Friend on Facebook claiming something I think is a lie caused her to have PTSD

***Trigger Warning***

So, I have this friend on Facebook who says she has PTSD from 9/11. I think she's making it up, because I think she enjoys having people feel bad for her. Here's the weird conversation we had about it. I am withholding her Facebook name for her own privacy. Can someone please explain to me how she can have PTSD from 9/11 when she wasn't at ground zero and it didn't actually affect her personally? I mean I was 13 when that happened and I remember it like it was just yesterday every year and on that anniversary every year I cry a little about it. But for God f'ing sakes I don't have PTSD from it. Someone please explain why on earth this could possibly affect her so badly that she has PTSD from it?

Her:Anyway to answer your question, I actually do have PTSD

Me: Have you been formally diagnosed? Just curious.

Her: Yeah, I don't believe in self diagnosis.

Me: Are you comfortable saying what caused your PTSD?

Her: 9/11, and my mom constantly beating me as a kid, I am very hyper aware.

Me: What does hyper aware mean?

Her: I am more wary of my surroundings and sounds.

Me: What happened on 9/11 that caused your PTSD if you don't mind me asking?

Her: 3,000 people died and America went on lockdown?

Me: I this, but I was 13 when that happened and I remember it like it was just yesterday and it bothered me and I cry about it every year but I'm almost positive it has nothing to do with my PTSD.

Me again: So, I don't understand why it would have cause you to have PTSD about it.

Her: Any time I see a picture of it at night I have vivid flashbacks of the event, as if I am inside one of the towers, these flashbacks cause me to sleepwalk and most of the time hurt myself.

Her again: 9/11 was a mark of loss of innocence for me, and I'm sure a lot of people have gotten PTSD from the event, especially those that were there.

Me: Yeah, I understand people that were at ground zero having PTSD, but I don't understand why you would have it in the least bit. It's confusing to me.

Her: Well so is that hold possibly sexually molested by my dad thing you said, but you don't see me poking you about it.

Me: Um, ok. I don't understand what that has to do with anything.

I am totally at a loss for words you guys. This is literally baffling to me, and honestly I really don't trust her that she even has PTSD. And it pisses me off that she is clearly claiming she has it when she really doesn't. I have PTSD (from when my dad abused me Verbally, Mentally, Emotionally, Physically and possibly even Sexually) and I don't appreciate people who claim they have it.

I think 9-11 was actually the first event when PSTD appeared in people who weren't directly involved in the situation.

Sure, it is controversial, but I think it's possible. And if she is from abusive background, maybe it affected her more than others because she was already in fragile state of mind.

I do think that national tragedies can **** us up in a way. My mom has her own trauma issues from soviet occupation and she didn't see anybody killed or anything. Just had to endure sucky 20 years in opressive regime. And the US after 9-11 was pretty weird, eh.

It had an effect on me. Things that happen for no reason, without warning, remind me of when my brother died unexpectedly ,and my Dad hit me for no reason.

Also I am from New York.

there are new diagnostics now for mental disorders PTSD now includes a diagnostic that states a person can have PTSD if someone close to them has gone through a traumatic event. if this person on facebook has a relative or close friend who went through 9\11 or has lost someone in 9\11 then that person can have PTSD.

my suggestion is if facebook posters seem to trigger you right now maybe its time to take a break from facebook. thats how I handle it when I notice what I see and those I know on facebook are triggering my emotional responses like anger, disbelief of their problems, questioning other peoples lives and whether other people have mental disorders.

line in the sand is no matter how well we know someone there will be things about our friends and their friends lives that we do not know...i mean when you think about it I dont share every little tidbit of my life with my friends and family, strangers. even my co workers do not know about every single tidbit of my life and if reading my personal facebook account would be absolutely shocked, disbelieving, questioning simply because they do not know what is going on with in my body and mind unless I choose to share it with them.

most of the time when I am on facebook I approach it how ever I would like others to treat me...example I dont take my friends and their friends posts from facebook and post about them other places because I think about how I would feel if someone did that to me. instead I send them a private message asking them if there is anything I can do to help, I ask them if they can clarify their post for me.

example i have MS. i saw a post by someone that stated they had MS. I privately asked them how they were and if there was anything I could do for them. They told me they diagnosed based on what criteria and they were putting it out there on facebook hoping someone with it would contact them to explain the test results. and whether they underwent a treatment option that they did not include in their post.

sure theres going to be people who will post about non exisrtent mental problems but there is a facebook "game" going around asking people to take the mental disorder quiz and the quiz tells them something like you have depression, you have ptsd.

my point only that person from facebook knows what their problems are and why they are choosing to come out in the open about having PTSD. its not up to me to question someone elses validity.

just like I may not agree with your lifestyle that you have previously posted about but I dont go to facebook saying theres this girl on this website...I treat you respectively by accepting that is you and this is me.

Im going to be a bit blunt here angelwings...you have posted you have bipolar and are manic,.. Im wondering if this can be affecting your perception. I wonder this because recently I was in manic phase and my own perception of posts and my reaction to posts here have been off. ...tip the moderators have been a great help to me this past few weeks with my perception of posts and such.

heres an experiment to try... go back and read your past posts. when reading them ask yourself is this something I would want someone else to say to me or do with what I post. when I did that with my own posts (I keep copies of my posts saved on my computer) I realized I was having some major perception problem sand I needed to slow down, look at things from reality not my erratic emotions. not saying it's easy. its not. when in bipolar state of mind its so easy to react first when manic. hopefully your manic phase will pass so that these facebook posts that you are posting about, are not bothering you so bad.

Just do a bit of research on the internet and you will find a great deal of reference to this. Yes, it is controversial to some extent, but a person who already has suffered early trauma is probably more likely to be strongly affected by this type of event and exposure.

Why the need to discount her own suffering? It isn't a contest.

I remember being in a new-to-me therapist's office a year after 9/11 and days after I saw the specialist in bipolar who diagnosed me because it was a little tricky for a few reasons. I was talking about PTSD (which I have) and about how I had been through some struggles with it in the last year as I moved from one state to another and then one city to another, started my first job in my profession, had to pass my board exam which was soooooo stressful for some reason, and several other things. And then I said that I hadn't realized until the anniversary but that I realized that 9/11 had been very traumatic for me in the middle of the chaos. I was not in NY and the only person I knew there was fine and able to let us know pretty quickly that evening but I was in a situation where we couldn't get the news in any way where I was working and so we only knew bits and pieces and so believed things were even worse than they were because the news reported a lot of incorrect things and we'd miss the corrections. I saw the 2nd tower fall on tv so that was a fact but so much of that day was full of rumors and fear and a need to get out of work and find out what really had happened. It was scary and powerless and they didn't even know if they should send us home or keep us available in case of an emergency where staffing would be vital. So I have some traumatic memories of that day and they bother me at times. My therapist said she'd heard a lot of people feel that way.

If I didn't already have PTSD I might not have reacted that way but I do and so trauma kicks of the PTSD signals in my brain.

I think that it's unfair to try to determine if someone else has or doesn't have something they are diagnosed with. That's between that person and their dr. since the dr is the only one who can diagnose. The fact is that what causes PTSD in one person may not in another and since the diagnosis is a psyhiatric illness and not really the pain Olympics I think it is better to just trust people with what they choose to share.

The best way to get someone to not want to share anything with you is to make her feel that her experiences are not worth anything even if you do not understand them.

Im a tad confused .. You were offended in a thread you posted under Bipolar about a Facebook page yesterday .... But yet your being unsupportive and un-believing that this person has PTSD ??

So you want unconditional support and agreement with any of your issues ,, but you don't offer her or maybe anyone else the same ???

I'm sorry you have me very confused

She told you that yes, she was formally diagnosed with ptsd. End of story! Her doc knows more than you do, both about PTSD criteria and your friends experiences.

She then continued to answer your barrage of questions, further explaining how it affects her. You continue to dismiss it. She shows frustration through pointing out to you that you use something in your past that may or may not have happened as an example of how that still affects you even though you aren't sure it happened. She was trying to show a parallel of how you don't want to be questioned and just get supported unconditionally, but that she isn't worthy of your support even when she has answered questions.

I don't see how it's confusing. She has PTSD. She was diagnosed. It's not your role to tell her that you don't believe her.

The most confusing bit from your post is wondering about how and what you are confused about. She was diagnosed by a professional and told she has PTSD. What is confusing for you about that?

I blame Facebook.

I don't know if there are degrees of PTSD, but watching terrorists blow up buildings is traumatic for anyone.

PTSD can arise from events you wouldn't always expect them to. I was traumatized simply by having repeated, severe illnesses over the course of many years, which was the cause of my OCD (germaphobia). I was told this by my pdoc 2 weeks ago. I don't think it's fair to automatically assume a person does not have PTSD/was not traumatized by an event just because it seems unlikely to you for said event to cause it. At this same appointment, my pdoc told me that what may traumatize one person will not always traumatize another. It's very individualistic and dependent on numerous factors.

My actual PTSD that you see listed in my signature was caused by something completely different, just to clarify. BUT it is possible that someone could get PTSD from something as unlikely as repeated illnesses. Whatever the event, it really does depend on the individual. So yes, I do see 9/11 as being a very possible cause for PTSD, despite not having actually been there.

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I think 9-11 was pretty traumatic for America as a whole. Would people be supportive of the whole Iraq war mess otherwise?

America didn't have war on their ground for few centuries prior to that (Pearl Harbour doesn't really count as it was attack on a military base, imho). And now you have something like THIS, new type of warfare, new type of terrorism. I think even Europeans are messed up from that. America lost a good deal of their perceived safety. It was end of an era. It was traumatic.

As how it effected each and every individual... it is up to them. Noone can really judge.

Thanks, Venusss. Terrorism terrorizes. I think we Americans are becoming more complacent with it, unfortunately. But 9/11 was a scary thing.

As a supportive community, I don't see it is our job to diagnosis others with mental illness or attempt to remove a diagnosis of mental illness. As someone stated it's not a contest.

Well, she said her mom beating her at 13....Hyper aware, are you bashing her terminology......Make her an acquaintance on your feeds, educate her/him, when I know someone has a psychological disorder especially trauma ones etc they are my special friends, or if I'm pretty sure they need to be checked for diagnoses cause I know certain things are not normal especially if I know a little about their story....Educate her/him

"I approach it how ever I would like others to treat me...example I dont take my friends and their friends posts from facebook and post about them other places because I think about how I would feel if someone did that to me."

(Bravo) Well said, AmandaLouise. Thank you.

All replies thus far have been ethical and most thorough imho.

PTSD does occur in bystanders. I got it from watching my brothers and sisters get beat. I didn't get beat.

PTSD occurs in soldiers who watch horrible events without being IN the event.

So, I suppose people could get PTSD from observation alone.

As a child, and as an adult, long before I was diagnosed with PTSD I could never ever watch horror movies or scary movies because I would have severe nightmares for days to weeks on end. That was from watching a movie on TV.

So my dad refused to let me see the movie Psycho because, "you'll never take a shower again." At which point I stopped taking showers with the curtain drawn.

Anthony Hopkins who played what's his name in Silence of the Lambs went to Jamaica to have a friend for dinner. NEVER going to Jamaica.

Some people are likely more susceptible to PTSD and do not necessarily need strong events to trigger the symptoms.

One really does not need a "professional" diagnosis if you have a trigger that gives you nightmares all night long for days to weeks on end. That would be diagnosis enough for me. BTW, I was professionally diagnosed after 3 weeks of no sleep from terrifying nightmares.