Poll How Many Traumatic Incidents Have You Experienced?

[allison142]

batgirl,

Don't despair. You are not the only one with the classic PTSD. There are many people suffering from it. There is hope because you can heal and strive to become the person you were, so that is a solid foundation you have.

To answer your question, I have complex PTSD. Let's see. Child abuse for 18 years, then 5 emotionally abusive relationships, and multiple abusive friendships. I wouldn't be able to count the total given the 18 years of regular abuse, but it is well over 100.

I am just learning about classic and complex PTSD/DESNOS (Disorders of Extreme Stress - Not Otherwise Specified) and they share many symptoms, but it's important to also know the difference and tackle the issues that are most pertinent to you.

I hope this helps and good luck!

 

[DrDanger1979]

Multiples over Time

Four seems to be one logical answer in terms of the types of trauma. Each varied as to numbers of times and duration.

 

[Petchen]

Shrink on Holiday....

Living with an alcoholic
Being abandoned by an alcoholic
Subjected to her boyfriends
Left at their families houses
Left in places where I had asthma attacks and no medical help (before inhalers)
Being transported by said alcoholic while drunk.
Baby Bird dies because alcoholic says "oh he'll be fine...we'll be home soon"
Alcoholic locking all my clothes in her car. Dear Step Mother had to come talk sense to drunk Mother.
Alcoholic passed out on sofa for holidaze. At 30 I cried through Chinese buffet with friends. (Alcoholic says I made that up.)
Alcoholic dazed in front of friends.
Being locked out of the house while alcoholic is humping boyfriend.
Dead baby bird starved, in box, burnt into retinas.
At the alcoholics boyfriends in the middle of nowhere by myself, no food. Freezer full of kilos of weed.
My room is flooded. "Fix yourself." I am supposed to be a construction contractor.
"Happy Fourth of July! I was goin' to BBQ salmon, but we decided to drink our dinner!"
(obviously this time line is not to scale)
Raped.
Sent to live with the Alcoholic.
Years of Wishy Washy Willy Nilly bullshit.
Pregnant. Boyfriend forced to abandon. His Mother becomes Satan.
Alcoholic promises not to tell my Dad.
I am not home 2 hours from Planned Parenthood,
Alcoholic "I had to tell your Dad. I needed the money for your abortion."
This piece of shit is my flesh and blood? I don't know how I was made from this.
My Beloved Step Mother Dies on my birthday after a very brief bout with cancer.
I am her caregiver. My world had stopped. I help my Vietnam Vet father with PTSD, for more than a year after. He is legally deaf. Things are difficult in a hearing world for a deaf person with flashbacks and nightmares.
Dad thinks I can't hear him say out loud "I could just drive the car off a cliff" or a myriad of other such things.
I go back to my world with my Husband. Things are different yet the same.
The Husband totals his car. He bumped his head.
I lived for many years before realizing how hard he bumped his head.
My best friend comes to live with us. She seems to think there are bugs living in her hair. Friends sister and I clean out her entire house and store in my basement. Friends family is upset at me, I knew she was schizophrenic. (I read the PDR, duh. Bugs, delusions, paranoid, talks to self, this aint rocket science.) Upset because friend lets me go into doctor appointments, because friend signed release of info with my name on it. Schizoid starts smoking in the house. Refusing any treatment. Nearly sets house on fire. Schizoid, friend no longer since I took her to the hospital.
The husbands bump on his head didn't like that she was up all night pacing around the house with her doc martins on anyway...
He had bumped his head so hard it was like living with part of the alcoholic all over again. So...

I partied. I worked 90 hour weeks. I was a dichotomy. I went to loud TOOL rock concerts to drown out the noise in my head or I quietly and respectfully cared for dying cancer patients. I carefully metered out morphine or lorazepam or cooked steaks that would go uneaten but sounded good at the time, ate apricot pie and ice cream for breakfast with my angels...
The noise of the concerts or someones else s grief was my sublimation.
Divorce was inevitable. The bump to his head changed him. He was too numb even for me.
Drop out of school? Not to go med school? This was crazy talk.

One night one of my cancer angels....turned...not on me but their cancer turned on their brain. I became the cancers victim. My angel attacked me. Twisted an already wounded arm. Pinched me, hit me. Called me filthy names. I'd never in 10 years of helping people die in their homes had to call the Paramedics to come get someone to take them to the hospital to die....

A month or so after that I moved into the "quiet graduate dorms" at a university. The stomach cramps, headaches, sleepless nights all just got worse from there...the quiet dorms were anything but...doors slamming at all hours of the night, fire alarms, senseless whooping and hollering...and me...

"I am up! I am up! I'll get your morphine. The Lorazepam...the the the I'll be right there!" But no....it was these snot nosed college kids partying all f-ing night...not someone dying. I wanted to kill....

I went to the foam store....6 inch foam in the windows...that blocked some of the noise....

One day I got up with the distinct feeling I was in the book "Where the Wild Things Are." donning my pj's, and sockies and my funny little beanie hat...I grabbed a broom and started stomping all over that god forsaken "quiet, graduate, 24 hour quiet apartment of mine" I knew I had to go....

Since then....there's been the person who side swipped my car...totalling it. And then I mistakenly moved in with a drunk...who was on the path to bottom with a slip and slide....with the land lord who forgot about the freaking rule book, alcoholic mother trying to sabatoge my relationship with my dad; trying to get me put in jail? delusionally thinks I stole her ID, mean voicemails, emails, f-ing crazy talk....but...good news is I live with a nice little ole lady who is wonderfully normal...and now I just need to level out and keep plugging away at school.

Ok thanks for letting me vent...The shrink's wife was off today...BEOTCH! Ha ha kidding... I love my Psychoanalyst. FYI for future reference my shrink is married to my Psychoanalyst. I usually grope every week.

I left out a billion or so traumas cause I forgot them and they are obvious, like the screaming and yelling and irrational alcoholic bullshit.... I only remembered that stuff recently in bits and pieces and had to confer with others that my memory was correct....f-ing alcoholic making me think I remember wrong. My poor step mother....here she was so close to death and I am trying to ask her if I had remembered some of this stuff correctly.


I think I need a little Uncle Jim running around in my head sometimes when I don't want to do my homework and I am feeling sorry for myself.....like today.... ;-) LOL I dig straight forward.

Enough bullshit! You know better.

Uncle Jim.

 

[Petchen]

I forgot I forgot....One that carried with me for a long time.

Dad was diagnosed with brain tumor. We moved to the Bay Area CA. Years of living with the thought that Dad could be gone at any moment. I'd be left with you know who.

***ugly flashback warning****

I've been away a couple days, realized I was, numb for the last two weeks. And I do have flashbacks...not just the nightmares. I have flashbacks of certain things like this one...it's burned in my retinas....a man in a burning car...he's burned,black, crisp....and rocking forward....and back...in his seat...with his mouth agape, yet gasping also...he's moving his head forward more because he's strapped in the belt still....like rocking...as if the last hope of life is trying to get out of the car......and the Firefighters are putting out the fire...several of them....several standing around....I am so disassociated....there's another me, screaming, silently at the firefighters....f@k, f*k your procedure...."is the scene safe?" just pull the man from the f-ing car....f-ing procedure....the man died.

Scene's safe for someone, I guess.

 

[Noone.]

I have been a firefighter for 16 years. I have had trauma to myself as well as been witness to the evil that mankind inflicts on each other. My trauma is never ending as well as my future patients. I will stay strong and not let this beat me.

Be safe.

FIRE.

 

[chant2012]

Many incidents throughout my life for sure...

 

[Changing4Best]

Many major ones and several minor ones too.

 

[Ed Norton]

Childhood neglect/homelessness, a disabling Car accident in 2005, witnessing a fire in which a mother burned to death with her three children...and the one that finally got me being tortured and threatened with death by the police.

 

[SuicideSurvivor1994]

My father's suicide, my mother's decay due to a genetic illness, poverty and near homelessness..... and then when I finally got on my feet I ended up being a victim of two natural disasters.....

Now I'm constantly looking over my shoulder wondering what's next.....

 

[Lionheart]

I've endured countless traumatic experiences beginning at age 4 and continuing through adulthood; severe, prolonged abuse of every type from simple neglect and abandonment to beatings, sexual abuse, and seeing my mother being raped and beaten etc.

....it was hard to share that, I don't like to think of myself as a victim.

 

[ResaLock]

I am roughly estimating about 50-100 throughout my life. Its hard to measure some. I put 50-100 because I was abandoned and I can't measure that. When you find out your abandoned. Your abandoned everyday. Especially if its confusing and you don't know what is going on, and your abandoned and passed around by the same family from state to state. Then I was physically abused by a couple of them a few times.(not sexually) - but its traumatic when you do witness them doing it to others which they did.- Then passed back to the adopted mother who abandoned me. Then you have these abuses from domestic violence (adult years) that last for days, that seems like its just one big abuse of one event. I also had a few car accidents in my life that were traumatic around my mid teens. A kidnapping/r*p*. and more... much more...Maybe it has even been more than a 100... I don't know.

 

[Caterpillar]

I had to vote for many incidents, though I currently only seem to have symptoms from one. Maybe that one has just encompassed all the others. It had all the elements that have haunted me in a long series of incidents throughout my life. I've been witness to mental breakdowns, suicide attempts and a successful suicide, serious physical illness, etc. Spent many nights wondering if people I cared about would be alive in the morning. Eventually it just got to be too much.

I still feel like I don't really "belong" here or in any other PTSD group, though, since nothing happened directly to me. I was always just witness. It's almost like I'm untouchable directly. Though I often think I would rather it had happened to me. I'm not afraid of my own death, but I'm terrified of losing people I care about.