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Poll What Is The Cause Of Your PTSD?

What is the cause of your PTSD?

  • Childhood abuse of all types, rape or assault.

    Votes: 250 61.7%
  • Abduction

    Votes: 7 1.7%
  • Adult rape/ sexual assault/ sexual abuse.

    Votes: 57 14.1%
  • Assault.

    Votes: 20 4.9%
  • Natural disaster.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Emergency services such as fire or paramedics.

    Votes: 11 2.7%
  • Army or war.

    Votes: 12 3.0%
  • Death or suicide.

    Votes: 22 5.4%
  • Medical condition.

    Votes: 9 2.2%
  • Accident.

    Votes: 17 4.2%

  • Total voters
    405
Oh Sailogal,

I am sure it isn't. You are right that it isn't there. For it to fit into PTSD criteria it would need to be threatened death or harm but that is sure to happen. Not sure I can correct it now as there are limited options available.

Childhood people can fit it under all types of childhood abuse so it is adulthood that is missing. I certainly have had verbal abuse in adulthood and childhood and it awful and damaging. :hug:

PS. I just checked and 10 is unfortunately the most that one can do. Hugs to you.
 
Sorry (((((Sailorgal))))). I hope that wasn't too confusing. When you create a poll you have a maximum of 10 options. That means that I can't add another option in at this point. Sorry you got left out. I have however adjusted the wording for adult sexual abuse.
 
The main cause was being in a crash in which I was critically injured. I've learned since that I was already showing signs of future problems because of my work as a police officer/crime scene investigator so I think that, to be honest, I would be one of the multiple response folks.
 
I'm not sure which one to choose. I'm leaning towards a kind of sexual abuse but I'm not sure because I did went along with the guy in the first place so I partly feel like I asked for it and jinxed myself. I didn't know what I was getting into beforehand and then he came back and he had all this stuff with him and I was shocked. We didn't have sex, it didn't came to that point but he was planning on abusing me I guess..
 
I chose war, though I also could have picked natural disaster, assault, or rape as I've experienced all of those. I'm a former humanitarian aid worker, most recently in the Central African Republic, a country experiencing ongoing civil war / unrest. Most of my trauma stems from what I saw and experienced as the result of the ongoing conflict there.
 
It appears, thought I am not totally sure, that my PTSD was caused by ongoing daily emotional, sexual and physical abuse perpetrated by my mother and father--but also a very traumatic event (or events) happened during my childhood that made me block out so much of my childhood. My father appears to have been entangled with criminals--some of whom were police officers. I feel that I witnessed crimes, and was actually blamed for one of them. Because I witnessed a major crime, my perpetrators--some of whom were police officers--told me that if I told that I would die and so would my entire family. I was only six. I am still attempting to piece together my childhood. I began remembering fourteen years ago. Feelings first, which came with flashbacks. Then, a slow leak of data--some of which I just didn't understand. It's been a nightmare, wrapped in a roller coaster of emotions, coupled with boatloads of confusion and disgust. I am grateful though…that my mind is allowing me to remember.
 
I chose "death or suicide" since that was the incident that I was originally diagnosed with PTSD over. In the period of a few months my best friend attempted suicide (doing permanent damage to her hands in the process), another friend committed suicide just hours after we'd been together, and my lover attempted suicide twice, with me literally talking him off the ledge of a 4 story drop the second time.

It's interesting to think about whether the groundwork was laid in childhood, though. When I was 8 my mother had a breakdown due to her own history of sexual abuse, during which she told me a lot of pretty graphic things, and I was hyper-vigilant from then on. I never felt safe again, a feeling heightened more with every frightening incident that happened to me.

The incident that finally pushed me over the edge this January (for which there's not really a fitting option on the poll) involved abuse from the mental health system and believing my fiance was going to be killed. It was one thing too many, I guess.
 
Like many others, mine isn't simple, but taken a different way the first answer applied to me. I was abused through childhood into my adult years (though moving & having a protective distance helped a lot), then I don't doubt that the straw that went all of my symptoms spiraling was a sexual assault as a teenager, and then the horrible experience of reporting it to dreadful police 2 years later.
 
I have multiple on here:

Childhood abuse of all types, rape or assault.
Assault. (Jumped from the frying pan into the fire so to speak)
Death or suicide. (A few deaths and my mothers suicide)
Abduction (Not me, but my children by my abuser)

I think what really sent me over the edge though was the month I spent practically living in the hospital with one child in pediatrics and the other in ICU. That is really when the disassociation started.

I do not count anything that happened to me before I was 5. I don't remember any of it despite hearing stories.

My husband says I should write a book. I don't think I could really handle doing that emotionally even though it still seems like most things happened to someone else and not me.
 
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