Ridiculous trigger is embarrassing

[Effie]

I posted way back in May after my last set of exams. Undiagnosed - Adult child of combat veteran I'm going into exams again and struggling to keep it together. I have a learning disability and receive academic accommodations through accessibility services. The university granted extra time and semi-private space to write exams. And it helps me write exams but doesn't address the part where I make an embarrassment of myself every exam period. It's been recommended that I go for counselling but I can't bring myself to do it.

I had problems with writing tests as a kid but normally, when something freaks me out, I just do it anyway and it get over with. Either it's a one off or it gets easier over time. Only, writing tests and exams doesn't get easier. I'm sitting at the desk and I feel like that little kid being choked by the collar all over again. I can sit through the worst/best horror movies and view subject matters that I experienced that would be considered traumatic and feel fine. But the law exam scenes in Suits in the first season and other test scenes in movies and tv is what I can't get through.

When I described my experience with exams with my academic counselor through AS, she said it sounded a lot like PTSD. When I looked it up, I saw what she means. Of all the things to set me off, why this? I think I know where it comes from, but it doesn't make it any less stupid. Is there another solution besides counselling?

 

[Justmehere]

It is not stupid, and it’s unhelpful to keep judging it as stupid to be triggered by this. It’s only keeping you stuck.

A lot of very bright and capable people struggle with exams even without PTSD in the mix. It’s quite common for people to be embarrassed of a learning disability too.

I have a learning disability. I need help and accommodations with exams. I can get triggered by too because of childhood experiences pretty similar to yours.

Should I be ashamed too?

It's been recommended that I go for counselling but I can't bring myself to do it.

Is exams and counseling the not the only times where you are afraid to be vulnerable and have a weakeness or is it only those two times?

I think it’s probably time to challenge the unspoken or perhaps spoken messages from your father that you have to be perfect and without flaws or you will be harmed, and actually talk to a counselor about it.

You are not alone and you have nothing to be ashamed about. And yes, I know, easy to say, hard to believe... but it’s true. :hug:

 

[Sideways]

Ordinarily, I’d roll my eyes in frustration at someone suggesting to you that extreme stress and panic attacks about exams must be a form of mental illness. Because actually, there’s a lot of people out there who experience symptoms like that around exam time. While they may look calm and compliant, the other people sitting the exam could be experiencing similar levels of distress, and pathologising that doesn’t necessarily help anyone.

I got driven away from an exam to a doctor and given a shot of pethidine from panic at one of my exams, and I never considered that to be part of my ptsd. I just get really stressed about exams. So stressed that it makes me really sick. Nightmares? Yup. Eating issues? Yup. Low coping threshold for everything? Yup. Stress can do that.

That said, between what you described last time, and this time together? It sounds like you’re almost phobic of exams. I throw that in because phobias are a type of anxiety disorder (there’s multiple types of anxiety disorders - and they can make you just as sick and dysfunctional as ptsd). And unlike ptsd, where the symptoms would be constant (not just cropping up during exam season), an anxiety disorder could easily peak and disappear and peak again like what you’ve described.

Then there’s ptsd. Which it could also be. You’ve experienced trauma that can cause ptsd in the past, and it may be that you’re one of those people who would be called high-functioning with ptsd, and it’s simply that exam season brings you undone.

Or, it could be something else. Or it could be serious levels of stress (that happens- don’t underestimate how sick stress can make people). We can only guess, yeah?

The best way to learn to manage what you’re going through, and recover from what you’re going through? Is going to be to find out what it is. And that’s going to mean seeing someone qualified to diagnose you.

You seem to be reluctant to pursue that option. Do you know why? Because, getting the right diagnosis could mean the beginning of a new life...

 

[Effie]

It is not stupid, and it’s unhelpful to keep judging it as stupid to be triggered by this. It’s only keeping you stuck.

A lot of very bright and capable people struggle with exams even without PTSD in the mix. It’s quite common for people to be embarrassed of a learning disability too.

I have a learning disability. I need help and accommodations with exams. I can get triggered by too because of childhood experiences pretty similar to yours.

Should I be ashamed too?

No, you're right. Logically, I don't think anyone should be embarrassed.

Is exams and counseling the not the only times where you are afraid to be vulnerable and have a weakeness or is it only those two times?

I think it’s probably time to challenge the unspoken or perhaps spoken messages from your father that you have to be perfect and without flaws or you will be harmed, and actually talk to a counselor about it.

You are not alone and you have nothing to be ashamed about. And yes, I know, easy to say, hard to believe... but it’s true. :hug:

I don't feel like I'm allowed to be vulnerable any of the time. Some types of weakness/vulnerability are acceptable, like failure. Others aren't.

I was allowed to fail and make mistakes as a kid, but crying, getting scared or freezing up was pretty much the worst thing you could do in my house. It was an unspoken rule that we knew that we had to stand up straight and face forward while our Dad was having an episode. If he asked a question, we had to speak in a loud, clear voice. I knew I would be forgiven for just about anything, except crying/cowardice. I tried getting help with the school guidance counselor as a kid, but my voice froze up. I gave up and started talking about course selection because I could get those words out.

You seem to be reluctant to pursue that option. Do you know why? Because, getting the right diagnosis could mean the beginning of a new life...

I'm reluctant because I won't be able to talk. I had selective mutism as a kid and went to a speech therapist for it back then. Talking wasn't easy after that but I could control it. I was better until I was sexually assaulted but then it just seemed to be when I tried to talk about what happened. Now it's whenever I'm in intense situations. Like I can't scream when I'm scared, like on a roller coaster. I slipped with a knife during Christmas and the cut started shooting blood everywhere but I couldn't get the words out or cry out in pain.

I don't just get the headaches and nightmares at exam time, but it's persistent around exams. There are a lot of situations that are difficult for me, but I can push through it anyway. Until I can't. Going to a therapist is exactly the sort of situation where I freeze up.

 

[Justmehere]

This really ain’t just about exams, that’s part of it, but this is very key:

I don't feel like I'm allowed to be vulnerable any of the time. Some types of weakness/vulnerability are acceptable, like failure. Others aren't.

This message you got from your father is wrong. So wrong. You deserved as a kid to know that weakness is normal and it’s safe to have a struggle. I’m so sorry your parents didn’t help you know that and you learned to be so silent. It’s really pretty awesome you have pushed through s much as you have and have reached out for what supports you are ready to accept now like accommodations at school and here on the forum.

I'm reluctant because I won't be able to talk.

I had a psychogenic stutter for years after trauma as an adult. I did speech therapy but I couldn’t even speak to friends about the weather. No joke. I could not tell a therapist a thing about me. I could barely even sit in the room, if that. (I had a year of sessions where we met outside, waking, talking about the weather just to get me to be there and talk at all...)

I brought pen and paper. I didn’t “talk” or write about trauma or anything that hard for long time... but I started to talk. I started to be present in the room.

It took a lot of work, but I talk and talk and talk without any problems. I think people wonder then I will stop! Lol. My point is that I can speak now.

Going to a therapist is exactly the sort of situation where I freeze up.

What you are describing is actually fairly common for trauma survivors. Therapy is the place where people freeze up in a variety of ways - and that’s why to go. A skilled trauma therapist would be able to work with the freezing up.

If it’s too hard to go in person just yet? There are professional licensed online counseling options that are done via chat or messaging mechanisms. For me, I did skills based group therapy for a season, where I didn’t have to talk about the trauma, like for DBT and CBT skills learning. I didn’t have talk much at all, but I could sit there and learn a lot, approach it like I was attending a class. I didn’t feel very vulnerable to doing that, and it really helped me change the core belief that vulnerability was dangerous. I was able to learn a lot of skills to manage and reduce trauma based symptoms.

Counseling isn’t the end all be all, but I think it’s probably going to be an essential part of recovering from what happened and doing what you want to be able to do in life. This problem isn’t just impacting exams but your ability to be safe and get help like the exams you gave with the cut. You’ve worked hard to do what you can on your own, and that’s really admirable. It may be time to try something new.

As for what to do until you are ready for therapy to resolve the underlying trauma behind all of this, I’d suggest investigating and learning all you can about grounding tools and mindfulness, and challenging cognitive distortions (we all have them.) Grounding and mindfulness will help to increase the ability to manage the anxiety you feel so it is not spilling out in nightmares and mutism and other anxiety based symptoms quite as much.

There are a lot of great free resources via any search engine, and this forum well on these specific skill sets. My favorite lately has been 4 square breathing. Navy seals use it to regulate the anxiety they feel, Dead Link Removed, and it was first taught to me by an ER doc. Will it help you speak? I don’t know. It will help lower your stress cup levels and that might help reduce symptoms overall. https://www.myptsd.com/threads/the-ptsd-cup-explanation.13737/

 

[Sideways]

@Effie - it sounds like there’s something much bigger than just exam stress going on here. And it sounds like you know that. I’m glad you found your way back here to talk through some of this stuff.

Talking to someone about this stuff isn’t going to be easy, but I honestly think that there’s a lot of things that you could heal from with the help of someone qualified. Life doesn’t need to be as this hard. Have a think about getting some qualified support, because it can make such a huge difference:)

 

[Effie]

@Justmehere

How long does that kind of therapy take to reach the point that you can talk? The money thing is one part but I can only imagine how awkward it would be for me to show up and then not manage to get right to the point. Scheduling appointments for therapy, for things I can't talk about, goes against the grain.

Objectively, I seem to be doing pretty well in life. But internally, it feels like when I get up each morning, I'm preparing for war. People talk about good mornings and bad mornings and I don't really know what they're talking about. We just have mornings. I think having kids, really puts things into perspective as I see what kinds of things they see as hardships vs what I saw as hardships as a kid.

I'll take a look at the links. Google search brings up so many options and differing opinions, it can be hard to figure out what will help. I have a few coping skills that I've figured out work that work for me.

@Ragdoll Circus

Seeing my parents go through therapy and the changes they've gone through has given me some awareness. They've apologized for things that I didn't even remember. But yeah, I don't have a professional opinion. Just a sense that some things are off. At the same time, I want to be healthy for my kids. Everyone has issues, but I suspect that I've got a cellar's worth full of cans of worms that I'm going to n

 

[SaharaSon]

I posted way back in May after my last set of exams. [URL="Link Removed...

Effie, I've been through alot of stress getting through school (university). To the point that I needed to get counciling. The pressure to perform through long and difficult majors can be very substantial. Suicides and murders do happen, regularly, in demamding academic environments. If you have PTSD, like we do, going in, extra care needs to be taken to handle the pressure. It is real and intense. Beyond that, the level of violence in and around campuses can be quite high. One Math professor that I was close to, and knew real well, was a Vietnam Vet. One day he was walking down a street near campus and was robbed by a kid. He chased the kid, and the kid turned around and shot him dead in the street. Married with kids. Can you imagine surviving combat in Vietnam, only to be killed in the streets of the US. Another professor, male, that I knew and had for a class, had a hidden life, he liked young male kids. He would go to New York and Boston to pick up kid prostitutes. Two of them followed him back to Florida and sufficated him to death in his condo. A mass murder of 5 students took place in my immediate neighborhood, right down the street, over a period of several days while I was in school. His favorite MO was to decapitate his victims and stage the heads somewhere prominently. Real nice. Another close friend was kidnapped from campus and raped continuously for three days by three subhuman scorpions. These are all close, personal, high anxiety, experiences I had to deal with while I was in school, not events which I heard about though the grape vine. Of course, I'm not saying your experience will be the same. It sure as hell didn't help my PTSD any. I was just lucky, I quess... :D

 

[Effie]

Effie, I've been through alot of stress getting through school (university). To the point that I need...

Yeah, there's been a bunch of suicides on my campus. I find the pro-lifer's and animals rights activists demonstrating a couple of days per week upsetting with their gory signs. I'm sorry to hear your experience at school included a lot of violence.