feeling like you’re faking

[hope555]

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,

 

[Movingforward10]

You're not alone with these thoughts.
Is there something you can say to counter balance them?

I have it too. Just the other day a thought popped into my head that why on earth am I in therapy, saying these things to my T, when none of this ever happened? I thought I had moved on from this denial and self doubt. But there we go.
I don't know if trying to understand where these thoughts originated from helps? A little protective part trying to get you through the trauma that happened? Idk.
But I hope you find a path through it that feels easier

 

[DharmaGirl]

I've been diagnosed since 2012, and I still, after 6 years of therapy, think it isn't true. It is totally normal to feel like this when you have PTSD. Talk to your T about it and I'm sure they will assure you that it is normal.

 

[HealingMama]

Me too. I basically never have stereotypical flashbacks or nightmares. My triggers are mostly relational. I have periods of time where I function normally. But I scored like 55 on the PCL last time I took it. That's not for nothing.

 

[user27357]

I remember being diagnosed with hepatitis C. I never had a bad day with it, there were no symptoms, and I hadn't been doing any of the things that most people associate with it. I doubted my diagnosis but there was no way around a positive test, I had it. Only then did I do the research and find the history that made it believable, in fact, I found there were several ways I might have been exposed. I had to own it, it was mine. It didn't help that I also had to explain it to people that, like me, assumed you got it through a very few routes like needle use and homosexuality. I now knew that it could be passed through blood transfusions prior to 83, or through my work as a first responder, or by something as simple as having a roommate use my razor or being scratched by the same jagged edge as a person that had it. In fact, the first people that presented symptoms were war heroes that had received plasma on a battlefield. I did the old interferon cocktail cure for 6 months and it is gone.

My point is this: Everyone around us assumes that you get PTSD through being shot or shot at and by seeing death up close. We learn that there are more ways to get it and we have to train people, even ourselves, that there are many many ways to get this.

As long as I have had this diagnosis, and firmly as I believe I am a sufferer, if I was put in a room full of combat vets, I would feel like I didn't belong. They might feel the same way because I got here by a different route. The same goes in reverse. If I was in a room full of CPTSD sufferers, even though I was aware that there was a huge variation in the way we had all gotten there I would feel like I belonged. And a combat vet might feel like she or he didn't.

If only there was a beyond doubt binary yes-no test like my hep C tests for this, we could all get a membership card and never feel like it didn't belong to us. Instead, we have to accept it as an opinion of someone that has seen it before and learn all we can about it, and accept that there will always be a lingering whisper of the unknown and unprovable that seems to get us all at some point.

I don't think that doubting our diagnosis makes us anything but human. I trust my psych, I know why and how I got it, and I accept that others got it another way that is no more or less validating than my own. I don't worry about the first glancing blow thoughts that I don't really have it, because I know that a longer look has shown me time and time again that I belong here, I have it.

 

[Freida]

Yep -- just had this conversation...again!...with my t.
I say I'm delusional and just making crap up for attention
She says I've got a massive case of ptsd and I'm denying it because that is easier than facing it it

She also says it's really typical for trauma survivors to not want to accept the diagnosis

 

[hope555]

You're not alone with these thoughts.
Is there something you can say to counter balance them?

I have it too. Just the other day a thought popped into my head that why on earth am I in therapy, saying these things to my T, when none of this ever happened? I thought I had moved on from this denial and self doubt. But there we go.
I don't know if trying to understand where these thoughts originated from helps? A little protective part trying to get you through the trauma that happened? Idk.
But I hope you find a path through it that feels easier

yeah i kind of am forced into having to look into it because i’ve just been having more flashbacks as of recently but anyway i kinda know where it originates probably because i talked about a couple things to my mom and sister and they just never really believed

I've been diagnosed since 2012, and I still, after 6 years of therapy, think it isn't true. It is totally normal to feel like this when you have PTSD. Talk to your T about it and I'm sure they will assure you that it is normal.

getting a new t this week i haven’t had one in a while but i’m back on meds now too because work was making my anxiety kinda bad :/ thanks

Me too. I basically never have stereotypical flashbacks or nightmares. My triggers are mostly relational. I have periods of time where I function normally. But I scored like 55 on the PCL last time I took it. That's not for nothing.

wait what’s a PCL ? and ya i don’t have nightmares anymore really tho but flashbacks

I remember being diagnosed with hepatitis C. I never had a bad day with it, there were no symptoms, and I hadn't been doing any of the things that most people associate with it. I doubted my diagnosis but there was no way around a positive test, I had it. Only then did I do the research and find the history that made it believable, in fact, I found there were several ways I might have been exposed. I had to own it, it was mine. It didn't help that I also had to explain it to people that, like me, assumed you got it through a very few routes like needle use and homosexuality. I now knew that it could be passed through blood transfusions prior to 83, or through my work as a first responder, or by something as simple as having a roommate use my razor or being scratched by the same jagged edge as a person that had it. In fact, the first people that presented symptoms were war heroes that had received plasma on a battlefield. I did the old interferon cocktail cure for 6 months and it is gone.

My point is this: Everyone around us assumes that you get PTSD through being shot or shot at and by seeing death up close. We learn that there are more ways to get it and we have to train people, even ourselves, that there are many many ways to get this.

As long as I have had this diagnosis, and firmly as I believe I am a sufferer, if I was put in a room full of combat vets, I would feel like I didn't belong. They might feel the same way because I got here by a different route. The same goes in reverse. If I was in a room full of CPTSD sufferers, even though I was aware that there was a huge variation in the way we had all gotten there I would feel like I belonged. And a combat vet might feel like she or he didn't.

If only there was a beyond doubt binary yes-no test like my hep C tests for this, we could all get a membership card and never feel like it didn't belong to us. Instead, we have to accept it as an opinion of someone that has seen it before and learn all we can about it, and accept that there will always be a lingering whisper of the unknown and unprovable that seems to get us all at some point.

I don't think that doubting our diagnosis makes us anything but human. I trust my psych, I know why and how I got it, and I accept that others got it another way that is no more or less validating than my own. I don't worry about the first glancing blow thoughts that I don't really have it, because I know that a longer look has shown me time and time again that I belong here, I have it.

yeah i guess i just like to be say in my head this isn’t real or stop like this isn’t real i literally saw that it’s weird i guess. but anyway i still know that i do have traumas do i don’t know why i go there i guess i also go to the “i’m making a big deal out of all this” thought :(

Yep -- just had this conversation...again!...with my t.
I say I'm delusional and just making crap up for attention
She says I've got a massive case of ptsd and I'm denying it because that is easier than facing it it

She also says it's really typical for trauma survivors to not want to accept the diagnosis

ya like i’ve been called delusional maybe that’s why it’s a re occurring thought i have too :/

 

[HealingMama]

wait what’s a PCL ? and ya i don’t have nightmares anymore really tho but flashbacks

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist

My re-experiencing symptoms tend to be more emotionally oriented, body memories, physical symptoms etc rather than visual.

 

[hope555]

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist

My re-experiencing symptoms tend to be more emotionally oriented, body memories, physical symptoms etc rather than visual.

body memories yup but all of those too

 

[Friday]

Who would you be faking FOR / to whom do you need/want to prove yourself... and what benefit would you be getting from it?

Because... Nope. Never experienced that. Not once. Until either of those factors entered my life, some 15/20 odd years later. I’m not a people-pleaser by nature, so it was mostly a weird f*cking experience, but but baseline? >>> Qui Bono? <<< How would you benefit BY faking? Source that, and you have a helluva lot of options and avenues of attack.

 

[hope555]

Who would you be faking FOR / to whom do you need/want to prove yourself... and what benefit would you be getting from it?

Because... Nope. Never experienced that. Not once. Until either of those factors entered my life, some 15/20 odd years later. I’m not a people-pleaser by nature, so it was mostly a weird f*cking experience, but but baseline? >>> Qui Bono? <<< How would you benefit BY faking? Source that, and you have a helluva lot of options and avenues of attack.

i know there’s literally no one to be faking for and i can’t be faking because my symptoms that i don’t have control over. me on the other hand total people pleaser since i was little i think i still have that in me and i hate it i always gotta snap out of that

 

[Chris-duck]

yeah i guess i just like to be say in my head this isn’t real or stop like this isn’t real i literally saw that it’s weird i guess. but anyway i still know that i do have traumas do i don’t know why i go there i guess i also go to the “i’m making a big deal out of all this” thought :(

Just popping in to say same, I'm a longterm member of the "I don't have PTSD, it wasn't trauma, but if it was it wasn't *bad* trauma, okay even if it was *bad* trauma, it doesn't actually affect me" So just saying I get it, I don't really have much to add to what's already been said though.