I've been on these forums for a couple months now and haven't divulged what my trauma is. The reason is that I don't know. I've read the article 'What is Traumatic Enough?' and am not sure I really meet the criteria. I have every single other symptom of PTSD, but I'm just not sure I fit criterion A.
When I was 12, my mother went into the hospital and stayed there for 8 months while she lost each limb one at a time. My dad spent all his time at the hospital, so my Aunt watched us kids and would yell at me (my brother was too young to understand what was happening) whenever I got upset about my mom.
I never had a relationship with my dad, even though he was in the home, until after mom came out of the hospital. We couldn't be in the same room together without there being a huge fight between us and he used to say some really horrible things to me and I thought more than once that he was going to hit me. I have 1 good memory of my dad - just 1. Before my mom went in the hospital, he pretty much had nothing to do with me.
2 months after my mom died (she only lived for 4 years after the hospital), my friend was murdered in his home. I was out of town and couldn't even be there for my friends.
I've been threatened with knives twice - once I don't think I realized how serious it was - I was a teen and immortal, and the second time was after my diagnosis.
I was run off the freeway into a cement ditch in my car, but wasn't injured. I managed to do $25k worth of damage to a $19k car. My dad was mad at me for wanting to go home instead of to my bro's birthday party.
I was the target of workplace bullying for 7 years by 7 different supervisors where I was called horrible names and threatened with being fired nearly every week. I finally broke down and had to quit - whenever I called in sick I was harassed throughout the day with threatening phone calls and after I took a leave of absence this continued with the HR person.
While having a bad reaction to depakote, my fiance blacked out when my father attacked him and ended up strangling my Dad - I thought he was going to kill him.
I don't think, though, that any of these is quite severe enough for a PTSD diagnosis and my T and my psych have never pointed to any particular incident and said 'that's the one' so I don't know. And that's my dirty little secret - I never thought I was going to die, I've never been beaten, and I've never been a witness to anything horrible. This is all normal life stuff. That's my dirty little secret - I've been diagnosed PTSD, but I don't know why.
When I was 12, my mother went into the hospital and stayed there for 8 months while she lost each limb one at a time. My dad spent all his time at the hospital, so my Aunt watched us kids and would yell at me (my brother was too young to understand what was happening) whenever I got upset about my mom.
I never had a relationship with my dad, even though he was in the home, until after mom came out of the hospital. We couldn't be in the same room together without there being a huge fight between us and he used to say some really horrible things to me and I thought more than once that he was going to hit me. I have 1 good memory of my dad - just 1. Before my mom went in the hospital, he pretty much had nothing to do with me.
2 months after my mom died (she only lived for 4 years after the hospital), my friend was murdered in his home. I was out of town and couldn't even be there for my friends.
I've been threatened with knives twice - once I don't think I realized how serious it was - I was a teen and immortal, and the second time was after my diagnosis.
I was run off the freeway into a cement ditch in my car, but wasn't injured. I managed to do $25k worth of damage to a $19k car. My dad was mad at me for wanting to go home instead of to my bro's birthday party.
I was the target of workplace bullying for 7 years by 7 different supervisors where I was called horrible names and threatened with being fired nearly every week. I finally broke down and had to quit - whenever I called in sick I was harassed throughout the day with threatening phone calls and after I took a leave of absence this continued with the HR person.
While having a bad reaction to depakote, my fiance blacked out when my father attacked him and ended up strangling my Dad - I thought he was going to kill him.
I don't think, though, that any of these is quite severe enough for a PTSD diagnosis and my T and my psych have never pointed to any particular incident and said 'that's the one' so I don't know. And that's my dirty little secret - I never thought I was going to die, I've never been beaten, and I've never been a witness to anything horrible. This is all normal life stuff. That's my dirty little secret - I've been diagnosed PTSD, but I don't know why.
