Weak And Terrible

[maelstrom]

I can't stop feeling that I'm a weak, terrible, lazy, and unforgivable person.

I don't even know why I have ptsd--my trauma is minor from an objective point of view, but my therapist says so, so it might as well be. But then what does he know? It's not like I've done a physical test or anything. Most of the time I just can't accept the fact that I have it--I did not go through the unimaginable pains a lot of people on this forum went through. I feel inadequate and weak. I feel like I'm a big joke, both here and out in the world. And in my own mind, of course.

Then there's depression, which I also suffer from but can't believe in. I can't work because of it, but what if it's just because I'm lazy? I feel like I'm finding excuses after excuses to avoid the things I should have been doing. I want somebody to slap me in the face and make me feel less guilty. I don't even want to listen to my therapist and psychiatrist anymore--I feel that they are all lying to me when they legitimize my pains. They are spoiling me and encouraging me to self-pity. I despise myself for wanting to hear what they say about me...

Does this even make sense? I don't know what I'm talking about. I feel terrible and completely alone. I'm scared and depressed, yet I don't feel justified in my own fear and depression. I want my old life back, and it seems dead already...

 

[anthony]

What was your trauma that you feel is so minor, and that you think your specialists have it so wrong from?

 

[maelstrom]

I was in two minor accidents but believed they were much more serious and that I was going to die. The truth is that the accidents were completely harmless, although I did not know in those moments. The traumatic part comes from my ignorance and subjective experience, so to speak, but for some reason it's been haunting me for years now.

 

[angel2write]

PTSD or no PTSD, being depressed or having mental health problems does not make you a weak and terrible person.... though they sure can make you feel like one! I feel like that a lot. :notworthy:

Keep reading, keep looking for answers. The more you learn about what you're experiencing, or what has gone wrong in your mind, body, and life, the more empowered you will be to try and change what you're going through. You can't make any kind of progress until you acknowledge the problem and start working on it.

 

[anthony]

but believed they were much more serious and that I was going to die. The truth is that the accidents were completely harmless, although I did not know in those moments.

Then the trauma was real to you. When you think you're going to die, the result is the same in your brain, regardless the type of trauma you endure. The difference is that I would say yours is a little easier to fix and get you back on track symptom free than more complex trauma... that is the real difference.

The end result, still the same and as valid as any other trauma.

The key you identified was your own ignorance to the thoughts. Now you know the impact of such ignorance, being denial, half the battle is won for you. Now you just need to take those irrational thoughts, and change them to rational for starters.

Negative thinking styles is the crux of symptom severity in most cases... either way, it does immense damage symptomatically.

 

[ThinkFeelBe]

I thought it was imporant for me to right. I KNOW HOW YOU FEEL, I am the same!!
I dont feel like my traumas are big enough. I didnt even believe I was sick for ages and was so frustrated and couldnt understand why I wasnt able to function properly. It became to the point where I couldnt talk properly and ive been told alot of what i would talk about made no sense at all.
My trauma is related to you could say without going into detail extended amount of bulling.

I have found thought, that being able to associate a bad feeling I have with, "oh its okay because im sick", means Ive identified someone thing isnt right, and try to work out what it is that has made me feel sick. I have been told too, that it is my body telling me that i strongly feel a certain way about something.

Sorry if this does not make much sense, i am still trying to work through it all myself.

Just remember though, you are important, you feelings matter, you matter, no matter what the situation is.

 

[Phoenix_Rising]

Re: Anthony - "Then the trauma was real to you. When you think you are going to die, the result is the same in your brain, regardless of the type of trauma you endure."

I cannot express how right about this Anthony is. Your brain, during the trauma, does not differentiate between perceived threat and real threat.

It says, I'm going to die and that's it. That is what is stored, and whatever information you have collected since that time is not stored in the same place in your brain.

You don't have any control over the fact that you were traumatized. You did not say to yourself during the accident, hmm, am I really going to die? Let me think about that..." No time. You went into survival mode which is what people do, when their lives are threatened.

I have spent a lot of years on the self hate, self blame and self judgement train.

It's really hard to get off.

That actually makes it worse for you being traumatized in that way, because you are left distrusting your own perceptions, as well as the validity and reality of the event.

And every person, who has been through hell, wants to be validated. That is not weak, it is human.

I have also had severe depression, and have been on the what's the matter with me, why can't I just do what everyone else does. The answer? If you could do that, you would.

It does not have anything to do with being lazy or making excuses.

There are FAR less painful ways to be lazy in life.

My brother got hit by a car when he was in high school. In the cross walk of all places. The car hit him, sent him flying and he landed on the side of the road. Fortunately, he was not badly hurt. But the rest of high school? He never crossed that cross walk without being in the middle of a bunch of other people.

He could have died. But he didn't have life threatening injuries. He nonetheless was obviously traumatized by it.

Nobody asks for PTSD. There is no person that has ever existed on this earth that has woken up in the morning and said to themselves, gee, I think I'll get post traumatic stress today.

Or depression, for that matter. And, ANYONE with PTSD can say to themselves, well, it doesn't really count, because... Or, well, this person had it worse than I did. There is ALWAYS someone who had it worse. There is always someone who had it better. There is as far as I can tell most of the time available a reason to justify self blame or judgement. What if I had done this? Or done that? Or not done this? Or not done that? If I hadn't made that stupid decision, then... What if he was looking at me because I... Maybe they singled me out of the crowd because...

This types of issues in and of themselves are symptoms of PTSD and everyone (most everyone) has them to a greater or lesser degree.

To use an analogy, you being in a car accident without life threatening injuries, say, vs. someone who came out of it with broken bones, laceration, chronic pain and so on. A 3rd person is paralyzed from the waist down.

It is like three survivors of childhood sexual abuse one says my grandfather fondled me, but it only happened once. The other one was raped by her grandfather, but it only happened once. A third says, my grandfather raped me from when I was 10 years old till I was 12.

The traumas worsen, but is ANYONE in their right mind going to tell someone whose life has been devastated by the first incident, that it really wasn't that bad? Well, so and so (#2) had it worse. But what affect did it have on YOU? And #2 can say, well, person #3 had it worse because he only raped me once. And #3, 9 times out of 10, will find SOMETHING else as a reason of "it wasn't so bad", or "i brought this on myself somehow,".

It's OK to feel however you feel. Your trauma is your trauma, what someone else had is nothing to do with you or the effect it had on you. There's lots of ways and situations that people will feel that there is a possibility of death, and of those many variations there are just as many variations of how people respond to it.

Give yourself a break, you don't deserve all this misery, you didn't ask to get in a car accident, or to have PTSD, or to have depression. It isn't your fault.

Phoenix_Rising

 

[maelstrom]

Thank you so much for all of your kind responses! I hope all of you are well or will be soon :)

Phoenix_Rising: Wow...this is so well said, and it makes me feel so much better--thank you! My therapist also keeps telling me that I shouldn't compare my experience with other people's experiences, but every time he says I have PTSD I keep denying it in my head because of all this shame and guilt. I keep asking myself: How could he have come to this conclusion? Could it be that I unconsciously exaggerated my feelings and misled him? However, after several years of hellish breakdowns I'm slowly starting to realize that this can't possibly be normal, and that I'm really sick in the head. It's just that my family doesn't understand it and keeps putting me down for "overreacting", and I'm always a self-doubting person, so now and then I get this terrible feeling that made me write a post like this.

In any case, I feel fortunate to have joined a supporting community like this, and I hope everybody here will be safe, well, and happy (when you can).