Support System??

[Deleted member 5760]

Yeah I agree. Sometimes I just log on to have a bit of a laugh. Starting treatment for PTSD feels like being a tennis ball thrown into a cube. Just bouncing up, down, left, right. One minute I feel like crying, the next I'm laughing. I guess I've been so numb for a while that I'm experiencing the whole spectrum of human emotion all of a sudden and it is thoroughly overwhelming. My Mum came around for dinner the other night - one minute I was shaking, the next I was crying, and then I found myself telling her a joke through my tears to cheer her up and reassure her everything was ok...?

My T has been away for 3 weeks now doing a training course and I have my next session tomorrow. She left me with a contact number but I'm quite certain she knew when she gave it to me that I'm not the kinda person who is going to call it and drag her out of a lecture. I'm not her one and only patient. Ironic part is - when I found out I'd have a 3 week break it felt like a relief. But I really really need to get in there tomorrow. Whether I have a little cry or a little laugh, doesn't really matter I suppose - as long as it helps. Plus, she snaps me back into focus. Sometimes it really doesn't matter how sure you are of something - you need to hear it from somebody else. The forum is a welcome release in that sense also. For that I am certainly very grateful.

 

[just me here]

I lost friends when I divulged that I had a medical condition once before, I won't do it again. I had hep c. I have been diagnosed with PTSD now or I wouldn't be here, and it is much worse than hep c, beleive me.
I beat the hep c with a long series of basically chemotherapy. I would do it again twice over to get rid of PTSD.
I don't know how I would feel if I was contacted by any of the people that left my life when I told them I had Hep C. Everyone assumes you can only get it through sharing a needle or engaging in homosexual activity, no one thinks about getting it from being an EMT, or a person that got a blood transfusion before 1983. If any of them tried to get back into my life, I would probably meet them at the border and tell them that they judged me for my affliction, now I was going to judge them for theirs, and no insensitive self righteous jerks are allowed in without proof of a cure for their disorder.
my advice for anyone reaching out looking for a support group is to be very careful, and aware that family, friends, coworkers, anyone is capable of causing you great pain by rejecting you for your affliction. Don't give this thing a chance to attack you on another level by alienating you from your friends. Not being able to talk to friends about the PTSD is far far better than not being able to talk to friends at all because they have all left you behind after judging you to be inferior for having a diagnosis of something they don't even understand.