PTSD hallucinations

[Sydniej]

I was diagnosed with PTSD about a year ago from childhood trauma. Over the last six months I have been having minor Hallucinations wether it’s hearing a voice behind me and spinning around to see nothing, or sounds will get distorted like the level of noise on a tv will get loud and scare me. I always flinch seeing somebody standing next to me but nobody’s there or recently a black dog in the daylight ran up to me and I could of sworn it was a man and put my hands up in defense everyone in the room looked at me. Has anyone experienced this?

 

[internal]

i experience this but it is not from ptsd. get yourself checked by a psych. it could be psychotic symptoms (which ptsd can cause but it is not that common), which you want to get under control pretty fast

because of they can spiral out real quick, real quick. mine go delusional as well-so you also want to make sure that is not a feature.

and that is when it gets dangerous because i stop understanding logic properly and i can't take care of my self properly. i could hurt myself or some one else and not realize what i'm doing-believe i am totally rational but i'm not.

or it could be something else entirely. a comorbid mental illness, a medicine you are taking, what have you. you definitely need to see a professional-hearing voices is not normal with ptsd. it happens, but you want to rule out other things as well.

 

[Sydniej]

I think I’m fine right now just something I have been noticing happening pretty often. I have a good support system who would tell me if something was wrong and I’m pretty good about getting help when I need it. It’s not so much voices as it’s auditory distortions. Thank you for your feedback!

 

[Sideways]

I have a lot of flashbacks.

I've only ever hallucinated the once, because of medication issues, which my pdoc resolved for me quick smart.

Definitely a good idea to run it by your doc.

 

[Friday]

Flashbacks are an easy thing to mistake for hallucinations, because one is literally reliving an event. Whether it’s seeing something, hearing something, smelling something, tasting, feeling, either singly or in any possible combination.

Similarly, one of the problems with hypervig is responding to a totally normal thing happening… as if it’s an entirely different thing. You don’t even want to know how many times I have mistaken a shifting piece of gravel on a rooftop, or sudden movement (both caused by birds) as a sniper. Or an trash blowing under a car, or this, or that, or the other: as wildly different things than they actually are.

Because my brain is filling in the gaps with what it expects to see… based off of incomplete information. Which is exactly what it’s supposed to do. (That’s how we still see clearly whilst blinking, and there’s color in our peripheral vision when we don’t actually have color receptors in the corners of our eyes, it’s all black and white, and see the landscape as smooth when we’re walking/running, etc.). What it’s NOT supposed to do is reach back 20 years for what to fill in the gaps with.

But when I’m eyeballs deep in hypervig? Everything is POPPING / setting off internal alarms for danger? That’s exactly what’s happening. It’s filling in the gaps with what it expected to see… 20 years ago. What it probably would be seeing 20 years ago. What it is absolutely NOT seeing… now.
>.< Arrrgh. Vexing. And? Another very easy thing to mistake for hallucinations.

Keep in mind.. I’m not saying you are not hallucinating. You may very well be. It’s just an important thing to know, when PTSD is in the mix, that it might be stuff from the past resurfacing, instead.

 

[Ireusa]

Flashbacks are an easy thing to mistake for hallucinations, because one is literally reliving an event. Whether it’s seeing something, hearing something, smelling something, tasting, feeling, either singly or in any possible combination.

Similarly, one of the problems with hypervig is responding to a totally normal thing happening… as if it’s an entirely different thing. You don’t even want to know how many times I have mistaken a shifting piece of gravel on a rooftop, or sudden movement (both caused by birds) as a sniper. Or an trash blowing under a car, or this, or that, or the other: as wildly different things than they actually are.

Because my brain is filling in the gaps with what it expects to see… based off of incomplete information. Which is exactly what it’s supposed to do. (That’s how we still see clearly whilst blinking, and there’s color in our peripheral vision when we don’t actually have color receptors in the corners of our eyes, it’s all black and white, and see the landscape as smooth when we’re walking/running, etc.). What it’s NOT supposed to do is reach back 20 years for what to fill in the gaps with.

But when I’m eyeballs deep in hypervig? Everything is POPPING / setting off internal alarms for danger? That’s exactly what’s happening. It’s filling in the gaps with what it expected to see… 20 years ago. What it probably would be seeing 20 years ago. What it is absolutely NOT seeing… now.
>.< Arrrgh. Vexing. And? Another very easy thing to mistake for hallucinations.

Keep in mind.. I’m not saying you are not hallucinating. You may very well be. It’s just an important thing to know, when PTSD is in the mix, that it might be stuff from the past resurfacing, instead.

This. While I encourage you to bring it up to your doctor/therapist, what you're experiencing seems to me very much a mix of hypervigilance+flashbacks.
Those can be disorienting and scary. You're definitely not alone in struggling with that.

 

[Toren]

I think I’m fine right now just something I have been noticing happening pretty often. I have a good support system who would tell me if something was wrong and I’m pretty good about getting help when I need it. It’s not so much voices as it’s auditory distortions. Thank you for your feedback!

Illusions may be what you are talking about and they can be auditory, visual or even tactile. U know how the mind's job is to find patterns? Well with ptsd and other issues(especially anxiety disorders) it's not at all uncommon to see things or mvmts perpherally then look and nothing is there or hear for instance someone in the house calling you when nobody is home. I once stomped on a huge nonexistent bug in the grocery store to the point where an employee asked if I was alright ( have a hard time in those places). Just one example. I did develop true hallucinations And delusions over a period of time with paranoia etc.
Hallucinations are also not uncommon dissociative disorders and ptsd. I believe if I had gotten help then, my symptoms would never have progressed to such a severe state, but the way you described it, it does sound like misinterpreting of actual stimuli. I think of that as the mind's way of shouting at me to take stock, ground, etc.

 

[Jade-]

Before(and during) trauma therapy I would see things dripping off of or on walls. Most of the time it was blood that I saw but once it was water. It happened once at my T's office,I was trying to show him a spot of blood that was on the wall that he didn't see.

It was pretty scary to experience. But as I delved deep into therapy and a specific traumatic event resurfaced and I worked through it and processed it,I didn't see blood(or water) again.

What I was seeing(blood) was actually something that did happen in childhood. I had dissociated the event though.

I think it would be difficult to judge whether something is a snippet from the past or a hallucination. That's why I think it's important to work with a professional for these types of things.