Types Of Trauma

[huggles]

Your symptoms and suffering are real. Friends verbally arguing can bring on many types of anxiety disorders, including OCD, but not the particular mental illness of PTSD. Did you have earlier life threatening events that meet the criteria? If not, then you don't have PTSD - and you should be very glad. PTSD is a very serious major mental illness that you can not cure. Not with the Liden method or any other treatment.

I don't know why you are seeking to label yourself with PTSD after an argument amoung friends. That's not qualifying trauma. You are not going to help yourself by self diagnosing yourself with such a serious illness of PTSD and then going after snake-oil cures to try and fix it.

Having a blunted affect, feeling depersonalized, and isolating are hallmarks of serious depression, *not* PTSD. Compulsions are not a symptom of PTSD - but they are a sign of underlying emotional dysregulation that can come with many mental health problems. Have you tried more traditional therapies like CBT or exposure therapy for the compulsions? There are many very well tested treatments for OCD that are highly highly successful.

What I read about the Linden method makes me concerned. It claims to cure numerous mental health illnesses. If there was such a real silver bullet that worked like it claims to work, then I think many more people would be using it and would be cured of PTSD. It is my understanding there is NO CURE for PTSD (which is part of why I am baffled you keep seeking to label your symptoms as PTSD.)

You could always give it the Linden method a try, and if it works for you, great! I wouldn't spend much money on it though, not until other more clinically tested methods have been tried and absolutely exhausted. There are many people out there claiming to have the latest new cure.

My guess is that your doctors have suggested a diagnosis and a treatment, but you do not want to put in the time and work it would take to get better and are looking for sympathy and a quick fix. You have my sympathy - all mental heath problems are very hard to endure. Because I care, I want to be clear that there are no quick fixes to what you are enduring.

 

[Zerah]

Many thanks for your help. I'm not trying to label myself with ptsd, but I do think that finding out what I do have will help on determining a treatment plan. Its obviously not ptsd, but it might be something else. The problem with doctors is that I've visited 3 psychiatrists and 2 psychologists, all giving me different diagnosis with different medications. I've been on one of the treatment plans for more than a year now and seen very little progress. I'm going to look into the CBT and exposure therapy, I'll contact a therapist that can give me full information on this.

 

[Votuf]

the problem with doctors is that I've visited 3 psychiatrists and 2 psychologists, all giving me different diagnosis with different medications.

What diagnoses have you been given by them?

 

[Idah]

Avoidant personality disorder, social anxiety disorder, major depression, one of them thought there was nothing wrong and the last one just gave me antipsychotics without doing any tests (a few of the other ones did). I also understand it is extremely complicated for them to give you a completely correct diagnosis only based on your symptoms and an mri scan. Anyways I do have my question cleared up so I would really like to thank all of you for your help, it is 100% clear that its not ptsd so I'll move on from here. Wish you all the best!

 

[Kukas]

You mentioned that before this event with the friends, you had major depression. Had you been seeing a therapist for that, and do you have a sense that it was related to particular previous life events?

Sometimes it can even take a while to figure this stuff out with the help of a good therapist. Perhaps you could focus on getting a good therapist and trying to figure out what is related to which events and what helps, rather than the diagnosis for now...

Diagnoses can change over time as you figure more things out, and finding a good therapist that you trust is a great first step. Medications are not going to solve that on their own though they can help you focus enough to work on the issues.

Some of the issues you mention sound like they could be trauma-related to me, but it can be hard to tell, and people can dissociate parts or all of life-threatening/abusive experiences too, to protect themselves.

I'm not a professional and am most familiar with ptsd out of those diagnoses that you mentioned.

There seems to be overlap in symptoms among lots of diagnostic categories, people can really have multiple diagnoses, and a lot of those "personality disorders" are now seen by some therapists as likely trauma-related... There is not complete agreement at any point in time among professionals. The diagnostic categories for these various manuals have also changed over time and will again.

I think being helped to feel better and live a fuller life are good goals though! These diagnoses are potentially helpful tools toward that end in various ways, given our current societies. They could help you get appropriate treatment, for instance.

 

[Daroz]

Many thanks for your help! I've seen psychologists but we haven't actually worked on why the major depression actually took place. We did speak about childhood in general but didn't come to any conclusions. I think it might be very important to focus on the sources of my depression, I'll definitely mention this to my counselor next time we meet. Thanks again!