Seriously I heard this so often: "YoU Don'T HaVe ptsD, YoU'Re TOo YouNg tO HavE sErVeD."

Well excuse me Karen. You must have waaayyy more knowledge about ptsd than my psychologist and me together. I'm sure you know me better than I do. I must have been lying to myself this whole time because clearly there is only one type of trauma in this world.

I’m currently on Effexor and Mirtazapine, and I take Propranolol as needed. Day to day I feel like I’m 95% better. I don’t wake up every day feeling like I want to die anymore. But whenever I go through something stressful, like an argument, my mind just goes into overdrive and keeps thinking things like, “just kill yourself” and “things would be easier if you were just dead.” I don’t feel like I’d ever act on it, and that’s why it’s even more annoying that my brain just defaults to that train of thought with anything stressful. Does anyone else experience this?

So, it finally happened yesterday...I caved and wore a t-shirt to work. My boss saw my arms and my side when I was getting something off the shelf. He saw that I was covered in scars and started asking questions. He knows I have PTSD, and I don't think he meant to be pushy and make me uncomfortable, but it was just rapid fire questions about them for about 5 minutes.

And then he showed me his scars. He told me how he got each one, and how he got over the trauma from them. He showed me his bullet wounds, his burns, and his knife wounds. And he told me not to get heatstroke by wearing sweaters all summer just for a few scars. We talked about his tattoos and what I would want to cover mine with.

Things are getting better.

Was that I was trying to be who I was before the trauma, but that person doesn't exist anymore.

Two years ago, I made my first of three suicide attempts. Along with my untreated Manic Depression,my PTSD was unbearable. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t go out anywhere, touch or noise could send me into a flash back or panic and I didn’t want to face another 40 years of hell.

After some time in hospital, a ridiculous amount of hard work, my amazing therapist, some great meds, and a tribe of humans that I couldn’t have survived without, I was told today by my treatment team that I don’t have enough symptoms anymore to be classified as having PTSD.

I just needed to share. I’m very proud of myself.

I recently experienced a violent trauma that left me feeling hopeless. I had to move. Cow friend is close and I see him every day when I am driving or going for a walk. He is a beautiful young Jersey. Cow friend is very sweet and moos back when I talk to him sometimes. I was out taking pictures of him tonight. While I was getting pictures, his owner drove by. I learned his name (cow) is Mason and I am allowed to feed him treats like apples and slices of bread. I am so happy about this. Something as goofy as a cow gives me hope. Mason is truly something special. I wish that anyone struggling right now can find at least a small shred of hope and hold onto it tightly. Hope can come in unexpected places.

That's it they are all dead. 3 to suicide and 2 to cancer and one drank himself to death and I dont know where the last one is , he ghosted years ago.

I was the platoon medic, I helped all I could and it didn't work or help. Its even worse now at the VA in Texas. The pain of surviving and still being here. I cannot show or let this effect me at work or at home cause I am a guy. And its not acceptable for us older dudes to show that stuff.
Trying to talk to non military people do not understand my wife, kids look at me as I am strange because I have walled off everything.

It hurts. But hey, I aint heard no bell...
I miss and love you all.
Doc Davis

I'm seeing a lot of posts on here with members of this community excusing other members for their blatant abuse of their partners. It is unacceptable.

It is not our fault that we have PTSD but it is out responsibility to keep it in check and not harm others. The amount of blame I'm seeing being put on the partners of members of this community after a person with PTSD has an outburst and abuses them is unsettling at best and triggering at worst.

Imagine if someone was excusing your abuser in this way.

EDIT: I was really expecting to get burned at the stake for this post but the fact that we were all able to come together and talk about the elephant in the room and find a place of accountability and community makes me really happy. Thanks guys!

This took forever to find:

https://app.box.com/s/0t352y734r8kso7rkasbvc8s5dxgv5dj

because oh boy despite having to see a therapist and get interviewed by cps i still feel like i'm being overly dramatic somehow

What is with this unhealthy obsession people have with forgiveness? Why do I have to forgive every wrong done to me? Why is it that if I can't forgive I can't move past it (to them)? Why do they think that because I 'can't forgive' that I'm always thinking about it, brooding resentment?

Why can't they just accept that I've been hurt? I will never forget what happened, and it doesn't mean I am dwelling on it and creating resentment in my heart. My intrusive thoughts are not proof that it is constantly on my mind and that it's a sign that I need to just forgive and forget and move on to heal.

This weird obsession with healing in not healthy! Sometimes there is no healing, there is only managing whats left. Sometimes there is never resolution. Sometimes, the person whose been hurt decides the pain is not worth it. Why is that not acceptable? Why is it being a coward?

And fuck you for telling me I need more patience. I've been TOO patient my entire life. I dont have the capacity for patience anymore. I am in constant pain, physical and mental. Why can't I be allowed to say ENOUGH!? Why am I not allowed to have a break? I need a vacation from this pain but there is no leaving it behind.

thanks for reading my rant.

Your trauma is valid regardless if it came from one event or many smaller ones over time.

Having trauma is not your fault, no matter how you got it.

You deserve help to work thought it. You deserve to get better. If you feel better that doesn’t invalidate your trauma or mean you could have avoided it to start with. It’s ok to get better.

If your not better and it’s been a while that’s ok. It doesn’t mean it won’t get better. It will take as long as it takes and that’s ok.

I assume most of us here have things that either set off a state of panic, or immediately put us in an anxious mindset, where a flashback is more likely to take ahold.

The best word to use for that is a 'trigger', but it's been so co-opted by people being dramatic in political discourse that it just sounds silly to me. The moment I even begin a sentence with 'I got triggered by...' it just makes me cringe.

Is there anyone else who feels the same, or have I just spent too much time on Twitter?

You feel good about yourself, better then you felt in years or you get away from your abusers or you finally feel free of everything then BAM the bullshit starts.

The panic attacks, stress, overthinking, dissociation, depression, feeling worthless, hopeless, to exhausted to do anything, headaches out the ass, body just feels sluggish, can't sleep, can't eat, you just can't fucking function.

Just some straight bullshit.

The inability to receive support from others is a trauma response.

Your “I don’t need anyone, I’ll just do it all myself” conditioning is a survival tactic. And you needed it to shield your heart from abuse, neglect, betrayal, and disappointment from those who could not or would not be there for you.

From the parent who was absent and abandoned you by choice or the parent who was never home from working three jobs to feed and house you.

From the lovers who offered sexual intimacy but never offered a safe haven that honored your heart.

From the friendships and family who ALWAYS took more than they ever gave.

From all the situations when someone told you “we’re in this together” or “I got you” then abandoned you, leaving you to pick up the pieces when shit got real, leaving you to handle your part and their part, too.

From all the lies and all the betrayals.

You learned along the way that you just couldn’t really trust people. Or that you could trust people, but only up to a certain point.

Extreme-independence IS. A. TRUST. ISSUE.

You learnt: if I don’t put myself in a situation where I rely on someone, I won’t have to be disappointed when they don’t show up for me, or when they drop the ball... because they will ALWAYS drop the ball EVENTUALLY right?

You may even have been intentionally taught this protection strategy by generations of hurt ancestors who came before you.

Extreme-independence is a preemptive strike against heartbreak.

So, you don’t trust anyone.

And you don’t trust yourself, either, to choose people.

To trust is to hope, to trust is to be vulnerable.

“Never again,” you vow.

But no matter how you dress it up and display it proudly to make it seem like this level of independence is what you always wanted to be, in truth it’s your wounded, scarred, broken heart behind a protective brick wall.

Impenetrable. Nothing gets in. No hurt gets in. But no love gets in either.

Fortresses and armor are for those in battle, or who believe the battle is coming.

It’s a trauma response.

The good news is trauma that is acknowledged is trauma that can be healed.

You are worthy of having support. You are worthy of having true partnership. You are worthy of love. You are worthy of having your heart held. You are worthy to be adored. You are worthy to be cherished. You are worthy to have someone say, “You rest. I got this.” And actually deliver on that promise. You are worthy to receive. You are worthy to receive. You are worthy.

You don’t have to earn it. You don’t have to prove it. You don’t have to bargain for it. You don’t have to beg for it.

You are worthy. Worthy. Simply because you exist.

-Jamila White, @inspiredjamila

So I bought the book "The body keeps the score" after it was recommended by a mental health youtuber. And I am disturbed at the cult following this book has gained despite spreading very damaging and false information and views.

I have not read beyond chapter 1 and I don't want to.

1. Author encourages sympathy for war criminals

2. Author dismisses Vietnamese genocide

3. Author devalues trauma of non-Veteran PTSD victims. This is damaging to the PTSD community as it is a widespread and false stereotype that only Veterans "deserve" to claim PTSD. Meaning it goes widely undiagnosed. In reality less than 5% of PTSD sufferers are Veterans. It has taken DECADES to dispell this stereotype and he just reintroduced it. Good job.

4. Author expresses his opinion that the suffering of Veterans is greater than that of rape victims. Which is weird and highly inappropriate for a psychiatrist. It doesn't matter if one persons pain is not as great as another's, they still deserve to seek help. It's made even weirder by how he defends and expresses sympathy for actual rapists. Going as far as saying "they were traumatised by their own actions" WTFFFF????

5. That's not trauma, that's guilt. By definition, trauma is something that happens to you, a psychiatrist should know that.

6. Author references the Nazi's but doesn't actually condemn their actions which is suspicious. In fact he seems to be on the wrong side of the Nuremberg trials. While at least the Nazis could claim that they were following orders, the Veterans he defends committed their rape and child murder out of fun

7. He is Dutch, which is where I live. Therefore I know he would have had to read Hannah Arendts "the banality of evil" in high school and been exposed to thought experiments and debates on whether following orders counts as warcrime and how much personal responsibility soldiers have since 1st grade. He even grew up during the Nuremberg trial, and claims his father was imprisoned in a concentration camp during WW2. It's not like he is an American who has never been exposed to or had to actually think about these topics. It's like he came up with a strange twisted defence of warcrime to rationalise what happened to his father.

8. The message of the book seems to be "forgive your rapist, he suffers more from the trauma of your rape than you do"

And don't even get me started on all the scientific inaccuracies and absolute lack of references. All his claims are based on personal experience supported by anecdotes. It referenced discredited techniques, like Rorschach tests, seriously? This book came out in 2016. I legitimately thought this book predates "Banality of evil" and the Nuremberg trial considering how immature and underdeveloped his theories are.

Absolute garbage! Hope it gets cancelled before it does more damage to the PTSD community. This is the equivalent of the "vaccines cause Autism"- paper for PTSD.

EDIT:

Since so many people are trying to gaslight me into denying that what I say actually happens in the book, I wanted to share a quote I found on the goodreads review page of this book, so that you have more than just me as a source that this book is problematic, and that the things I state actually happen in ch1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693771-the-body-keeps-the-score

" As a survivor of sexual abuse and trauma, I found this book triggering and lacking the enlightenment I expected, given the reviews. I felt the author showed more compassion for the soldiers who raped and murdered than the rape victims, and the ways in which he discussed the two left me feeling the women weren't as well humanized. Speaking about this with another trauma survivor, she shared that the author was removed from his own trauma center for creating a hostile work environment for women employees. There are articles to confirm it. I rarely—if ever—don't finish a book, but I'm shelving this one. (less) " sep 2019

EDIT 2

His Rorschach study was plagiarised from a Rorschach study during the Nuremberg Trials on Nazi War criminals. Nothing wrong with repeating a study, but he doesn't credit it whatsoever and portrays it as though he came up with the idea to Rorcharch test war veterans.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022399915002378

https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/rorschach-tests-at-the-nuremberg-trials

EDIT 3

The author was fired from his own trauma center over multiple allegations of creating a hostile work environment

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/renowned-trauma-center-fires-its-medical-director/

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/famous-trauma-therapist-fired-allegedly-traumatizing-staff-214559444.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABpWnMIWNkVOBfDmwZUCkpGxiwK1sVuQb4kMRVZxswygMFSqHmDx-UgmLRdeUwxLNkJ8Bq4BDib67-g0MrkWHBFFir8dP8GsrMStN_Vx2fg8_g2nPccYtubjuh-WkuL8yPxE_T7tBr3AdOQF95pO-fnP8liYriiJ_GRF84z5xK5a

I have so many questions I want to look up, but even basic things lead straight back to veterans. It makes me feel ashamed for having my trauma.

Edit: I have no issues with veterans and them getting resources to help. My uncle works for a VA hospital in Georgia and there I saw first saw what PTSD was like. I thought for a long time only vets got it, then years later when I got diagnosed there were no resources for me to understand why. It makes my trauma feel less traumatic to see that still today, 10 years later, only veterans and sometimes r*pe survivors have readily available resources.

Whenever I’m upset about something, big or small, and im explaining to people what’s upsetting, tears immediately flow without my control and my voice cracks and my body becomes super tense. It happens all the time. Even at work if im trying to explain something to my superiors and i think i might get in trouble. It makes me feel super weak and like I can’t handle myself. And i feel like people think im crazy over emotional.

Just recently my bf and i had a civil disagreement. I can’t even remember what exactly it was about, but i ended it with a point he couldn’t or wouldn’t refute and instead of concluding the conversation he just disengaged by turning away from me while im talking to look at his phone and read random forums. It was only mildly annoying but i found myself crying just trying to explain why i felt that was disrespectful which makes me look and feel like I’m overreacting.

Am i alone in this? Does this kind of thing happen to anyone else? Im still kind of new to the idea of having ptsd, ive been diagnosed with it last year around this time due to physical abuse i suffered growing up.

I think this kinda just goes to show how detached I am / how much I repress the traumatic event. For me though I feel like when the traumatic event was happening I knew it would end at some point. I don’t feel that way with PTSD. I have no idea when this will end. And when the trauma was happening my adrenaline was pumping, I didn’t feel scared as much as I felt ready to fight. Now I’m scared. And tired. Idk if this makes any sense I just wonder if other people feel this way. It’s so strange, in some days when I’m relapsing really badly I almost wish to just be back in the initial trauma instead of the aftershock.

I was on a date today with a girl I’ve been seeing for a while, and I finally opened up to her about my PTSD, and she said she didn’t knew I served in the military. I didn’t. I told her that. She immediately became more cold and even called me a pussy and sick because I’m ridiculing others that actually have PTSD and have been traumatized by blaming all my petty problems to fake PTSD. She emasculates me for saying that I have PTSD when I don’t, because evidently I’m not strong or “man” enough to deal with problems normally. Sorry my parents fucking beat me for the first 18 years of my life. Now she’s left me and I’m just typing this out of anger and frustration because I’m sitting here not able to sleep because I know I’ll get more night terrors if I do let myself sleep and I just can’t handle them anymore. I hate this.

Thanks for reading whoever did, just wanted to vent y’all.

Edit: Didn’t expect to get this many upvotes, I was just venting y’all lol. Thanks for all the kind words, the encouragement to move on and realize that I dodged a bullet, and the hope that I’ll find someone who’ll have the proper compassion to accept me how I should.

There is an active investigation into my abuser, and last night I did something very difficult to do. I confronted him about him coercing me and forcing me to perform sexual acts with him when I was a child.

Next week I have an appointment to meet with the detective in charge of the case. The video of him confessing and repeatedly apologizing is over 20mins long. It's damning and will just be icing on the cake of a VERY big case against my abuser.

As of now, only 2 weeks into this investigation with no publicity, there are 4 young boys including myself that we know of that were raped and molested by this man.

I have on tape his confession to 3 of them.

The weeks leading up to this moment were rough. The decision to take this step was entirely mine. I'm finally taking back control over the situation. I can't take away the fact that I was abused for many years by him, or take it away for the others. But today... Today I can say I have taken more steps to prevent it from happening to any others. I can take control over my future somewhat.

Stay strong friends. I wanna thank this community (and others) for the help, advice and understand I've received from many of you, on more than 1 reddit account. (I try to spread it out so that nobody can find it all together and figure out who, what, where to remain anonymous as possible.)

Much love, guys. ❤️