Help?

[baratron]

Still not doing well at all. Emotionally I am a mixture of hypomanic and depressed with an enormous amount of anxiety and panic. Very, very easily triggered. The worst thing about this is that I'm not actually in pain physically until the emotional stuff has been triggered :/

I need help. Seriously. I've been dealing with depression for years, I can talk myself out of it in my sleep. But I don't know the first thing about post-traumatic stress. I mean, I totally hesitate to call this PTSD, because I'm sure that name should be reserved for traumatic events along the lines of being caught in an explosion, rape, being horrifically injured, suffering for years by being trapped in a body of the wrong physical sex, or witnessing your partner die horribly. But jeez, I have enough of the symptoms. Whatever name you want to put on it, I'm a wreck.

Flashbacks? Check
Hyperarousal? Check
Insomnia? Check
Nightmares? Check
Triggers? Oh my God, yes. Just the two words that start g_ and a_ are enough to have me hyperventilating. Medical stuff in general = Not good. fluffymormegil talking about the abcess in his tooth is making me panicky.
Avoidance? YES TOTALLY. I'm comforting myself with Sims 2, Pokemon cartoons and baking, anything to avoid having to think about what happened. Thus I'm fairly happy & perky - hypomanic, even - until somebody or something reminds me.

Many people have suggested I need to write to the hospital about what happened, and lizw kindly rewrote my upset ramble into coherent English, but I can't even read it right now. I can't deal with anything to do with it. I was on the bus on Monday, & put on one of the albums that I was listening to in hospital, and that triggered me. (Do I have to throw away my current ten favourite albums now?). Yesterday I had to go on the bus route past Kingston Hospital, and ... I don't have the words to describe how I felt. I need to get this shit out of my head, NOW. But I haven't the first clue how.

Help?

Comments

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I think it might be a good idea to print out this entry and the summaries I wrote and take them back to your GP. At the very least, it looks to me as though a referral to a counsellor is in order. I don't think PTSD symptoms are something where amateurs are going to be very much help to you :-(

[baratron.livejournal.com]

What I'm looking for, apart from sympathetic comments (which do help), is information about what kind of counselling has actually been useful to people. CBT worked wonders for me with depression, but I don't know whether it's what I need for this. It really doesn't help that the average wait to see someone for CBT in this area is 18 months. I can't go on like this for 18 months! I need help now!

Mind you, I could go privately to see someone, if I could get a recommendation of someone who was any good, or if I could see one of the useful counsellors I've already seen privately to skip the queue.

[quiet000001.livejournal.com]

CBT is one method used to treat PTSD-type things. (it's probably what I'll be trying, actually.) There are others, but if CBT has worked for you before and you're familiar with it, it may be a good place to start.

*hug*

[ailbhe]

I'm told CBT is very effective, but I'm still on a waiting list so I have no personal experience of it. It's what all the women on the difficult birth mailing lists end up getting, and I don't remember anyone saying it didn't work.

Meanwhile, how on earth can you tell how big a trauma is from the outside? Your distress sounds awfully similar to mine as I remmeber it, during the event. And PTSD is what people seem to agree I have. It's just as likely you have it as I do. More so, given your tendency to anxiety before you even started, I think.

I started the lnc journal to focus on the good things in my life, to help them outweigh the bad things. That helped. I also asked everyone for help and reassurance a whole hell of a lot; I still do. Ask. We're all here listening.

[x-mass.livejournal.com]

have you talked to esbat about the person she went to see and how much it helped her?

[quiet000001.livejournal.com]

it's actually too early to diagnose PTSD, since part of it is length of time you suffer from the symptoms (to allow for normal time it takes to cope with a traumatic event- no one gets over it in a couple of days) as I understand it, anyway. However, you shouldn't feel like your experience wasn't 'bad enough' to count, by some external metric. Things stick in people's heads for different reasons, something that horribly upsets one person doesn't bother another at all, etc.

I haven't actually started proper treatment for the PTSD yet (I keep buggering off to other countries, and they don't like to start a course and then stop halfway through for a month, so I'm due to start up after I get back) however I have found counselling quite useful in terms of coping with the symptoms, like the heightened anxiety responses.

You've already said that your GP seems to be quite sympathetic- I would get in touch (in whatever way you feel most comfortable) and let him know the problems you're having (even if you only print out your lj posts, or get someone to talk to him for you.) He will likely quite happily send you off for some counselling, and hopefully that will help you deal with it sooner.

(If it helps to know, even untreated you will likely get less sensitive after a while- I've learned to sort of not-see things which are likely to be triggers for me. If I stop and THINK about it, it will still upset me, so long term it's not going to work, but short term it makes life much better.) (Also, I wouldn't throw away the albums. They may well play a part in coping with the event, and I'm sure sooner or later you'll be able to listen to them again. :) )

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know it's too early to diagnose it as anything other than "anxiety". At the moment, it could be called Acute Stress Disorder (http://allpsych.com/disorders/anxiety/acutestress.html). Frankly, I don't need a label, I need it dealt with, y'know?

There's many many things all wound up together, not least of all the fact that now I have all this stress on top of my existing anxiety, and I still theoretically need to have the operation that I could barely cope with already! Argh.

[quiet000001.livejournal.com]

I would absolutely 100% go see someone. I don't think at this point it necessarily needs to be a specialist, even, just someone you feel comfortable talking to who can get you pointed in the right direction, because a lot of the immediate relief is just from knowing that you are doing SOMETHING and that you won't be beset by the crippling problems forever. (At least, ime. :) )

So talk to your GP, get a referral to someone you've seen previously, whatever. :)

[nitoda]

Hugs. Others have given practical advice and I can't better it, so just hugs and hugs and more hugs.

[hiddenpaw.livejournal.com]

Put in very simple terms many PTSD come from being in a situation where you think you are about to die. You mentioned bomb blasts and being injured for instance.

Your trauma stems at least in part from your fear that you would not suvive the anisthetic. This was of course exsasperated by other factors in the situation so it may prove to be PTSD. yet as another poster said I think there is a natural time period that is given for natural mental healing before they call it that. so you may only be tempoarily broken and find you heal up natualy.

Until then I guess Sim-therapy will have to do.

[ludy]

hugs
i'm trying to think up a cohrent commnmet but curretnly am too asthmatic/steroidy to do so. PTSD is one of my diagnosisis

[x-mass.livejournal.com]

first hugs
big hugs
I'm sorry your really going through it

secondly a very small point TS people probably actually suffer from cptsd which is way more long term in its traumatising effects and in recovery from

but that doesnt escape what you've been through
so
Hugs
kate