Hello all,
I haven't received any formal diagnosis, but I have had a few tragic events in my life that have caused various symptoms at various stages of life that lead me to believe I might be suffering from PTSD.
Most recently, I was hit by a car that had collided with another car in the street, and then swerved up onto the sidewalk where it hit myself and my two dogs. The tire popped on its way over the curb, so the bare rim of the wheel ran over my foot and one of the dogs (a puppy we had adopted just a couple of weeks earlier who was killed by the impact), and then crashed into the apartment building behind us. The injury to my foot was fairly severe and the impact caused a fairly long-lasting concussion, but thankfully I've been recovering fairly well.
My experience since this accident has been very confusing. I've been experiencing rage in a way that I never have before. Mostly from unfortunate conversations, often about the accident, which leave me with my heart pounding, a noticeable change in my vision, and once or twice I have experienced fairly extreme but brief bouts of vertigo. During one of these bouts of vertigo, I checked my blood pressure several times, and it had jumped to 200, which is way above my normal blood pressure. Later that day I checked again and it had returned to normal. This brief spike in my blood pressure frightened me, and motivated me to seek an understanding of what was going on.
Throughout the day, when I'm not experiencing one of these episodes, I feel pretty low and empty, but am generally able to function and get through the day. On the way to and from work, my girlfriend and I have been arguing far more frequently than usual, which I attribute to my general irritability.
I have also had a difficult time with a variety of intrusive thoughts, like self-bullying, as if the accident was my own fault, or as if I'm worthless for not recovering faster. This happens mostly when I think of the accident, and just how close I was to dying. I have no memory of the accident due to my concussion, so I sort of have to reconstruct the scene in my mind from things I've been told, and this leads me to a dark place, though I've recently had some luck controlling this tendency.
My past experiences with PTSD-like symptoms were unrelated to this accident, and involve re-experiencing the death of my father, now 8 years ago. I came home from school and found that he had fallen down the stairs of our house and been bleeding from his head for several hours. 4 years later, my father's friend (and our next door neighbor) died in a strangely identical way, and in an effort to help my close friend, her son, I ran to the house and cleaned up all the blood so that he would not have to see it. At the time I felt strong, and that I could overcome my fears, and that maybe this would even be a growth experience. But it really made things much worse. I stopped functioning at my job, frequently re-experiencing the death of my family friend or the death of my father, breaking into sweats, and feeling unable to communicate effectively. Thankfully I had a boss that I could be honest with, and she helped me get back to work at my own pace. I saw a psychoanalytic therapist about these issues, and he never formally diagnosed me with PTSD, but described it as a "delayed grief response," but when I read about the experiences of PTSD sufferers, they resonated so clearly with my experience. Thankfully I no longer re-live those experiences.
Sorry if this is scattered, but I have never put all these thoughts down in one place, and don't really have any way of articulating the connection between these tragedies, except that they have both produced emotionally confusing experiences that seem to manifest physiologically.
I have been reading through the forums on this site and feel a huge amount of relief. I am grateful for the acceptance of people like me, without a formal diagnosis, but that feel connected to (and possibly afflicted by) the disorder. Thank you all.
I haven't received any formal diagnosis, but I have had a few tragic events in my life that have caused various symptoms at various stages of life that lead me to believe I might be suffering from PTSD.
Most recently, I was hit by a car that had collided with another car in the street, and then swerved up onto the sidewalk where it hit myself and my two dogs. The tire popped on its way over the curb, so the bare rim of the wheel ran over my foot and one of the dogs (a puppy we had adopted just a couple of weeks earlier who was killed by the impact), and then crashed into the apartment building behind us. The injury to my foot was fairly severe and the impact caused a fairly long-lasting concussion, but thankfully I've been recovering fairly well.
My experience since this accident has been very confusing. I've been experiencing rage in a way that I never have before. Mostly from unfortunate conversations, often about the accident, which leave me with my heart pounding, a noticeable change in my vision, and once or twice I have experienced fairly extreme but brief bouts of vertigo. During one of these bouts of vertigo, I checked my blood pressure several times, and it had jumped to 200, which is way above my normal blood pressure. Later that day I checked again and it had returned to normal. This brief spike in my blood pressure frightened me, and motivated me to seek an understanding of what was going on.
Throughout the day, when I'm not experiencing one of these episodes, I feel pretty low and empty, but am generally able to function and get through the day. On the way to and from work, my girlfriend and I have been arguing far more frequently than usual, which I attribute to my general irritability.
I have also had a difficult time with a variety of intrusive thoughts, like self-bullying, as if the accident was my own fault, or as if I'm worthless for not recovering faster. This happens mostly when I think of the accident, and just how close I was to dying. I have no memory of the accident due to my concussion, so I sort of have to reconstruct the scene in my mind from things I've been told, and this leads me to a dark place, though I've recently had some luck controlling this tendency.
My past experiences with PTSD-like symptoms were unrelated to this accident, and involve re-experiencing the death of my father, now 8 years ago. I came home from school and found that he had fallen down the stairs of our house and been bleeding from his head for several hours. 4 years later, my father's friend (and our next door neighbor) died in a strangely identical way, and in an effort to help my close friend, her son, I ran to the house and cleaned up all the blood so that he would not have to see it. At the time I felt strong, and that I could overcome my fears, and that maybe this would even be a growth experience. But it really made things much worse. I stopped functioning at my job, frequently re-experiencing the death of my family friend or the death of my father, breaking into sweats, and feeling unable to communicate effectively. Thankfully I had a boss that I could be honest with, and she helped me get back to work at my own pace. I saw a psychoanalytic therapist about these issues, and he never formally diagnosed me with PTSD, but described it as a "delayed grief response," but when I read about the experiences of PTSD sufferers, they resonated so clearly with my experience. Thankfully I no longer re-live those experiences.
Sorry if this is scattered, but I have never put all these thoughts down in one place, and don't really have any way of articulating the connection between these tragedies, except that they have both produced emotionally confusing experiences that seem to manifest physiologically.
I have been reading through the forums on this site and feel a huge amount of relief. I am grateful for the acceptance of people like me, without a formal diagnosis, but that feel connected to (and possibly afflicted by) the disorder. Thank you all.
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