Delay-onset ptsd

[Sideways]

@hodge - in a way, yes. Trauma can cause physical changes to the brain. Something we’re still learning about. But we do know, for example, that trauma in childhood can lead to the hippocampus and amygdala growing physically differently in a measurable way. We also know that the way neurons fire in the brain, which is the way the brain communicates with itself and the rest of the body, can also change from trauma.

In fact, they seem to be uncovering lots of ways that the brain physically changes as a result of a number of different mental illnesses, and not just the ones that arise in childhood.

I’m no scientist, but I remember one of my pdocs did a gallant effort at trying to explain to me that my brain was physically altered as a result of my trauma.

 

[Sandstone]

For me, there was at least a 30 year delay from the last trauma to the onset of PTSD. During that time I too built a full life, with a lovely family, and had a successful career. I didn't forget the traumas, but they didn't have the grip on me that they do now. I suspected that life was harder for me than it was for others, but I could do it, and do it all.

I make sense of the delay as compartmentalising. |I could keep the impact "over there", until the day came when a particularly triggering event broke through the compartment walls and it all came pouring out.

I'm not all that bothered about whether it caused actual brain changes - I agree it certainly feels that way - or whether it was "just" a psychological change.
I'd like to be able to rebuild the walls that kept me functioning and safe for al those years, but that doesn't seem possible.
I think I probably have more guilt and disbelief now about having PTSD because of the delay. It seems so unlikely that was OK for all that time and now it isn't. Is that what has set you researching @TexCat ?

 

[Deleted member 37474]

For me, there was at least a 30 year delay from the last trauma to the onset of PTSD. During that tim...

Yes. I question my therapist about my dx every so often. I am pretty much a textbook case of symptoms, but it just seemed so unreal for this all to hit like this when it did.

 

[The Albatross]

In my case it didn't "hit when it did" it was there and there were more subtle signs and symptoms... but I excused or rationalized it (PTSD) until a great many years after the fact. But we could see that in all likelihood I'd had "PTSD" for a good long while.