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Undiagnosed Potential ptsd from self inflicted trauma?

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american98

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I just finished my sophomore year in college, going into junior, and am finally accepting that I need to look for external help for what I'm experiencing and that I won't ever be able to heal if I don't tell anyone and keep it bottled up, trying to fix it myself. This experience has completely ruined any attempts I've made at forming healthy relationships, platonic and otherwise, since I forced myself to go through with it, and in the relationship with the one long term significant other/girlfriend I've had since, I didn't think I deserved a relationship and the majority of it was just me telling her I've done an awful thing but not trusting her enough to tell her what it was or let myself actually love her.

Long story short, after my freshman year of college I forced myself to lose my virginity to an escort because I had become consumed by a paranoia that had convinced me that a potential partner would look down on me for being a virgin and not want to engage with me.

This stemmed from the relationship I had with the first and only girl I loved. She had been my best friend since seventh grade and we began to develop a relationship around junior and senior year, but she would always push me away because she was Catholic and didn't want to have sex and was worried I wouldn't want to be with her if I knew that, obviously I never cared. We dated for a while senior year, then she broke up with me Spring Break, once we got to the point in the relationship where she thought I expected her to have sex, I didn't but we weren't good at communicating with each other even though we cared about each other, and deep down I know she loved me too, even if she might deny any feelings today because we were never super public about our relationship. Though I must admit, sometimes the doubt that I'm making up our whole relationship in my head does eat away at my, and in the present she's actively trying to propagate that notion.

But long story short, at the end of senior year in High School, after graduation, she brought me to another room, alone, during the graduation party and told me she didn't want to have sex. I think she expected me to kiss her, but I was a dipshit and after we broke up I got getting more into smoking weed, up to the point where me and my friends decided to do acid. We had done it twice before graduation. I thought I was some enlightened prophet and simply told her I know and hugged her thinking that if I kissed her she'd think I only wanted to have sex with her, I was trying to show her I cared about her as a person.

After graduation we all went to beach week, I didn't want to be there, so did acid everyday, four days in a row, and didn't really actively engage with the festivities. At one point I told her I'd done acid and, whether accurately or not, judged from her reaction that she didn't want to be in a relationship with me because I'd done acid.

This caused me to spiral the rest of the summer, in the month of June I did acid 11 times. Me and my best friend went on a two week roadtrip together where he was the only person I talked to for the entire duration and we tripped together and developed a deep bond, real coming of age story there, to the point I almost convinced myself that I was gay for him because I thought she never cared about me and that he was the only person who ever cared about me. I'd consider him closer than a brother, it almost felt like he was an extension of myself during that time, he had also just broken up with his long term girlfriend, who I was also friends, and she was talking to me a lot about it. I tried to be impartial and not get involved or talk to her too much, but sometimes she would text me about weird/reckless stuff she would do for attention and it low key freaked me out.

All the acid convinced me that there was never anything between me and the girl, so I barely even tried to see her the rest of the summer. My freshman year I lived with one of her best friends, a potentially gay Indian kid, who was also best friends with my best friends ex-girlfriend, and we pledged a fraternity together where one of my other friend's older brother was president.

At one point my best friends ex-girlfriend visited and I tried to be nice to them while they stayed with the person I was living with, but she posted pictures of us on social media together and started a rumor that we had sex to get back at my best friend.

This really hurt in the longterm my relationship with him, and eventually a week before pledging ended I decided I had to drop because I couldn't be trapped with my roommate for four years because he was too close to my ex and my best friend's ex and all I really wanted was some distance from that, but this also had the unintentional side effect of hurting my relationship with my friend who's older brother was president because he thought I dropped because the fraternity didn't have enough parties or wasn't "cool" enough, which wasn't true.

But being forced to live with him for the rest of the year, after he became a brother, caused me to become cut off from the rest of the world because I was constantly surrounded by all my old potential pledge brothers and brothers though they held a disdain and resentment for me, this made it hard for me to develop new relationships freshman year.

After getting back the summer of freshman year, my old ex-girlfriend, who I was still in love with because I had lived with her best friend for a year who was constantly visiting her and talking about her, was in a new relationship where she was having sex and she was constantly throwing jabs at me during the summer about dropping the fraternity and assuming I wasn't having sex and looking down on me for that.

I didn't have sex freshman year because of how things ended between me and her, not only was I consumed by guilt because of what happened but also I didn't trust any potential partners or think they cared about me when they told me they did. Throughout the summer I managed to heal our relationship partially, eventually making her realize that I never cared about sex, but she still just told me it was too late, even if she was nice about it.

This somehow got twisted in my mind to thinking that if she of all people looked down on me for being a virgin all girls would and forcing myself to meticulously plan out sleeping with an escort and actually following through with it. Listening to Mac Miller's The Divine Feminine during the deed, so now whenever I force myself to listen to the album I have flashbacks to the event.

This left me stranded at the beginning of sophomore year, all of my high school friends scattered in the wind, my two closest friends resenting me because of perceived slights, without any infrastructure trying to deal with this new trauma and feeling like this was a secret I had to take to the grave.

Sorry, I didn't think it would be this long, I'll try to wrap it up. I somehow got in a relationship in the fall, mainly because she was the primary instigator, and over Christmas break I kissed my old ex-girlfriend but was too scarred by the experience of having sex with the escort to go any farther, even though she wanted to, and she was weirded out by my reaction.

I tried to have a serious relationship with the girl at college in the spring, but I was never able to openly communicate with her and instead of talking to her about how I felt and what happened, and deep down I wanted still to be with the original girl, I channeled that energy into writing a feature length script about pokémon because that reminded me of my childhood innocence.

In the script the main characters returns after not seeing the person he loved for a long time, darken and changed, eventually revealing his starter pokémon to now be a clone, something a made a methapor for having sex with the escort, both a life threatening mistake, at first the girl rejects him saying she doesn't know him anymore, but eventually accepts him for it and tells him that one mistake doesn't erase a lifetime of good.

That relationship I had with the college girl ended because she thought I didn't actually care about her, she might've thought I was still in love with someone else, and maybe I was or am, I don't know at this point, all I know is that at this point, about to start summer break the only positive I can draw from all this is that at least it made me a good screenwriter, my professor gave me a 99 on my script for the final, unrelated to the pokemon movie but still, under the surface, it was about my relationship between me and the original girl and told me that's the highest grade he's ever given in the class. But I have trouble engaging with society, sleeping, am constantly plagued by negative thoughts and flashbacks to the events and related events, so I don't think it was worth it.

I'm going to abroad to London in the fall, 99% sure I am, and if I do, I can turn everything around then, fix my slipping grades in everything except screenwriting, create new friendships, just move on, but first I have to get in the right mindset before I leave. This is what finally pushed me to look for external help because I feel like as long as I try to fix it myself, whether through writing or whatever, if I don't express the truth of what happened to the real world, I'll feel like I'm living in my own reality separate from everyone else's, unsure whether my reality is real. I hate that I feel like I'm toxic to every relationship I'm apart, whether romantic or not, to the point I'm afraid to start new ones.

I didn't mean for it to go this long, I just wanted to explain myself. TLDR: I forced myself to lose my virginity to an escort and am still haunted by it almost a year later and feel I burned the bridge between me and any of my old friends who would've supported me.

I think this might be PTSD because of the flashbacks I have/trouble sleeping/Avoiding the Mac Miller album because it was what was playing while I was having sex with the escort, and having worst than normal flashbacks when I force myself to listen to it, but I haven't seen anyone to talk or get diagnosed, I'm planning on probably finding a therapist to talk to while I'm home in the summer before I leave for London, but would appreciate any help or insight here.
 
I didn't mean for it to go this long, I just wanted to explain myself. TLDR: I forced myself to lose my virginity to an escort and am still haunted by it almost a year later and feel I burned the bridge between me and any of my old friends who would've supported me.

Nope. That’s called a regret.

People remember regrets, and feel badly about them. That’s how they work.

You can’t get PTSD from consensual sex.

I'm planning on probably finding a therapist to talk to while I'm home in the summer before I leave for London,

I think that’s a very good idea. You clearly have a lot of stuff going on, and someone that could help you work through it would be a very good thing.
 
Hi . I think it might be helpful to tell us what your flashbacks look and feel like? Are you aware of your environment and what else do you see and feel? Would you like to say more about the incident with the escort? I can't see much on that but my brain is overwhelmed.
 
In her defense I think she was only mean to me during the summer of freshman year because she thought I didn't want a relationship with her at the end of high school because she didn't have sense, so I guess in her eyes me dropping the fraternity was me getting what I deserved. She was low key super into me after that summer, but has been cold again after I weirded her out over Christmas, we've only seen each other twice since then, once during Christmas break again and the other during Easter right after my girlfriend broke up with my so my heart wasn't really into hooking up with her, I just wanted to talk.
 
Hi . I think it might be helpful to tell us what your flashbacks look and feel like? Are you aware of y...
Yeah I guess I had finished twice and was there for around two hours, I don't really know how to describe the flashbacks excepts that it feels like I'm reliving the experience even though I now I'm not. Like I had sever flashbacks after I kissed my ex over Christmas break and I couldn't tell you how I was acting in the present because my consciousness was consumed by the memory of the experience.

I feel like I'm rougher during sex than I would've been other wise and treat girls more as objects, like I always excuse my language f*ck them super hard and it takes forever for me to finish because I associate sex with the negative experience and have to force myself not to focus on that while I have sex, which is great for my partners I guess lol.

I'm not trying to brag because I don't take pride in this, but nearly every girl I've been with since has told me I'm the best they ever had and even the escort herself told me afterwards that "I had a good dick" but I can never make eye contact with them when they tell me this and feel super guilty. All I want at this point is a relationship with soft, intimate sex where I feel like I have an actual emotional connection with my partner and that she cares about me, I feel weird about being rough/hard but all my partners have liked having sex with me better when I do it like that so that's how I do it.
 
Nope. That’s called a regret.

People remember regrets, and feel badly about them. That’s how they...
I'm sorry but the amount of flashback and associations I have with this experience go past regret, while technically consensual, I feel like having to pay and the whole ordeal that went along with it along with the experience afterwards and feeling completely isolated/alone away cut off from my friends and feeling like I have a deep secret caused it to develop into something more. PTSD stems from a traumatic experience and that's the only thing I can find that matches close to the symptoms I've been having and it might not be traumatic for other people to have sex with escorts but for me and my relatively normal life leading up to it it was.
 
Hi,
I think it would be wise to see a therapist. Ptsd is different to what you are describing but it has had an impact on you. Different experiences, different effects, different conditions and treatments.
 
It would be a good idea to abstain from illegal recreational drug use while in a foreign country....
I would agree except for the flashbacks I have to the experience and how it has affected my ever day life to the point where I feel unable to accurately express my thoughts/experience out of fear of being ridiculed or judged for choosing to do that. With the flashbacks either it feels like I'm mentally reliving them if I'm physically engaged, or, if I'm mentally engaged, it sometimes feels like my body is reliving the experience/going through the motions of the encounter even if I'm standing still. It's nearly impossible for me to engage with my peers in the present moment.
 
Sorry for the long post I was just trying to explain why I would feel like I had to do that because I think a lot of the stress/negative energy from the experience has come from the events that lead to it and now my mind just focuses all of it onto that moment. I can't really describe what happened, but I felt something change when I had sex with her, it was like I was falling out of reality. The only things I can narrow it down to are PTSD or dissociative identity disorder with the flashbacks/nightmares and the avoidance of things I associate to it, Divine Feminine and this TV show, disjointed, which is a really shitty show btw I do not recommend it, I binge watched alone after it happened have me leaning towards PTSD.
 
I'm sorry but the amount of flashback and associations I have with this experience go past regret
Then you have led a very charmed life up until this point. Regret, like grief, can be one of the most profound things out there.

PTSD stems from a traumatic experience
Very specific traumatic experience.

Criterion A: stressor

The person was exposed to: death, threatened death, actual or threatened serious injury, or actual or threatened sexual violence, as follows: (one required)

  1. Direct exposure.
  2. Witnessing, in person.
  3. Indirectly, by learning that a close relative or close friend was exposed to trauma. If the event involved actual or threatened death, it must have been violent or accidental.
  4. Repeated or extreme indirect exposure to aversive details of the event(s), usually in the course of professional duties (e.g., first responders, collecting body parts; professionals repeatedly exposed to details of child abuse). This does not include indirect non-professional exposure through electronic media, television, movies, or pictures.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0890425558/?tag=ap0f5b-20
only thing I can find that matches close to the symptoms
Every single symptom of PTSD is found in other disorders. The unique part of PTSD is the specific kind of trauma that causes those symptoms. Not the symptoms themselves.
afterwards and feeling completely isolated/alone away cut off from my friends and feeling like I have a deep secret caused it to develop into something more.
Very well may have done. That it won’t be PTSD, doesn’t mean everything is all good.

Even from criterionA trauma, say a bomb went off in your dorm killing half the people there, only about 1:5 would develop PTSD from it. The other 4:5? Could have a HUGE range of resulting issues.

Mixing in tripping, ending/changing relationships, transitioning into a new period of time in your life... you have a whole lot of stuff going on.

It’s like going into the ER because you think your leg is broken, and finding out it’s not, but you have bone cancer. Just because your leg isn’t broken? Doesn’t. Mean. You’re. Perfectly. Fine.
 
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