Hello. I am a woman in my late 20s who went through a lot traumatic abuse when I was growing up. I can't even remember all of my years but what I do remember is bad. I had my first major breakdown when I was 15, and I was diagnosed with depression, given zoloft and sent home. Since then I have been to multiple therapists and psychiatrists and it's like nobody wants to diagnose PTSD.
I don't really care about the label itself, but I want to make sure I get treatment that actually works, and when professionals try to label me with everything but PTSD, my treatments go all over the place, as well. Been through depression, generalized anxiety, bipolar, schizoaffective and the latest thought I had dissociative identity disorder despite me not having multiple personality states. With that last one I was glad the trauma was at least acknowledged, but I wasn't about to fake having DID to get treatment, and I had to quit seeing her because it was like she was pressuring me to act like I had it.
SO the treatments have included anti-depressants, benzos, anti-psychotics and talk therapy (where I was just supposed to talk about whatever I wanted for an hour, and that was it). One therapist years ago who said I had bipolar disorder suggested we try EMDR (yes EMDR for BP, seriously, thinking back on it makes me so mad, why not just diagnose me correctly, what the heck is the deal??). Well I didn't know it at the time, had never heard of EMDR before, but apparently you're supposed to learn important things like grounding and so on before attempting stuff like that. We did none of that and she just went for throat with the theme of the EMDR exercise, I had a massive panic/rage attack, was messed up for over a week and never went back.
The symptoms I DO have are all in line with PTSD. I'm not sure what the trigger policy here is, so I won't go into details without knowing for sure what would be considered too much, but I am tired of being drugged for illnesses I don't have with drugs that don't help, or expected to magically recover by just talking about things for an hour once per week. It's so stupidly frustrating.
The last psychiatrist I saw, by that time it had occurred to me that maybe they are worried I am trying to get disability benefits, so I made sure to state upfront that my goal is to get stable and normal enough to work again, and that I don't care about what any papers say, I don't need the label on a paper, I just want to be understood and treated properly. The psychiatrist prescribed me olanzapine, even after I explained that my "hallucinations" and paranoia are not typical in that I retain insight and know things are not real, but they still affect and scare me half to death, and that I had been on Seroquel in the past and it hadn't helped at all with anxiety and other symptoms, had just made me sleep 20 hours a day and made my anxiety and other symptoms worse.
So what I am trying to find out now is what treatment methods have been the most effective for people who have PTSD, and then how to get those treatments without needing a label.
If anyone has any information/advice to share, I would really appreciate it.
I don't really care about the label itself, but I want to make sure I get treatment that actually works, and when professionals try to label me with everything but PTSD, my treatments go all over the place, as well. Been through depression, generalized anxiety, bipolar, schizoaffective and the latest thought I had dissociative identity disorder despite me not having multiple personality states. With that last one I was glad the trauma was at least acknowledged, but I wasn't about to fake having DID to get treatment, and I had to quit seeing her because it was like she was pressuring me to act like I had it.
SO the treatments have included anti-depressants, benzos, anti-psychotics and talk therapy (where I was just supposed to talk about whatever I wanted for an hour, and that was it). One therapist years ago who said I had bipolar disorder suggested we try EMDR (yes EMDR for BP, seriously, thinking back on it makes me so mad, why not just diagnose me correctly, what the heck is the deal??). Well I didn't know it at the time, had never heard of EMDR before, but apparently you're supposed to learn important things like grounding and so on before attempting stuff like that. We did none of that and she just went for throat with the theme of the EMDR exercise, I had a massive panic/rage attack, was messed up for over a week and never went back.
The symptoms I DO have are all in line with PTSD. I'm not sure what the trigger policy here is, so I won't go into details without knowing for sure what would be considered too much, but I am tired of being drugged for illnesses I don't have with drugs that don't help, or expected to magically recover by just talking about things for an hour once per week. It's so stupidly frustrating.
The last psychiatrist I saw, by that time it had occurred to me that maybe they are worried I am trying to get disability benefits, so I made sure to state upfront that my goal is to get stable and normal enough to work again, and that I don't care about what any papers say, I don't need the label on a paper, I just want to be understood and treated properly. The psychiatrist prescribed me olanzapine, even after I explained that my "hallucinations" and paranoia are not typical in that I retain insight and know things are not real, but they still affect and scare me half to death, and that I had been on Seroquel in the past and it hadn't helped at all with anxiety and other symptoms, had just made me sleep 20 hours a day and made my anxiety and other symptoms worse.
So what I am trying to find out now is what treatment methods have been the most effective for people who have PTSD, and then how to get those treatments without needing a label.
If anyone has any information/advice to share, I would really appreciate it.