Anyone in here have PTSD? I do.

Cainkane1

Philosopher
Cainkane1
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Jul 16, 2005
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I was never in a war but I was in a bad car accident when I was much younger. I was basically unhurt but the person who caused the accident died and my passenger was permanently injured. A drunk hit my car on the passengers side destroying my car, injuring my friend and killing the drunk who hit me. I had only a few cuts.

Some years ago I started having flashbacks and was basically reliving my ordeal in my cubical at work. The sound of brakes, the smashing glass the overall terror of what had happened sometimes come back to me. My friend has problems walking to this day.

I sometimes have to take trazadone to sleep and busbar for my nerves. Anyone else going through something like this?
 
I suffer from PTSD as well, and have for quite some time. Mine isn't war related either. No, I'm not going to talk about what it is related to.

I was on a rather hefty dose of anti-anxiety medications for a while, but I've managed to get off them by using CBT techniques.
 
I have known people who had PTSD from all sorts of trauma, DV victims, rape victims, natural disasters, house fires, car accidents, robbery.

Very sad.
 
I had flashbacks one time. It happened while watching a musical make from "Little Women". Being a low budget community production, the choice of Little Women was limited, and their voices didn't harmonize well. The trio part gave me flash backs to growing up in a house with two sisters and a mother, all screaming at each other during synchronized PMS. I started laughing uncontrollably. Other patrons thought I was nuts, I guess I was for a minute or two.
 
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I do, a little. Not terribly severe. I don't really feel comfortable discussing details here, but you're not alone.
 
A professor of psychiatry gave a talk at our Seattle Skeptics meeting a few days ago about PTSD. It was very interesting. I wish there was a recording of it you could see.

He brought up a lot of very good points discussing whether one could just as well describe the mental health syndromes that make up PTSD using other psychiatric definitions. The question isn't, are people suffering, but is the label useful in directing treatment and identifying a unique problem? And does physical trauma or the threat of physical trauma somehow differ from other kinds of significant stressors?
 
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I think I have some undiscovered weirdo varient of it, where I get it fairly easily, but it fades on it's own over the course of a couple of years.
But I've had it a 3 times before, but I'm over all of them now.
 
For me personally my trauma did not lead to the classic symptoms of PTSD, but that may be because they were overwhelmed by the anxiety disorders that are part of my depression.
 
I thought it was quite common that PTSD didn't necessarily involve flashbacks and obvious indicators that it was because of a past trauma.
 
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Undesired Walrus said:
I thought it was quite common that PTSD didn't necessarily involve flashbacks and obvious indicators that it was because of a past trauma.
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The DSM Criteria does actually require that there be some sort of intrusive recollection. That intrusive recollection can be as severe as a full on flashback (as in, actually thinking that you're right there re-living the trauma), or it can be as minor as simply reacting anxiously to a set of stimuli that are symbolic of a traumatic event.

More complete information here: http://ncptsd.kattare.com/ncmain/ncdocs/fact_shts/fs_dsm_iv_tr.html

In terms of how common full on flashbacks are... Just about everyone I've known with PTSD has experienced flashbacks at least once, if not more than that, myself included. The "reliving the trauma" kind of thing is pretty prevalent. A sound may trigger it, or a smell, or a small visual detail.

In terms of how common "obvious indicators that it was because of a past trauma" are... Well, how exactly does one end up with a diagnosis of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) if there are no indicators that the source of stress is a past trauma? Unless you're speaking about a delayed response, in which case someone might not exhibit symptoms for days, weeks, months, or even years after the initial trauma?
 
MDMA is what the army having been using in private trials to cure troops of what they see in battle; it works absolute wonders. The happy empathic mood MDMA can induce is a very unique state, and it is currently at phase 2 clinical trials and soon probably to be the treatment offered for all PTSD. It would have to be taken in conjunction with a therapist and they talk over all of the issues, They used to use it in psychiatric wards before it was made illegal.

Ecstasy is the key to treating PTSD

An Ecstasy tablet. That’s what it took to make Donna Kilgore feel alive again – that and the doctor who prescribed it. As the pill began to take effect, she giggled for the first time in ages. She felt warm and fuzzy, as if she was floating. The anxiety melted away. Gradually, it all became clear: the guilt, the anger, the shame.

Before, she’d been frozen, unable to feel anything but fear for 10 years. Touching her own arms was, she says, “like touching a corpse”. She was terrified, unable to respond to her loving husband or rock her baby to sleep. She couldn’t drive over bridges for fear of dying, was by turns uncontrollably angry and paralysed with numbness. When she spoke, she heard her voice as if it were miles away; her head felt detached from her body. “It was like living in a movie but watching myself through the camera lens,” she says. “I wasn’t real.”

Unknowingly, Donna, now 39, had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And she would become the first subject in a pioneering American research programme to test the effects of MDMA – otherwise known as the dancefloor drug Ecstasy – on PTSD sufferers.
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I have some kind of "complex PTSD with a passive reaction", and is almost impossible to treat.

The weird part is that it was caused by several years of atrocious recovered memory therapy by a raving lunatic of a psychiatrist. Now I am morbidly afraid of any medication that could help and am suspicious of all people in the mental health care industry.

My teenaged daughter needed that kind of help a few years ago and when I was told that she would be seen at the psych hospital that I had been "treated" in I convinced myself that I could handle taking her there, after all I was a grown-up and she did need help.

Unfortunately taking her there and seeing my old nurse assigned to her just threw me right off the deep end. I told the pediatric psychiatrist who was a specialist in PTSD that bringing my daughter there was giving me PTSD but he didn't listen. I almost had a complete nervous breakdown after bringing her to just two of her appointments.
He then cancelled her therapy and said that I could never come back to that hospital.

Soooooo, as long as I stay away from therapists I will be fine I guess.
 
Roma Hart said:
I have some kind of "complex PTSD with a passive reaction", and is almost impossible to treat.

The weird part is that it was caused by several years of atrocious recovered memory therapy by a raving lunatic of a psychiatrist. Now I am morbidly afraid of any medication that could help and am suspicious of all people in the mental health care industry.

My teenaged daughter needed that kind of help a few years ago and when I was told that she would be seen at the psych hospital that I had been "treated" in I convinced myself that I could handle taking her there, after all I was a grown-up and she did need help.

Unfortunately taking her there and seeing my old nurse assigned to her just threw me right off the deep end. I told the pediatric psychiatrist who was a specialist in PTSD that bringing my daughter there was giving me PTSD but he didn't listen. I almost had a complete nervous breakdown after bringing her to just two of her appointments.
He then cancelled her therapy and said that I could never come back to that hospital.

Soooooo, as long as I stay away from therapists I will be fine I guess.
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I sure hate to hear this. I had a bad experience with a few Psychiatrists in my day too. back in the 70's the Headshrinkers were too fond of Phenothyazides to suit me.. Your life just isn't worth living when your doing the Thorazine shuffle.
 
Roma Hart said:
I have some kind of "complex PTSD with a passive reaction", and is almost impossible to treat.

The weird part is that it was caused by several years of atrocious recovered memory therapy by a raving lunatic of a psychiatrist. Now I am morbidly afraid of any medication that could help and am suspicious of all people in the mental health care industry.

My teenaged daughter needed that kind of help a few years ago and when I was told that she would be seen at the psych hospital that I had been "treated" in I convinced myself that I could handle taking her there, after all I was a grown-up and she did need help.

Unfortunately taking her there and seeing my old nurse assigned to her just threw me right off the deep end. I told the pediatric psychiatrist who was a specialist in PTSD that bringing my daughter there was giving me PTSD but he didn't listen. I almost had a complete nervous breakdown after bringing her to just two of her appointments.
He then cancelled her therapy and said that I could never come back to that hospital.

Soooooo, as long as I stay away from therapists I will be fine I guess.
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:(
 
Zeuzzz said:
:confused: elaborate...
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I can't open the article 404 file error.

Been down this path with you, you have small anecdotal and un blined studies that show the possibility of something.

Try showing a real research article rather than some press release. Yeah so some guy does something and it might have helped one person, maybe but without sample prorocols you can't really say.
 
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