Fear leads to fear leads to...new trauma?

[siniang]

I've been wondering a little... is it actually easier to get re-traumatized or new trauma that could actually cause more/new (for lack of better wording) PTSD? I think we've been saying at one point or another that pre-existing trauma lowers the threshold for Cat A trauma - though I'm not sure this is actually true? Though it DOES make total sense to me.

Case in point, anecdote time.

With time, I've aquired fear of flying and on boats. Not to the point of phobias, but to the point of being majorly stressed, even panicky, when things don't go smoothly (as in turbulences and rough sea). I have no previous trauma from either of those two, but I can pinpoint the start of this specific anxiety to after PTSD-causing trauma - though not immediately, but more gradually. I remember more than one instance where I was stuck on a boat in rather rough seas. I've worked on boats in the past and this wouldn't have bothered me, didn't. But at some point this flipped. And while objectively I probably was never in actual danger - I was frigging f*cking scared the last few times this happened. Like absolutely terrified scared. Genuinely afraid for my life scared. While stuck. While having to completely trust others.

I don't think I got new PTSD from this, missing the symptoms - but I'm speaking hypothetically here. Could this actually happen when stuck in such kind of situations? Could the entire "Cat A trauma" thing shift when pre-traumatized?

Can PTSD actually be a self-reenforcing cycle like this?

And if so...how to break it? Like...should I actually work on those new fears or will they magically disappear if I work on the trauma/PTSD alone?

Can anyone even relate to what I mean?

 

[Ronin]

To be clear - are you asking if prior vulnerabilities (like fear) make the CritA trauma hit harder, hence leading to easier developing of PTSD (as contrasted to people without the vulnerability, who experience CritA, but don't get the symptoms from it after / different resilience)?

 

[osiris]

I don’t think the two are connected (although someone without a fried brain may explain everything waaaaaay better than me). Fear is a totally normal human thing, even if it scares the hell out of us.
I almost crashed my SUV going around a bend too fast in the rain the other week. Every time I drive by that bend since I panic, but it’s not trauma and doesn’t bother me afterwards, nor does it stop me driving. My PTSD is a totally different beast.

 

[bellbird]

And while objectively I probably was never in actual danger

I don't think I got new PTSD from

So I think your goal should be to work on managing these anxieties.

They're clearly being impacted and exacerbated by your PTSD, but given Criterion A is relating to actual or threatened violence/danger, being in circumstances that terrify you but do not objectively put you in danger, simply wouldn't qualify as Crit A.

Also, I'm not even sure if getting "new PTSD" while you have existing PTSD is even a thing. Like I think it just means you have PTSD, still.

Can PTSD actually be a self-reenforcing cycle like this?

Yes, but only in the sense of symptoms exacerbating symptoms. Not in the sense of a mental illness spawning off a separate, duplicated illness.

 

[Friday]

I don't think I got new PTSD from this,

Could the entire "Cat A trauma" thing shift when pre-traumatized?

You can only get PTSD once.

Once you have PTSD it doesn’t matter if you never have another CritA trauma, or have thousands. It’s already there. Unless they find a cure for it, and to date there isn’t one, you can’t get it again, because you still have it. Similar to having diabetes, just because it’s super well managed doesn’t mean that eating cake without taking insulin gives you a new case of diabetes. You already had diabetes, and it’s reacting to sugar the way diabetes does.

And, yes, responding to perfectly normal things as if they’re life threatening conditions? Is pretty durn common with PTSD. But that doesn’t make the normal thing life threatening trauma.