Sufferer Diagnosed 2 days ago. It would be a comfort if anyone is willing to share their diagnosis stories?

[nicole534]

Hello everyone,

I was diagnosed with PTSD two days ago. Fortunately, I see a therapist regularly and have been going in for general depression and anxiety symptoms. After over a year of bouncing between different medication, talk therapies, and other things, I had a breakthrough a few months ago, which led to my diagnosis. I am nowhere near ready to talk about my trauma - the diagnosis alone is enough to keep my mind occupied. I've been looking for a name to the horror I've been going through the past year and a half... now that I finally have it I'm not sure what to do with it, which is how I ended up here.

If anyone is willing to share their stories with receiving their diagnoses, please leave them below. It would be a great comfort.

Thank you!

 

[Polly Anna]

Hello Nicole :) I'm Polly.

I'm new to the forum as well, although I think I may have posted my diagnoses in the wrong forum (rookie mistake, woops!)

My post can be found here.

In a nutshell, I first received professional help well after the damage unfortunately, and was looking at a diagnosis of dissociation disorder from the psychotherapist I'm still seeing now. Where you'd think issues would be simplified they were in fact more complicated after the main dissociation was challenged and defeated. With emotions came a bazillion other issues like hypervigilance, absence of trust in all areas of personal and societal life. I was lacking in pretty much everything skill-wise when I first began to connect with feelings and the world again.

So right now I'm currently tackling hypervigilance, while trying to learn key skills to function in a society. Despite the fact that on the inside I've got my mitts on, ready to box my issues into a corner through determination, I still haven't found my own little path to success on it. In my experience of constantly challenging my demons, it's exploring every possible treatment you can find to see if one works for you, it is inevitably down to if you're ready or not, but there are many different routes to go about it, which I've found very beneficial as some routes (such as the typical CBT) does absolutely nothing for me personally, but other therapies did!

 

[hopefully optimistic]

I was diagnosed with PTSD after my first therapy appointment with a psych. ??‍ Unfortunately, that psych didn’t really work out for me...I have no clue what her method was (I’d never seen any therapist before), but her telling me over and over that things weren’t my fault didn’t really help much. I’ve since moved in to a new therapist that I have been with for the past 5 months-and honestly, it seems crazy I have talked with someone for five months and still don’t feel much different. But, I guess everything is a process, right? Good luck on your journey!

 

[Justmehere]

nicole534 - Welcome to the forums! I received a diagnosis at a young age and didn’t talk about the trauma for years.

I wrestle all the time with disclosing trauma and not. It’s tough to sort out. Having the space to have someone hear me on what wasn’t heard the first go around is a pretty helpful experience. It’s also been helpful to work on things like core beliefs that were shaped by the trauma, without diving into the trauma itself.

@Polly Anna - As a heads up, I’ve edited the trigger warning from your post. We don’t use trigger warnings here because one never knows what may or may not trigger another. If please use contact us for any further discussion so that we keep the thread on track. Thanks!

 

[ladee]

I felt relief!!! There was a name for what my life had been and the insanity that followed. I wasn't crazy or a misfit, or disposable.

I started CBT and went on to different T's for different things. I sought out healing and answers.

It's a diagnosis. And it's an answer. Wishing you a lot of healing and regaining power in your life. It's a new beginning. Thank you for sharing. Glad you are here.

 

[DharmaGirl]

My brother was diagnosed at the age of 35, I thought I might also have it. I went to a therapist at age 52, because I had severe back pain and the neurosurgeon's office thought I was a psych case. Since I was an RN, I believed them and thought I had conversion disorder, so I went to a pain psychologist who also did trauma, and found out my pain was real, but I had other issues. I didn't remember much abuse from my childhood, but talking to my mom and younger brother brought it all back. It was as if it was all happening at once, all the horrific abuse.

After about 6 months of therapy, I told my T that I didn't want to have PTSD, but I thought I did. He said yes. It was a struggle for me to believe I was mentally ill, since I was so high functioning, but eventually I did. I worked hard on getting better, since at the time I remembered, I couldn't work, and I wanted to work since I loved being a nurse. Sadly, I haven't been able to work for the last 7 years. I do have a mini farm, chickens and flower gardens so I keep busy, and I continue to work on PTSD every day.

It took me over a year to talk about my traumas, or at least one of them. I really have a trust issue, lol. I now know that it takes as long as it takes to feel comfortable enough to talk about it, and a good therapist will allow you the time you need.

 

[EveHarrington]

Mis-diagnosed for about 5-6 years before being properly diagnosed.

 

[littleoc]

Ah, man, I got diagnosed at the weirdest time possible -- in the middle of getting a psychopathic man kicked out of my house by getting the outside world involved.

It was weird!

It does take a while to come to terms with the diagnosis itself, but you will. It's something you can get better with and live a normal life with, just takes some work.

Good luck, and also welcome to the forum!

 

[Abstract]

Not diagnosed for a very long time which isn't surprising as I never discussed trauma incidents even though I had therapy from quite young. Sectioned it off. Didn't think to do so. Iron clad avoidance. Wouldn't have ended up doing therapy then either but eating disorders "forced" me into treatment. Denied even ED's very thoroughly initially. I do denial well. Them not me.

When I did discuss a little around 10 years ago in therapy for the first time I was totally dissociated had no emotional response when telling and the traumas mentioned were like written titles to a book. In my mind. Just floating there. I was fervently adamant that nothing had affected me in the slightest. Not one bit. There wasn't access to anything more than the written title in my brain and anything more was behind a steel shutter in my mind. I didn't have to force my mind away. Anything near it and it would close. Not that I ever questioned this. In my mind none of this belonged to me. Not the images coming up randomly and not the resultant fallout. It was just a story about something or someone else. It didn't occur to me that the way I reacted to this was unusual. That t clumsily messed around with this stuff without knowing what she was doing and it all started cracking open. Unpleasantly. Leaving new scarring.

I consulted a clinical psychologist online who to my shock suggested I was suffering with trauma symptoms and needed to have trauma focused treatment. I didn't think I would ever have made that leap on my own. That meant I eventually ended up having therapy, going in asking to have help with the trauma, from a clinic that specialised in it. Was drowning in flashbacks and unable to function. Was diagnosed then which set off a horrific denial acceptance process that practically killed me. Around age 43 ish. In truth it took around 5 + years to start settling in. 8 odd years later and I still go in and out of it at times.

Someone said to me that the acceptance of the diagnoses can be a form of processing if there has been a lot of denial before and I will acknowledge that was the case for me. Internal fighting confusion and even physical attacks on myself continued for a very long time but in truth having the diagnoses and starting to treat the PTSD, knowing the direction I should be going, resulted in so much more progress for various things than years and years of previous therapy and very hard work ever managed to do in the slightest. So essentially diagnoses was painful, a horrendous shock, and has probably literally been life saving for me and has definitely been life changing. Really weird to look at my mental health history before this period. I still hate myself for having it as I really don't have extreme types of trauma but knowing has changed my life. Things are still painful and messy but I at least feel like a person that has been born, at times.

Good luck with the start of your new journey.

 

[Wendell_R]

I went through multiple difficult relationships with women, and that led to therapy for me when it was clear that the problem was not them, but my picking out the wrong women for me. The therapist had a psychoanalytical approach and didn't believe too much in labels. I didn't make much progress for years, but never had the nerve to try something else.

When my therapist needed to retire for health reasons, I chose a new therapist based on my high trust of her and her specialty in addictions (which I managed to pick up on the way). That therapist diagnosed me with PTSD almost four years ago. I had a hard time finding the right path until about a year and a half ago when I started to read more about dissociation. I score REALLY low on a general dissociation scale (I'm a very observant scientist), but quite high on the pathological parts of the scale. When I read "The Haunted Self", I knew I had finally found what was going on with me-- complex PTSD with a very well hidden dissociation.

Now I'm working with both my addiction therapist (sober for almost two years!) and a trauma specialist. I was in denial about much of my trauma, and that trauma was locked away in some of the dissociated parts. Nowadays, I can call up the parts (there are five of us), they admit their sadness and old pain, they can ask for what they want and need, and we are much happier. My marriage is also much better. I just started EMDR to heal some of the old wounds and give me more peace. Down the road, I'm told that we'll try to integrate my parts, but that's beyond what I can imagine just now.

The PTSD diagnosis was the start of a crazy, hard journey that has actually brought me more peace than I imagined I could find.

 

[Friday]

The first time*... I was diagnosed when I was active duty during the years no one really cared much about PTSD, they cared about alcoholism. Taking the beer machines out of the barracks didn’t really slow us down, much, though. ;) TBH, come to think of it, it mostly switched us to hard alcohol, which is more compact & easier to hide. Not that we didn’t still line wall lockers with trash bags, fill them with ice, and add a few halfracks.

Back to getting diagnosed... The short of it is that I was f*cking up and getting in trouble more and more on base. But I was fine in the field. It became a very predictable dance. Get promoted in the field, come home and lose rank and pay. Rinse lather repeat. Still have scars under my collarbones from getting pinned so many times. My base command was trying to get me booted, my field command was fighting it. It makes sense in retrospect, I was two very different people depending on which environment I was in, but I had my nose seriously out of joint about it at the time. I couldn’t see what the f*ck was the problem, and neither could my field command, so I was pretty damn self righteous about the f*cktard pencil pushers on base, and what they could do with themselves. Which I’m sure didn’t help my cause, at all. So I got a shrink attached to my hip for a few days. Damn near literally. He shadowed me at work, came out with me/us when I played, and I slept in his office.

At the end of it I had a diagnosis and a recommendation that I be kept out in the field as much as possible. Which means I was transferred to a busier squardron, and did a lot more TAD. That was, again, pretty normal for the time. There were a bunch of us who were out about 3x as much as the rest of the folks. Like a duck to water, it was a huge relief.

As far as recommended treatment?

<chuckling> Well... he said 6 months, I said 2 months, we split the difference at zero, and I went back to work. The diagnosis went in my file, but that was all there really was to it. For years and years the sum total of what I knew about PTSD was that it was “nightmares & shit”. But “everybody” had that. Which -to be fair- was true for my world / the smallish niche I operated out of. We were all f*cking crazy, in roughly the same way, and tended to pride ourselves on it. Nightmares, panic attacks, etc.? Those were just the cost of doing business, and normal as all get out. Never pieced the f*cking around, adrenaline junkie shit, or all the rest of it as being a part of.

It wasn’t until I was discharged that my world imploded. And it did so in a really big, melodramatic, and fairly embarrassing way. Not that I made the link to the PTSD diagnosis I’d gotten a long ass time before. I was just a f*ckup, who wasn’t made for this world, so I set about trying to leave it, or make the best of it, in various different ways. It took me about 5 years, but I finally settled my tits down, for the most part.

15 or so years later, when my world imploded again, I decided to give the therapy thing another go, and learn what this PTSD thing really was & how to deal with it.

It’s been pretty mind blowing, to be honest.

In a lot of ways I miss not knowing “why” I was this way, and just being me figuring shit out as I went. Insanity was certainly a lot more fun, that way. I left a mile wide wake of wreckage behind me, doing that, though. So it may be less fun, but at least I’m f*cking up in new ways, instead of the same old, and hopefully creating less of a mess to clean up later. We’ll see. The jury is still out, on that one.

* I was diagnosed a few more times, after that, seeking help for various “other” things. I rather unilaterally rejected the entire idea. Nope. I’m fine. Totally fine. It took it becoming so obvious even I couldn’t deny it anymore -and being rather f*cking desperate- before I finally gave in that maaaaaaaybe it might could be this thing.

 

[user27357]

i was in a bad HMO that had a "flow chart" method of dealing with depression that had me stuck in a cycle for a long time.

It was more or less: Depressed? if yes, continue. suicidal? if no continue. longer than 6 months? if yes continue. Prescribe drugs.

After years of nothing but side effects, I was pretty disgusted by the whole thing.

the first outside the plan help I sought diagnosed me almost instantly, prescribed the first drug with a positive effect on my hypervigilance (a benzo) and set me up for weekly meets that lead to EMDR. I knew more about PTSD in the first fifteen minutes than I had learned from fifteen years of low budget HMO "counseling".

My diagnosis was a gift to me and even though I have suffered more traumatic episodes since, I at least know the lay of the land now and can help myself in ways I would never have figured out on my own.

PTSD is, for me at least. like the weather. We all get rained on some days or sit in the sunshine some days. The diagnosis is like a weather report that tells me I need to carry an umbrella and know how to use it. Far better than getting drenched and wondering why you are shivering and miserable.