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Complicated case of ptsd

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@0101, you cannot bend a diagnosis to fit a situation. You cannot bend PTSD to fit the symptoms. There are plenty of other things this poster can have that have cross over symptoms with PTSD. And they all were listed. NO ONE is saying this poster's SYMPTOMS are not vaild. Why do they have to add up to PTSD to be vaild? What about the handful of other disgnosis this COULD fit into?

Just because it is not possible to be PTSD does not make the suffering or the symptoms less. And this bending to fit PTSD makes no sense to me. I faught my diagnosis for months because there was no way in my head that my trauma was near as bad as going to war. I got so pissed at my therapist and screamed at him because there was no way I had PTSD and here are people fighting for it. Why? What is the pay off of having PTSD? It is life long. Not having PTSD is a GOOD THING.

No joke, a cousin of mine had nightmares and flashbacks and therapy for MONTHS for ptsd from having a spider in her ear. I'm not even kidding. She really did have PTSD from a perceived threat of death thinking the spider was laying eggs that were hatching inside her head and potentially permanently harming her brain. The spider was real but the threat of death was not. But she was absolutely traumatized by this.

Miss diagnosis. That does not fit criteria A. Unless it was a poisiness spider. Which it could have been. But that is stretching it if you ask me.

Go on a sex assault forum. It's full of teenagers feeling manipulated and used but they admit they weren't held down or forced

Sexual assult (sex without consent) fits criteria A, forced or not, violent or not.

However, the definition of assualt is to make a physical attack on.
 
@0101, you cannot bend a diagnosis to fit a situation. You cannot bend PT...

I kept on this threat because I had a strong sense you were one of the purists that couldn't tolerate the PTSD label unless it was "justified" and "as extreme as war." These thoughts come from shame and in a sense you are shaming others the same way you shamed yourself.

Your emotional response to this is a projection of your own issues and not based on reality.

If this trauma is less than yours in your mind but still gets a PTSD label, it doesn't make your experience less valid.
 
These thoughts come from shame and in a sense you are shaming others the same way you shamed yourself.

What?

Your emotional response to this is a projection of your own issues and not based on reality.

It's based on the DSM. That's not reality? There is no emotional anything in this. You are implying something that isn't there.

If this trauma is less than yours in your mind but still gets a PTSD label, it doesn't make your experience less valid.

Yes, I am aware, but thank you.

But, if this trauma gets a PTSD label, it is a misdiagnosis as it is in the DSM (the manual in the US where all mental health diagnosis are diagnosed from) it says drugs cannot be involved and it must have to be a thing that happened, not a believed perceived thing.

You went completely around my questions:

There are plenty of other things this poster can have that have cross over symptoms with PTSD. And they all were listed. NO ONE is saying this poster's SYMPTOMS are not vaild. Why do they have to add up to PTSD to be vaild? What about the handful of other disgnosis this COULD fit into?
 
Is the DSM right? It doesn't matter.
Yes, it does matter. If one wants to heal. Or not die. While people are having freaking intellectual arguments about whether I 'could or could not' experience something that was absolutely (and medically validated) happening to me at the time.

I lived through that stage when a previous DSM insisted that catatonia could not exist without psychosis. Guess what? Years later they say 'oooops, soooorrrryyy, my bad. You can have catatonia without a psychosis diagnosis'.

In the meanwhile, if I had accepted their diagnosis, I would have been on entirely the wrong set of meds (anti psychotics).

Honestly, just because something is believed today, or 10 or 40 years ago, doesn't mean it is true. And people are at risk, lives are ruined, or they die while people are arguing about this stuff.

You do recall that they used to shoot soldiers for having PTSD? My uncle was in an insane asylum for most of his adult life because of what the DSM said was standard at the time for people 'like us'. I think it might have mattered to them and their families, in hindsight, that the DSM had it wrong.
 
And people are at risk, lives are ruined, or they die while people are arguing about this stuff.

Yes, but, do you not go through and check off any possible disorders that could fit better and that your symptoms could fit into, in the DSM, today, first?

What I am seeing here is a given list of disorders this could be that have PTSD cross over symptoms, but those ignored and PTSD is fixated on then bent all which ways to try to make it fit.

Before one fights for a disorder (which you know I get ) one must go and check any other possible answers first.
 
You're right, @shimmerz, in the big picture. I think what I meant to say is, there's a diagnostic manual, and it is never perfect - it can't be, because so much is unknown.

But, it's also the structure that exists.

And when one does have a set of symptoms and a background that all point to a decently accurate label (diagnosis), it's a good thing to pursue the path that goes with that.

When your experience doesn't match what that manual has to offer - it doesn't mean you aren't having the problems you are having.

But it doesn't really mean anything to insist that the manual is wrong. That's a dead end; even if you are proved right, decades later.

In the here and now, figuring out how to get your symptoms addressed, and ideally getting a clinician who has a broad enough knowledge base to keep searching for whether there IS a label yet for what you have...that's more productive, if it's possible.

Otherwise said: I think one is better off remaining undiagnosed, if there isn't an accurate diagnosis available, instead of trying to argue that the book is just altogether wrong.

It's super-shitty to be in those rare percentages of people with very complex symptomology, like you had, and to not have the opportunity to be working with a doctor who was really capable of understanding, and being up to speed enough to know where the research was moving at the time.

So I hope I don't sound like I'm invalidating your experience.

My only point is always to consider all the possibilities available.

Like in the OPs case - they (doctors) don't completely understand the relatively rare reaction that medication caused.

Just deciding it must be PTSD will stop all other lines of inquiry. No other possibilities will be considered. And so long as meds are excluded from the diagnosis, that really doesn't mean meds aren't taken seriously - it's kind of the opposite; it means there isn't an answer, which means more needs to be looked at.

When it fits, it fits. When it doesn't, one can and should keep looking. I think that's a frustrating thing, yes, but also can be empowering.
 
My only point is always to consider all the possibilities available.
Yes. I agree with this.

I think one of those possibilities is that there is built into the DSM, room for adjustment with these labels when someone doesn't fall entirely in the box. Sort of like an NOS designation, as in DDNOS. Recognizing that the DSM is a live document (so to speak) which by the nature of our limited understanding of the brain, is meant to evolve along with new tools developed to aid in our knowledge of how things can go wrong and how to categorize those things.

I believe with each revision, it should be acknowledged that no version of the DSM has ever, nor most likely will never, be able to be capture absolutes in this area. And although I understand why it is important here in management of this site, I also feel as if it is detrimental to those who have yet to tap into past memories that may be at the root of a seemingly inconsequential rekindling event.

Anyway, just my 2 cents. I didn't want to derail, but did want to weigh in.
 
What I am seeing here is a given list of disorders this could be that have PTSD cross over symptoms,
Perhaps, but we also don't know exactly what was said during the meeting with the doctor. Or whether the doctor saw the patient dissociating. Or that the doctor knows more about the OP's history than we do. Or whatever. We weren't there.

I am not certain that we should be telling anyone over the internet that their doctor is wrong. Perhaps suggesting a second opinion would be good enough.
 
@0101 - I used the phrase sexual violence, but that doesn't mean "sex that includes physical violence". Sexual violence may or may not include physically violent behaviour.

There also seems to be the perception in your threads that if someone has a response to an event, it's either PTSD or nothing. Which is not the case.

In my mind, psychological suffering is what it is. We use all sorts of different diagnostic labels. PTSD is one of those labels. A person may have an experience that doesn't meet the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. That doesn't mean their suffering is less than mine, or less valid than mine. All it means is that, diagnostically, their suffering is better described by different diagnostic label.
 
Are you of the belief that unless a rape/sexual assault was violent, it cannot cause PTSD?[/QUOTE...
Not at all. I'm arguing the opposite. I'm trying to get the purists to STFU about shaming people for saying they have PTSD. People get PTSD for non-life threatening things. If they perceive their world is in danger in some form or are very frightened for even illogical reasons, they can develop PTSD.
 
So in summary, you all are stating that the perceived threat of death doesn't cause PTSD
No, that is not what I've said. You need to re-read what I have said, and others.

You are trying to put words in my mouth, and honestly, you're starting to piss me off.

A perceived threat of death causing PTSD is ONLY relevant when their is an ACTUAL threat due to an actual TRAUMATIC event occurring at THAT time.

You are trying to broad brush the use of perceived threat, as though it applies to EVERY case of perception. Again, you are trying to elude with your broad brush that if I lay in bed and think a plane could fall on my head and I will die, that that is sufficient for PTSD diagnosis without any actual threat, i.e. a plane exploded overhead nearby and fell on houses and killed people around me.

Are you trying to piss me off?
 
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