[layla11]

I'm upset because I had never read up on ptsd, and realize that I have it. From childhood. The Phyciatrists in my city or on my med plan dont care about any one, they are a bunch of embasals (sorry my spelling bad).

I have been diagnosed with bipolar I by the most resent doctor, I had seen her before and she diagnosed me 5 years ago with bipolar II. I'm not bipolar, i suffer from pstd. I spoke with a therapist on the phone awhile back when I was trying to find one and she said this.

Anyway I took the sanity score and this was one of my problems, so I read about it. And it makes since when nothing else has. I feel like my whole life has pretty much been a lie. I am a lier I know. Iam off work on disability, Iam afraid to go back that I cant handle it. I try to tell myself, I can handle it. I was off last year also this time was worse though. Well I guess better late then never. anyway sorry about my spelling.

[Nammu]

It's hard when you don't get validation from doctors.

In my experience the Md's/Pdoc's like to focus on the dx they can "fix" and are comfortable with. For them it's about a medical fix w/ medicine.

T's are more open to traumas. That is approachable by talk therapy. Most of therapist's have a type or several types of therapy they use, such as Cognitive behavior therapy, or very popular right now is dialectical behavioral therapy, psychotherapy and theres eye movement desensitization and reprocessing EMDR and much more I think its like 5 or 7 common ones and many others. I like art therapy but most insurance's no longer cover it.

Most people have both a Pdoc and T. That way they can get both their medicine and talk therapy--it is the most successful treatment too, when you have both.

I wish you luck in finding a T.

[Nammu]

I forgot to say don't worry about spelling, it is a none issue on this site. We do not have grammar or spelling police, however I found a nice cure for myself--I'm horrible speller too. In the upper right you can see a ABC w/ a check-mark, you can download the program into your computer(it took me several tries to get it to load) and after that you need only remember to click the check-mark and it will go though the spelling with you. How cool is that. So if your spelling worries you there's a cure.

[layla11]

Originally Posted by sidestepper

I forgot to say don't worry about spelling, it is a none issue on this site. We do not have grammar or spelling police, however I found a nice cure for myself--I'm horrible speller too. In the upper right you can see a ABC w/ a check-mark, you can download the program into your computer(it took me several tries to get it to load) and after that you need only remember to click the check-mark and it will go though the spelling with you. How cool is that. So if your spelling worries you there's a cure.

Thank you for validating me. It is so strange. I couldnt figure out why when I go into my bedroom to clean I feel so depressed. I thinks its because I have to look at my stuff. I dont know if that makes since. but thanks for the spell check cure also.

[Open Eyes]

layla,

I have PTSD myself and I have also been misdiagnosed. Once I came across certain information that gave an indepth discription of PTSD, it all fit for me as well.

I have been a member of PC for over a year now, and I spent a lot of time reading and posting to different members that have different diagnoses and there are things that I have related to and wondered if some of these others may be experiencing some PTSD as well and just don't know it.

We are still learning a lot about the brain and it's complexities. So in my opinion, I feel that eventually we will discover that our brains react more to stress and disfunctional environments we grow up in more than we now know. And I really feel that when a child is stressed and feels threatened or unsafe on a daily basis somehow, it effects how their brains grow and develope in ways they are not even aware of consciously. So what can happen is that we can be set up to seem to function normally and then if we are in a situation where we are extremely stressed, we can present with PTSD and that can look like other disorders. For example a person can grow up with a mother that sends constant messages that say the child is unworthy somehow and then at sometime later in life something can happen and that now adult can develope "agoraphobia, or social phobia, or depression or symptoms that appear to look like bipolar disorder". People who have PTSD have symptoms of ups and downs and depression and they struggle to go out and sometimes need to isolate and withdraw. Also there can be a challenge in being able to learn and keep track of time and there is some sense of confusion that is hard to understand as well.

So when someone struggles and presents a symptom that bothers them the most to a psychiatrist or even a T, they can be misdiagnosed because it "appears" like they are just struggling with depression, or bipolar disorder or because they struggle to go out and be around other people or noisey places, oh, it must be agoraphobia. Or, if someone struggles to relate to others, oh they must have social phobia too.

I am not trying to say I am a professional here either. I am just giving my opinion based on what I have been reading and learning and experiencing myself. And I truely feel that until we have a way of really seeing the changes that go on in the brain due to a stressful childhood and social environment in that childhood we will continue to tend to focus on the symptoms and may misdiagnose patients that struggle.

At some point down the road, I believe that a dianosis will be made by a patient having their brain "scaned" to see what areas of their brain may be affected .
From what I have learned about my disorder is that they now know that those that struggle with PTSD show a change in the hypocampus as well as the amigdila. So PTSD is not "just" about "someone needs do "just" deal". And in my own recovery process, I have become aware of the stages that present with PTSD as well. I have also noticed as I struggle with certain difficulties, others talk about the same struggles and how challenging it can be to learn to manage these stages/symptoms.

For example, lets say someone comes forward and talk about bipolar and how they struggle with it. Then that same person talks about what their day to day environment is. A young girl finally discribes her parents as alway arguing and even express that anger by throwing things around, at each other and they yell and express very threatening body language. This young girl has grown up in this kind of environment her whole life. But this girl goes off to college and is away from this environment and she does struggle to focus and follow a college atmosphere however there IS some awareness of a purpose for her enviornment, something she can understand. Then, it is break time and she returns to her home and again is disturbed by her parents expressing a lot of anger and resentment and they raise their voices and throw things and don't even validate this girl when she talks about how disturbing these behavior patterns are to her. This girl complains of a length of time where she feels ok, but then she feels very low and struggles to function for a while. Well, when someone has PTSD and they are exposed to something upsetting they are "triggered" and when this happens they can experience several days of feeling low and a big desire to withdraw as well.

But someone with PTSD can also suddenly be triggered in to feeling very angry and tempermental as well. They can complain of having difficulty controling their temper and they can suddenly just become snappy and short tempered, it just comes out and they feel at times they can't control it and only can recognize it "after they express the anger". I have this problem myself and all I could do is think about it "after" I expressed the sudden bout of snapping out at someone. And when this happens, it is very unsettling because it is not as if I can feel it coming on and control it first, I react first and then have to think about "why did that happen?"

If someone is able to go out and function in society and then one day someone does something that totally upsets them somehow. Then they get so they really struggle to even go out in any social way, it becomes "painful" and they begin to need to find a way to exit quickly where there are no people, or noise or comotion because they get so full of anxiety they are in physical pain. Well, I have felt that myself and sometimes when I go out to work, I struggle through a lot of discomfort in anticipation of being around my customers when I work. I "have' found that once I am doing my job and see things are ok and safe, I can do better, but I still deal with a lot of discomfort before I get to a job. Well, that is not something that was so hard in my past, it was there but I managed it, telling myself to "just" relax, it would be ok.

I "know" something is not right in my brain, I know it. BUT, because I have an understanding of what PTSD is now, I can understand that somehow my brain is struggling and kinda "injured" and I am just very "sensitive". And because I can understand that, I am allowing myself to understand that there will be a challenge to pay attention and learn to slowly work through the things that upset me, and, there is a reason certain things upset me. Once I learn that, I can work on slowly learning how I am not actually "being threatened" and "that I CAN manage my response better". This is "a lot of work" for me, but because I have an understanding of what is happening, I am not afraid of these symptoms, I have learned that I have to learn about what they mean and how I can work through them.

I personally believe that is someone is told, "you have agoraphobia" they will give into that disorder and seek safety and decide that they "can no longer go out" because if they do, it will mean pain to them. If someone is told, "you are bipolar" they will grow to believe that they will have periods of time where they will be able to function well, and then they will have periods of time where they will be bearly functional. If someone is told, "you have depression" they will believe that they are plagued and need to withdraw and give into feeling all they can do is "withdraw and feel drained".

With this PTSD that I have been struggling with, I have experienced all these symptoms. BUT, because I am now learning that I can "work through these troubling symptoms" by understanding they are actually a response to something that reminds me of a period where I was actually very stressed and worried, I can work on understanding that I am only being reminded of a bad experience and that I can learn that a reminder doesn't mean I am in that "stressful situation" in the now.

It sounds easy doesn't it? Well, it is "not" easy because we are all subject to learning about emotions and a sense of individual value from the time we are born.
And as we grow and develope in our "home" environments we are given many examples of how to learn to express and control our emotions as well as how we express our emotions to fill our personal needs. So, if we are not recognized as a growing child that needs to learn a "healthy" balance of what our emotions are and how to express them and even control them in a "healthy" way, we can grow to be challenged emotionally and not even know it.

Each and every one of us is unique, because the sum of each and every one of us is based on our life experiences and what we have learned not only by being exposed to various information, but also various "emotions" that are displayed to us in the interactions of our parents and family members that are "supposed" to give us a sense of value as a human being. And we are very vulnerable to this parent or families understanding of "emotional" balance as well. We are also vulnerable to the level of understanding and knowlege a parent has about a child's needs that help that child grow "psychologically" independant with a sense of value and understanding of their emotions and capacitiy to know how to interact with any potentially threatening presence they might encounter. So, in other words, each child is taught about "personal boundaries and how to protect their own boundaries if those boundaries are being invaded". If a child grows up in a home where there is no real respect for boundaries and they are not even allowed to have their own sense of boundaries, this part of their "psychological and emotional health" remains very confused and troubled for the rest of their lives. We are what we know. And what happens is these children that are not truely allowed to approprately understand "boundaries" often find it very hard to personally navigate their sense of the ability to establish themselves effectivly in this thing we call life.

In my own struggles with PTSD, what I have come to understand is that my own upbringing and family environment did not teach me how to truely feel that I can protect my own personal boundaries in certain areas of my interactions with others that may pose as a threat or disrespect of my boundaries. What I did learn is that my own survival meant that I had to learn how to see the areas in others where their needs and sense of well being would not have the capacity to appreciate "my" needs.
Somehow what I learned is to exist with others that could only function with "their" needs being met, even in some very twisted persceptions and that I had to "work around them" to survive. And this is what happens in many families. And we are also taught that whatever does exist in this structure is something we must also not share with society outside "family".

Well, whatever we get in our childhoods, we are supposed to somehow keep going and keep learning how to interact with others and find ways to have our own way of providing for ourselves. We are supposed to learn to "just deal and do our best". And the bottom line is that we are lucky to have at least one parent that provides us with a sense of safety and personal value, we can find this journey either managable or unmanageble. And if we find it "unmanagable" we have a tendency to begin to self blame and struggle to find enough emotional balance to gain the energy to be motivated to really "feel" we "can" progress and be truely self sufficient.

In my own struggle with PTSD, I have been slowly learning about the areas in myself where I was emotionally challenged and did not learn how to properly "defend" many of my personal boundaries. I learned how to navagate the issues of others and to recognize the disrespect of boundaries. But I did not have the complete emotional balance when it came to my boundaries being threatened. When I suffered because of the issues of others, each time I suffered, I thought that after a certain amount of time, that suffering would just fade and I could "just move on". What I didn't understand is that what was really happening was that if I had a substancial loss, that my brain, in search for a return to a sense of emotional balance, would sort through my past in an effort to see where I had learned how to do that. And because I truely never learned that, what I am dealing with now is not just this loss but all losses and all the troubling emotions that are attached to all losses.

Healing through PTSD is a process and each person is a little different depending on what they have learned and experienced in their "own life experience". And if they are validated and allowed to finally learn how to understand themselves better emotionally and also learn how to finally understand where ever they did not establish themselves correctly in their past and finally be given the correct way to protect their boundaries better, they CAN heal.

However this process takes time to accomplish. I believe the brain is capable of healing if given time and direction to do so. And I also feel that if someone is told they have a certain disorder, it is important to make sure they understand that it doesn't mean they cannot learn to overcome it.

I believe that eventually we will be able to see how the human brain is effected by how we are not given the opportunity to feel safe and nourished while our brains are growing and learning in our childhoods.

Open Eyes

[layla11]

Yes, this makes alot of since. Thank you for the hope you have given me.

[Open Eyes]

You are welcome (((Layla))).

I guess I wrote a novel for you to read, I didn't mean to do that. When I was where you are now, I would have liked to have read what I posted to you here. I was so lost and confused myself. And I needed someone to tell me what it meant and that I would be ok. And I needed to know that it was not because I failed somehow or that it was "my" fault. I lost count of how many times I struggled to "just anything" and I sure had no idea what it all meant, I kept saying, "I am sorry or I am tired of it, or I hate this. I didn't understand the I am ok days, then I am not ok days, and the anger and suddenly being snappy and short tempered either and the days of just crying or just plain full of anxiety and I didn't know why. And ofcourse the flashbacks, they were nothing I could have ever imagined the brain could do. I have truely learned so much this past year.

I don't mean to say that I think "everyone" has PTSD, but I do believe that many of the things that people suffer from can be linked to the kind of environment they were raised in and if they were tramatized etc.

(((Hugs)))
Open Eyes

[layla11]

Originally Posted by Open Eyes

You are welcome (((Layla))).

I guess I wrote a novel for you to read, I didn't mean to do that. When I was where you are now, I would have liked to have read what I posted to you here. I was so lost and confused myself. And I needed someone to tell me what it meant and that I would be ok. And I needed to know that it was not because I failed somehow or that it was "my" fault. I lost count of how many times I struggled to "just anything" and I sure had no idea what it all meant, I kept saying, "I am sorry or I am tired of it, or I hate this. I didn't understand the I am ok days, then I am not ok days, and the anger and suddenly being snappy and short tempered either and the days of just crying or just plain full of anxiety and I didn't know why. And ofcourse the flashbacks, they were nothing I could have ever imagined the brain could do. I have truely learned so much this past year.

I don't mean to say that I think "everyone" has PTSD, but I do believe that many of the things that people suffer from can be linked to the kind of environment they were raised in and if they were tramatized etc.

(((Hugs)))
Open Eyes

I wish I had known earlier. Ive had problems at work and the suffering well you know what I mean. Thank you