Does PTSD Really Mean Injustice

[Jestadud]

This is something I've been struggling to come to term's with "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder".
When diagnosed I had a real problem accepting the wording, although I couldn't deny the symptons. (I had to change it to pre rather than post.)

Since being on this site I've come to realise there are other's like me who feel guilty at being diagnosed with this problem, we are not veterans or victims and we feel unworthy. We feel like frauds and cheats or as in my case "just a dud".

Maybe it's because it's late and I've had a drink, but I thought I found a link and it's the feeling of injustice, even perceived injustice.

Jesta

 

[patrick]

Hi Jesta,

I'm not sure what it is. I am a war veteran and I feel unworthy, like a fraud and a cheat for having PTSD. There are lots of folks who went through way more than I did. On top of that, if I have PTSD from the little dab of shit I went through, I must be a real sissy. I think the guilt and shame accomplish two things. First, it gives us a way to deny we have this problem, and secondly, once we do admit to PTSD it lets us minimize it - to think it couldn't possibly be that bad.

Until just the last couple of weeks, I was thinking that PTSD is just a lightweight mental problem, that probably everybody has it to some extent, and that I should just buck up and stop obsessing on it. It's no big deal - just get on with life and forget it. When I ended up on a psych ward last week, for the first time in my life, I started taking this thing a little more seriously.

I don't know if there is any way to get over the "feeling like a fraud" thing, but I do know that whatever PTSD is, it can kill me if I'm not serious about it. The trauma that causes it is not important, it's the symptoms and learning to live with them that matter. I really hope you're not like me, and that you do take it seriously.

Pat

 

[Deleted member 541]

You need to stop comparing trauma/s of others, to yourself. Trauma is trauma! What is traumatic to one, may or may not create PTSD in another.

Whatever it was that you experienced, was enough to give you PTSD. So you are NOT a fraud. Except it, and work through your trauma and find relief.. It's better to do this, than waste your time and energy on feelings that are not of benefit to you.....

 

[Claire]

I have this too. I feel deep guilt and shame. I have also been through a stage when I was telling myself I must be making it all up and it wasn't real at all.

People say its harder for blokes to admit it too but I'm not sure about that. I think it depends on your background and the people around you too.

The only way I can accept it is by thinking of it in physical terms eg. I used to be able to run a marathon but I cant right now. I'm not trained, not fit. So I could just complain, sit around, keep trying to run 26.2 miles and failing OR I can accept that I'm not as fit as I was then. I can just settle for that or I can do something about it.

 

[Irton Pike]

Oooooh! shame and guilt! They lead to you denying the problem for years! And the only person who suffers is your good self. This is about denial isn't it? I felt for years that I hadn't "earned" PTSD because I hadn't been shot at or blown up in the army or I was wasn't in a plane crash or a train srash and it was me being weak that gave me the problem. In short, I bullied myself. I had no compassion for myself, though bizarrely i did have it for others.


Unfortunately, I have found that there are plenty of people in the world who will back up this point of view because they are bullies.

I think the way through this begins with compassion for yourself. Imagine you are talking to a freind who is in your shoes. Imagine the kind things you would say to your freind. Now say it to yourself.

Claire is bang on the money with the marathon analogy. You can't get up and run when you are broken. It takes time and patience and kindness for yourself to get back to some sort of functioning. It will pass.

BTW Claire, I joined my local running club after christmas and I am runnning loads. Feel really great! Mioght see about a marathon in autumn but will be getting some halfs in before then.

 

[Marlene]

I was thinking that PTSD is just a lightweight mental problem, that probably everybody has it to some extent, and that I should just buck up and stop obsessing on it. It's no big deal - just get on with life and forget it.

This particular line of thought is one that I've beaten myself up with many, many times. I still do sometimes. It's an easy place to slip back into.

One thing I've found since I've begun to open myself up a tiny, little bit to friends about my past...there's a lot of people out there who didn't grow up like I did. For the longest time I just figured that everyone did. Maybe that was part of my rationalizing my screwed up family. Because if everyone's screwed up then I'm normal.

I'm starting to come to realization that it's not a lightweight mental problem. I've lived with it so long and it's so much a part of me that I don't see it as such a seperate part or a problem. I'm me and this is how I've always been. Sometimes I feel guilt and like such a sham and a fraud for wasting my therapist's time with something that's no big deal. It's just me being me. And of course I'm just making such a big deal over what happened. It wasn't that bad because I'm still here.

Wow...pretty twisted thinking there.

Lisa

 

[Jestadud]

Thanks for responding everyone. I feel I haven't explained very well the point I want to discuss.
I'm not looking for sympathy for myself or any other, but thanks for caring anyway.
What I was thinking about was what is a common link between all who have the symptoms of PTSD.
When you see my trauma, your trauma, multiple trauma's what exactly is the trauma?
Is it an event (something that happened) or is it a feeling of injustice or lack of justice.

For example

Event.
If something bad happens to a child does that child just think it's nasty, horrible and I don't want it to happen again.

Feeling of injustice.
Then years later as an adult recalling the event, realising that what happened shouldn't have and they should have been protected or someone should have been punished.

Which puts the T in PTSD?

Jesta

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Jesta,

Your scenario describes me...I had something bad happen to me when I was only 4...I never forgot, but for over 25 years I thought that the memory never bothered me. I was wrong.

Doctors say that I've been suffering from PTSD symptoms for years, its just that I wasn't correctly diagnosed until I had something happen to me which was triggering enough to make that memory suddenly so horrible.

Sometimes I think that if the recent event never happened to trigger me, that I would still be OK...that my PTSD wouldn't have blown up in my face and made my life a living hell these last 5 months. But I know I'm wrong. I was just a ticking time bomb waiting to go off...it was just a matter of time before something triggered me, making things so much worse.

So for me, I know its the actual event that caused my PTSD. I don't have any feelings of injustice...I'm not even mad at my perp. I am not mad at my parents for putting me in the hands of someone who hurt me. I am just happy to know that I finally have a correct Dx because now I can work towards finally getting better. I have been misdiagnosed with every mental disorder under the sun, starting at the age of 16, so for me, simply knowing that I have PTSD has given me hope...and relief.

 

[goingonhope]

Hello Jestadud,

If you don't want T to equal traumatic, well perhaps let's say it equals:

T ...for... Terror
This is going to kill me.
This is killing me.
I am dead.

T ...for... Torment
I can't live this way.
I do live this way.
Where am I? What has become of me?
I am dying.

T ...for... Trapped
I am f'n stuck.
I must get away.
I can't get away.
What will become of me?
I am witnessing my own destruction and death, before my eyes.
I can't escape.
I will die!

T ...for... Totaled
This is f'n real!
God, make this go away!
Begging: Oh' my God, please God make this: (trauma event) and/or (symptoms) stop happening!

T ...for... Tortured
I will make do with this.
I will survive.
..A time for disassociation.
..A time for continuing denials.
..A time to toughen-up.

T ...for... Thought
What's happening?
What happened?
What the fck was that really about?
What's this?
Who are you?
Who am I?
Who or what is going to help me save my arse?
Who am I, now?
Whom and/or what's important to me?


Jestadud, This might not mean a whole lot to those who read it, but it's what your thread here has rapidly brought to the surface for me, so I figured I'll share it, bc it makes all the sense in the world to me.

Also, I looked up the word injustice in the dictionary and it reads:

Injustice: unfair treatment: unfair or unjust treatment of somebody, or an instance of this. Source: Encarta ® World English Dictionary


Seeing that traumatic is traumatic and ptsd is ptsd no matter how it's disected or sliced,

...Sure why not, one could say that both trauma and ptsd are injustices.

While others may be daily thinking: 'This all is so horribly unfair and unjust,'

but neither IMO, really reaches the attitude of a post traumatic, .....new, abrupt often strange, and too frequently agonizing reality that simply did not exist pre-traumatic injustice.

And certainly whether it's called injustice, ie. 'I was just bent over pulling the weeds from my yard when a car swirved off the road and ran me over.' ......Or, called traumatic, or whatever it's called, it's symptoms are to f'n ..Real Or Unreal.. !!!

...if one is so inclined not to trust ptsd sufferers if asked if this is so, then ask anyone of the spouses, children, mother's, fathers, siblings, or carer's and many are capable of being quite helpful in expressing just how f'n devastating Ptsd can be and can even progress to when left untreated.

 

[Claire]

I understand the question but I find it hard to answer. I think its the injustice for me. But you cant have that without the trauma. The thing that actually causes the PTSD is the initial trauma. You've got me thinking now! Its all mixed up together.

I had a car crash. I could have been killed. I was angry that someone could do that with my life. Be so careless with it. So that's the injustice you talk about isn't it?

 

[dust]

Since working on my PTSD I have been thinking about justice a lot more. Not the kind of personal revenge type of justice, but about how to use my experiences and insights positively, and see myself in relation to a wider picture of human rights.

Like ScaredOfLonely, I spent many years not being able to feel anything about the people that abused me. Now I can, it hurts, but it is good to feel and feeling is part of the healing process.

My identity was shaped by injustice and sometimes that thought gets to me; how could those people live with themselves after what they did? How could they do that?

The answer is that they are probably not even aware of the debilitating effects of trauma and will never acknowledge their actions. It's very painful to live with these thoughts... Those people not only violated my rights, they also refuse to acknowledge it.

On good days my traumas allow me to see the pain in the injustices that other people suffer and I see how we are all linked by that. There is some consolidation there.

I guess I am trying to say that my experiences mean I identify with the term 'survivor' and with people around the world who are also survivors. I feel that justice is something to fight for, and while I am facing the injustices of my past, there are big injustices occurring on a daily basis and they are happening in the present. I find that responding to and fighting injustice in the present, helps me to feel less helpless about the injustices in the past.

 

[cragger65]

I feel deep guilt and shame. I have also been through a stage when I was telling myself I must be making it all up and it wasn't real at all.

Claire, I can relate so much. For years I have told myself "I'm making it all up", and I think this was magnified 10-fold because I had people hanging over me telling me exactly this. Compassion for self seems a dicey hit-and-miss business when we can't even acknowledge our own stories.