Need Reassurance?

[MamaHopeful]

I am working with my new PTSD therapist at untangling the misdiagnosis I received from the traumatic OCD specialist/experience.
I am doing a CPT worksheet and need to untangle the belief that my PTSD symptoms are *only* in OCD.
I have made great progress, but I am stuck on a few symptoms:
1) A need for reassurance that the trauma is not about to happen. I get an intrusive memory and then feel the need to ask my husband if it's about to happen again. Does this also happen in PTSD?
2) Thinking that my PTSD symptoms were actually me going insane, and when they happen, wanting so bad to google or read or ask my therapist/husband if it's really PTSD or if I'm insane. I had a really, really bad nightmare two nights ago where I woke up vomiting and screaming and couldn't recognize where I was for a while. Even though my husband kept telling me I wasn't insane I kept begging him to take me to a hospital. Eventually, I calmed down but I still felt the need to google PTSD symptoms just to be sure other people have the same thing, and I wasn't, in fact, going insane.

Have any of you had this happen??? Did you think you were going totally insane when PTSD symptoms first happened to you?

Is this part of hyper-vigilance?

 

[Joan]

I am so sorry you are experiencing all this! I have personally often thought I was totally losing it and insane! It is so scary. One of the biggest components of PTSD is reliving trauma and the inability to differentiate then and now.I hope that you get the help you need in caring for yourself,

 

[MamaHopeful]

Thank you so much for answering. I guess the part I'm feeling alone with, is, when you think you are losing it or insane - what do you do next? I often google the symptoms of PTSD to remind myself, or go through all the things my PTSD therapist has said to reassure myself that I am not. Do others with PTSD do this? Do you?
I guess I don't understand why, even after my therapist told me I'm not going crazy and it's PTSD, I DOUBT it so much. The presence of this doubt is what the awful OCD therapist said made it OCD and not PTSD. She said that someone with PTSD would simply say, "Oh, it's PTSD, I'm fine." and not need to keep asking or researching or reminding themselves. But I don't think that's true.

 

[Tinyflame]

Did you think you were going totally insane when PTSD symptoms first happened to you?

Yes. ^^

"She said that someone with PTSD would simply say, "Oh, it's PTSD, I'm fine."

Well, ^^, not exactly, for me. I thought, well, that explains it- when what they explained was exactly what I experienced, and others similarly too.

I don't think it's insane, unless one day I become so. That to me would be a break with reality. However, that being said, it's still not 'normal' to me, whatsoever.

 

[Friday]

Everyone I was around was doing the exact same things, so it was all very normalized. Nothing to be upset by / the only thing to be upset about was crying about it afterwards. IE the moment you became able to think/feel what was happening? The tiniest whisper of self awareness? Lock it down instead of freaking out, or feeling sorry for ourselves, or spinning it up harder.

 

[Tinyflame]

I also recall my dad having many of the same 'reactions', and thinking I was turning in to my father as I aged.

 

[EveHarrington]

When you say *only* OCD are you under the belief that PTSD is higher on the severity ladder than OCD?

It doesn’t really work this way, that is, PTSD isn’t “worse” than OCD.

Some people with OCD will have symptoms more severe than some people with PTSD. The reverse is also true, that some people with PTSD will have symptoms more severe than some people with OCD.

I see this as possibly being the root of your belief and the cause of your resistance.