Hello everyone
I relate to everything I read on these boards but a part of me feels confused being here... I will explain...
A few years ago I was diagnosed with chronic burnout and likely complex PTSD due to work place stress and bullying - panic attacks, near violent confrontation (by me if triggered), screaming and swearing at colleagues, absolute feeling of being 'beaten down' and reacting at the slightest raised voice (I once had a panic attack in a supermarket because a security guard used a stern voice near me).
I eventually got out of the work situation to save my health, went to counseling and changed my life totally but now, a few years later, I've started getting more and more stressed and feel the same old feelings coming back.
This time the fear and anger is being focused on my husband - any time he raises his voice I go crazy akin to if he is trying to kill me. 2 days ago I had a panic attack so bad that I opened the car door while he was driving so I could get away from him and then threw up in the car because I had worked myself up into such a state. Afterwards I was so exhausted that I had to sleep for the whole day and I still feel exhausted now, with terrible headaches and neck/shoulder pains. What is really worrying me is that everytime my husband looks at me angrily or even vaguely raises his voice I burst into tears like he is going to hit me. It's got to the point I havent been able to look him in the eye since the car incident 2 days ago.
What I'm starting to see is that I've always had some sensitivity and the work bullying seemed to have upped everything to the highest level. But a level that was so high that others who were also bullied alongside me did not react as extremely as me (or so fast). What I'm saying is that it's almost like I had PTSD before I 'properly' got PTSD (ie the work-related PTSD).
If I look back to before the work bullying, I'd lived my life as early as my first memory 'waiting and preparing' for something bad to happen to me; permanently alert and observant to the point of exhaustion. It means I've always been a 'pre-empter' extreme and can predict most of the time what will happen in given situations, maybe because I've had so much experience of watching how situations pan out. Feeling some relative control by preparing for the worst has been the way I have lived my life and I hadn't had a problem with it until recently when I realised other people dont think like me (I'd assumed that thinking about dying or being killed every thought was perfectly normal)
So my question is, did I always have PTSD of some kind before the work place bullying took it to another level? And is this why it is resurfacing again now, because it has never really been fixed?
Also, how could I have PTSD as a child and adult without being able to think of one traumatic event during my childhood? I don't mean to upset people who have had trauma but I really dont recall anything terrible happening to me...
The only thing I can think of linking to accidents and trauma is that my father was a soldier who was killed a month before I was born.
However I did not know about this as a child as I didnt meet him.
So why am I so f**ked up and when and how do I get these feelings to stop? I wish I had some idea why this is happening to me. I feel so alone.
I relate to everything I read on these boards but a part of me feels confused being here... I will explain...
A few years ago I was diagnosed with chronic burnout and likely complex PTSD due to work place stress and bullying - panic attacks, near violent confrontation (by me if triggered), screaming and swearing at colleagues, absolute feeling of being 'beaten down' and reacting at the slightest raised voice (I once had a panic attack in a supermarket because a security guard used a stern voice near me).
I eventually got out of the work situation to save my health, went to counseling and changed my life totally but now, a few years later, I've started getting more and more stressed and feel the same old feelings coming back.
This time the fear and anger is being focused on my husband - any time he raises his voice I go crazy akin to if he is trying to kill me. 2 days ago I had a panic attack so bad that I opened the car door while he was driving so I could get away from him and then threw up in the car because I had worked myself up into such a state. Afterwards I was so exhausted that I had to sleep for the whole day and I still feel exhausted now, with terrible headaches and neck/shoulder pains. What is really worrying me is that everytime my husband looks at me angrily or even vaguely raises his voice I burst into tears like he is going to hit me. It's got to the point I havent been able to look him in the eye since the car incident 2 days ago.
What I'm starting to see is that I've always had some sensitivity and the work bullying seemed to have upped everything to the highest level. But a level that was so high that others who were also bullied alongside me did not react as extremely as me (or so fast). What I'm saying is that it's almost like I had PTSD before I 'properly' got PTSD (ie the work-related PTSD).
If I look back to before the work bullying, I'd lived my life as early as my first memory 'waiting and preparing' for something bad to happen to me; permanently alert and observant to the point of exhaustion. It means I've always been a 'pre-empter' extreme and can predict most of the time what will happen in given situations, maybe because I've had so much experience of watching how situations pan out. Feeling some relative control by preparing for the worst has been the way I have lived my life and I hadn't had a problem with it until recently when I realised other people dont think like me (I'd assumed that thinking about dying or being killed every thought was perfectly normal)
So my question is, did I always have PTSD of some kind before the work place bullying took it to another level? And is this why it is resurfacing again now, because it has never really been fixed?
Also, how could I have PTSD as a child and adult without being able to think of one traumatic event during my childhood? I don't mean to upset people who have had trauma but I really dont recall anything terrible happening to me...
The only thing I can think of linking to accidents and trauma is that my father was a soldier who was killed a month before I was born.
However I did not know about this as a child as I didnt meet him.
So why am I so f**ked up and when and how do I get these feelings to stop? I wish I had some idea why this is happening to me. I feel so alone.
