Poll Was Your Ptsd Diagnoses Helpful Or Not?

[Abstract]

By "recovery" I mean positive movement in quality of life, mental health or well-being compared to the alternative. Even if life has deteriorated instead of improving would the alternative have made it better or worse?

 

[ashdawn8287]

I was relieved at first. I knew what I was working with and up against. It hindered me at first because I thought I would be stuck in the limbo forever, but through various healing, I learned it wasn't something I couldn't recover from (not cure, but manage it better).

I am not sure if that makes sense. It is the best way I can describe it. I was highly depressed at first. It was a rude wake up call to growing up and taking control of my life and realizing I am an adult and have the power to recover if I choose too. It was a very rude awakening lol. I was angry a lot, sad, hopeless, but the more I learned and practiced better habits the easier it got.

 

[Nicolette]

Hope I've edited the poll as per your request Abstract.

 

[Misul]

Yes, after dx, I could wrap my head around myself much better and understood that there wasn't something fundamentally wrong with me; that there are reasons behind some of my difficulties. So now I can address them. Also, it's kind of like validation. Yes, I have been through some really horrific things. That's important for my personal recovery.

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

A short while before I was diagnosed it became suddenly so apparent that my previous diagnosis of Aspergers was so patchy and wrong, the more I learned about PTSD, the more I could understand why I did things, why I was affected by things, what was really happening when I'm triggered, how much of the time I'm triggered (that one's still very much growing in awareness), what flashbacks were and why they haunted me so frequently, why I didn't trust myself or others and why I self-sabotaged to name a few. Also with the understanding of what dissociation was and how I had barely lived a day without filling it with some form of dissociation for over a decade and nearer two, has also provided me with great insight.

That doesn't mean I'm relieved to have the diagnosis' affects, just that I can recognise them as what they are and as such either chose to stop there or investigate them further and perhaps tackle some of the underlying problems. I agree that it was validating, for me it meant that I didn't loosely fall under the diagnosis of Aspergers and my behaviour was out of my control - which felt like a lie even to me, it meant that even though I can't control all of my behaviour now, I might, in time, be able to control some of it in the future. It also means I can finally see that I need some personal recovery for the first time.

Good post! :)

 

[Padfoot]

It helped me understand what was happening. Finding a therapist who specialised in PTSD caused by a violent assault while it was an open case through the courts was difficult, but I found someone now and even the first session was not terrible, I can see things going well :)

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Yes. It meant I wasn't bipolar after all. It meant there was a reason for the insanity and with the reason comes a fix. Well not a fix, but a way to heal rather than just get by.

The stigma sucks but without my diagnosis I'd be lost, floating in space somewhere.

 

[franciemarnie]

It made all the difference in the world. At last I knew why my life was the way it was, why I was the way I was. It was the beginning of self confidence again, self esteem, hope for the future. I wasn't a perverse, irrational, ungrateful person. I - my brain, my body, my soul, my spirit - reacted to an abnormal situation the way a human being is built to react.

 

[rightkindofme]

It means there is a rhyme and a reason for how I am broken. I find that encouraging. It has allowed me to think of myself as permanently altered so I have stopped trying to "get back". I can't get back to what I was. There wasn't really a pre-PTSD for me. There were just earlier more damaging but "better feeling" coping methods. I don't cut any more and that makes it harder to live in my head. I'm still making progress.

I'm glad for the diagnosis. It means I'm not just a whiner.

 

[twopenny]

I think it's helped me to understand that I'm not just a horrible person, and I'm not just a coward (which was how I felt before). I think it's helped me to know there are very real reason why I sometimes do things that make no sense.

 

[Venusian]

Ditto on what everyone else said. I had blocked all the traumatic parts out until recently. Once they all came flooding back my life began to make sense but there was still so much I didn't understand. It took a long time before I could see a psychiatrist to get the official diagnosis but so much of the criterion fit that I joined this forum to help myself understand. It didn't surprise me when I did get the diagnosis and now it all makes sense. I am still learning how PTSD is affecting me so that I can make different choices.

 

[Misul]

Interesting, I was also dx with Asperger's prior to PTSD.