Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
Find support with others who have gone through a traumatic experience. Whether you have chronic or acute PTSD, we are here for you.
I was diagnosed with severe PTSD a few months ago, caused from a trauma two years ago. Most of mundo symptoms are coming out now, in the past few months, and it's really difficult for me to deal with. I am not used to the level of anxiety I sometimes now experience. I have a lot of anger now, which was never there before. I will get angry for simple things. It has been effecting work, but my biggest problem is that it's so uncomfortable and I really don't know how to deal/cope with these things.
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Hey All...I hope that you have a lovely, peaceful beginning of your weekI have a bunch of chores that need doing but may put them off til tomorrow and just hang out with my landlord/roomie todayWhat about you?...Anything special going on?Have a great day and take good care of you!!..Xo
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Once again I've had a fever today. I'm not going to the hospital because that's a huge waste of time but I did schedule a dr appointment for Wednesday afternoon.
Has there been therapy surrounding the dx? Has your therapist had any opinions about the escalating symptoms? Each case of PTSD is unique enough that it is worth having a professional finger on your strictly personal pulse.
In my own strictly personals, each new dx has brought me a heightened awareness which makes the symptoms *feel* worse when I am actually just losing the denial which I used to mask my pain. The growing awareness amplifies until I compensate for the protective denial. Not a fun process, but more productive with more long-term benefit than functioning through denial.
On the dealing/coping end? ? ? I takes it one symptom at a time and get by with a little help from my friends. Some of those good friends are right here in this forum. See 'em over there, scooting their cyber chairs over to make room for you in the virtual circle?
Welcome aboard Onyx. Hope you find healing companionship here. Sorry for what brings you here but glad you are here.
My time at DS is nearing the end.
I was going to leave when I realized
I'd been diagnosed in my old town for about 5 years by then and had had a weekly therapist all that time. So I needed a new therapist, and just got lucky. He was lgbtq friendly, too, as well as cool with Latin American issues, which is where I grew up and got PTSD.
My old therapist for 5 years didn't have a background with combat trauma, IED's, and that sort of thing. And me, not being ex-military, I didn't know how to ask for anyone like that.
If you want a VA doc, maybe you could contact a VA hospital and ask if any of their docs see patients on the side after hours, like I found out he did with me.
before I got diagnosed or even remembered most of what happened to me, I had started having problems with anxiety that "came out of nowhere."
it was extra terrifying because i had no idea what caused it or why it started??? just - boom - now this was what my life was like.
having caring people - anyone - suggest i might be helped by talking to a counselor or therapist, sounded scary too - why did i need to do that all of a sudden??? nothing different had happened - where was this coming from?
what I learned, eventually, after getting a therapist to talk to - but before that a psych doc - a really good one too, who took very careful care of me and helped me with a minimal amount of medication - it helped me deal so I could get some sleep and chill out a little bit.
when i felt more ready, i did start to talk to a therapist. i began to look for what i was pressing down, not looking at, trying not to remember.
PTS often hides out under our radar and we can press it down, push it back and under for so long, but only for so long. eventually it starts to wear out our nervous system and most of the time it shows up as these anxiety blasts - for many people it does - it did for me.
anyway, this is what happened in my case. I was very good at squishing it away. I had learned to do this since I was a little bitty kid, so i had a lot of practice. too much practice.
it's like peeling an onion sometimes - it is best to go very very slowly and gently with ourselves - and find people who understand and don't mind sitting beside us while we maybe just want to hang out - that's what we are great for : )
we understand and you can talk or not talk - we will listen and we get it.
pete walker's 13 steps flashback management
1. Say to yourself: "I am having a flashback". Flashbacks take us into a timeless part of the psyche that feels as helpless, hopeless and surrounded by danger as we were in childhood. The feelings and sensations you are experiencing are past memories that cannot hurt you now.
2. Remind yourself: "I feel afraid but I am not in danger! I am safe now, here in the present." Remember you are now in the safety of the present, far from the danger of the past.
3. Own your right/need to have boundaries. Remind yourself that you do not have to allow anyone to mistreat you; you are free to leave dangerous situations and protest unfair behavior.
4. Speak reassuringly to the Inner Child. The child needs to know that you love her unconditionally- that she can come to you for comfort and protection when she feels lost and scared.
5. Deconstruct eternity thinking: in childhood, fear and abandonment felt endless - a safer future was unimaginable. Remember the flashback will pass as it has many times before.
6. Remind yourself that you are in an adult body with allies, skills and resources to protect you that you never had as a child. [Feeling small and little is a sure sign of a flashback]
7. Ease back into your body. Fear launches us into 'heady' worrying, or numbing and spacing out.
[a] Gently ask your body to Relax: feel each of your major muscle groups and softly encourage them to relax. (Tightened musculature sends unnecessary danger signals to the brain)
[b] Breathe deeply and slowly. (Holding the breath also signals danger).
[c] Slow down: rushing presses the psyche's panic button.
[d] Find a safe place to unwind and soothe yourself: wrap yourself in a blanket, hold a stuffed animal, lie down in a closet or a bath, take a nap.
[e] Feel the fear in your body without reacting to it. Fear is just an energy in your body that cannot hurt you if you do not run from it or react self-destructively to it.
8. Resist the Inner Critic's Drasticizing and Catastrophizing: [a] Use thought-stopping to halt its endless exaggeration of danger and constant planning to control the uncontrollable. Refuse to shame, hate or abandon yourself.
9. Channel the anger of self-attack into saying NO to unfair self-criticism. [b] Use thought-substitution to replace negative thinking with a memorized list of your qualities and accomplishments
10. Allow yourself to grieve. Flashbacks are opportunities to release old, unexpressed feelings of fear, hurt, and abandonment, and to validate - and then soothe - the child's past experience of helplessness and hopelessness.
8. Healthy grieving can turn our tears into self-compassion and our anger into self-protection.
9. Cultivate safe relationships and seek support. Take time alone when you need it, but don't let shame isolate you. Feeling shame doesn't mean you are shameful. Educate your intimates about flashbacks and ask them to help you talk and feel your way through them.
10. Learn to identify the types of triggers that lead to flashbacks. Avoid unsafe people, places, activities and triggering mental processes. Practice preventive maintenance with these steps when triggering situations are unavoidable.
11. Figure out what you are flashing back to. Flashbacks are opportunities to discover, validate and heal our wounds from past abuse and abandonment. They also point to our still unmet developmental needs and can provide motivation to get them met.
12. Be patient with a slow recovery process: it takes time in the present to become un-adrenalized, and considerable time in the future to gradually decrease the intensity, duration and frequency of flashbacks. Real recovery is a gradually progressive process [often two steps forward, one step back], not an attained salvation fantasy.
13. Don't beat yourself up for having a flashback.
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LillyPotter
LillyPotter 02/24/2018
i you can't find it, it is on his website www.pete-walker.com or i have it saved in my journal xo