is a depression that comes with PTSD. And yes the events you describe can be and most likely are PTSD. And the puzzling part of PTSD is that you can go a long time and not realize it and then it can come on all of a sudden and you are asking questions like you are here.

You have come to a good place for support Seeker5 because there are others here that understand what you are saying, and have been in therapy and are working at it. So you will find a lot of comfort here in this victims of abuse and PTSD forums.

But you should not be dealing with this alone, you should seek the help of a therapist that can help you, someone that specializes in PTSD. You have a lot to learn and there are ways for you to heal and get through these issues but you really need help with it. It took me time myself to find the right therapist and I finally did, and I have been here at PC since March and I am still working at it. But you need to let it out and get help, and this PC can support you as well because we do get it, we understand.

Lots of Hugs Seeker5

Open Eyes

I would really like to find a place I have wanted to and been trying for years, I just run into problem after problem.. I run away from them too quickly. I move across the country to get away from myself. Right now I don't have any resources near me, that's why I've come here. You're response helps me alot because I feel that is true, but doctors are too quick to call me bipolar. I don't get a chance to tell them everything before they try pushing zombie meds down my throat. Today is only day three? of finding this site and I already feel like I may have found more value than any place I've tried before. I have a plan, once I can get back close to population. I just get overwhelmed by these things sometimes, I guess, until then. I want to get a job and have a normal life again. Thanks for listening and your reply.

I've been doing some reading on PTSD. I feel like complex PTSD may be what I'll be dealing with. I re-read your response after an episode tonight and believe it would be a good idea to explore some of these events. I worry that I will not feel the same way later. Its hard to even think about these things directly without extreme anxiety. I'm pretty sure I've developed some type of personality disorder along the way. I hope to attend the next appropriate session with DocJohn. I feel like I'm going crazy sometimes, but I know that's impossible because I've already gone. The few things I mentioned in the first post were the things I've kind of faced somewhat, there are still things I don't know how to feel about. I don't know if this is appropriate to talk about (like, you know, right here on a public forum) but I need to at least add one thing and that's that one New Year's when I was about 13 I allowed myself to be subjected to a situation that got much more out of hand than I could have ever imagined and as a result I am not expected to ever have children. I doubt sometimes if I am fit to have children mentally and maybe God was saving future generations by sacrificing me, but that sounds like psycho-babble just seeing myself type it. I know better. I still go in these cycles asking myself why. Well, I just felt I needed to put something down in a recorded manner or let it out or whatever.. so I don't explode. (just kidding I know I will not explode literally..) Then you know I think, maybe if I fix myself then God will fix me and I can have a baby. I mean, what use is a woman who cannot have a child? I haven't been able to do anything else useful thus far. And so I must quit the chatter.

Hi Seeker5,
So far what you have been doing by running away and thinking you can get away, you are expressing a symptom of PTSD.

People who have PTSD have a heightened sense of RUN and the important thing to understand if that you actually cannot really run. You have to stop running and face the past and events that brought on tramas were you experienced something or even many things that you had a lot of emotions about. And the experience that you have let out here is of a young 13 year old that experienced a normal curiosity that ended up experiencing a bad event. So, you never really dealt with that and part of you feels responsible. But the reality is that you were engaging in normal curiosity and you were not prepared for what that curiosity lead to that truely presented something bad and because of that you suffered a consequence you were never prepared to experience.

When people have PTSD they can very easily appear to have symptoms that also look like Bipolar disorder. And because someone who has experienced something bad can present a strong desire to strive for perfection and unreasonable expectations and can also feel exhausted and often depressed, well, those are also symptoms of Bipolar disorder, however in Bipolar no real trauma has taken place. And it is very tricky because in Bipolar disorder a person experiences long periods of high function and motivation that almost seem like super qualities and then for some reason they go into a period of very lows where they feel very depressed and can bearly function.
And with PTSD, there is a similar pattern where a person can function highly as they try to push aside the emotions and confusion that accompany a trama or even many tramas, and then something can happen to trigger that person where they get really anxious and then fall into a depressive state of mind.

And your not alone in being possibly wrongly diagnosed with Bipolar disorder and that came across my own efforts to find help in therapy. And what that did was make it worse for me and just prolong getting the correct diagnosis. And in reality, PTSD is still being studied and therapies for it are still being explored to see what can be done to irradicate the circle of emotions that disturb victims and confuse them and even lead to feeling very depressed at times.

In many ways your lucky because PTSD is being more recognized and studied and there is now an offer available that acknowledges PTSD and REAL efforts are being made to help probably thousands of people that struggle with PTSD for different reasons. And as I look back in my life and how I tried to get help and clearly express all the red flags that would lead to that diagnosis, I was never given that diagnosis that I so needed and I was left to wonder and struggle for many years. I was even exposed to sitting in a therapy session with my husband and daughter and everything that was wrong was directed towards me as being my fault somehow. And I had sat with that therapist and talked about all the experiences that should have told that therapist how I was REALLY STRUGGLING WITH A BAD CASE OF PTSD. And there I was a victim of clearly several abuses from as far back as early childhood and also dealing with a husband that was a binge alcoholic and also committing adultery and resenting me because of his guilt, and I was punished in that family meeting. I will never forget that event now that I know how really hard I was trying to get help and was again misunderstood and even victimized, even with a therapist present. And when I think about all the times I really tried to get help and tryed therapy, I was not successful and misunderstood and I have every reason to be leary of seeking the help of a therapist believe me.

But thankfully, the field of psychology has caught up with REALITY and there finally is a REAL DIAGNOSIS AND EFFORTS FOR DEALING WITH THIS DIAGNOSIS. But I have to admit that I do have a deep sense of anger that it wasn't there WHEN I NEEDED IT. So the very bottom line for you that can be truely grateful is there is help out there for you. But you do need to make sure that you seek the help of a therapist that is truely up to speed with this diagnosis and can utilize the gaining knowledge of how to help a patient deal with it and find ways to resolve it somehow with ongoing support, because it is very hard for a patient to understand the demensions of it.

The good part of you coming here and getting support here at PC is that your going to learn that your not alone, and your not crazy and you are dealing with a diagnosable condition that you can learn to understand and begin to make efforts to heal. But it is a journey and it isn't easy Seeker5, but you can't run away from it.
And all that your talking about here is actually part of the struggle every person that has PTSD faces. Every single concern including the desire to be active in society and some inablility to do so. You have to stop and work on YOU and put that aside for now and recognize that in order to get to that place where you feel more comfortable with functioning in society, you have to FIX WHAT IS HOLDING YOU BACK AND EVEN MAKING YOU FEEL LONELY AND CONFUSED.

So take a deep breath and begin your journey, time out, you have to stop and learn how to recover from whatever it was that hurt you. And there is support here, but you do need to find a good therapist that can help you as well and be there for you on your journey and hold your hand and really help you along, because it is a journey, and you just cant do it alone.

Are there some people that have PTSD and are also Bipolar? Yes, by shear numbers that are inflicted that is a possibility, but not always true. So it is important to learn and pay attention to your psychological struggles because there really is a similarity of symptoms. What has helped me by coming to PC is that I was exposed to others that have PTSD and are also in therapy and I was able to learn how these other people were being dealt with in therapy and what they learned about what PTSD means. And I also was able to see that I wasn't alone too, that there are many others that stuggle with PTSD as well. And that support and exposure to others is so important, I can't even express how much that comforted me, because I can see how someone could begin to believe they are crazy. And how others that around them truely cannot understand what it means to have PTSD. And for me? I am forever trying to explain how difficult it is to others around me, and I am constantly looking for words to express this struggle that is very hard to understand, PTSD.

Open Eyes

^^^^ what Open Eyes Said~~ best wishes, hope to see you in chat soon. Gus

The Run symptom and desire to participate in society are definitely real; again I ask does anyone understand how to know which events in our pasts caused the most stress to linger and pursue us? My T somehow has missed this, though I've tried to describe the toxic people in my life. As a child I always knew when there was an
evil situation or person present, even though I hadn't personally experienced what evil was, I remember the perception. I truly feel when I get over this present medical issue, I want to move to a new place, although my home is security, it has become a holding pattern. Is there really a place "past" PTSD other than facing down our fears and having the courage to confront abusers? I realize this is not a chat room, but I haven't found a forum for PTSD.

People tell me to put this past me, to not let it ruin my life. But they arent dealing with what i am. I have the same questions as above. Im told to let it go, but no one tells me how.

Those are very good questions and first ((((tohelpafriend)))) if your talking to your therapist and your also including your trama and even growing up in a dysfunctional sitation, that therapist should be seeing the signs of PTSD. I am wondering if your therapist is aware of or studied PTSD in depth and can truely recognize the signs of it, and I can tell you, I have been there, where a therapist should have recognized it but didn't. So you might need to find a different therapist that understands PTSD better. You do have to remember that therapists are just people and some are better than others and can deal with certain psychological issues better than other psychological issues. I have to say myself that it took me time to find a therapist that has experience with PTSD and treated and worked with patients that have it. And he is still learning because I can tell he is also learning from me, I overwhelm him because I have a lot of abuse in my past. And he is also helping me get through a troublesome lawsuite too so poor guy gets a work out.

Ok, likewater, people tell you to put this past you and not let it ruin your life. That is much easier said than done. I wish I had a dime for all the people that have told me that but the people that tell me that do not have PTSD so they cannot understand what I deal with. And as hard as I try to explain it they don't get it.

likewater, are you working with a therapist that actually understands PTSD? Because any therapist that truely understands PTSD knows that it takes time to overcome and deal with PTSD. Seeking comfort from someone who doesn't know what PTSD really means and how difficult it is to process, is just going to make you very confused and feeling lonely and helpless and even angry. And I know all too well how very difficult it is to actually get the comfort and understanding from someone who has no idea what it really means and how it effects the brain.

As far as chats go, unless you are in a chat with someone that experiences PTSD and has been getting help, your not going to get the reaction you need in a chat other than sorry or hugs or gotta put your past behind you responses. In fact you could even end up being triggered in a chat and not understand why, and that is exactly what happened to me, luckily I found some people that were sympathetic in another chat, because I was going to leave PC. So chats are ok, but you cannot expect others to understand what your past really means to you the way you need to address it. So yes you can chat but you really have to keep it in mind that you cannot expect a curall or a real understanding of PTSD, unless as I have already said someone in that chat has it too and understands it.

A person who has PTSD responds to other people often in a unconscious defensive manner and it is a coping method that people with PTSD have and until they get therapy don't understand it on a conscious level. I didn't understand it either, and I have been learning about it, it is not a 1, 2, 3, easy process. And it all depends on each persons past and can go all the way back to early childhood experiences that started it and leading up to an event that was very upsetting and very hard to process and what happened was the brain just storred all those emotions and so there can be many triggers that bring out those emotions and even a sense of a desire to run, danger, bad touch, facial espressions, certain body language from an abuser, even sounds, (for me doors are a big trigger because I ran through so many and hid behind so many and I never realized how triggering they are to me), and there can be smells that set off anxiety where there a certain smell present in that tramatic event that you don't consciously remember. So, there is a lot to PTSD that has to be brought out and addressed and a big part of it is seeing or understanding the different triggers that can make you suddenly full of anxiety and emotions and even confusion. And depending upon what the trama involved there can be a sense of guilt because maybe it happened when someone was very young and looking back, well, we see that it had a beginning and somehow we got away from it, but during the trama we didnt see it coming, how long it was going to last and how it would end. So we have to be able to look back at it and not blame ourselves or feel guilty in anyway. And it can come from many different things where a person felt trapped in a situation of many different kinds of abuse, even in an atmosphere of ongoing family dysfuction that we didn't really see, but felt over and over again. And that is why a patient that exibits PTSD symptoms has to go back and talk about their past and be able to look at all the areas where they were in an environment or even a tramatic situation that is storred as a lot of emotions that were confusing then and now.

Does that make sense to you? It is a very personal journey, however the symptoms of PTSD are the same as the condition is very difficult and can be very troubling and confusing.

Open Eyes

Ok, tohelpafriend, and likewater and Seeker5, here are some links to some information on PTSD and Complex PTSD and how if effects people that have it.

Now, when you are reading this information, don't just get all upset and think that it all applies to you. Because there are variations of PTSD and how it presents in different people. But it is good to read about it and learn about what it means.

http://www.bullyonline.org/stress/ptsd.htm

http://www.ourtofthefog.net/CommonNo...ors/CPTSD.html

again, do not just assume that all of this is exactly you. And there is a lot of information in both of these links so don't get overwhelmed, take your time and read through it and see what might apply to you and how you may show these symptoms.

Open Eyes

There are some on here, I haven't been able to navigate around too easily to find stuff, but the home page has a lead to a Forum for PTSD. Kinda so is this thread.. I don't have the opportunity in my case to "face" my abusers. I feel like the past will never leave me alone. Sometimes I feel free from like said above by my ...tutor? up there above this.. I believe there must be a place past PTSD, I'm just afraid we may have to look at it as making us stronger for living thorough this and being able to prevent things from happening to others, or maybe just sharing stories so others know (like me now) that we are not alone in feeling this way. It seems to have lightened my load quite a bit. I still plan to seek a dr that works mostly with PTSD. When I can get to one!! I look forward to it still, which is a good sign. I remember I never knew until it was too late, as a child, that my elders contained evil. I trusted them, and now I trust few as a result. I learn instead to observe for longer and harder. I wish I had known that the evil isn't "love". I no longer have any idea that that is really supposed to be. I know its not supposed to be pain. This I have been told. Its kindof hard to trust though between molesters, abusers, neglect, liars.. santa cluase, the easter bunny... Sneaking under my pillow while I sleep to trick me for money? What did they expect? I guess I shouldn't put blame, they didn't know my molester paid my seven year old self to keep quite. WHY would I do that for money anyway. I notice this forum thing kinda just ends me up jabbering. What's with this? I hope I responded as I had intended to.. I think I added some extra .

I'm starting to understand more as I experience more. Today my boyfriend yawned and I got upset over such a small thing I knew it was a trigger. It helped me to identify something. I'm not sure exactly what yet, but this trigger bit, I suppose. For instance, I've known that being called stupid is a trigger for some reason and will make me just explode when you could call me a b**** or c*** all day long and get nothing out of me. As I think about it, it makes sense. I think because of this "complex" part of PTSD I have to learn alot of "triggers"... Will this ever end? (rhetorical) Anyway, back to the point.. Seeing that I am reacting to a trigger and not actually thinking about the real life situation I'm in helps me to return myself to a calmer state. And I have this thread to thank for helping me identify a major one that I believe will take me a long time to accept is even true completely, but one day I will dull that trigger down so that when it tries to stab at me it has no substance with witch to penetrate.

Hi Seeker

I understand everything you go through - EVERYTHING.
The lack of help, the need to run....the anxiety and depression....
I have complex PTSD and personality disorder along with it...I know how everything feels and how everything is hard.

You have the strength and intelligence to take care and to work on yourself. I can really relate to you in the attempts o get better on your own...i have tried too. It does help a lot to know you were just triggered....
I am trying to be strong and make my fake smiles seem real just like you do...Sometimes, though, i give up on any fake behavior. It can be a load of energy.

I can tell you that last year i went to a therapist...and went back to him this year....He teaches me a way to deal with the memories - and i no more feel our of control with them ...i am not telling you a success happy end story...I still struggle a lot...struggle seems to be something that doesn`t end in life - but rather changes expremes - sometimes we have a lot of it and sometimes very little.

and about - how to get the right diagnosis:
Here it goes ( i became a specialist on how to get things from unwilling people, without those people knowing it!)

A. read all you can about PTSD.
B. Read all you can about Bipolar.
C. When you come to a treatment provider - don`t be extremely open to
them, don`t describe EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING - and
don`t get into your emotions - in short do not TRUST them!
D. In the conversation be short and direct, answer only to the point. In
your answers describe ONLY the effects of the trauma in your life. If
they ask you how you react in certain situations - recall the situations
that are hard to deal with BECAUSE of the trauma! Whatever they ask
you describe the flash backs, the anxiety and only what is known as
PTSD symptoms.

Most likely that if they know anything and are worth talking with at all - they will give you diagnosis and a therapist who specializes in trauma.

I have done similar things and the worked wonders for me. When you have no one else to trust you rely on yourself and TAKE WHAT YOU DESERVE without asking...just DO it!

Those memories got me really stuck in life...Now i am rebuilding it....
I think you can do the same.

Can you share how you say you found to deal with memories? I thought I was dealing with them, but maybe only some of them.

The ways need to use your imagination, as following:

1. Bring up the memory. Let yourself feel all of it.
2. Imagine that you are inside a movie and you get OUT of it. Now you see
it on a screen.
3. You sit and watch this memory on the screen.
4. Get out of your body and sit watching yourself watching the movie of the memory.
5. Sometimes when a memory gets triggered and the body memories start
to flow (feeling pain or just panic etc) you can take your right wrist in
your left hand. This kind of brought me more to the now.

These were a few "tools" that T gave me to deal with the trauma. The next session he gave me some more.

1. When the memory comes the picture on the screen is moving? - take a
remote control and stop it. So its still.
2. Put the still picture in a frame and hang it.
3. Burn it.