Other Becoming More Familiar With Ptsd

[Caity]

I am a student in graduate school and am getting degree in counseling. One of my assignments is to reach out to an online forum and discuss with people about PTSD. It is easy to sit and read articles about PTSD and generic information, however it is much more beneficial to people who truly know what PTSD means to them. I am reaching out this online community in hopes that people would feel comfortable sharing their experience and what they find works best in working through symptoms associated. I appreciate any feedback and look forward to hearing from you.

 

[Sighs]

Hi Caity,

Are you hoping to get people to engage with you? Or are you happy to read the posts on the forum? Each one of them is by a real person living with PTSD (either as a sufferer or a supporter), sharing their experience and talking about the challenges they face in managing the symptoms.

 

[Seasounds]

Yes, I think you will get an idea of what having PTSD is like, by reading the threads. There is a broad spectrum of experiences and a broad variety of individual conditions.

You could ask the staff members if you an another forum member could private message each other, if you are looking for something more. Good luck!

 

[Caity]

More so engagement, on whatever comfort level that means. My goal is to find tools and ways to help my future clients and those on this site, I feel would have a much clearer idea on what that means. I appreciate you clarifying that. I have read through some of the other posts. I am very happy to see that this is a place where people can come to for support because that is essential. One of the main parts of counseling is helping a client find resources that can help, especially outside of the counseling room. How have people found out about this site and felt when first posting? How has it helped?
Another important factor is identifying barriers and issues that a client comes in contact with on a regular basis. If anyone would feel comfortable sharing that I would be interested to also know of ways it has been overcome or how it remains a barrier. Thank you in advance because I know that I am asking a lot of people to share with someone new. Like I said earlier, only the comfort level that is okay with him/her.

 

[Caity]

Oh thank you for the further insight. I did not know there was a way to private message people. That would be helpful too. I appreciate all of your feedback.

 

[Sighs]

No offence, but I don't really understand where you are coming from. If you are studying counselling aren't you supposed to be taught the tools and techniques etc to help people? Aren't you supposed to have more of an understanding of the psyche and the reasons why we react the way we do? Why are you asking us? We're just the dumb shmucks who don't get to leave it behind when the hour is up.

 

[Caity]

We do learn general techniques in school to help people, you are correct. But each person is different in how they cope. I know as a counselor we seem like an "expert" in the psyche and yes we have a understanding of the textbook version of a disorder and as time goes on with more experience we see different ways to help a client (as a counselor in training I am still working on the experience part). However, I see the client as an expert too. People know what may work or not work for them and having even just that insight can help tremendously in counseling. It will save time and frustration on techniques or tools not to try. As a counselor, that is very helpful information and can allow a strong team (counselor and client) approach to therapy. So I do not see people who suffer day in and day out as you put it "dumb schmucks" but more as a valuable resource to helping me do my job effectively. I also understand you do not get to leave it behind when the hour is up, but if there is anyway that I can help relieve even the slightest bit once you leave my office, then I hope that helps. I know it might not every day but over time I would hope it would.

 

[scout86]

But each person is different in how they cope.

From what I've seen on here, each person is different in what they experience too. There are people who are afraid to leave their home, and people who are afraid of being trapped inside, and everything in between. I guess some of us gravitate towards fight, others flight, others freeze. People are individuals, to be sure.;

Do you have anything more specific that you're wondering about? I guess one of the hallmarks of this way of experiencing reality is, often, difficulty trusting, and difficulty sharing thoughts and feelings. You've expessrd an interest in learning about experiences. That's maybe a bit vague and general. Can you be more specific? (Now that I've thought about it, you're probably going to run into this in a therapeutic setting too. If my T asks me "How are you doing?" I'm going to say "Fine." I just am, that's the stock answer. If he asks me "How are you sleeping?" He's going to get specific information.)

 

[Justmehere]

@Caity I appreciate your heart to learn. Are you a graduate student? Have you had any specialized trauma training? Are you seeking to be a general therapist or a trauma trained therapist?

Your posts sound like you haven't spent much time on the forum reading and searching the forum. I would suggest that you spent some more time reading around.

I appreciate that you have read a few threads, but the way you post feels like you want us to do all the work for you in your effort to learn about PTSD. Learning about PTSD takes time and lots of work. Lots. So take your time and read more. I think that this would help you understand a lot more about PTSD. There are great articles on the site, search function and even a help desk. It's a pretty comprehensive place. You

Your posts are very difficult to respond to because you ask for what would amount to vast amounts of information for any one person to begin to answer - and yet ironically, it's information that you could easily begin to glean if you continued to read more of the thousands of posts here. There are even entire forums for each group of symptoms and even for different types of trauma.

Your questions are very vague and overly broad. There is no way to really begin addressing them. If a non-therapist posted your questions, I would ask them many questions back to have them be more specific about where they are at and what they want to know more about specifically.

If a therapist doing trauma therapy with me, or general therapy, was asking such questions in a session - I would be quite dumbfounded as how to respond.

Please read the forum more and then perhaps ask questions about some of the information you read. It will invite people to be able to more easily assist you in your task to understand PTSD more.

This is not a place where you can skim the pages and volumes of material here and expect that we can distill down answers to such broad questions in a few posts.

If we had cancer, and not PTSD, and you were training to be an oncologist, and you were told to read articles about patient experiences and symptoms - would you come here and ask us all what cancer was like and expect to understand all cancers and all people's experiences in just a thread? After showing that you had spent some much not much time reading any of the thousands of posts and articles on the site? I think that on such a cancer forum, the exhausted cancer patients would be a bit bewildered as to how to respond. It would be more effective in that case to instead say that you are an oncologist in training, had been reading the forum and noticed a lot of people suffer from nausea, and you would like to know more about what doctors do that is helpful for nausea and what isn't helpful. Then you would likely get lots of very specific and more helpful answers. Would you understand all of what it is like to have cancer And how to treat cancers in general? Probably not. But you would begin to understand a lot more about it.


Edited to add:
P.s. I apologize to anyone offended by the cancer comparison. I am trying to only compare PTSD to a condition that others tend to understand better than PTSD. I'm not trying to say PTSD and cancer are similar other than that they are both conditions that people can suffer from.

 

[Sighs]

@Justmehere - well said! Perfectly expressed my frustration without the anger and hostility that was in every draft I wrote! :tup:

 

[sun seeker]

Caity, it might help if you could ask a few very specific questions. When I see you asking us to share our experience and what works, my reaction is a bit like what you might feel like if someone from another planet showed up at your door and asked you for a synopsis of what it's like to live on Earth. You'd be at a loss for where to begin. The experience of PTSD, especially if it begins in childhood, profoundly affects every aspect of a person's life. There is no separating the symptoms from the rest of life. You are aware of the pain in every breath you take, all day every day. Probably anyone on the forum who is so inclined could write a book answering the question "what is your experience of having PTSD?" It might work better if you asked more specific questions, like "what are things that help you calm down when you are triggered?" or "what is the most/least helpful thing your therapist does?"

The other suggestion I would make is that you go through the therapy forum and read all the old posts you have time for. You'll find tons of material on the therapeutic process, including, if you can handle reading it, lots of ranting about things people's therapists do that are not helpful. You'll be a step ahead before you go into practice if you can handle the candor.

 

[sun seeker]

Sorry, Justmehere, I'm in a hurry and didn't read all the replies before I wrote mine. Sounds like we reacted to this in much the same way. Well said.