To ask a question about PTSD

[MadameBee]

I am feeling absolutely fine about the current situation (as fine as I can be).

A few years ago I was pushed through a shop window, not going into details, but it was traumatic and by some miracle I had v minor injuries but was trapped for a while, while all the shards of glass fell around me.

Few months after this I was really jumpy around loud noises, this passed.

Few years later I had a minor car crash, wasn’t injured but the impact created a really loud bang, cue and loud noise, bottle bank why making me jump out of my skin. Settled down again.

Now I am at home working, perfectly happy but not going everywhere I normally go and in peace and quiet but it’s happening more when I do go out, unexpected noise and even when people come into a room I am in and I haven’t noticed. I am like that women in the Catherine Tate sketch who screams at everything

I wonder wtf this is and am I not noticing my own stress.

I am really aware of my own mental health as I have a job where I need to be.

Has anyone else experienced this and does it sound like PTSD (or am I being overly dramatic?).

It sounds like a reaction to the traumatic experiences - it probably isn't too valuable to focus on whether it meets the technical criteria for PTSD.

CBT based treatments all focus on allowing you to process the trauma via talking about your experiences. Is there anyone in real life who you could talk through (in detail) what happened with? As an alternative, writing a narrative of what happened and reading it to yourself can help.

It is normal to feel traumatised when traumatic things happen, so remember that your difficulties will likely lessen over time whether you seek treatment or not.

Hope you are ok.

Post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic stress disorder are different things. The former is a natural reaction to traumatic events that everybody has while they recover and process what's happened, the latter is when processing gets stuck. It can continue straight on from the PTS or be a delayed response later on.

Also, you don't have to be specifically anxious about something to have anxiety. It just means you're staying in an unduly heightened state of arousal, which in fairness seems to be what you're describing (jumping at loud noises).

A heightened startle reflex could easily be because your body is in a higher state of alert due to feeling unsafe/less safe due to the current situation, therefore it takes less to provoke a response because you're already on the edge of responding (hence less distance to travel so to speak). When you're already in a high state of arousal it doesn't take much to tip you over the edge.

Whereas if you were generally calm and feeling safe (ie low arousal) it would take more for your body to react, as there'd be a bigger distance to travel to reach "frightened and reacting" from calm than from "frightened and uneasy".

So, regardless of whether it's trauma or anxiety or trauma anxiety, looking at ways to reduce your arousal levels (ie calming your mind and body, soothing yourself, occupying your mind with other things) would likely be a very good way to go to make things more manageable and help yourself. (And is basically step one of any treatment for trauma or anxiety anyway).

Feeling more unsafe (even if you're not noticing specific thoughts about it just the general sense in society right now would be enough) because of this situation has made trauma and anxiety symptoms worse for some people. So I would also bear in mind that some of the worsening in symptoms you're experiencing could resolve naturally as the situation improves.

it probably isn't too valuable to focus on whether it meets the technical criteria for PTSD

I absolutely see what you're saying and it's a good point to make, but for me it was really important that I had a professional diagnosis.

After years of suffering, to be told I had c-PTSD and I wasn't going mad or was somehow 'faulty' was the very start of my healing process.

But it might not be the same for you OP, we're all so different!

Hi MadameBee the hypervigilance and the not wanting to talk about it are symptoms. However whether it meets the criteria for diagnosis also depends on how it is affecting your life. The memories have not been processed correctly because at the time of the incidents your life was under threat. They are 'stored wrong'. Unfortunately your understandable avoidance of talking about it is maintaining the problem. Writing or telling an account of the incidents in very rich sensory detail - not rushing - and then reading or listening to it and updating the memory is what would be helpful to do with a therapist (it's highly effective). You will feel worse if you bring the memory to mind but if you stick with doing it in detail then you will feel so much better. Learning a grounding technique would be good in advance.

CBT based treatments all focus on allowing you to process the trauma via talking about your experiences. Is there anyone in real life who you could talk through (in detail) what happened with?

I'm sorry, but that's a really dangerous suggestion. A trauma therapist is trained to help someone manage their distress and process their experiences while they talk about them. A friend or family member won't be and could inadvertently make things worse.

And not all CBT based trauma therapies involve discussing the traumatic experience in detail.

@MadameBee I had EMDR (eye movement desensitisation therapy) for PTSD and it was life changing. xx

I’ve had ptsd and I have general anxiety disorder. The difference is the constant flashbacks. My GAD gives me intrusive thoughts, but my PTSD is flashbacks. The incident that caused my PTSD is now 13.5 years ago (and she dis in her bed right now) and is now not a large part of my life. My anxiety is there every day.

www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/victoriaderbyshire/2007/11/sharons_story_a_mexican_soap_o.html

Is there anyone in real life who you could talk through (in detail) what happened with?

Please don't do this. Nopenothappening is right, this could be very harmful.

And not all CBT based trauma therapies involve discussing the traumatic experience in detail.

This! Infact CBT is known for focusing on thought process - if you feel you need to talk in detail about what's happened, a specialised trauma counseller is a perfect idea.

Personally I did this type of talking counselling, followed by CBT, which worked really well.

Have a look at tapping and EMDR sessions on line it may help.
The trouble is what ever anxiety you have takes you back to the state you were in when you were last really anxious
You do need someone clinical to rule PTSD in or out that may be hard to get hold of right now so you need coping strategies and possibly medication to help you manage the symptoms in the short to medium term

I'm sorry to hear you're having a rough time with this.

I was followed home one night and mugged 11 years ago. In amongst a whole load of other stuff that happened the same year, I ended up in counselling. It helped a lot. I never had a label for it, but it still catches me sometimes.

There are still times when overly react to things - mixed sex loos are a no go for example or checking my front door is locked.

Like you I cope well with fairly stressful or pressured situations. Sometimes though, when I'm doing all the managing of life's stresses - like now - I have less ability to manage my reactions to things I logically know are not dangerous and are ok. I can talk myself round though.

I don't know about PTSD but I do know what it's like to panic about things. Even though you're on top of coping with life, COVID etc. It may be your reserves are low and this is flaring you as a result. Anyway, no idea if this is helpful but I hear you!

Good luck with it and don't hesitate to at least tell someone your reactions are happening . Sometimes just sharing that (rather than the details) helps.

cPTSD sufferer for several decades. It gave me symptoms I never would have associated with that condition and it took many years and a lightbulb moment - plus a major trigger finally making me seriously ill - for me to see the light about what was wrong with me. My most terrifying symptom was severe short-term memory loss. I honestly thought I had early-onset dementia and I was very frightened. I had flashbacks, but didn't recognise that this was what they were. Naively I supposed this meant seeing events unfold in front of me in montage; I experienced it as a feeling of being submerged in the foggy quagmire of denial and 'shutting off' I experienced when in a traumatised state. I processed a major bereavement as a trauma and my mind did what it had been trained to do and shut down. It took me 17 years to properly process that event. I ended up in a heightened sense of anxiety all the time. When #MeToo happened I followed the stories obsessively, got very emotionally over invested and made myself ill with stress.

Recognising the condition and having it diagnosed was a horrible, horrible time. It had progressed to a state where I had to become seriously ill - triggered by a period of sexual harassment at wok - before understanding that the 'normal' I'd lived with almost my entire life was anything but. I also realised precisely what my triggers were, and that I was, indeed, becoming sick in response to these very specific triggers. It was traumatic to look at my own life and see myself as a victim of extreme, repeated trauma (child abuse, later rape and sexual abuse). But that recognition gave me a life belt.

18 months of investment in EMDR therapy has given me back my life. It's changed my entire outlook and given me a clarity of vision and a self-understanding I previously wouldn't have thought possible. It can't take a horrendous past away. But what it does do, is it strips the emotion away form those events and allows for an extraordinary degree of objectivity. My wonderful therapist was of the belief that CBT was something of a catch all which was ultimately not as effective because it was designed for use over the short term, and in a controlled environment. It works for some, but it apparently isn't necessarily the best treatment for trauma, in his view.

My therapy concluded in mid 2018, and I'm convinced the cPTSD is cured. Not just receded to a point where I have an emotional toolkit at my disposal to enable me to manage the condition. But actually, completely, gone. I agree with PP that it was a life-changer.

Didn't want to post a me me me response, but I hope by sharing these experiences someone might recognise them and be helped. I hope you get all the support you need, OP, and wish you all positivity as you deal with this.

My children constantly joke about me having early onset.

My short term memory is appalling.