According to the National Institutes of Health website “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat.”
Signs and Symptoms of PTSD are grouped into three categories:
1. Re-experiencing symptoms:
• Flashbacks—reliving the trauma over and over, including physical symptoms like a racing heart or sweating
• Bad dreams
• Frightening thoughts.
Re-experiencing symptoms may cause problems in a person’s everyday routine. They can start from the person’s own thoughts and feelings. Words, objects, or situations that are reminders of the event can also trigger re-experiencing.
2. Avoidance symptoms:
• Staying away from places, events, or objects that are reminders of the experience
• Feeling emotionally numb
• Feeling strong guilt, depression, or worry
• Losing interest in activities that were enjoyable in the past
• Having trouble remembering the dangerous event.
Things that remind a person of the traumatic event can trigger avoidance symptoms. These symptoms may cause a person to change his or her personal routine. For example, after a bad car accident, a person who usually drives may avoid driving or riding in a car.
3. Hyperarousal symptoms:
• Being easily startled
• Feeling tense or “on edge”
• Having difficulty sleeping, and/or having angry outbursts.
Hyperarousal symptoms are usually constant, instead of being triggered by things that remind one of the traumatic event. They can make the person feel stressed and angry. These symptoms may make it hard to do daily tasks, such as sleeping, eating, or concentrating.
Unfortunately whenever a psychological experience is dubbed “a disorder” people get the impression that the person who has this experience is “defective” or “crazy” or of poor character. The thought that PTSD symptoms are related to some core defect in character/personality serves to further increase the sufferer’s anxiety and level of symptoms. Not wanting to consider any predisposing factors to these symptoms may also prevent a person from doing real soul searching.
There is one main reason to emphasize that PTSD symptoms constitute a disorder. That is that the symptoms greatly impair a person’s ability to function. They also rob people of love and well-being. Overwhelming anxiety is not conducive to well-being or loving relationships.
Because PTSD symptoms are debilitating we have to address them, face them and ultimately conquer them. That means acknowledging the other fears/concerns that go along with having these symptoms:
1. Am I crazy?
2. Am I defective?
3. Will I ever be normal again?
4. Why did this happen to me?
5. How can I prevent this from happening again?
6. Can I trust myself?
To start to recover, notice that if you reduce PTSD down to its core essence it is simply difficulty processing that the trauma was then and today is now. For people whose PTSD is related to an experience with a sociopath, the problem is that the sociopath may not be gone. The then and now is blurred. The worst things done by the sociopath are in the past and there may be protections in place but the sociopath is still around. Sometimes that source of trauma is the other parent of beloved children.
Recovery in such a context means having a clear head to really sort out what was then and what is now. Next week we will consider other roadblocks to distinguishing then from now.
God I can recall vividly having some kind of a breakdown…didn’t sleep for more than two or three hours a night..eating junk every couple of days and surviving on coffee and fags…it was hideous, unexplained palpitations and anxiety attacks. My hair fell out and my thyroid suddenly packed up..have read stress can be a huge factor..I look back and cant believe how badly abused I was and how I not only accepted it I bloody craved it…I cannot imagine living like that again…
Dear Muldoon,
I think we can all relate to that feeling, sweetie! PTSD. Anxiety, fear, obligation and guilt. (((hugs)))) Only we can save ourselves from more of it but first we have to acknowledge that we have those feelings, what is causing them, and that we are the only one who can do anything about it. It isn’t easy I know—and double when you have kids. (((hugs))))
Muldoon,
I had the same thing, with the hair the thyroid, sleep, I was always getting infections, drove myself to the E.R. because I couldn’t take husband flirting with the nurses when I’m peeing blood. So sorry you went through the anxiety attacks.
One step mentioned being fearful for loved ones, this is a bizzare thing, I kept wanting to stock pile food and water, just in case. I would have dreams about how we could use part of the ulility room for a bomb shelter and had lists of everything we would need to live on. I got obsessed with it. Went on the government websites to get the list for what you need if there was a chemical attack. Nightly I would dream of how I would protect my family. Another dream was protecting my children if a burgler tried to break in. These dreams were recurring, but I stopped having them within this last year, thank goodness.
Looking back at some of these patterns, I believe they were all related to PTSD. Those dreams were so vivid, and I felt I needed to act on them and it makes sense how out of control my life has been. The dangers I wanted to protect my children from, were not coming from outside my house, but inside.
I hear you. Fascinating that there are others who write about the very physical experiences I had during my first marriage. It was all that- thyroid, anxiety, the loss of ability to think or decide. And then plunging through menopause like a stone falling through a well.
I didn’t know it was abuse, I thought is was all me. I thought I was losing my mind.
Thank God for a doc who told me that it wasn’t me, but I should consider alternatives because it would kill me.
The road away from there has been arduous.
The current incident doesn’t play well. So much of it all coming back. So much to be anxious about for real.
I am pleased to find confidence in knowing I am not crazy. I am not.
And there is time to move ahead in directions which are true because it didn’t kill me.
Not then, not now.
{{{Silvermoon}}} No, you aren’t crazy, and you weren’t crazy. It was the gaslighting, manipulatons, and degradations.
You’re on your healing path, and it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. Not always pretty, but we learn to manage the triggers over time. It’s been 13 years for me, and I still have to consciously manage triggers. I’m better today that I was yesterday, and the day before that, and so on….
Brightest blessings.
Dear Silvermoon,
Darling I WAS CRAZY, driven stark raving mad, out of my head, not rational, not thinking straight—but you know, anyone can be “off their rocker” when the situation is as ABNORMAL as a psychopath can make it, as much as they can TWIST REALITY—I realize now that I was reacting to the ABNORMAL situation I was in. OK,, so how should you react when you come on an “alien space vehicle”? Well, you act like you have seen (guess what!) an ALIEN SPACE VEHICLE, and the fact that no one else can see it makes you seem even crazier! But—you can learn that “though NO one else can see this thing, I CAN SEE THIS THING and I’m going to validate my own reality!”
Too many times we SEE the alien among us and others tell us “it ain’t there, you’re crazy” but we can SEE IT, but eventually be come to believe that the fact we SEE IT is what makes us crazy—no, we are SANE and They are BLIND because they can’t see it.
Not doubting ourselves is very difficult when “everyone else” can’t see what we SEE.
I’m learning to trust MYSELF, that’s a wonderful gift that only I can give to me! (((hugs))))
silver – i am a sucker for a good woman online 😉 so we need to take my opinion with a grain of salt, but; you are so kind, so refined, so funny, so beautiful…so f**king sane….you just keep holding on to that sanity.
i have been having a hell of a time the last few days – on the downside. i know it will come back up, ’cause that’s how it goes. the last three weeks, there has been a growing bloody mindedness. and the last few days it is like i have morphed into a ball of rejected/abandoned anger. some of this is in response to other people’s actions, but it is wild and i am not sure how to handle it.
i think it started with the info. that the other dupe had contacted the REAL boy – and that he didnt’ care that his pics had been swiped. well, that’s what she said – BUT what happened is that he didn’t respond to her. but i know a bit more about that now and i see him as dangerous. i guess that’s part of it, i don’t know what/who is safe right now – i was worried about starting the work on the spreadsheet for and other stuff the asst. AG. but it actually is focusing me. and the anger is getting focused.
i have this feeling like i’d like to break something or blow up relationships. i have a friend i am so angry at for abandoning me through this, that i couldn’t go somewhere where she is today. i have no desire to isolate, but i canna be hiding my reality. i am so angry. sh*t.
found more pictures of real people used as fake people in another sweep through real boy’s blog.
i kinda lost it on thursday – i had set some goals and i just lost myself. froze up. sh*t sh*t sh*t.
may this come strong, pass, and leave me with some grace.
i feel like i want to detroy something; is it because i am having such a hard time taking care or myself? there are dips and weaves in my housing and food safety. dipped down again the last few dasy – looking at bills i can’t pay. overwhelmed again. angry. really frustrated.
i miss my mom. it’s mom’s day tomorrow and i can’t see her.
maybe i’ll get a friend to call for me. 🙁
Hi all…hopeforjoy…be interesting to know how many of us here have thyroid problems because of the stress of the life with these sods…I too had a period of anxiety dreams that were vivid..I dreamt I was unwillingly on a huge white knuckle ride..Try to get off but too late its started..horrific..Wonder what Freud would make of it!! I see it as symbolic as to my state of mind then, no control over self and constantly fearful.
I whole heartedly believe my thyroid was as a result of undue stress.
Now I am either full of beans and cant rest, or cold hungry and sleeping half the day…
One,
I think the answer is flowerpots. See what you with a flower pot is hugely symbolic. Take the things that make you angry like the “friend who is ignoring you”. Yeah, that should make you mad. And it should provoke a judgement. I have a few friends like that. Old ones. Women I’d call best. Well used to. Too many years, too much distance. We care, but the depth just isn’t there. No harm no foul. It happens. Sometimes I wish it was different but really don’t feel like making the investment.
Well, that’s off piste. Back to the pots.
Anyway, you can put any frustrating thing you want in the dirt in a flower pot and then throw that thing and smash it for cheap. Its insanely satisfying. and when you are done, you can clean up and say, that, is that.
Yes, The resolve is growing, but man the last few days have been tough. Had this notion I might be under surveillence by the not good guys because of a websearch I did that looked like it yielded information and it just about SENT me. Sometimes, there is no substitute for professional help and a friend has told me that I’m over doing it and explained what I did see.
I thought that maybe I’d found some key to understanding and that I might have found insight, I thought that I’d found that he was very sick. Well, not clearly so.
But it spun me around in the middle of trying to deal with life in general. I’ve been inside out and rethinking the decision about running backwards or forwards until it was exhausting.
Ultimately, we want some result. A smashed flower pot, a decsision. Because no matter how long you swim in the pool of fear, frustration and all of the yuck, you want out.
And without a tangible result. you can’t get out. Because NOTHING happens and you don’t feel better or even different.
So what? Observe you feelings. What DO THEY TELL YOU?There is a pointer for which direction to go in to release or change the pressure. But if you focus on the feeling and not the observation of it, it will be elusive and well, for that, there are flowerpots.
Have fun!