Do you ever feel like people won't believe your PTSD? That it's all exaggeration? I know I do.

I've been abused growing up, but a part of me tells myself that it wasn't so bad since I wasn't in the guiness world book of records for abuse. I feel like most people won't believe me when talking about the impact of these things. Maybe it's because I deny it myself.

[Teacake]

Sure. It was a milestone when I stopped giving a ****.

We disbelieve trauma stories to avoid being played for fools, and because we are scared to death of the world. Have you ever heard a story that scared you so bad you wished you'd never heard it? The first thing your mind wants to do is make it a lie. If you cant, you make it the victims fault. Then you get mad that she told you and wonder what her REAL motives are and what she expects to gain from you. Lol!

[MotownJohnny]

I think these feelings are common. Part of it is denial, because we wish it weren't so, that it had never happened, and this is a way to try to minimize the experience in our minds. I think the other part is a heightened sensitivity to suffering of others. Throw in the entire societal attitude about mental health issues, how many people view it as a made-up thing, a slacker's excuse to avoid responsibility. These strands of belief all affect us, to the point we can buy into them and question ourselves.

Getting others to believe that what happened to you is "real " can be hard, and the closer they are to a situation the harder it is. Especially with something like child abuse. For various reasons. I know in my own case, I was the only boy and also much younger than my sisters. My father deteriorated mentally as he aged, so that by the time I was a teenager he was a complete brute. And, they were all gone from the house by then, living away and not seeing day by day what happened. And he hated me in a way he never did them, because I was male he viewed me in a way as a threat and rival and challenge to his authority and possession and control of my mother. And he made sure to take all of his psychotic rage out on me, far more intensely than I remember him ever doing to my sisters. That isn't unusual, it can go as far as one child being constantly bullied and abused by a parent while another is coddled - a condition which certainly results in radically different perceptions by siblings in later life.

[Parley]

Originally Posted by Rara200284

Do you ever feel like people won't believe your PTSD? That it's all exaggeration? I know I do.

I've been abused growing up, but a part of me tells myself that it wasn't so bad since I wasn't in the guiness world book of records for abuse. I feel like most people won't believe me when talking about the impact of these things. Maybe it's because I deny it myself.

I haven't been diagnosed with ptsd so there is nothing to believe. As far as my symptoms~ I don't talk about them much either. I was trained well! unfortunately~ not properly.

As far as my trauma~ I denied it for so long that I'm not sure I believe it myself. It's hard to explain but I do get what you are saying about not being in any record books. For me~ it wasn't child abuse but I felt like I was the lucky one ~ I survived. how could it possible be trauma?

I am working on accepting things for what they are but I internalize the impact so much that I don't express them and when I do~ I downplay because I feel like I am exaggerating or being a drama queen.

Hopefully you have someone to talk to and he/she can help you sort things out. Best of luck to ya.

[Open Eyes]

Yes, and the truth with me is that people around me either didn't believe it or felt I was wrong to struggle and they were actually mean to me. Even now I am not really allowed to talk about it, or how it affects me. I was just at a family gathering and I was talking to my niece and the conversation went towards challenges and I said very little and my older sister literally jumped right on top of the conversation and said, "No comparing, no talking about struggles, no comparing notes" like "how dare ANYONE have it harder than her".

My older sister is like this overpowering family moderator where she has a need to put each person in their own neat little box and god forbid you don't stay in that box the way she thinks you should. I am not allowed to talk about myself, yet she can go on and on for a long time, "until" I slip and "need" to talk about myself. I never realized how bad it was until I developed PTSD and "really needed to talk and support". For me to even have a thread about how I struggle is very hard for me, it is like a deep part of me is expecting to be repremanded for it.

For myself, my trauma was seeing so much of what I loved and worked so hard for damaged really badly, damaged because of how another person had no respect, just didn't care and even continued to have that mindset and intrude. Then I didn't know about post traumatic stress and after having to address so much damage for a few months I broke, really broke.

I was treated badly for that, treated like I did not have a right to be so upset, to develop pts, even by professionals. Even in a lawsuit "don't talk" and "don't feel" and for 7 years and counting it has just been so surreal that as I know what I know now, it's so hard to see just how "cruel" people can be to someone who "genuinely" suffers. To even be told not to talk about how I struggle with PTSD because the opposing side will use it against you and beat you up?

One therapy session I realized how my T was the only human being that actually stayed calm and gave me permission to "talk" and "feel". He also talked about how he should have a way of video taping PTSD patients when they first present to him and then after they have had time to "tell their story and vent" because of the desperation they present with and how after finally talking and venting they begin to gain more composure and control. But when one thinks about it, how sad is that? What is also so sad to me is pretty much every person I have met who struggles with PTSD tends to "appologize", and if one doesn't say "I am sorry", they feel it. Either that or there is this deep subconscious way of "expecting to get attacked" that can trigger "fight" even before the conscious mind has a chance to think about getting angry.

A person who struggles with PTSD experiences an "awareness" that the average person simply cannot comprehend. It has been observed that when someone develops PTSD, they mingle best with others that also have it. There is a new awareness of the pain that people cause to others that the average person is often "unaware" of. Yes, it is depressing and very frustrating, yes it is as though the person who struggles is suddenly talking a language that others "don't know or care to know".

Who would be a good "rescuer"? Well, I think that would have to be someone who understands it, someone who is willing to listen and actually help the person harness it better and even has the ability to stop the "disrespect" to where people "blame" the person who is challenged and understands they are not "crazy" and they really "are" saying something that "really did happen and needs to be heard and validated". But also someone who has a way to help the person find a way to "accept" how they are more sensitive and "can" often see realities that many just don't see. But, to also learn to better accept the past when the person struggling wasn't as "aware" where they didn't have enough foresight or means to "protect or defend". To learn how to hear a pin drop when others cannot and be able to adjust to that in the mind to where one thinks, "oh, that is "just" another pin dropping, no worries there".

OE

[Hellion]

Not only do I feel like that and worry about it sometimes, but I have actually experienced it so yeah. And it contributed to me not taking it seriously and just trying to get on with my life because no one thought I needed any help/support with the stupid trauma...even when I told a school counseler of my concerns, and tried to get back in therapy through the same place I had been seeing a therapist a few months before.

[Teacake]

Originally Posted by Hellion

Not only do I feel like that and worry about it sometimes, but I have actually experienced it so yeah. And it contributed to me not taking it seriously and just trying to get on with my life because no one thought I needed any help/support with the stupid trauma...even when I told a school counseler of my concerns, and tried to get back in therapy through the same place I had been seeing a therapist a few months before.

I think we all have had this experience.

My first psychologist knew I was sleeping with a man who had been to political prison in such and such a country. Did she ever think to relate "anxiety neurosis" to living closely with someone who had been tortured in captivity?

People are idiots. A PhD doesn't help.

[Teacake]

White American psychiatrists have been more dismissive of me than the regular kind. I do not mean to imply that there is anything wrong with white Americans, which is what I am. Just pointing out that doctors are people and peoples beliefs are shaped by their early childhoods trusted adults, then their experiences then their education.

A white man can tell you in perfect sincerity that racism is not a problem in the US. If you dont believe him, he feels you are challenging an authority of which source he has never questioned. Not all white men, but weve all met that one.

[under_the_iron_sea]

This thread has been a real comfort to me. I have carried around the feeling that I am just ultra sensitive, and that the kinds of things I lived through as a child were really not that bad, and that I was just too sensitive, and therefore it affected me too much. I totally understand the guiness world record comment. I feel the same way even still. I even go farther and think of all the poor people in the world that I see on the nightly news, suffering through one calamity and the next, and then I feel really stupid and selfish for ever being affected so negatively by my own situation. But I'm slowly learning that you can't compare things like this, and that things that seem smaller or more subtle can still make a major impact. It's hard. I'm still learning. Good luck, and thanks for posting this.

Briar

[IrisBloom]

A person who has never had emotional problems cannot possibly understand what you are going through. A good friend or T can try, and be sympathetic, but this is one thing you have to live to really know what it is like. Maybe you could see if your local mental health facility has group therapy.

[Purple Heart]

Hi

Great comments! I only discovered a few years ago that I had undiagnosed PTSD. In fact I have severe PTSD and some days it is very painful. I guess Mr Joe Public will just tell you to stop dwelling on the past or think positively. If only they could understand what it is like to go through this. My family would surely say that I'm overly-sensitive or stuck in the past or that I'm crazy. I think on the whole most people have no comprehension of it. I've also been to some therapists who prescribe CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) which in my case had little effect. When you are experiencing significant deep pain, blocking it or trying to think positive simply does not work!

Yes definitely.
I constantly watch people for signs of alterior motives as I don't trust anyone. I also question my own trauma and there is a cold, lying voice at the back of my head telling me im faking it and its not real, which is wrong because it is real.

[IrisBloom]

Originally Posted by Purple Heart

Hi

Great comments! I only discovered a few years ago that I had undiagnosed PTSD. In fact I have severe PTSD and some days it is very painful. I guess Mr Joe Public will just tell you to stop dwelling on the past or think positively. If only they could understand what it is like to go through this. My family would surely say that I'm overly-sensitive or stuck in the past or that I'm crazy. I think on the whole most people have no comprehension of it. I've also been to some therapists who prescribe CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) which in my case had little effect. When you are experiencing significant deep pain, blocking it or trying to think positive simply does not work!

Thank you! I have experienced exactly the same things. Now my sister and I are in our mid 50s, she seems to understand more about why I am the way I am. Parent still clueless though. O well, you can't win 'em all.