[beauflow]

OK- so they dx me with a few things,,, severe ptsd was one of them.

I don't think it is severe- Yeah sure I can cry when talking about stuff, get upset, have bad memories that get me stuck in a low slump for days, weeks or so on.... Think illusions with things that are present as well, like not sure if people are being real to me (I am sure that leads into another dx).. but I was a little shocked with severe ptsd... really? Like I don't doubt some, but severe..

I have a boyfriend right now, if it was so severe, wouldn't i just have cats?

Maybe I am not fully comprehending what they mean by severe.....

But I just have to wonder due to the nature of my upbringing, the things that occurred, the lack of love from mommy and daddy and from someone else in a distorted way, the punishment of physical and emotional from parents and siblings, the detachment from dad as a young child, so on and so forth...

The thing I have to wonder is--- just because their life was not that bad, that means I am severe!

I at least acknowledge that I have feelings for this all, even if it is hate/blame/pity/self destruction or hate/ and the list goes on- and not all at once do I have these feelings.

I also acknowledge that I CAN NOT deal with the same home as an Adult as I was a child- I refuse to live in such a home of fighting, lying, abuse and so on.

I also try to take what the bad was, and see that it could in ways make me stronger even if I fall weak some days....

Yeah I feel that it has put a block on me at times to get through some stuff, but really severe... I have to question that...

IDK just how i feel today.... maybe I will feel different in few days or weeks about it.

[beauflow]

"The children in the study were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, as a result of undergoing physical, emotional or sexual abuse, witnessing violence or experiencing lasting separation and loss."
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/64484.php

I know it is talking about a study, but I read that.... as a child check on all of it sorry never mind.. I guess they would see it severe- but IDK- I don't try to be a victim, but I am not an abuser... I have struggles with myself, struggles with my relationships, pushing me down/pushing others down (I guess that is sort of an abuser but not in the physical sense of pushing) I just try to be better than my past, than my up bringing than my parents and so on...... I never looked at me being severe due to I always thought, others got it worse than I did.

[roads]

But beauflow, check the definition of "severe":

Definitions of severe (adj)

se·vere*[*sə vr*]***
harsh: very harsh or strict
dangerous: extremely bad or dangerous
stern: looking stern or serious
Synonyms: harsh, stern, strict, cruel, brutal, ruthless, relentless, rigorous, difficult

Severe doesn't mean "the worst possible."

What you went thru was certainly cruel & brutal, wasn't it? Just because it could have been even worse, that doesn't diminish how bad it was.

So don't think that anyone is lessening another's suffering by whatever word they apply to your case. These are psychological terms that mean specific things to the professionals, & generally not what they mean to ordinary folks like us.

[beauflow]

Thanks Road Runner, I don't know- i think some times I get mad at the fact that I shared it with the psychiatrist and therapist.. I always tell them : " not to compare myself but my siblings I feel got some things worse".... I have always felt that my sister got it worse from our oldest brother, that my 2nd oldest brother got it worse from our dad...we all got it worse from our mother (lol).. I agree with the docs that it was not a normal child hood- and in a sick way, by me saying I did not get it as bad, I tried to run with that as getting through some things- perhaps that is not the right mind set some times..... guess it is like telling myself as I would get told "It's not that bad".... but your right- it does not lessen on how bad it was.

[Penny T. StDuhnam]

*hugz*. My take on the issue is try not to assign so much value on them telling you it's severe. You still have the issue and the game hasnt changed. We should strive to make little changes to bring about a holistic change. At least that's my wish and goal.

I wish you find it too

[meadowsweet]

I might be completely wrong, but in a diagnosis, I think it is the symptoms that are described as severe, not the trauma itself.

[33yankee33]

hi beauflow...I wouyldn't put much emphasis on rhe term "severe" if I were you. The important thing is to take you diagnosis and run with. Research it,meds,etc. Good luck.

[likewater]

Beauflow, have you heard of "minimizing" it' s a coping mechanism we use to survive abuse when it's happening because if we admit to ourselves or others the enormity of how bad it really is, it would destroy us as children. As adults, we continue to do this for many
reasons. We are still protecting ourselves from alk kinds of feelings we don't want to feel. We are protecting our abusers.
Just something you might want to think about.

[kaliope]

I have said those same words to myself a million times. "it wasnt that bad" "others had it way worse". It was my way of protecting myself. A way to keep myself in denial. A way of not believing that the people that were supposed to be protecting me, loving me were actually harming me.

Several years ago, triggered by a psych 101 class, the very patient teacher hammered away at me to accept the reality of my childhood and my world began to unravel. She wouldnt let me hide behind denial any longer. memories began to surface and a major breakdown ensued. I was hospitalized against my will.

Severe ptsd? suddenly the world made sense. the dissociation. the hypervigilance, the flashbacks. the anxiety, the perfectionism, the fear. but still, it didnt make sense because it wasnt that bad, others had it way worse.

[beauflow]

thank you all- LikeWater and Kaliope- you two hit things close to me.

It is something to think about but its hard... I have also tried to look at it through life as- it happened, I don't have to put up with as I got older, and most certainly I could not be like that. try to talk more with my boyfriend about things and so forth..

I get confused though- IE like with my Dad, I get confused with how to feel about him.

My family stuff I have talked to my boyfriend about- I have exposed it to someone, someone listened, understood my hurt.. why does it have to come back up though? Why do at times I have a hard shell, a hard time, unable to be close to others, poke people with a stick to ones being nice and want to know me, etc so much more.. all i can say is idk, some thing to work on, something to think on...

My therapist, IDK if she wants to talk about this stuff with me- i keep getting told i need to be stable, but yet I only have till March 2012 with her. :?

[kaliope]

when everything came up for me, it really interferred with my quality of life. i couldnt go on functioning that way. in therapy we didnt go back into the past to root around to see what caused me to be the way i was, we just dealt with my symptoms and worked on them to be able to function again. what stressed me the most was the guilt of playing the role of "good daughter" to my father when i had all those feeling of ???? for all the abuse i suffered at his hands. when i finally acknowledged the abuse, and my T convinced me that I was entitled to feel anger, I wrote a ten page letter to my dad outlining the abuse and what it created in my life, how it impacted me today and essentially disowned my dad. I let him know i couldnt have contact anymore until I dealt with my issues. no more christmas, birthday, fathers day gifts. these times created such stress for me trying to find the perfect gift to bring joy to this man that hurt me so much. since i got all this off my chest it has helped dramatically. I felt such a freedom. The ptsd symptoms improved and for the most part have gone away. There are still some things that trigger me, but living with ptsd symptoms on a daily basis is no longer. But I didnt have to drag out my childhood in therapy to address it.

I dont know how your T plans to address it. I just know it is worth addressing. My quality of life has vastly improved.

[Open Eyes]

Hi beauflow,

I understand your questioning your diagnosis. At least be glad that you are being diagnosed properly and that you can receive help. For a long time I didn't have that and because there is more studieing being done about PTSD there is more therapy and as was pointed out in the article you placed here, proof that something does occur in the brains of children who were abused.

I have read different things about PTSD and even posted www.giftfromwithin.org here as it is another form of information about PTSD that members can look at. But, I hadn't quite understood it the way your article explains it. I have to say that when I read it last night I again was somewhat disturbed and began thinking back again to how I struggled in school and other areas of my life.

What was said about the desire to minimize our experiences growing up would be true for me also. I think that as we grow up and suffer abuse we don't truely understand what it really means to our brains, what is really happening as a result of our environments. And because we don't truely experience what it means to grow up any other way we try to adjust to our home environment and often think that we need to do our best just to
do whatever we need to do within that family without adding more disturbance. That is why many children who are abused do not report the abuse and somehow we all know that, there is this blind loyalty to our family unit and so we just suffer in secret, trying to minimize the reality of how different kinds of abuse are truely effecting us. As your saying in your post, others got worse than you, I could say that too about my brother.
My brother was so poorly treated, punished for having what I now believe to be ADHD.
I grew up in a time when nothing was known about that and these children were often severely punished because they were just considered unrulely children. My brother was even told by a teacher not to bother trying to learn and that he would not amount to anything in his life and that truely upset him and made him worse. All the anger that festered inside of him would build and blow and often me, being the youngest suffered for it and I did run and hide and I was very confused, half feeling sorry for him and half extremely afraid of him.

I always felt like I was behind in school, I never felt I could ever catch up. I always just felt behind in so many ways, never truely felt that I was intelligent or truely worthy somehow. To be honest there is a part of me today that still feels that way and now that I am truely dealing with really bad PTSD symptoms due to this incident that damaged so much, I am literally flooded with something that I truely am having a hard time understanding. I did many things in my life, but I have to say that I was also in an abusive marriage and had other things happen to me in my life that just extended damage from my childhood. And all that time I was constantly told to forgive, forget, that was yesterday, why do you bring up the past, you must forget etc. I had grown into an adult that was constantly ruminating about how to solve abuse and understand it, put it in its place and figure out why it happened and how to avoid it somehow. I had always felt like I could not control my own brain from trying to find some kind of resolve and understanding. My brain was always on a search and I didn't realize that it was not normal. There was always a deep hidden undertone in me that told me that I wasn't smart enough, worthy enough but that I was capable of being resourseful inspite of all of those issues.

Now I am learning about what I do have and it is confusing because I struggle with days of clarity, other days of exhaustion, and days of extreme anxiety that I don't understand. I am slowly learning that all the time I had thought I had coped, I was nursing PTSD. And I am told how intelligent I am and that one truely sets me back because all my life I truely never felt that way and I get really sad because I wonder what it might have been like to grow up normally and be able to utilize my so called intelligence and truely flourish and just enjoy what I had.

I honestly don't have the answers yet and I am trying very hard to understand it and find ways to try to heal or overcome it somehow. What I do know is that I am truely not alone and there are many people my age, older, and even now that struggle with it to some degree, only they are not aware of it. I have always been very outspoken about somehow teaching parents how to present the best nurturing for their children that will help them grow up without having damage from bad imprinting. Children truely have to get more respect as now it is often just assumed that children just adapt to families where parents struggle with thier own issues. Children do adapt, but they don't adapt in very healthy ways and I think it is truely sad.

Open Eyes

[beauflow]

Open Eyes First I am so sorry for complaining about this DX when you are right, decades ago it may not have even been recognized for some (maybe just war vets and such) but "normal society" I bet that was hard for some docs to swallow.

Also thank you so much for sharing your words with me (us, anyone reading)..

See these days at 25 I get the whole not going up entirely more than when I was young; when I was younger that was all I wanted, If i grew up I could get out. right?.. these days I still feel like a child so many days, lost and confused... When I read about the school studies, I thought to myself in High school I differed but in ways not (I never thought I would go any where even though graduating with honors), now elementary and middle a different story of how well I did, but school for me at any age was my escape from home- it was the one place I went and there was not the chaos as home was (I may had picked this up from my 2nd oldest sister for that is what she did a lot as well- she was the one I spoke of getting it worse). She amazes me, she never did drugs- I fell in drugs, my oldest sister never did drugs like I did either,.... I don't get why the 3 boys and I were so enticed by that life... it was a true escape.. it was doing my ultimate goal of dying some days I think... I remember a friend and I use to joke around that we had death wishes with how much we did- and yes, i think we did... My mom was no help with that, she'd let me "sleep" then when i came to be like "I thought you were going to die".. well geez thanks ma, what if I did? LOL, sigh- i just have to laugh some days with that cuz the only other thing is to get mad and cry if not.

I got told my constant suicidal thoughts, even in happy times, are due to my rage, my past.... I got mad at the pdoc when he said "you seem to have a lot anger" in my head was I am not angry you mofo-- sigh looking back I think so esp. with such a response.

It took me years to accept that maybe someone would love me, and struggle even with that today. I saw what a monster I could be if I just jumped into relationships.. I knew my rage young- sadly when others saw it I was shocked and IDK why. (My mom, she was really the anti-human to me- then my dad use to say- women grow up just like their mothers, which scared me so-- I did not want to make the same mistakes as her, as my oldest sister did get involved young, have kids and be miserable)

sorry I feel like I am rambling-

Kaliope-*Sigh* I think some things I don't realize as you- only on surfaces some times do i realize, but I think i have ignored the surface so long that is what I do now. I know it takes time, but it is hard too at the same time..

IE someone gets mad, if it is a guy (even my boyfriend) i think I did something wrong/I need to fix it- push my feelings aside and get some thing done, and that thought of I may get beaten.... My boyfriend is not a violent person, he has only "lost his temper" with yelling at me, when I was yelling at him mind you- only once in the almost 3 years we been together, and the almost 5, that we have known each other. he is a gentle person, I know these thoughts are due to past--- my father and my brothers and even my mother.

I cant help but to be on guard constantly at work, work I think in strange ways I am triggered- I actually wrote that out a little last night after some thoughts.... it is long to explain... And what I gathered from T on last session she just sees it as normal job stress- which I don't due to it makes me think of memories when I am young.

I know with in my relationship with my boyfriend, his family and even friends, I have trouble trusting people, always on the look out.. strangers are worse.

i feel tense over probably 80% of the time, waiting to be smacked down by a being or an unforeseen bad thing... even right now as I type, even today- I could not sleep.. but IDK if this is hypo mania- i have been told i have been agitated a lot IDK.

IDK - I wish us all well. I wish us peace of mind. I am glad that you all that posted on here, you realize some thing in side yourself- thus you are breaking habits,

I know i have sad sadly- there is no cure for a person like me, as Open Eyes says Children of people with issues adjust- we Adjust with what we have, we do try to make it better.

best wishes all, i am sorry I am having issues staying on track today

[kaliope]

beauflow
you have touched on so many similar things in this post. i come from a family of six kids too. 3 boys and 3 girls and i marvel at how different we all came out. we were born in groups of two with four year breaks between us. my sister and i are a year and a half apart and have the most predominant mental health issues. she has spent years institutionalized and has multiple diagnoses. lives on disability. i often wonder what separates us? sure, i have been hospitalized a couple times, but i have managed to get my degree and i hold down a job and i am functional. how did i make it and she didnt? nearly all of us have mental health dxs. my oldest bro is a house husband and stays high. my oldests sister cant hold down a job for more than a year. my younger bro has maintained employment but has had issues with alcohol and food addiction and my little bro is an addict. as messed up as i am, i think i am really the least dysfunctional member of the family. i really have nothing to do with any of them. i refuse to live the lie.

i jsut wanted to comment on a few of the things you said.

beauflow wrote - "I got told my constant suicidal thoughts, even in happy times, are due to my rage, my past.... I got mad at the pdoc when he said "you seem to have a lot anger" in my head was I am not angry you mofo-- sigh looking back I think so esp. with such a response."

interesting. i started praying for god to take me away when i was six. in my teens i started having suicidal ideation. my goal was to die by the time i was 21. i was really pissed when i hit that birthday. even though i am no longer suicidal, i still want to die. i find such comfort in the idea of death. i have never connected it to rage. i too would get angry when confronted with the idea that i was angry. T brought it up again and again and i would never admit it. He would say, "admit it kaliope, youre pissed! youre pissed off at your dad for how he treated you." And i never could because i wasnt allowed to have feelings as a kid. I would get ridiculed or beat for getting upset or crying while i was being ridiculed or beat. It took a couple years and working with my new T and finally one day i felt safe enough to admit i was angry. i was so excited. i emailed old T to announce i finally did it. He was so happy for me.

beauflow wrote - "It took me years to accept that maybe someone would love me, and struggle even with that today."

i certainly understand this. my mom hammered in my head that nobody would ever want me because i was fat. so the first people who took an interest i latched onto. on top of that, they werent very nice. with the whole abusive dad thing, kaliope has to be perfect in order to be worthy of love, i thought if i could get these guys to love me, accept me for who i am, then it would make up for dad, prove him wrong, so i stayed with 2 bad men for 20 yrs of my life. i have been alone for like 9 years now. i am afraid that i will repeat the pattern, that i am not healthy enough to make a good decision in a relationship. it is just not worth it to me, to give myself up for another man.

but someone loving me in general i find hard. i finally accepting that my kids love me even though i made bad choice in a step father, lived in poverty and could not provide for them emotionally. they understand that i am limited due to my mental health and forgive me. others in my life, my last job say they love me but i thought it only because i do so much to make their life easy for them, but now i am working at another place. we are all close and people say they love me all the time. i do not do for them. i went on vacation for three weeks and when i got back they were so excited to see me. this one girl in particular had a sparkle in her eye as she smiled and gave me a hug to welcome me back. all i could think was that these people would really miss me if i died. these people really do care. it was really eye opening, heart opening for me. i really felt loved and i dont know that i have felt that before.

beauflow wrote -"IE someone gets mad, if it is a guy (even my boyfriend) i think I did something wrong/I need to fix it- push my feelings aside and get some thing done, and that thought of I may get beaten.... "

wow, this is a big one. always, something goes wrong, its my fault, im the one that is going to get blamed, get in trouble, get beat for it. once at work i was at the front counter with my boss and one of our renters came out and said the sword from one of his knight bookends was missing. after he left, my boss is like "what happened to you, he asked that and i saw you panic and your eyes sorta whooshed and went blank." total ptsd reaction. i used to call it getting suicidal over burnt toast because if my BF didnt get pissed at me/blame me for whatever when wrong, i beat myself up for it. i would SI, hit myself over the head. I needed to be punished.

beauflow wrote -"I cant help but to be on guard constantly, i feel tense over probably 80% of the time, waiting to be smacked down by a being or an unforeseen bad thing ,i have been told i have been agitated a lot'

All symptoms of ptsd. what i hated the most was when people would catch me off gaurd and i would jump a mile in my chair. it would take me so long to recover from that and the panic it would trigger, tryingto suppress the need to cry in a professional setting just was so hard to do.

beau- do you have the dissociative symptoms as well? depersonalization? derealization?

gosh, i havent thought about this stuff for so long. i truly have come a long way in the last couple years. i dont know how i functioned back then. i guess not very well or i wouldnt have ended up hospitalized against my will. huh? lol

[beauflow]

Kaliope- this here I relate to a lot-----" if my BF didnt get pissed at me/blame me for whatever when wrong, i beat myself up for it. i would SI, hit myself over the head. I needed to be punished. I needed to be punished."
I wrecked the car last October- My boyfriend said that accidents happen and I was so glad he was home with me that night, I wanted to hurt me so bad, I needed to be punished.. I shared this with him- He Does not understand, it is hard to explain due to logically it does not make sense.

And this "tryingto suppress the need to cry in a professional setting just was so hard to do." I work nights, I am so glad that I do- I worked 1st shift a few months and I would go hide and cry a few times... Night shifts it is easier to go and hide and cry, It is very hard some days to keep calm and quiet.

--"beau- do you have the dissociative symptoms as well? depersonalization? derealization?"

At Times-I suppose.......I do have some thoughts on things are not real, intrusive thoughts of things "i make up"- part of Borderline traits that my T and I talk about are the love and hate, him cheating on me, me being left for another and so on.... As far as other thoughts- (I am not sure if this goes with direalization or not) I some times think the skies, land scaps- the world is a mirage in a way, it is hard to describe- it is all fake or set up. I can go on tangents of things are a project...... I can go tangents that my life is just a cruel joke (I am not religious but I tend to say God is laughing at me and so on messing with my things)....

I do lose track of time often, forget what I am doing when doing it- I need to be careful cooking some days cuz I get utterly spacey at times and forget that I was doing something when i go do something else "for a short time". I am lucky to realize that I think.
Sigh- I think part of my "different me's" maybe interconnected with some of this- what I mean by that is that I am different me's but I am me, realize that I am me, but this different me can handle situations much better at times so that me gets kicked in.... I dont think it is DID/MP due to I remember most of the time, me and I know it is me but maybe part of dissociation... That is all I can think of right now, besides times that I forget stuff utterly- even my boyfriend tells me "you said this" and I am like No I did not.. some times it takes a bit or not all remembering

Oh and some people, like here at work, I remember most of them but there are times, I don't remember people, but they know me- they talk about about some things that we talked about earlier, and know my name.. To be honest it sounds like some stuff I say, but I have no recollection of these people some times, and even after talking to them a few other time I don't remember the first time meeting them like they do-
I had this a few times as a child in school... I don't like it too much, it makes me more paranoid as in "tricks are being played" some days.

eh- i know they are concerns, but I always try to bring my self back (i think)...

I forgot- about signs--- some times I go through spouts where I think things are signs, I told this to Pdoc and t- actually I think this is the only dissociative thing I told Pdoc and T- I told T more about the rocks and in alignment and messages for me, and the frogs that I kept seeing and they were signs not to go to therapy.. T said the signs may just be my validation - my looking for answers in higher places... IDK, maybe-

Ya know my probably worse dissociation is with movies- I can watch a movie, swear I have never seen it, then like 20 or 15 minutes after watching it again- I tell you the end of what it is and if you say "you didnot remember it" I then say "oh now I remember it!" LOL this use to bug my brother so much cuz he did not get it-- I don't think that is a big thing though--


ya know after writing down this little bit it scares me if this movie thing was the only thing I recognized as dissociation but now after thinking there may be a little more.

[kaliope]

beauflow wrote- "I can go tangents that my life is just a cruel joke (I am not religious but I tend to say God is laughing at me and so on messing with my things)...."

i used to always imagine god, up there with a buddy, looking down on me. maybe over a couple beers. and he's hitting his buddy in the arm excitely saying "watch this, watch this!" pointing down at me. Im climbing a ladder out of the pit of despair and i am almost to the top. and he is waiting for that precise moment that i reach that top rung. that moment when i finally see light and hope and i can breathe. and the second i get there he reaches down and with his giant thumb and forefinger and he flicks me off the ladder. He hits his buddy in the arm again and says "now watch, shes dumb enough to get on that ladder and climb again. we've been doing this forever and she never gives up."

its good that i didnt. ive finally found the light. no help from god as far as im concerned. thats an issue i may tackle another day.

[Open Eyes]

It is interesting to read how the two of you can present some common responses and find ways to relate.

What is emerging with studying and discovering aspects of PTSD is that some cases are worse than others, more complicated and patients took different routes to self sooth and adjust to their living conditions that presented this condition in the brain. It is also becoming known that some people have larger hypocampus's that help them escape the disorder called PTSD. And it is also being recognized that children who suffer abuse have hypocampus's that shrink in size which can make them more prone to depression and other issues later in life. But don't just assume that your going to be one of these as the brain can also recover.

We have to recognize that there are variations of struggles that present with PTSD and therapy treatments have to be designed according to the severity of the PTSD present in the patient. As you both have noted here your siblings either faired worse or better. This could be depending on the severity of their abuse, position in the family and personal ways of finding comfort or designing self soothing methods to help them combat the condition. And we have to remember that most children develope PTSD damage and are totally unaware that it is taking place.

I have to say that I had no idea what I was truely dealing with, and I myself developed many coping methods that I have used all my life. Unfortunately for me when I was in therapy and read various coping methods that opened up pandora's box and then I could not do most of my usual coping methods because I could now see how they were attached to tramas.

I am again looking at my coping methods a little different and am now trying to see them as a value rather than a reminder of trama, but I am only just seeing that and trying to work my way back to reusing them in a healthier way, not so easy, very tricky.

Unfortunately if someone is diagnosed with PTSD that is not as severe that person can pick up on coping methods and truely find a way to overcome PTSD much easier. I know, because I had unknowingly done that myself. But if someone suffers a worse case they can take longer to unravel and understand how it manifested to a more acute case and it has to be unraveled slowly in therapy. As you mentioned the anger, often anger is there and yet a patient is so acustomed to it they may infact not recognize it consciously.

Personally I am trying to understand why I managed to cope before and not now, it has been explained to me that many of my experiences were sort of held back in my brain and my most recent trama released old damage that I had somehow maintained for years. So in my case I am much more sensitive now than ever before. It sure is mindboggling to me as I face triggers that have a more intense reaction in my brain where in the past I was able to overcome them better. I am very confused by it, but I am open minded and continue to make efforts to overcome.

It is important as we all come to this forum that we understand what may be easier for one to overcome, may be much more difficult for another. I do get upset if one person with not as bad a case of PTSD utters any advice that says I am giving into my condition.
Perhaps some do give in, but I know I am fighting very hard to learn how to deal with something I could never have imagined and it is a lot harder than I could have ever imagined as well so as some say, get over it, I don't think one just gets over it, one has to truely understand what it means and find ways to gain control over it and be able to live a more functional life. If anything I would have to strongly advise, do not give into the feelings of self hate and feelings that we can never be loved or that it is all our fault.
I can totally relate to a quick response to someones dis-satisfaction as feeling, "Oh, I did something wrong, its my fault" feeling. And that can be an auto response that we all havet to truely become aware of and recogise that we consciously have to learn how to stop ourselves from blaming ourselves and feeling anger with ourselves or even anger at others.

Open Eyes