Quote:
Originally Posted by Apocalipstic
I have been requested to start a thread on Trauma survival and recovery.
I looked up symptoms of PTSD as a place to start.
Symptoms of PTSD can include:
- Hypervigilance and scanning
- Elevated startle response
- Blunted affect, psychic numbing
- Aggressive, controlling behavior (a high degree of insistence on getting your way)
- Interruption of memory and concentration
- Depression
- Generalized anxiety
- Violent eruptions of rage
- Substance abuse
- Intrusive recall -- different from normal memory in that it brings with it stress and anxiety
- Dissociative experiences, including dissociative flashbacks
- Insomnia
- Suicidal ideation
- Survivor guilt
Thoughts? |
I just found your thread tonight, my Sister Femme Friend, and I'm going to spend some time reading it. I was recently diagnosed with a severe case of PTSD, which is scary to me because I've never had PTSD in my life, up until recently. Last fall, I began to have serious anxiety attacks. Sometimes I would be so filled with rage that it would literally leave me blind, staring into a field of stars in my vision and then turn to an expansive field of white nothingness... leaving me numb, paralyzed with fear, choking the air from my lungs. I am hypervigilant, more so now than ever. I worry for my own personal safety more than most people might. I am reduced to tears easily; but at the same time, I also have an uncanny ability to control myself by not taking the bait? If that makes sense at all. I don't sleep well. My rest cycles are impeded by panic attacks that seize me out of nowhere, but usually precipitated by an event of massive emotional upheaval, whereby my feelings and emotions might not come out but more delayed or even stranger to me, I feel affected by bluntness, an numb-like affect. My memory is not as sharp as it once was. I feel like my memory is disrupted, displaced, like it won't come back to me like it used to be; but it's not an overall memory issue. It's like it only affects particular parts of my ability to remember or short term memory disorder? I don't know, but I do see a therapist weekly now, and have been going since last fall.
I have had a rough time of it, the past few weeks, due to stressors I have no control over, right now. I'm moving, after not having moved for nearly 11 years, so I imagine the high anxiety I feel about moving amplifies my PTSD. But I also have other things going down in my life right now that is not so nice and it also amplifies and triggers my case of PTSD.
I am massively affected by survivor's guilt, too. I most likely have some form of depression too, but my therapist hasn't really said if I do or not. But I'm guessing I do.
But seeing my therapist is the best decision I ever made for myself and I'm sticking with therapy until I can better mitigate on my own behalf. I needed help, and I'm glad I reached out for it.
Thanks so much for your forum thread on PTSD, Apocalipstic.
