Ptsd Setting In 20 Years After The Fact - Anyone Have This?

[gms1976]

I have complex PTSD from multiple childhood traumas, growing up in Africa with violence and rioting, Rhodesian Bush war at age 4, molested by my grandfather, rejected by my father when I told him. My father had a heart attack in front of me and I was the only one who knew CPR - I was 16 and couldn't save him. The list goes on.

I seem to have done pretty well for myself and have a bachelor's degree in nursing and a loving husband. I had gastric bypass in 2005 for a severe weight problem as I was medicating with food. I've moved to the USA and became a citizen in 2010. But about 3 years ago, my world crashed. Severe depression, anger, mood swings, severe memory loss, anxiety attacks, screaming in my head, dissociation (emotional and lost time), nightmares, agitation. I teetered on the edge of suicide for 3 months last year until I found my current therapist.

Here's my question...why now?

Has anyone else experience a large time gap between the end of the trauma and the onset of PTSD?

Why did all the symptoms come crashing down 20 years after it all ended? Why do I feel like my life is in a spiral. I get triggered a dozen times a day, I feel damaged, stupid and worthless and have nightmares almost every night. Any percieved violence (even stupid TV shows set me off) or potential or implied violence triggers me. Abused animals or animal cruelty send me into a severe dissociative spin. I spend most of my life in various states of emotional dissociation or just lose time. I have intrusive thoughts and a toxic inner critic along with obsessive worrying and severe anxiety. I look in the mirror and despise the person I see there. My reflection fills me with disgust. I see myself as weak and useless and pathetic. I have a molasses brain and can barely function at work. I feel like an outcast of humanity, like I don't belong anywhere.

I just wish I could understand why it's all hitting now, after all this time. I realize that some of it has possibly been leaking through for for some time and I didn't notice because it was a way of life.

My therapist keeps telling me not to blame myself for all the bad in my life, but it's hard because I feel useless and stupid today and what happened, happened 20 years ago and they don't feel related. I'm trying to reconcile the two. I'm also dealing with Bipolar 2 disorger and infertility with 3 failed IVF cycles and 1 miscarriage.

I just can't figure out what the hell I did to piss the universe off because there sure isn't anyone up there who cares.

Any thoughts would be welcome. Just want to know I'm not alone.

 

[The Albatross]

gms, I was one of those who didn't realize that the root cause of my maladies and behaviors was PTSD until about 3 years ago. I was largely unconscious in my behaviors and only came to understand what was happening, really happening when I began recovery for alcohol more than a decade ago. It explains a lot.

Looking back I can see I fit the classic PTSD description as a child and teen. I self medicated with booze to function in my 20's and 30's. When I got rid of that in recovery, a couple of friends observed some behaviors and one realized that I was describing disassociative episodes. I just turned 52 and realize that I've been dealing with this for quite a long time. Most all of my life. I'm aware now, I can begin to understand and try to heal is as much as I am able now.

No, gms... you're not alone.

 

[Chincho]

My experience is similar to the ones you both describe. I was abused when I was about 6 (I still don't remember parts of it), I also grew up with emotional abuse and suffered a few more traumas along the way. It wasn't until I was diagnosed at 43 (two years ago) when I sought help, that I realized I had been living with PTSD most of my life, I just didn't know it.

 

[Taven Carlsen]

I resisted mental illness well, I'm proud of how I did things at the time, and I still had a quick onset. Not much help but I figure any data is useful...

 

[intothelight]

Hi GMS,

I don't think that it is that unusual to have a full blown PTSD blow up long after some of the main trauma's have passed. Also, were their times you could have had the symptoms and they were not recognized? Was the bi-polar diagnosis made prior to the PTSD diagnosis?

Sometimes there is one event later that triggers the whole flood of the past. Also, as odd as it sounds, sometimes when we are most secure in our life, the memories come flooding back (along with the symptoms) as somewhere in our subconscious we have decided it is now "safe".

Only you and your therapist can sort out the actual reasons. But the most important thing is that you are aware and actively working on healing. Just make sure you continue to be kind to yourself and focus on all that you have accomplished in your life. Trauma is a part of our lives, as is PTSD, but it is not who we are..even though it feels that way at times.

 

[gms1976]

Thanks Intothelight,

Your words make a lot of sense. I was diagnosed with Bipolar II about 2 years prior to my PTSD diagnosis. I believe my father had Bipolar II as well as he had definite up and down-swings in his moods and was alternately chatty and upbeat and depressed and withdrawn. He also had sudden anger and rage (he also had PTSD as he fought in the Rhodesian Bush War). It was hard living with him.

My therapist agrees with you that something triggered what happened in the past but I feel a huge disconnect with it and am struggling to reconcile things. It's so hard not to blame myself as it is 20 years later and I'm a mess where 3-4 years ago I wasn't.

Gayle

 

[Christian Price]

GMS; no I am going through the same thing. It has been 25 years since my trauma. My mother took off when I was 4-5. Became depressed, grades dumped in school. The abuser thought he could beat me into good grades; I was depressed... became suicidal until the end when I the thought became reality. I survived, a SI GSW m.m. next to the heart. When the shot went; didn't care about the why anymore...

I had counciling for 1 year... I was told to "own it" the old man dragged me down into the woods to stand infront of the tree where I shot myself and figured I didn't collapse and urinate all overmyself I was "over" it.. I felt numb most of my life. I hear a constant roar in my head. I would average 3-5 jobs a year. Drove my first wife up the wall so she figured she deserved a man on the side. The marriage ended. I medicated myself when I worked as a bouncer in a night club and went home with countless bar flies for 2 years; when I met my wife. I wanted to be a "villager" and play nice. So I got a job and held my breath for the last 10 years.

You can only hold your breath so long I figured. Struggled to keep a job as usual, had fits of rage when we argued, I was distant. Go see a family councilor last year...she mentions PTSD. I never heard of it. I brush it off. Stress is building because I am a salesman and business is bad. Bills pilling up, I do enjoy writing. My wife wants me to write down what I saw when the gun went off and how I survived <I think it was an Angel> I thought I would self pupblish the book to make the extra money... The book was a key to let the monster out. The flashbacks have been the most powerful to date. This week I went to the hospital; I saw myself walk into the woods and I was screaming at myself to stop, I saw the vortex...here is what's changed

My motor skills are off
Appitite is half
I see flashes of light
I blacked out 2x this week
I feel this medicine head fog covering my head
I get exhausted for doing almost nothing.. I took the trash out and needed a nap
I feel light on my skin and pressing on my eyes.
I have no health insurance to see a doc; but the E.R. doc gave me a script for anti depressant....they told me it will get worse before it gets better and this scares me because when I blacked out; I lost my reality. My PTSD <if thats what it is? of me shooting myself...my God scares the hell out of me. I am under weekly counciling. I've no desire to end my life...none.

 

[bright_morning]

Gms all I can say is I relate in a lot of ways. I too have a list of lifetime traumas a mile long and was only recently made aware that I have PTSD. I have come to believe that I always had it, but since trauma and survival was my normal mode, I only had it really kick in and appear "symptom driven" once I was in a safe and good place in my life.

From initial abuse to breakdown and consequent diagnosis was about 30 years. In between there were 9 years of repetitive ritual abuse, and numerous other traumas, anything from extreme and near fatal violence against me to several car accidents and more (like you the list goes on). But until 2 years ago I had not yet had a major emotional meltdown that rendered me useless and landed me in the illustrious "Camp PTSD" with all the other happy campers.

 

[Bubba]

Same here! Childhood trauma - now I'm 42 - just recently diagnosed with PTSD. I never knew I had it, but now that I am going thru therapy and a lot of personal retrospection, I can see that I have indeed had it my whole life. It sucks. It takes a lot of effort. There is a lot of pain.

I often wonder if it isn't worse now that I'm older - now that I have life experience and see things from a different perspective. I think it's almost harder to shrug things off. When you're young, you can sometimes turn the other cheek and just push on forward. When you get older, I think there's a bigger impact. It's harder to just shrug it off.

Hang in there! You are in good company here. There are so many people that can help you learn how to manage all of your PTSD symptoms.

 

[^^FlyingSolo^^]

I can't answer the "why now", but like everybody else I relate to this.

I think when people are younger they have more stamina to "function" and maintain a pretty normal life. At least that was me. I new for many years something was wrong, but I kept working full time and maintaining a normal life, ignoring the symptoms as best I could.

But I think PTSD is the type of thing that will catch up with you sooner or later. You can't really run from it forever.

It finally caught up with me in my mid/late thirties, which is a good 20 years from the initial childhood trauma. There came a time when It became very obvious that I could no longer work and my defenses were breaking down, and the symptoms were coming on strong, the PTSD took over. That's when I had to switch gears and get social security for a means of financial support as a single mother.

good luck on your research,

Solo

 

[Tinyflame]

From when it started I always thought it was 'just me', and tried everything healthy and not-healthy to work around the symptoms, though in retrospect I can pin point when the FB's etc started, about 26 years earlier.

But like others have stated with little warning- a relatively minor incident compared to others things in my life (though it was under extreme stress for a few years from other circumstances)- 'my defenses' (or coping mechanisms) broke down also, as FlyingSolo said.

Ironically, it was just when I was feeling happier, getting the ground under my feet.

However, that is just how it went. Perhaps had it continued without that happening, things would have been worse, because the ptsd was always there, just masked. Though it's felt like to Hell and back.

 

[Christian Price]

As I look back over my life. I was in shock for a year. Then I wanted to live in the village with all of the other "villagers" so I've maintained an equilibrium between my interior core and my environment.

I've always lived my life like a general in battle enaged in a two front war. I've always had to keep troops in reserve to keep an eye on my central core and keep it under control. When my exterior environment gets to stressful I have to pull troops away from the center to face and deal with normal "village" stress because all of my life I've wanted to be a villager.

With no one keeping an eye on the center it starts to get very hot; the flashbacks get more severe... anxiety builds. Eventually the core always wins.. I pull the plug on life in the village and make "irrational" life changes but to me... if living under a bridge for a season so I can sleep and zone out until the temperature goes back down... I have.

This is how I used to deal with it. Now I have a family and am not 20 years old.... so I have to live in the village and all of my troops are gone; MIA... I've no more reinforcements to keep crowd control on my central village and the natives are throwing a coup against me... I feel the metal light... hate the metal light.

More memories from that day are more severe they have more sound, texture. I told my wife its like a "flip book" with a cartoon. Start to flip and a cartoon character slowly starts to move and in time it builds and the character moves fast..faster this is whats going on...