You Know You Have PTSD When...

[The Albatross]

You know you have PTSD when you've had to call twice to get your schedule for Monday, and your brain shut off and you couldn't attend properly to the reply, or you weren't present to hear and retain what was said... so you don't know what your schedule is and you have to call again and ask, one more time. :unsure:

Yeah, I have no idea what my afternoon schedule is, and I have to ask again and look like an idiot. I have absolutely no recollection of the conversation beyond asking what my schedule for today was.

 

[Changing4Best]

When you have very few minutes left on your phone, but you let someone talk on and on afraid to hurt their feelings or interrupt them, so now you have fewer minutes yet! Something like 6 minutes per day until the 1st of next month. Hopefully no one important will call!!! (And take up what few minutes you have left still).

 

[rainy_daze]

You know you have PTSD when you plan an entirely simple trip to the shops to buy food. You picture it in your head, step by step. Then you go into the shop and everything has moved to different shelves, which makes you begin to panic. Nothing goes according to plan and you end up like a stuttering wreck who no longer has any ability to do simple maths in order to pay for the shopping with the money you counted several times before you left the house.

When you arrive back safely at your own home, you vow never to leave the house again, for fear of change :banghead:.

You then have to convince yourself that thinking in this way is completely irrational and sometimes simple tasks are difficult when you are getting little or no sleep, and you really should stop planning how a day is supposed to go, in order to start functioning like a normal person :O_o:.

 

[Changing4Best]

When you consistently wake up several times each night, have had nightmares about people who were very controlling and you have trouble getting back to sleep again, for fear that in your sleep you will have to deal with them all over again (and again and again...).

 

[BlackbirdSinging]

When you see a car randomly and it's any model of the same make of any of the cars of an ex abuser used to own and you can immediately feel your anxiety spike.

 

[zaniara]

you think you don't have PTSD?

Oh, I'm thinking those thoughts too.. Off/on: it's like a damn light-switch in my head. The awareness I mean vs. the denial. Just the other day I thought that I might have made absolutely every single memory up. And maybe my father is a nice man after all, and maybe I just did all those self-destructive things just because I was born this way.. Or something. Or maybe I have PTSD after all? (I hate when that switch go on/off like that..)

 

[zaniara]

When you stand in the local food store and stare at the machine you are supposed to put your credit card and member card in, but you can't figure out how it works or what you are supposed to do- despite the fact that you have done it at least a thousand(or ten thousand) times by now, sometimes every day for a long period of time. :confused::O_o::eek: (After having a tough EMDR session though..)

 

[Deleted member 19804]

Zaniara: I get that, too. It usually takes a pretty severe anxiety attack to realize again that it's the PTSD talking, not me being dramatic.

 

[zaniara]

It usually takes a pretty severe anxiety attack to realize again that it's the PTSD talking

Thank you for writing that. I helps some to tell a friend too what I'm thinking and seeing her face when I say it.. :D Or hearing her laugh at me. (In a warm way.) I guess it's a part of the dissociation-thing too. Since it happens more when I'm overwhelmed by the work done in therapy. And I feel "nothing" when it happens, and/or unreal.

 

[Changing4Best]

I even have that when I see someone who hurt me emotionally's car (which is a reminder because she lives 3 states from here!).

 

[ninja]

When both the prospect of living alone and living with someone (excluding furry companions) sends you into panic.

 

[BlackbirdSinging]

The prospect of writing your life story scares you because you know it's probably going to trigger you into some very intense flashbacks.