Differentiating What Is Ptsd And What Is Just Negative Thinking Related To Events After The Trauma

[lostforgottensoul]

Have you read the PTSD cup explain action, it's on the home page.

https://www.myptsd.com/threads/the-ptsd-cup-explanation.13737/

Stole that from FJ on another thread but thought id make it easier to find ;)

 

[Anarchy]

Hi Erica,
Sorry that you have been experiencing the the trauma response problems for so long, and sorry to hear about your husband's illness and its affecting both of your lives.

I hope that what follows helps you to put the question of what events caused which reactions, aside.

I don't think that it is something that you can ever know, and even if you did know, I don't think that it would have much effect on how to address the problems you experience, or the success or otherwise of your therapy.

"Disorders" are not like physical medical problems
There's no xray to show where a break is
And despite the wishful thinking of drugs companies and the "youve got a chemical imbalance " crowd, there are no blood or tissue sample tests.

All we know is that some people who've experienced trauma, experience a range of problems afterwards.

That's not to say that there aren't physical and chemical changes in ptsd too (that are distinguishable between the averages of groups of people, but they are not distinguishable on single individuals, as the ranges overlap so much).

That uncertainty is only a problem for people who are searching for a "this drug treats this condition" solution.

In terms of cognitive, behavioural or analytical type psycho therapies, and the various mindfulness, drama, yoga type approaches.
It is the difficulties that the individual person is experiencing, that are addressed,

In a psychotherapy setting, the "diagnosis" isn't so important, which is really just as well, as there is very poor agreement between even highly trained clinicians, diagnosing the same people ( there's only about 60% agreement between clinicians, once agreement due to random chance is corrected for).