Meds wouldn't tell you you're safe. Would just be a relief from the severity of symptoms.
This. So much this.
I don't want meds that are going to tell me I'm safe. I'm not safe. I just need to be able to function while knowing I'm unsafe. lol.
I'm really sorry for whatever happened to you. :( I'm glad you have such a good doc!
Likewise for what happened to you. Nobody deserves to have trauma. Okay, maybe the people who contributed to me having PTSD, and anyone like them.
She is a great pdoc. She works with me on meds, she likes that I'm really cautious about taking anything, that I always research meds myself before ever taking them, that I play a really active role in my own care, as far as the meds are concerned. She's been very helpful in helping me figure out which meds are a good fit for me, and suggesting ones that I'd probably be more okay with taking.
I take multiple medications to help me with anxiety, depersonalization, derealization, dissociation in general, sleep, ugh just so many f*cking medications. But, they help - and they still aren't enough to make me feel safe out at night. I felt pretty f*cking unsafe out tonight and it was only 10pm! They don't make me feel safe in the day either. Or like, ever. I don't think there is a drug for making you feel safe, when you have PTSD. Maybe I'm wrong. But so far nothing I've tried has made me immune from feeling unsafe.
What they do though, is help me handle those unsafe feeling situations - whether or not they are situations where I should be feeling unsafe. The middle of a grocery store, at noon, on a Sunday? Full of people, but I -should- feel safe. They all feel safe, and the odds of being attacked with so many damn witnesses and people to help you or call for help etc., in a place with f*ckin' cameras and security with a gun, and additional security, and blah blah blah - I should feel safe there and then, but I don't. I feel super unsafe around people, but like, hyper-unsafe around night people, like the people you'd see in a gas station at 1:30 AM. (guess why my pdoc was telling me to not go out at night)
The meds help me handle it and not freak out outwardly. Propranolol is a beta blocker, kinda takes away a lot of the physical symptoms of anxiety and panic. So I can be in the midst of a panic attack where I feel like I'm gonna die or go insane or some shit, heavy 10/10 panic attack, and only have 90's bpm heart rate, instead of 170 bpm. It keeps my hands from shaking too bad, unless I am heavily hit with anxiety or panic, but out doing shit, or being startled, doesn't make my hands shake on propranolol. They just shake a whole lot less. There's less of the anxiety chest pain and the adrenaline feeling isn't as strong. It's a great med for helping you stay -functional- while being anxious or hypervigilant or panicky or what not.
I also use diazepam, 2-6mg, depending on what's making me need it. I can still feel panicky on that. I've been on 1mg xanax prior to a genital exam. It did NOT prevent me from feeling anxious, or like something horrible was gonna happen, or like wanting to throw up in the trash can in the waiting room, it just toned it down to a point where I -could- even do the f*ckin' exam, and dissociation came in and saved the day during the exam. Xanax really helped in that it made my memory of the whole thing feel very fuzzy, so I reacted less to it than I did to a subsequent, simpler exam, where I only used 2mg diazepam and 10mg propranolol, because I figured I could handle it. NOPE. The propranolol helped. The diazepam was fully overridden at least as far as I could tell, during the exam. I also felt horrible after and was curled in a ball groaning and crying, feeling disgusting and just... yeah it was horrible.
Anyway, even benzos, in doses much stronger than what I'm used to, don't make things stop feeling unsafe for me. It just turns down the knob - though the effects like sluggishness, clumsiness, feeling sedated and foggy, being basically intoxicated - that makes it more unsafe to be outside. But in very small amounts, like 2mg diazepam, you can go outside and not be impaired to the point you can't function properly, but have a small tiny bit of help with your anxiety and panic while outside.
I'm on naltrexone for depersonalizaton, derealization, dissociative shit. The D's. Lol. It's an opioid receptor antagonist - basically makes it so opioids, from either external (opiates) or internal (endorphins and such) sources. It works wonders. Seriously, miracle drug for me - but it's also scary as f*ck because with a much higher bar for dissociative events to happen, I have to actually deal with my anxiety and panic and memories and hypervigilance and everything without dissociation to rescue me from it. Even then, sometimes my body's chemicals seem to get high enough to override the naltrexone. When I was in the gas station at 1:30 AM I began to feel extremely anxious, and then heavy depersonalization hit, like, I-have-no-control-over-my-body type of depersonalization, where my body is doing things and I feel like I have no control over it and am just spectating, not experiencing it myself. Hard to describe. The drug comes with some minor side effects, and if I ever get hurt badly I'm gonna have to deal with it without opiates because they won't work, and it's risky to override the blockade of opioid receptors. All the other negative side effects have been getting better with time. One downside/upside: it takes all the fun out of alcohol.
Anyway. Huge post but - consider taking meds for your problems. You can take ones that help you handle feeling unsafe, without taking away the fact you feel unsafe.
