Hi Patrick.
I'd like to share an experience of mine for you, to give you something else to think about. (as if you need anymore!)
I was diagnosed with PTSD 7 years ago, and at the time I had all the symptoms. I was having flashbacks, not sleeping, panic attacks, dissociating, hypervigilence...Basically, I was a basket case.
I struggled through the symptoms, had two therapists helping me, and was given a workbook to help me through the PTSD. I was getting a lot of the work in the book done, and was starting to think that there would be an end to all of it. A year passed. I started to do okay in school, started to be able to sleep, my eating habits were back to normal, most of my symptoms were gone, I was flourishing once again.
It all blew up on me just over a year after my original diagnosis. I was kidnapped, tortured, and gang-raped by three "men" over a period of three days. After this assault, I kind of just completely numbed out. Of course, I went through a period of being a complete basket case...it was an awful month.
Then, one morning about a month after my attack I woke up and was fine. I wasn't having flashbacks, I wasn't dissociating, self harming, panicking, or anything. But I wasn't really there either. I became a shell. I had no emotions, couldn't react to anything. I don't even remember 90% of what happened in the years following. I somehow got through symptom free for 4 years. I pretty much forgot all about PTSD.
Yeah, I suffered from depression, and I did have one real big breakdown when a man approached me at a bus-stop claiming to have a gun, but other than that I wouldn't have said I had PTSD.
Then one day I walk into a restaurant with my boyfriend. It was completely random, neither of us had ever eaten there and we didn't even live near the place, but went in to eat. We had our seats, had ordered drinks, and were eating appetizers when all of a sudden my bf laughed and pointed out a man that was sitting over at the bar completely ignoring his companion, but pretending to listen. I looked over and watched the exchange, andI started to get an awful sinking feeling of recognition.
It was the man who had raped and abused me resulting in my original diagnosis of PTSD when I 16 years old. I started to react, and my bf noticing something was wrong was able to drag it out of me who it was. We left right away.
I was completely numb for the hour it took to get home, but when we got there it was as though a dam had burst. I cried, and cried until I thought my heart was actually breaking inside me. As I lay there on the bed sobbing in my boyfriends arms it all of a sudden occured to me that I had been raped.
Although I had been able to talk about my traumas in detail and acted as though I knew it happened, it was as though it was the first time I was finding out. The first time I felt anything to do with the second trauma that happened to me. It was too much. I can't describe the horrible sinking feeling of despair, rage, hopelessness and fear I went through that night as I fully realised the extent of the abuse that I had suffered at age 15 and then again at 17. I thought I would die laying on that bed going through those feelings for the first time.
After this realization all of my PTSD symptoms came back with a vengeance. I was worse than I had ever been originally, and I have never recovered from that moment. I am suffering from full blown Complex PTSD. I had a brain scan that determined I had the worst case of PTSD that any of my doctors had ever seen.
I struggle with the flashbacks, nightmares, panic attacks, depression, anxiety, dissociation and all the other crazy, awful symptoms of this disorder constantly.
I am trying to find help and hope, but I'd be lying if I said I was okay.
My point in telling you all this is so that you can see that you most likely do have PTSD, but that you have managed to block out your feelings SO well that is isn't manifesting as you seem to think it should from the textbook cases.
You say you aren't having flashbacks and most of the other symptoms. I say you're lucky in that regard, but it does not mean that you are not suffering, and that you are in the wrong place.
One thing I will say is if you have managed to block your feelings to the point that I did, when I was not suffering any PTSD symptoms, you may be in for a very rough time when exploring your PTSD.
I wish you luck in finding what you need to get through all the experiences you have coming. You are a valuable member here, and I do believe you're in the right spot. You say you feel you're a part of something here, and you are.
Keep on keeping on.
