Sufferer Do I Have Ptsd?

[Mist]

Hi everyone. I'm not really sure where to start... I suspect I used to be abused by my biological father, in more ways than one. At first, I just had this nagging feeling. Whenever someone said the word "dad" or "father", I would involuntarily tense up and feel really weird, almost agitated in a way. I also always have and still have weird feelings about fatherly figures. It's almost fear, but I can control it with some effort. I used to think this was because my parents got divorced when I was about 12 (I am 15 now, 16 in a month). Here's where it gets weird. About two months ago, I was in my basement, in the office area of our house. I opened the desk drawer, and there was a paper inside. I unfolded it, curious, and read it. It was a long list of complaints from my visits to my father (My mom and him were separated since I was about 5-6). Some things on there I had no memories at all of. Here are some of the memories that have come back to me so far. Once, when I was in kindergarten, my dad was supposed to pick me up, and he wasn't there. Literally everyone was gone except for the principle. I remember agreeing to just walk to my grandmas, and finding my father asleep in his car a little bit down the road. Another memory I have is a very very distant one. I was visiting him for the weekend, and remember watching the music video to "Hey-Ya" on his big screen tv. I don't even want to type this part. I was about seven at this time, and I vaguely remember us playing the "Pull Down Your Pants Game". No matter how hard I try, I can't remember anything that happened after that, but maybe that's for the best. Another memory, this one a bunch clearer, is one morning, I remember waking up literally in my fathers vomit. I was sick for the entire day after that, and I now have a phobia of vomit/vomiting. I suspect experiences like those are why. The only thing I can remember ever eating there is this toast, cut into triangles, with cheese melted on top. I can only remember getting one piece every time I visited. I remember having a love for cats from a very early age. Whenever my father would have friends over, he'd lock me in this room with toys and this kitten I named bob. I know, weird name, but I was five. This continued until I was seven, then one day Bob bit me while I was in that room. I remember this clearly. I yelled for my dad, but he never came in. There was a teenager, probably around eighteen at the time, named Paul. I remember him clearly, he was my first crush. I know, weird age difference, but I couldn't help it. I had weird feelings at the time. He was the one who found me, laying on the floor, bleeding. He drove me to the hospital, and I got treated. I still have a light scar from it today. I spent my ninth birthday with him, his friend, and her daughter who was two years younger than me, but her birthday was three or so days after mine. I remember I was so excited to spend my birthday with my daddy. I got there, and they were all three at the table, with presents all around. I was so happy that I got so many presents, when my dad's friends daughter started opening them. I didn't get one single present. I asked if I got one, and got sent to that room. Thankfully for me, bob was there. I had forgiven him for biting me. He was the only one there for me. There's plenty more, but I'll keep those stories for another thread. Here's what makes me feel like I have PTSD. I remember, when I was about 9-14 I had extreme lucid dreams, where I would wake up paralyzed and mute. I don't remember much from the dreams, other than the feeling of fear and anxiety, as well as not being able to speak or move. That's why it was so scary waking up in the condition I did. I got a dream catcher about a year and a half ago, and they stopped all together. I also have extreme trouble trusting people, and never share my emotions with anyone. I often feel distant from others, even though I have a great group of friends. I have an intense phobia of vomiting, which I explained earlier. I also have a severe gag reflex, which is odd. I feel as if I'm suffocating whenever the reflex activates. I also have unexplained respiratory problems. I have symptoms of VCD, but I haven't been diagnosed. I also have unexplained gastro-intestinal problems. I also remember when I was 9-12 I used to get these out of body experiences. It was extremely unnerving, and I had no idea how to handle it. I also get irritable very very often, and it's normally adult male figures that irk me. Whenever my step dad is drinking (which sadly, is often), I always get extremely annoyed and angry. It may be triggering unwanted feelings from my past? I've never had a boyfriend, though I've had many friends who are boys. I feel I'm afraid of intimacy. This May be off topic, but I have this extreme fear of being unable to swallow. I remember my throat used to constrict randomly, I don't know if this is involved at all, or just an extremely weird sensation. I really hope you guys can give me some advice, and help me discover my hazy past. There are some years I don't remember at all! Please help me!
-Anonymous

 

[Tanishq]

Hi Mist,

A kind request to you. Could you please breakdown your post into paragraphs? It's bit hard for me to read all in one paragraph.

Tanishq

 

[Em C.]

Hi Mist! I'm just going to bed but I thought I would welcome you to the forum first!

And in answer to your question, we can't tell if you have PTSD because it is a certain way your body reacted to certain stressors (among other things). However, that doesn't mean that you don't have to cope with some traumatic experiences! You can have stress disorders that aren't necessarily PTSD. Is there a family doctor you could talk to?

Welcome to the forum!

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Those dreams where you wake up paralyzed is actually called sleep paralysis. I suggest googling it. It is not exclusive to ptsd. Almost all you describe could be a result of having a crappy dad and not be Ptsd. I don't see a number of key symptoms mentioned, including a criterion A trauma (you won't be diagnosed without one). Your best bet is to see a therapist as we can't diagnose you.

 

[Anarchy]

The critereon A trauma, is a potential catch 22 situation.
If
X+Y=Z
in a catch 22 situation, having Z implies no Y.

One possible symptom of PTSD is amnesia - so it is not unusual to have no memory of a trauma, because you have PTSD, but without evidence of the trauma, you cannot be diagnosed with PTSD.

perhaps, accepting the DSM as a reliable source could be construed as delusional thinking...

 

[Nam]

No one can help you with remembering a hazy past. I have one and no matter how hard I try, I can't remember. It just comes back to me whenever it wants to.

I used to have severe reactions to things that made no sense at all. Until I remembered what triggered those, it was just this weird thing with me. For example, I have a reaction to poop smell. It wasn't until later I realized why I have that after I remembered.

I was diagnosed with PTSD without having much of criterion A. In fact, I only had one event that I could remember when I was diagnosed. More memories came later. However, I had severe anxiety, panic attacks, hypervigilance, nightmares, avoidance, and depression. I had a full time job. I couldn't keep it. I had two children to take care of. I barely did. It was debilitating for over a year. And not "normal" for about five years. It's a long haul.

Go see a therapist. See what they say. I hope that you don't have this. I hope it's just sorting through a crappy childhood.

Welcome to the forum.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

@Anarchy
She still doesn't mention a number of other key symptoms. It's not just a criterion A catch.

 

[moonbeam]

Nobody on the forum can tell you if you have PTSD. It sounds like some unpleasant things happened but it doesn't necessarily mean you have PTSD. I think there there is a statistic that 70% of adults have experienced trauma at some point in their life. Only 20% develop PTSD. Some of the other issues you describe could be attributed to several different mental health issues (many have somewhat shared symptoms). And a bit of it to being a teen.

Trust me PTSD is not something you want to have.

I would advise that you speak with a therapist about all of this and see what they think. They are the only people trained to make a diagnosis. Appropriate assessment is the best way to know what help you will need.

 

[intothelight]

@Mist Welcome to the forum!

I don't know if your mom would be willing or able to get you to a therapist or if a school counselor is a resource. It is difficult to know that something isn't right and to not know what it is, but regardless of the diagnosis, it is important that you feel like you have some support and a way to get some answers and make it better for yourself.

Memory is a tricky thing and if your mom was keeping a list, are you comfortable enough to ask her about it? I don't know about your relationship with her, but she may be the best support to enlist at this point.

 

[Anarchy]

She still doesn't mention a number of other key symptoms. It's not just a criterion A catch.

Unless she needs a "diagnosis" for welfare payments, insurance payouts or to get extra help at college, she is perhaps better off not putting too much weight on or faith in specific diagnoses,

there are a whole range of named diagnoses within the DSM which overlap the same symptoms and traits, and which are all "trauma" related, bear in mind too, that "trauma" is subjective, it was what the individual perceived as traumatic at the time that it occurred, which might be something very different to what we, or a trickpsychlist, as adults would consider to be traumatic.

Check out Prof van der Kolk's take diagnoses from a researcher's point of view, starting from around the 25 minute mark in the vid:

 

[Deleted member 1860]

@Anarchy
I get the feeling that you are in denial over your own diagnosis and so you tell everyone else its not necessary?

 

[Anarchy]

Hi Solara,

Sorry that this is so long, it's going to take me a while to explain where I'm coming from.

It did take me several years to actually believe what I had been told; that I was displaying symptoms consistent with PTSD.

One of my reason for that lack of belief was me thinking that I didn't have a sufficeint trauma in my life to give me PTSD, I thought I needed something like getting an arm or leg blown off, or spending a few days and nights getting deafened and fearing for my life under heavy shelling. The only model of PTSD that I was aware of was wartime / military trauma.

I had known people with "shell shock" . The old man who had owned the house I grew up in, and had built his retirement house next door; "uncle" Benny. He used to come in for a coffee after church each Sunday, and little me (between say 4 and 7 years old) wanted to run around showing off with late 60s / early 70s cowboy and Indian outfits (some plastic chaps and holster on a little plastic belt, or a head dress of turkey feathers dyed with food colouring that wouldn't dry) and little toy cap firing cowboy guns. Those had to be put away, "Uncle Benny doesn't like bangs".

I was well into my teens before I was old enough to be told that he had spent four years in the horse and mule teams carrying supplies to the front line trenches in WWi, improvising crossings of trenches and shell holes out of whatever was available and coming under fire while they did it. I think he shared a few vague descriptions of it with my father.

I thought that that was the type and level of trauma required. It was only this last August that I stumbled accross the idea of the (vastly more frequent in the population and this forum) abuse and neglect traumas which most of us here have gone through. Suddenly, the idea that I displayed symptoms consistent with PTSD began to make sense and the PTSD paradigm can indeed explain feelings, thoughts and behaviours that I had.

I now realize that I have absolutely oodles of crap in my past, any one of which would represent complex trauma; botched medical interventions, emotionally un available parenting, lots and lots of bullying (I spent a month fastened to a hospital bed after one session), seven years in a boarding school getting bullied to hell, no where was safe there, and, to put the cherry on the top, with a narcissistic tw@ of a deputy headmaster gaslighting us...

I'm still fleshing out that list, I still have reactions which I don't understand.

So far the PTSD paradigm has been very useful to me, but my entire background in engineering, science, and logic tells me to remain sceptical of it, to keep watching the evidence, rather than bending evidence to fit into the theory. A paradigm shift in one of the sciences I've studied (geology) has even happened in my lifetime, a paradigm is merely the best framework we have at the time for explaining what we see. it isn't something to get sentimentally attached to.

Now to my beef about diagnoses.

People experienced difficulties before such things were ever "medicalized". "conditions", "Disorders", whatever we want to call them, exist independantly of the labels that are put onto them, of the attempts that are made to classify them, and of the attempts to explain why they arise, regardless of whether those attempts at explanation use the paradigms of "demonic posession", "inferior racial origin", "refrigerator mothers", "self abuse" or "chemical imbalance"

Symptoms occur and are valid without a book.

How reliable might that book be?

Up until the mid 1970s, the DSM listed "Homosexuality" as a "mental illness", even as late as the 1980s, people were still being detained and forcibly "treated" for that "illness" in the united state. The "symptoms" (people going for people of the same gender as themselves) still occur, but now, as if by magic, it is no longer in the book, so it is no longer a "disease" requiring "treatment" (full disclosure - I'm bi and I don't want "treatment").

I'm giving that as an example of a behaviour which some people find is not to their taste, being falsely medicalized, and the DSM being used to lend a false cloak of "science" and professional consensus to that social judgement.

Yet at the same time, the experience of millions of people who had experienced trauma, was denied by its omission from the DSM up until around 1980.

There is a wonderful anecdote in the first five minutes of this presentation by Gabriela Balf, about the person who had come up with the 5 out of 9 criteria for diagnosing depression. When tracked down years later and asked what thresholds and statistical criteria were used? what studies of outcomes, why five and not 6 or 4? his reply was "Five seemed about right".

Balf, goes on through the various paradigms (in this case for BPD) after that, and they include Herman and van de Kolke's C-PTSD, she also covers medication, and one patient's list for 20 medications for the various overlapping disorders which she had been diagnosed with.

I hope I've made my case that the DSM has a legacy content of a hopeless hodge podge of actual science, mixed with guesswork, eminent opinions and moralistic judgements. No one has yet shown blood tests or brain scans as a diagnostic technique for PTSD or any of its symptomatically overlapping and probably related conditions such as BPD, Bi Polar, ADhD, DID, ODD... which the DSM lists.

What you get as a diagnosis is an opinion that you fit into a class of symptoms and case histories, that could well overlap with eight or ten other classifications, I've certainly seen it in my short time of coming here, that some people have received several different diagnoses before finally arriving at PTSD.

I'm not saying that there are not valid financial and legal reasons for getting a diagnosis; there certainly are in terms of getting treatment costs and welfare payment costs met, or prescriptions written - if you go in for medications, and possibly even saving you from losing your home and your job.

What I am suggesting is that outside of those - is that eminent opinion actually of any further use to you? is it telling you anything that a reasonably smart and observant friend can't tell you about yourself, and your therapist and you work out between you?

There are also potential pitfalls in many jurisdictions for anyone who has been diagnosed with a "mental condition" which might outway any benefits to you from getting diagnosed with something that the DSM or ICD says is valid.