Anyone else have PTSD?

Cesart ?

Sounds like you are taking all the right steps, being open minded but clear about your needs.

The first time I read a list of the symptoms of PTSD six months ago I experienced an intense identification. "My God this has been the past 15 years of my life."

Dreamer ? No offence, but I completely disagree with you ? these are all simply terms, signposts on the road that allow us and doctors to communicate with each other... there's no clearly delineated line between the relative trauma of "death of grandmother," and "experience of direct threat to life." Individual experience and reaction is much more complicated than that, there are too many factors that play into how an individual will emotionally and psychologically respond, you can't catagorize it from outside. You CAN compare symptoms and see if they line up with other's experience. I think I'm talking to the right crowd here, can y'all relate?

Perhaps ask yourself why you are so insistant of your speculation that PTSD is currently over-diagnosed. You might come up with an interesting answer.

My brother's death was a suicide. Does that make it more awful than Cesart's loss? I don't think so. The entire concept that "that's worse, THAT's worser, and THAT's the WORSTEST!" is illogical, flawed and leads to misunderstandings between people. I don't think its healthy to compare trauma this way.

bright23 said:

Perhaps ask yourself why you are so insistant of your speculation that PTSD is currently over-diagnosed. You might come up with an interesting answer.

Click to expand...

Bright, I'm not sure what you mean by that. I love research. I am a mental health advocate. I have a mental illness and interact with many mentally ill people. I like to try to understand the workings of the mind. What's an old 47 year old woman to do? I enjoy the research. 8)

bright23 said:

My brother's death was a suicide. Does that make it more awful than Cesart's loss? I don't think so. The entire concept that "that's worse, THAT's worser, and THAT's the WORSTEST!" is illogical, flawed and leads to misunderstandings between people. I don't think its healthy to compare trauma this way.

Click to expand...

There is no competition here between a worse trauma than a lesser trauma. That's not what I'm saying and it's not what the DSM is saying. A heart attack is no less serious than a stroke, but when the patient comes into the ER in a coma, a doctor needs to know what happened. Heart failure or stroke? Then the proper treatment can be given.

I'm very sorry about your brother. My closest friend committed suicide last year... well... it was around this time last year that she was "finalizing her life plans".

It's very difficult for me to deal with. I am attending a focused Survivors of Suicide group for this. Her one year death will be 12/15.

I am simply saying there is a difference between death and catastrophe and the human mind deals with it differently. But everything is on a spectrum, and of course everyone is unique... have a look at my signature! 8) I keep stressing that.

I have been on this board and on the DP Board before this one. PTSD seems to come up more often as a diagnosis. Frequently people self-diagnose and say they have PTSD. Like sebastian, I wanted to look it up for myself to see what the difference was ... if I recalled it correctly.

Our suffering is not a competiton. Not at all. I'm glad cesart is also open to hearing different points of view. I'm not making it a competition. I'm simply expressing my understanding of the difference between PTSD and what is now called Acute Stress Disorder.

Folks know me here as the research maven and the biological reductionist. Many things made me that way in my life. It's who I am. No harm intended.

I don't know what your implying in your first statement. Can you clarify?
I don't have PTSD. I have GAD/Boderline/DP/DR and have since I was a kid. Long boring story. No one has diagnosed me as PTSD in all those years. I can't identify with the diagnosis myself.

And as I mentioned briefly, I attended a PTSD meeting at a NAMI convention. It was packed full of war veterans at the time. None of them knew what I was talking about when I described DP/DR. And their experiences and symptoms were very different from mine, and from reading the board, from many here.

I can't diagnose anyone here, I am just thinking out loud. I'm sorry if I offended anyone.

Best,
D

Okay, but if you examine the words post (after) traumatic stress(terrifying) disorder (dysfunction) it seems they could be applied to growing up in disfunctional homes OR going through a war. I have read that people who were close and dependant on someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder come away with ptsd and at first I thought that term shouldn't apply. But I have been thinking about it and I am changing my mind. Growing up with 3 out of 5 family members NPD and never feeling like I mattered to anyone was traumatic. There was no overt abuse, but from my earliest memory I felt alone and unconnected. The dp kicked in at 15, when I realized no one would help me grow into an adult and no one cared about my education, in fact they hated me for wanting one. (so guess who won). I saw one therapist soon after I discovered NPD and she told me she felt sad that I had to grow up missing the feeling that I mattered to someone. I was amazed that she understood and I thought no one could. She said she never felt like that and she was very kind, not arrogant and dismissive. So now, all these years after my childhood is over, I still don't know what it's like to really connect to anyone. I'm recreating the framework of my earliest memories and that's my "reality". The same mechanisms kick in as the ones I used as a child. Am I trying to change it? Yes. I've only known about dp/dr for a few months.