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feeling like you’re faking

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sometimes i struggle with thinking i am faking my ptsd diagnosis that none of any of this shit is real and all of my flashbacks, nightmares, anxieties, thought distortions caused by these traumas that i have are all just not real. and i say they don’t matter. but it’s like these symptoms are there regardless if i say or think i’m “faking” or whatever the heck that means. it’s just a roller coaster sometimes and i know it’ll never end and i guess i’m just at a point where i’m kind of upset with this thing that i think is wrong with me,
I can’t say I ever felt as if I was faking, but others tried to minimize it and make me believe I was because they either don’t understand or choose not to.
 
To the OP—I Definitely relate. I realize rationally that I meet all of the criteria for CPTSD…and that it is the simplest most straightforward explanation of my symptoms and behavior for the past several decades, but it is still almost impossible to convince me that it’s true. I also had therapists tell me I was making it up for attention, so that certainly didn’t help. I have had a lot of people both family and treatment providers tell me I just need to control myself and that I can and should just control my behavior. I am 37 years old, chronically unemployed, have struggled with eating disorders and self harm for decades, and anxiety for much longer, and no medicines help without making me dopey. Why? Because there’s nothing “wrong” with my brain. My brain literally required itself to cope as adaptively as possible in the face of severe and continuous trauma, both CSA and psychological/emotional/financial abuse. I have very few conscious memories of CSA but if you read my poetry from middle school and high school, holy crap. The few times that I have known without a doubt that I have CPTSD have come when I have literally raged at the world and felt like a radioactive toxic waste dump for a few hours and then wound up crying and in all honesty admitting that, although my memories are primarily body memories and emotional flashbacks, and the nightmares have stopped since EMDR, that I was sexually and psychologically and emotionally and financially abused and that I need help that HELPS or I am going to struggle for the rest of my life. I hope this story makes sense and you get the meaning behind it. What I’m really trying to say is: almost everyone feels like they’re faking. Look at the symptoms you have no control over. Look at old journals or poetry or drawings. They don’t lie.
 
To the OP—I Definitely relate. I realize rationally that I meet all of the criteria for CPTSD…and that it is the simplest most straightforward explanation of my symptoms and behavior for the past several decades, but it is still almost impossible to convince me that it’s true. I also had therapists tell me I was making it up for attention, so that certainly didn’t help. I have had a lot of people both family and treatment providers tell me I just need to control myself and that I can and should just control my behavior. I am 37 years old, chronically unemployed, have struggled with eating disorders and self harm for decades, and anxiety for much longer, and no medicines help without making me dopey. Why? Because there’s nothing “wrong” with my brain. My brain literally required itself to cope as adaptively as possible in the face of severe and continuous trauma, both CSA and psychological/emotional/financial abuse. I have very few conscious memories of CSA but if you read my poetry from middle school and high school, holy crap. The few times that I have known without a doubt that I have CPTSD have come when I have literally raged at the world and felt like a radioactive toxic waste dump for a few hours and then wound up crying and in all honesty admitting that, although my memories are primarily body memories and emotional flashbacks, and the nightmares have stopped since EMDR, that I was sexually and psychologically and emotionally and financially abused and that I need help that HELPS or I am going to struggle for the rest of my life. I hope this story makes sense and you get the meaning behind it. What I’m really trying to say is: almost everyone feels like they’re faking. Look at the symptoms you have no control over. Look at old journals or poetry or drawings. They don’t lie.
this helped and yes i understand what you’re saying completely.. thank you !
 
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