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.
Jfog!: I dont know your specific situation, but I used to work in real estate and mortgages. There are many ways to screw things up, and also many things you can do that are actually right and good that could look like they weren’t.
If I can help you understand more clearly what you are dealing with, I will be glad to be here for you.
Meanwhile, trust that your gut is telling you to pay attention to a missing detail.
I am sitting here 1year and 1/2 after dealing with my S and looking for the flags. He stopped having sex with me (RED FLAG) said it was due to heart condition, Picked fights (RED FLAG), didn’t come home for days and always came with an excuse (RED FLAG). Because of the betrayal I still have not been able to get involved with anyone else. Our baby of 8 months has never and will never see his father. He played a magic trick and poof disappeared in thin air. Will I ever be able to trust a man again?
janetf-“Will I ever be able to trust a man again?”
janetf….sorry for you and your baby. I’m about three years out from a “betrayal” (wish my ex-tox would “poof”!). As to your question…with what you learn here, and with an awareness of these disorders, I think anyone with whom you become close in the future will need to EARN your trust, and rightfully so. There are never guarantees, but there are people who can be trusted, if you use care and discernment, for the “long haul.” When YOU are ready.
Give yourself time to know yourself…and be careful and patient. I’m glad, we’re glad, you’ve found this site.
Dear Janetf,
You are fortunate that he is “poof” out of your life and your child’s life! Get down on your knees and thank God that he is gone! I bet any of the mothers here who have to
“co-parent” with a P would love to be in your situation.
To answer your question about trust, Jim in Indiana said it right on! don’t get in a hurry, it takes time to heal and what I did was to sit down and make a list of “deal breakers” for the future relationships (not just with men) that would make me NEVER TRUST ANYONE.
1) LIES—about anything–EVEN ONE LIE
2) Blaming others for what they did
3) Not being responsible and keeping their word
4) and so on
You can make your own list, but you get the idea. ANY ONE of these things is enough to show you that you cannot trust a person. Trust is like dead or pregnant, either you IS OR IS NOT.
A person can’t be a “little” trustworthy, or a “little dead” or a “little” pregnant—–either a person is reliable and trustworthy or they are NOT. the people who are NOT trustworthy I wll maybe have to deal with them, but NOT ON AN INTIMATE BASIS.
THE People you cannot trust, must for your sake and safety, be held at arm’s length. It doesn’t matter WHO they are, in my case, it is one son who is a P, my egg donor (mother) who enables him, lies to me to cover up for him, several “friends” who have used and abused me for their own benefit, who have not kept their word in various situations, or who tried to blame me for things they did….nope, I have been systematically getting these people out of my life. Settling boundaries for them, if they cross them, they are OUT—some I actually “tell them to get lost” others, I just “fade away” from contact with them, quietly….”too busy” to see them etc. “got other plans, sorry” until the relationship just goes away and they move on to another victim.
I am cautious about new people and observant about “old” friends….have found that I put up with a lot of crap from “old” friends I wouldn’t have tolerated in “new” ones, but am eliminating the “old” ones as I see the problems arise (again). takes time just like weeding a garden, there are always new weeds cropping up to be taken care of.
But if you don’t “weed your garden” you won’t have much of a life, as the “weeds” choke out the good things pretty quickly!
Good luck and give yourself time. You will get there! (((hugs))))
Amen on the garden weeding!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I wish “Getting is Easy, why is getting out so hard” because I think many who come here are struggling with obsessive thoughts and how to get rid of them and I can’t seem to find the right place to post this. Anyway, here is a link to an article that helped me a lot. It helped stop the obsessive thinking.
http://www.lisaescott.com/forum/2009/04/29/just-because-you-believe-it-doesnt-make-it-true
Thank you for sharing this article. Seems, more and more people are living the nightmare.
Oops, I meant to say I wish “getting in is easy, why is getting out so hard” was still open for comments because….
I swear that stress has really goofed up my brain lately. Or do antidepressants do that? I make big errors like that all the time now!
Glad you liked the article. It was so helpful to me.
Concentration… PTSD does that.
I have not been able to work as well as I used to: thank G-d for supportive team and great friends who are taking on some of my share. Priorities change.
Hi all, I think I had a very bad flash back yesterday, when I was invited by my father to a country club charity event (the very first time, I am 47, in my life! I was kind of flattered, but also wary of the event knowing my father. My father is a P, and I was forced to attend the Golf club in my youth, hated it, but could not let go, because now I think Golf might be something when I am retired, some 18 years to go 😉 ) He and my mother (retired N, she now is not attending Golf anymore as she is 79, thinks she is fat and ugly and sick) said to me that the people he invited too were very nice kind folks, it should be a funny evening.
Anyway the evening started quite nicely, but then my father started insulting me, after some drinks, so that the woman he was with (not my mum) said it was not nice from him, and she retired early. I just said I know him, he is always that way after drinks, and made no big fuss although it embarrassed me a lot.
He said I need a shaver for my “hair on my teeth”, but I said I usually prefer epilation, a word he did not know, and that I brush and gel them every morning for strong hold. (in German “having hair on the teeth” means being a snappy woman, in a very negative sense)
I was playing the Oboe but had to stop because of lack of time, and my father constantly picks on it knowing it is embarrassing me. I love the Oboe. And sure he did this evening! The man to my left started to make comments about an Oboe concerto I was for years longing to go to but could not go because I was certain that the X would be there too.
I was sitting at a table facing a huge fotograph of a mountain I climbed with the X one and a half years ago in the honeymoon phase, in the late autumn, and was constantly reminded of the wonderful times.
I retired quite early.
My father called today and said that he got lots of praise for my well behaving and that he is proud of me! Lucky me…
To make things worse my mother called me today to see how things went and whether people were asking for her, and she asked me whether I also knew that the man to my left who mentioned the concert and seemed very cultivated and who is kind of close aquaintance of my father’s for years was handcuffing his girlfriend to the radiator while going out so that the girlfriend could not escape. AND THEY TOLD ME HE WAS A NICE MAN!!! (BESIDES WHEN HE IS HANDCUFFING HIS GIRLFRIEND TO THE RADIATOR????!!)
So I got flash backs on every level, but I behaved well like a lady, and I could let drop every thing off me as the rain from a duck’s feather, my father let the mask drop so he was making a very bad figure out of himself, not me, and I won a very nice voucher from a flower shop as compensation in the tombola, and the food was nice, and I met my wonderful old boss and some very nice people who invited me to join them, so that I know with whom I can go and be independent of my parents (until now I went with them or my sister).
I think the scar is still raw but not bleeding any more as it gets touched, and that is comforting me. Watching the fotograph of this mountain I remembered the place where I sat snuggled in his arms, feeling comfi, the sun shining, he explaining the airplanes starting on the small airport below us, the wine tasting afterwards, and that I am greatful for having had this feeling, that I have to concentrate on having had this feeling MYSELF and not his fake interest in my life and the realizing that it was all a big fake.
It was all about him and I happened to be at this point of life near him physically but it could have been anybody.
The X opened my eyes and my heart for my feelings and that I must not fear anything, and for that I am very greatful; for the insults my father is applying on a regular basis, that I can never be safe from him, that nobody is protecting me and that nobody can stop him from doing so (not even the lady he was with, and whom he tried to impress as I noticed very well. She seemed kind of abhored by it and said she did not know my father THAT well).
I can just walk away with grace and leave it all behind, and I think I have to go definitely NC with the parents after this last try!
Thanks for letting me vent! I wish you a very refreshing sunday!