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What did you feel like when you got diagnosed?

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Bubblegum

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I'm just still digesting the fact that I got the diagnosis, and feeling a little lost, to be honest. So I'm curious.

How did you feel/react when you got yours? Did you deal with inner turmoil? Disbelief? Relief?
And how did you start your journey towards bettering your life? How did people in your life react?
 
I felt huge relief! I had been in therapy off and on for years and couldn't quite get to a place of any kind of contentment or healing. So when I heard it, I was relieved. I was diagnosed back when PTSD was primarily for combat veterans. So finding help was sketchy at best.

There were therapists that questioned the Dx because of the stigma it was only for vets. So I just became dogged in finding answers. I would find a T that could help me with certain issues. Certain symptoms. It was hard and confusing.

But I wanted to get well more than all the obstacles in my way so I had to settle for what was available. There are so many veins of PTSD that it didn't seem, at times I was making any progress.

Finally found a counselor, not a T, that made sure I was put on meds for depression and anxiety. That helped a lot. Then I could process a little better and didn't feel so hopeless.

I didn't tell anyone because I knew I would be met with judgement and denial. 'You were never in combat', things like that, so didn't bother. Ignorance I did not have time or energy for.

There were no trauma T's that I could find much less afford. So I tried to educate myself and put one foot in front of the other.

Guess I'm trying to say, getting that Dx gave me hope. That I wasn't so broken I could never recover. I still get symptomatic but know what it is and have a huge 'tool box' of things I can do to get myself back in line. I will never recover from PTSD, but it doesn't rule my life today.

Being here on this forum helps me to at least have a support group to help. I lost my son last year and that has thrown me down the rabbit hole. But the people here have been by my side every step of the way. Very depressed and have a Dr that knows what is going on so I will soon get a med change. But I have the tools to get from one day to the next.

I've had PTSD my entire life. So at least something finally made sense.

Hope you adjust to your Dx and find that there is endless help today and people that understand and will support you. Sorry you have to be here, but glad you found us.
 
I was horrified. I thought I would lose my job as an RN case manager. I did, but only because I had a breakdown. I couldn't get around the idea that I had a mental illness. I couldn't get over the stigma. I was really high functioning and it wasn't until I started therapy for chronic pain (which turned out to be cancer) that I had a breakdown. Now I'm over it of course, but it was a tough time.
 
I was horrified. I thought I would lose my job as an RN case manager. I did, but only because I had a breakdown. I couldn't get around the idea that I had a mental illness. I couldn't get over the stigma. I was really high functioning and it wasn't until I started therapy for chronic pain (which turned out to be cancer) that I had a breakdown. Now I'm over it of course, but it was a tough time.

I'm glad you were able to get over it, cancer is an ugly thing, so it's very understandable that you reacted to it like you did. The world is ugly, and I'm sad to hear that there were little understanding back there.

I hope I can be as strong, and get over this hurdle, thank you for sharing your story ❤
 
I felt huge relief! I had been in therapy off and on for years and couldn't quite get to a place of any kind of contentment or healing. So when I heard it, I was relieved. I was diagnosed back when PTSD was primarily for combat veterans. So finding help was sketchy at best.
People react to things, and digest things in their own individual ways, but I am glad that you took it like you did and got help, that's very brave :)

Guess I'm trying to say, getting that Dx gave me hope. That I wasn't so broken I could never recover. I still get symptomatic but know what it is and have a huge 'tool box' of things I can do to get myself back in line. I will never recover from PTSD, but it doesn't rule my life today.
That's very uplifting to read, I hope to get to that point too one day.

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of tools did you find most helpful? My T told me to get "the body keeps the score", it seems to be a good read at the very least, so it's a start?

Hope you adjust to your Dx and find that there is endless help today and people that understand and will support you. Sorry you have to be here, but glad you found us.
Glad that I found this space, there's a lot of people willing to share their experiences

Which makes me feel a little less alone in all of this.
 
Glad you found us too. I would suggest the DBT workbook also. It worked wonders for me, not just for confronting my diagnosis, but for emotional regulation too.
Thank you for the suggestion. Id love to be able to confront mine too! I'll pick up any tool that'll improve my mental health.

But yes, pleased to know that so many have found help with this book, I'll definitely pick this one up :>
 
For me there was a mix. I was relieved that I had a diagnosis and that it wasn’t something worse. As I look back over the years I had been fighting it for decades (even had an attempt when my kids were very young) so knowing what the actually heck was going on was a relief.

I was also horrified/ embarrassed/ scared I wouldn’t be able to do my job etc. I didn’t tell my kids for a long time. I am still very selective about sharing that information about myself.
 
I spent years trying to figure out "what was wrong" with me. It wasn’t sufficiently wrong for not being able to do minimal function and even being a good achiever, but I was dragging myself in a fog and what I understand now, as a state of constant grief and hypervigilance, which cause a lot of resentment and social anxiety. I also had angry meltdowns and sort of disconnected most of the days, couldn’t understand what was going on with people except for a few moments where I’d be full of energy. Honestly thinking back of how I was without therapy and how I am now, there are many many things that have changed.

The diagnose didn’t really surprise me, in the sense I knew things I went through were traumatic. But what I didn’t know is that all the difficulties I was experiencing weren’t due to the fact I was weak, stupid, lazy or mean, it was because of PTSD. In my head, PTSD was much much worse than what I was experiencing, also because of the stereotype of combat PTSD (that is also very different). I have seen people that had it worse than me because for some reason I have been able to find less problematic methods of coping distress, such as writing or learning compulsively and hiding myself when I felt "the mood" was creeping.

I first got BPD diagnoses but honestly it didn’t entirely match. I do have BPD style manifestations, but not entirely. However, certain criteria in PTSD and CPTSD that I filled, I didn’t realize I was filling it. I was telling myself my experience wasn’t so hard, that it was hard for everyone.

Over months (I have been Dx’d officially in January but with strong suspicions since September), I realize the areas in which it’s frankly crippling and that aspect of the diagnose frightens me. Because I know I cannot work properly and am subject to spikes of dysregulation where I spin in circles or tuck my head in a hole. At least when that happens know I understand why.

Being diagnosed helps me also to be more tolerant to methods of healing. Previously I’d think all this healing shit is for fancy bourgeois spending times with crystals or diving deep into psychoanalysis. Then I read Sapolsky and Van der Kolk and understood there is a neurology behind and this reassured me in a way. There are paths to try to manage things and make life less of a constant suffering sandpaper.

Before being diagnosed, I had a lot of talking therapy and the woman completely failed at identifying my avoidance, constant fear and tendency to isolate. She thought I was depressed, but I wasn’t; I still was keeping doing a zillion things, but just not the ones I needed to. So I was very confused about what I had, at some point I thought I had Asperger, Antisocial Personality Disorder, ADHD or simply attachment problems.

Now I have a much clearer vision of what’s going on, day by day, by understanding my own mechanisms. It’s not a walk in the park but at least I know there is a way out. And even if it’s painful, there is no reason to brutalize ourselves thinking "we’re though" or whatsoever. I survived horrible things. I’m happy to be here.
 
She thought I was depressed, but I wasn’t; I still was keeping doing a zillion things, but just not the ones I needed to. So I was very confused about what I had, at some point I thought I had Asperger, Antisocial Personality Disorder, ADHD or simply attachment problems.
Ha! Pretty much me for 20+ years. And even now sometimes I will lapse into thinking that I’m full of it and that I just have one of the MANY things you listed about(and others too)
 
I got originally diagnosed as a teen which basically just had me like "okay cool story", and I put *zero* thought to it, pretty much denied I had it, read other peoples stories of PTSD and was like "omg PTSD sounds like it sucks, glad I don't deal with what those other people deal with", even after being diagnosed.

Skip to now and my CPTSD diagnosis a couple years back and I'm not sure how I feel, I was pretty much like "duh" when they told me I had it, cos I'd already been told, but didn't think much of it because it doesn't have an obvious impact on my life (read: an impact that other people see).

Now I need an accommodation at work (I'm a nurse), and it's a reasonable one (I need Mon dayshifts off to attend T), and my letter describing why I need it describes my PTSD as "longstanding" and "significant", and I'm not sure how I feel about it because I'm half dismissing it as "things Ts say to get accommodations for their patients" and half like "wtf, they think I'm nuts".

So in summary, I have not given a shit in true teen fashion, been in denial, been out of denial, then am currently having an identity crisis about how I am or am not affected because I cannot decide either way.
 
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