What next after diagnosis?

[MiMiPies]

Hi all,

I was diagnosed with PTSD yesterday however I believe I fall more under complex PTSD due to repeated trauma in childhood/teenage years.

I've been give 50mg of anti depressants and 5mg of anti psychotics. I'm doing a life skills course and then will be offered therapy.

However I'm a problem solver and now my brain is trying to think about why we got ptsd and it's bringing back memories I locked away years ago and it's making me quite poorly. I didn't sleep at all last night, I'm very on edge and I feel so sick.

I'm really not sure what to do and was wondering if anyone had any advice

When we experience a trauma - either as a one off or as a pattern of behaviour - our subconscious mind will do it's best to work out what happened, simply in order to avoid that situation in the future. It will rerun it in our thoughts, dreams and memories to examine it from every angle to try to find a solution - could we have done something different? Were we culpable in some way? This is not to hurt you (although it feels like it) on the contrary the mind wants us to be happy but part of that happiness means making sense of the trauma so it can't happen again.

The problem comes when there is no possible solution - either the event(s) were completely random and/or the people involved are unable or unwilling to explain their actions.

Imagine if you were given a jigsaw puzzle that contained all the answers to your past trauma. You first instinct would be to try to complete it. If however you opened the box and realised that some pieces were missing and others has been covered in white paint, what would you do? You'd accept that there would never be a satisfactory answer and you'd throw it anyway. That's what your mind needs to do.