Ok, as this came up again I will add my two cents once again. I spoke with Evie on the phone the other night and she asked me this exact thing, and my answer went something like this:
When I started this forum I used to shutdown any person who went down this road of thought, being its a negative thought pattern. The thinking style of comparison is never a good one in most aspects of life; PTSD being one of them. We have threads here in the new member forum and elsewhere outlining these exact aspects, yet many don't read them or skip through them.
You cannot gauge your PTSD, your healing capacity or trauma to another person, ever. The simply reason is as I have stated previously, and commonsense, is that every person and situation is different and will be interpreted uniquely. This comes back to why you can stand two people side by side, shoot them both in a non-lethal body part, one may get PTSD and one will not. Why? Because one's brain processes the act of being shot uniquely. This is why some people get PTSD and some do not, regardless the trauma, situation or lifestyle.
Kathy summated perfectly the exact variations between people, and those who do not see this need to read it over and over in order to grasp the concept. Because a person works for example, does not mean that person is better off than someone who doesn't work with PTSD. The person who works may have little choice, so they counter act their PTSD with work, they drink or smoke heavily to cope with it, they medicate themselves heavily to cope, and the big one is.... some who have PTSD are actually workaholics as workaholism is a form of medication to help them cope with their PTSD. Again, every person is different and no two people can ever be compared the same, regardless of certain similarities with symptoms, their severity of symptoms will be different.
Kathy refers to those with severe PTSD. Well, I am a veteran who was diagnosed with severe PTSD. When Kathy refers to combat PTSD, etc, these are references that are discussed as coming in 2012 with the production of the DSM V. They are discussed only as possible categorizations to PTSD diagnoses and yet to be confirmed. Even those do not outline, nor could two people with the same diagnosis be compared.
My brother-in-law has PTSD from being a medical officer aboard a Navy ship. He dealt with the wounded only, never seen action on land, yet he has PTSD from fixing soldiers who had been wounded and civilians also. He works, yet I cannot. Why? Because his trauma is far different from mine, his brain processes his trauma differently, yet we both have the same illness. He chooses to drink and smoke, which are known aids in combating the symptoms of PTSD. I used to cope doing the same thing, though I was drinking and smoking myself to death. Now, I do neither and must find other ways to keep my stress levels low, one being not to work and create myself undue stress that would force me to be medicated. Actually, even if medicated I would likely kill someone if provoked enough. Big difference in trauma, big difference in brain processing, big difference in symptom severity and duration.
You cannot compare trauma, ever.... you cannot compared symptom severity. What works for one may not work for another. What every person with PTSD can do though, is achieve a more healthy lifestyle in their own time finding what works best for them.
The facts are though, people lie. Am I calling everyone here a liar? NO. What I am saying though is that even most people I have worked with here had lied to me, they kept secrets from me that hindered the healing process. You do it to your therapist, you do it here, you do it with your families.... the facts are, people lie. Some are very honest and open, the majority don't tell the full story to make themselves look better than they are, which means they lie. If you lie to yourself, your still lying at the end of the day, regardless how honest you are with anyone else. If your honest with yourself though not totally with others, then still your lying. Sorry, but the facts are; people lie.
So knowing this very important fact, no person should ever be comparing themselves or another against another with PTSD, symptoms or trauma, as the gauge is not even comparable on a realistic measure of accuracy. All you do is lie to yourself, lie to others and piss people off.
The best thing any person can do is forget all that nonsense to begin with, and just work on what works best for them, though knowing it may help another, yet may make someone else worse. Learning to manage PTSD is an experimental process. This forum just helps narrow the experimentation down for each person, or helps a person find what can work for them through others experience. It is not a pissing contest for comparison though.
People here try and gauge themselves against me, yet I still never figured that one out either. I manage myself quite well the majority of the time, function extremely well and can interact with society quite well also. All that though, I still cannot work because the stress would be so overwhelming to me that all these other aspects would be no more. I would end up in a hospital.
Evie and I spoke about avoidance, and how avoidance of some things are good, and some avoidance is bad. Typically, any aspect surrounding your trauma will hurt you, although some can be beaten with exposure therapy, some will never be beaten and instead must be avoided. The difference though is that a person must push themselves beyond their capable limits to expose themselves to the problem and use commonsense and logical solutions to learn how to move through it. If a problem cannot be moved past with the help of professionals and techniques known to work, then sometimes avoidance is the best solution. The overall aim though in management is to have very minimal aspects that you will ever avoid, compared to what you used to avoid though now interact within your life.
Anything that is essential for life is not logical to avoid, ie. driving, shopping, entertainment for relaxation. So even if your PTSD is from an MVA, you must achieve a level of interaction surrounding motor vehicles, because its not logical to avoid them as that would limit you entirely to your home. Meaning even if you never drive one again, you can be a passenger without fear, you can walk the streets with cars driving by, etc etc.... though even then it is like falling off a horse, you must get back on.
I got hurt some years ago pretty bad in a motorbike accident, though even whilst I still had broken bones I was back on a motorbike and riding it slowly down the street to ensure I didn't grasp a fear of riding them, especially considering I enjoy them so much. The longer you leave something the worse it becomes to interact once again with it. Avoidance is a logical strategy for some things if you have tried to first engage them many times with no sight of improvement. If you find improvement, then you continue exposure in order to learn how to engage it once again.
Overall though.... with all this in mind, you cannot compare any aspect of trauma or healing with another, as they are unique and cannot be compared nor gauged as every single aspect is unique. The only thing we have in common is PTSD, the symptoms, though not the severity nor the trauma nor the healing. Two veterans who have PTSD will have unique trauma. You can attempt to go around the problem all day discussing each trauma, though you will never find a similarity and only that you both have the same thing, PTSD; and even that will be different for each.
