My ptsd came about in several events over my life. Very abusive child hood. Drug and alcohol addictions. Several near death events. More. But thanks to alot of great therapy and support, I manage my ptsd pretty darn well and without meds. Could be better but so grateful its not worst. Not much more to tell. I am here and I am happy to be most days.

Mainly my PTSD is from sexual abuse that I endured when I was ten, but then I endured emotional/verbal/ mental abuse all through my teens and it just made my PTSD symptoms worse. My symptoms have been flared lately, because I just recently started to deal with the abuse (all of it). It sucks, but I'm glad it's not worse.

Raised in war zone abroad. Car bombed age 9, domestic violence age 15, torture age 16, so left home at 17 and came to USA. Surprisingly, full onset PTSD symptoms at 21. I had thought escaping to the USA put it all behind me, but no.

You mentioned surviving renal failure. I've been diagnosed with chronic kidney disease since 2011, so I can't take PTSD meds since then.

Hope your son continues to do fabulously!

WARNING: TRIGGER ALERT! What is my trauma? I would have to add an "S" on the end of the word.
First when I was 8 yrs old I was molested by an 13 yr old female babysitter which led to "intercourse" if one can call it that. My mom found out about and just about took the poor girls head off. Two weeks later I was playing in our front yard when my mom and step-dad #2 got into another argument. This led my bikini clad mom to pack up two suitcases and announce to him that she was taking my sister and me and leaving for her mom's. He didn't like that so as she got into the front seat of the car to start it, he picked a glass 1 gallon jug of gasoline and threw it at her. The jug hit the upper part of the window frame and shattered. It sparked and the gas ignited as it spewed all over my my mom's breasts. She leaped out of the car smothered in flames while he calmly walked to the back seat and removed the two suitcases. He then carried them to the garage where he retrieved a blanket and threw it over her burning body. She died the next morning. Charles told me to lie for him the next morning so that we could stay together as a family and being the well behaved child that I was I obeyed. Four days later we were placed with one of my mom's sisters. We were adopted a short time later and spent the remaining years of our childhood being physically, emotionally and sexually abused.
I have always exhibited the symptoms of PTSD but it wasn't until a few years ago that I received treatment. Forty-eight years after the events.

TW Trigger Warning

My trauma began when I witnessed my father kill my mother and my identical twin sister when I was five. I went to live with my father in a satanic cult till I was 13 when I became a foster child till 18 and during that time I moved over 60 times and went to well over 10 high schools.
It has been a long journey with much more abuse in between those years. My father has still not let me go. He is afraid of me and I'm terrified of him because he only got 20 years for everything he did to me including kidnapping me when I was 14 so I wouldn't testify against him. He still to this day tries to hurt me with all his back up support. The most recent was this past may were he tried to kill me and he put me in the hospital for at least 15 days with no chance of living but I'm stronger than that. F#*$ them all.

Pedo # 1 tried to force me into ground floor window of his apartment at gunpoint...Pedo # 2's groomy approach worked and I was, um, orally used, which I repressed.

...Uncle got me at 6, while we were in the process of moving into that house.
Then my mom went to work 11-7 as an RN. Dad had a lot of need to physically lash out, and, well, sexual frustration, and he decided I could be his primary outlet for those needs.
My maternal grandma ended his fun, she moved in and was freaked out when she found out that, unbeknownst to my mom, I was sleeping in dad's bed 5 nights a week.
My mom got really physically and emotionally abusive through this time; the frustration of one shift at a hospital and another full shift as a housecleaner...and then my dad was laid off, but of course did no housecleaning.
I have a few weird snippets of memory I am not totally ready to believe...that my dad took us to a Pedo party once.
..and then hit us in the car on the way home a bunch, we dunno why. Maybe we have a big imagination.

I had other people in my head living for me for a lot of those two years. Being plural inside is mostly handy except I misplace everything, and if someone cracks a joke...well I suddenly burst out laughing for no reason.
Oh..wait...there was that argument in the peanut butter and jelly section. That lady looked at us awful funny...

Trigger warning!

I was diagnosed with PTSD last summer after I was hospitalized due to my flashbacks of sexual abuse as a child and the physical and verbal abuse in my teens. When I would relive my trauma I would not always know what was real and what wasn't. I would scream for hours, hurting myself as a form of "punishment" I felt I deserved. My PTSD was manageable until I was raped in 2013. It was like a flood of memories of being sexually abused as a child were back and I felt dirty all over again.
I began group therapy where I opened up about my trauma. It made a world of difference. To hear people's responses and to feel the support was a life saver. I am now attending a support group for abuse survivors. The more I talked about what happened to me the more I was able to cope. There is so much healing talking.

I was raised in a traveling child sex show (11 siblings plus strays) and achieved adulthood with no childhood memories, whatsoever.

Mine began at age 2 and went on until age 20 and then was exacerbated by a serious injury at age 41. I'm alive. I'm surviving. I'm striving to thrive. I was mentally and physically and emotionally abused by my older sister and dad, raped at 17, and managed to push most of the childhood stuff down below the level of conscious memory until that accident at 41. Then it started to come up, b/c the accident itself gave me some PTSD. COulda been a helluva lot worse, and I'm glad it wasn't. I've relearned to walk after my accident, I've had a mostly-good marriage for over 20 years, and that was despite the mild symptoms I never knew I had till I ended up in an ER from a PTSD panic attack.

Glad your son's okay:-)

migth trigger this is hard to read i was two my first memory was staring out the back window of my dads truck feeling terrified i could not see what , it was when my dad took us away from her ,, he was extra mean i r ember him drowning puppies in oil , putting kitten on tire and running over it , i rember hanging in basement with diaper on i hated him i got sent to bed without dinner lots , i used to have nightmares at two and three i rember everything he ever did except basement thing . i got lucky he sent me to my mom probably because they found me a mile away with my sisters who could barley walk and a case with stuffed animals, the police i guess asked me why guess i might of told them everything next thing i know was my mom coming to get me i was so happy , i do know that my childhood was really good after that ,

I saw this post and have been reluctant to respond on a public thread, I usually only talk about this in journaling.

My home life was very abusive. My father was a narcissistic alcoholic, he would verbally abuse everyone and physically abuse my mom from time to time. There was a lot of fighting. Nothing I did was ever good enough. Mom is a manipulator. Throughout school kids saw me as weak and I was bullied from 4th grade all the way to graduation.

**TW**
I believe I was about seven years old when I was gang raped and sodomized with any object available including branches, basically used as an experiment. It has led to many surgeries... throat, hysterectomy before I was 20, and many bowel surgeries.

I had extensive therapy four days a week for a few years specifically for the rape trauma and it helped me tremendously.

K I've read and thought and I think I can.......


TW...
When I was 3 my uncle started raping me every chance he got. When I was 6 my mom mom's boyfriend raped me almost daily as punishment for being alive until I was 8.. On my 10th birthday I was hand cuffed to the four corners of my bed and my uncle and my cousin took turns raping me for most of the day and into the night. From the time I was 7 until I was 12i was raped multiple times a day by my uncle and quite often other me that lived in my trailer park. When I was 11 my uncle stayed paying me around to his numerous friends for drugs. At 17i was held for 9 1/2 hours and brutality raped and again two weeks later for 7 1/2 hours. I thought he was going to kill me. He said I wasn't gonna leave they're alive and I believed him.

There have been a couple of date rapes in my adulthood, 26, 31 and a year where my husband wouldn't take no for an answer. But through intense therapy I'm learning to deal. PTSD is nothing to sneeze at that's for sure.

I just wanted to say that I hope everyone is having a day that's as good as it possibly can be.

I don't feel much like sharing, but I just wanted to wish everyone well.

Thanks. Apparently sharing had caused an emotion that I didn't expect. Currently I am very sad . Maybe I just need to sleep this off.

Yes, I'm so deeply, deeply sorry for everything that happened to all of us to bring us here. Speaking for myself, I am also so deeply, deeply thankful, though. In spite of surviving such evil, so many people here have done me, at least, so much good with support. Thank you all. It is amazing grace.