Imaginary Companions?

[le croissant]

Hey all. I'm new here, and I don’t know whether I have PTSD. I haven’t been diagnosed with anything, at least. But I had prolonged, severe medical problems when I have a teenager. I’m all better now and moved on with my life, and for a while I never, ever thought about those years. But then earlier this year, I started having really bad anxiety seemingly out of nowhere. I started seeing a therapist and even though I’ve barely mentioned this part of my past (like I said, I never used to think about it), after just a few weeks of therapy it suddenly seemed so obvious to me that the anxiety was trauma-related. And now it’s very hard to get all those memories off my mind. (But it's also almost impossible to talk about them!)

That’s the backstory. Here’s my question… During my illness, I spent a whole lot of the time off in a fantasy land in my mind, because things in my body were not so great. I was a teenage girl, so maybe it’s not surprising that a lot of my fantasies prominently featured attractive men. :) But after a few years, they all started to be centered on this one man. They got really overwhelming and violent, and it got to the point where I felt like he was much more in control of what happened than I was. I could even often sense his presence with me in my regular life. I still thought I was making it all up… but also on some level it felt really real. It was very scary and I had intense nightmares about it for a while afterward.

Has anyone had an experience like this? I’ve never heard of such a thing. I don't have a history of abuse, and I’ve never had a problem before or since with blurring imagination and reality. But it really bothers me. I haven’t tried talking about it, but when I even think about talking about it, it makes me feel incredibly small and scared. How can I be so scared by something that never actually happened?

Any insight would be appreciated. I want to talk about it to my therapist, but it’s really hard. I think it would help if I didn’t feel like it was so bizarre.

 

[katiekat]

I have been seeing a new therapist for a few months now and just barely told her about my past which is very hard for me to talk about. I ended up finding a blog article that was similar to my experiences and emailed it to her. I'm glad I did that because it allowed her to know what I need to talk about but it wasn't as scary to tell her in this way. Maybe you can find a creative way to tell your therapist that will be easier for you?