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C2V
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10 Apr 2017, 11:47 am

I'm interested in the opinions of people diagnosed with PTSD, C-PTSD or other legitimate forms of trauma.
This may be a bit of a novel.
I was recently having a conversation with a woman who claimed she had "a trauma background" and that caused her to have a trauma condition as an adult.
As she had brought this up in conversation I assumed she wanted to talk about it so I asked her what the story was.
She said her mother had been a very anxious woman, and hadn't coped with her anxiety very well, often transferring her stress on to other people and yelling at her children.
I was waiting for her to tell me about the traumatic part but apparently that was it. I asked her how that affected her as an adult, and she said she had anxiety because of how her mother used to act, and was very uncomfortable around highly anxious people or in stressful situations because it reminded her of her mother. Someone else claimed to have PTSD from superficially burning himself on a backyard chemical bomb he made.
Now, I have in my time argued with therapists about this in regards to myself. I had a bit of a rough background, ranging from alcoholism (relatives, not mine at that time) and domestic violence, homelessness, abusive family situation with people with mental health problems, and so on.
Therapists have repeatedly tried to tell me I have been "traumatized."
I don't believe this equates to trauma. The topic title was from an article I read that seemed to make sense to me - "drama" is not trauma. Coming from a pretty sh***y background may make it harder to get through life than someone who had a happy background, but in my opinion this does not qualify for "trauma."
Messing you up emotionally does not a psychiatric disorder make.
The diagnostic criteria for things like PTSD includes the traumatic event must be from something outside the normal range of human experience, and something that involved real threat of death or serious injury. I doubt there is anyone alive whose mother never yelled at them, and millions of people every day have to deal with relatives who have substance and mental health problems. This is not so extreme as to cause a disorder like PTSD. Plus all these people who claim to suffer from trauma, they never mention things like flashbacks, psychosomatic symptoms, panic attacks, insomnia/nightmares, intense emotional problems, etc.
It's a tangent but I have been doing a bit of research on this for a tale I am writing, of a character who is a war veteran. Some of the accounts I based my character on of the symptoms of soldiers suffering then termed "shell shock" are horrific, as is some of the video footage of what these men were dealing with when they came out of the trenches. Some had lost the ability to walk or speak, some suffered chronic debilitating pain for no reason, others whose whole bodies shook violently for years into peacetime.
It seems to me the terms "trauma" and therapists trying to diagnose things like PTSD for comparatively mild emotional stresses, like an anxious mother or a bunch of alcoholics for a family, trivializes the disorder for those who really do suffer from it. People who have been through wars, violent attacks, sexual abuse and rape, child abuse, torture. People whose lives are irreparably damaged from those events in real, visceral ways, and who do suffer from the clinical symptoms of PTSD that impact on their lives.
I reject this pathologizing and have for a long time. People did the same with "depression."
I knew a guy once who had dealt with real clinical depression all his life, due to a documented imbalance in his neurochemistry. Off his medication, he could spend days crying hysterically or attempting to kill himself.
He felt that the over-diagnosis of depression trivialized what people like him went through. He would tell people he had been on medical leave for depression, and they would flippantly reply with things like they were sooooo depressed too when a relationship ended, or similar. Heartbreak, he maintained, was not a chronic psychological disorder.
That's a bit of a rant but for some reason, this woman I spoke to claiming a "trauma background" and "a trauma condition" because of her mother's anxious behaviour leading her to yell annoyed me. I want to be compassionate about other people's bad experience, but for some reason, claiming it was trauma made it more difficult for me to be compassionate toward her real difficulties about her mother. It seemed as if she was over-blowing it and taking on a diagnosis that wasn't appropriate.
The article I read proposed that this not not even helpful for the people misdiagnosed with things like PTSD or those who self-diagnose and then identify with "trauma" when it is just emotional damage.
The author claimed that identifying with being broken when one was just upset or emotionally hurt made recovery from these things much harder.
How do people who genuinely suffer from things like PTSD relate to this kind of thing? Do you think "trauma" is an over-used word, especially in the west? Does it bother you if people either self-diagnose or are diagnosed with PTSD for everyday issues, and take on the label of a "trauma background" as the woman I spoke to did?
Do you agree with the expansion of the diagnostic criteria? Do You accept such a diagnosis yourself or do you question it? Do you believe diagnosis of things like PTSD is helpful, or is it misunderstood and creates a stigma instead?


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starkid
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21 Apr 2017, 12:33 am

It seems like you are mixing up the concept of trauma and the idea of diagnosable PTSD.

"Trauma" is not just a clinical term; people use it colloquially to describe unpleasant experiences that had lasting psychological effects, regardless of whether those effects constitute diagnosable conditions.



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27 Apr 2017, 7:44 pm

I agree with you, C2V. Drama is not trauma. Heartbreak is not depression.

Sorry, I do not have PTSD or depression. But, I have had doctors try to diagnose me with anxiety and depression many times.

Being stressed by everyday events because my senses are hypersensitive, my danger response is slow, my black-and-white thinking makes me ill-prepared for realistic situations and their consequences, and my speech and behavior are always miscommunicated and misinterpreted, does not mean I have an anxiety disorder. My anxiety is a perfectly appropriate response to my situation. When the situation improves, so does my mood. In fact, I have been unexpectedly and inexplicably calm on some occasions.

Being disappointed in my life because my current status - and future likelihood - of being employed, having friends, having a boyfriend, or being independent is nonexistent - and low - does not mean I have a depressive disorder. My sadness is a perfectly appropriate response to my situation. When the situation improves, so does my mood. In fact, I have been unexpectedly and inexplicably content on some occasions.


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27 Apr 2017, 8:01 pm

I don't have time to read the whole post right now...but based on what I did read I have one thing to say. PTSD is more about how you feel in a situation than what the objective reality may be. Now not so sure the woman with the anxious mother really had PTSD, sounds like in her case perhaps some of her mothers anxiety carried over to her which has caused her issues but that's not exactly PTSD.

But the situation with the kid and the home-made bomb I could see...even if the danger of him dying wasn't real objectively if he was afraid he'd die when it happened and it caused him distress then yeah its certainly possible. I mean something blows up in your face and you feel like 'f***k I almost killed myself' could certainly be a PTSD causing moment.

Basically PTSD is when your body reacts to what you perceive as great danger and the reaction lingers, I mean most people will at least experience shock but if they don't recover from the shock than it can progress into PTSD. I have it, I mean for now as hard as it is to believe its mostly in remission...but from time to time it still tries to get at me. Mine was from my sister being molested and later on a girl I knew in school got shot by a gunman who entered the school...the two traumas kind of combined due to both times feeling like I should have been able to do something about it but didn't.


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HelloWorld314
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27 Apr 2017, 9:20 pm

Well I don't know how do you define trauma? If the mom is anxious enough to yell at the kids all the time, that is called childhood emotional abuse. And if the mom is anxious all the time that she does not look after the feelings of her kids that is called childhood emotional neglect. Both of them when experienced continually are traumatic and child abuse is not a normal healthy human experience.

I got diagnosed with (complex) PTSD from bullying (sexual nature), childhood physical abuse, childhood emotional abuse, childhood emotional neglect, and childhood physical neglect, but none of them was life threatening though I did feel hungry enough to steal food several times.

It is kinda the same with physical disability. You have the person who does not have any limbs from birth and the person who can walk but only with a stick. I mean both of them are sad cases and I don't think it is productive to make the less disabled person feel bad for "stealing" the more disabled person's status or something...

p.s. And I agree with your therapist that you have been traumatized...I sense an inability to be vulnerable and a lack of tenderness towards yourself from your post, and I think they are probably due to your childhood traumas. Take care.


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03 Jul 2017, 5:49 pm

I disagree in some ways. People react to situations differently. There are situations that might not be traumatic (and I use the clinical sense here) for one person, but is for another. There's also evidence that the autistic brain is more likely to process distressing/difficult events as traumatic, than the non autistic brain.

Just to note, I have not been diagnosed with PTSD as of yet. But I was just referred by my psychiatrist to see a trauma specialist.

There have been some events over the past few years in particular that affect me to this day. I have panic attacks during which I have images of the events flashing uncontrollably through my head. There are times when I panic feeling like there is someone behind me, even though no one is there. I've hidden in the closet to try and find some safety. Someone scaring me can cause me to panic have have those images start flashing through my head. Even someone smiling in a very specific way has caused those thoughts and panic to be triggered. I try and leave situations that remind me of the events if I'm getting triggered. I have trouble sleeping, and there are some things I now rarely or never do because of what's happened. I can't talk about some of the events without starting to cry and hyperventilate, and afterwards I'm especially jumpy and panicked. I have trouble sleeping. I could go on.

None of thses events was life threatening. However, I was terrified to an extreme level, screaming in fear in some cases. My sense of safety was completely violated in some cases. At any rate, I felt I had no control over any aspect of physical or mental safety. I can't go into too much detail, but some of the events involved my parents not handling my autistic meltdowns well. When I briefly mentioned this to a psychologist recently he assumed that these were just unpleasant arguments with my parents. But it was way more than that from how it felt for me from the inside.

Some people might not think these events were traumatic, because for some people they wouldn't be. But for me they were. My psychiatrist agrees, and friends who have been diagnosed with PTSD also agree.

Bottom line, you don't have to go through something that is ordinarily considered life threatening to be traumatized.


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Chronos
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11 Jul 2017, 12:23 am

C2V wrote:
I'm interested in the opinions of people diagnosed with PTSD, C-PTSD or other legitimate forms of trauma.
This may be a bit of a novel.
I was recently having a conversation with a woman who claimed she had "a trauma background" and that caused her to have a trauma condition as an adult.
As she had brought this up in conversation I assumed she wanted to talk about it so I asked her what the story was.
She said her mother had been a very anxious woman, and hadn't coped with her anxiety very well, often transferring her stress on to other people and yelling at her children.
I was waiting for her to tell me about the traumatic part but apparently that was it. I asked her how that affected her as an adult, and she said she had anxiety because of how her mother used to act, and was very uncomfortable around highly anxious people or in stressful situations because it reminded her of her mother. Someone else claimed to have PTSD from superficially burning himself on a backyard chemical bomb he made.
Now, I have in my time argued with therapists about this in regards to myself. I had a bit of a rough background, ranging from alcoholism (relatives, not mine at that time) and domestic violence, homelessness, abusive family situation with people with mental health problems, and so on.
Therapists have repeatedly tried to tell me I have been "traumatized."
I don't believe this equates to trauma. The topic title was from an article I read that seemed to make sense to me - "drama" is not trauma. Coming from a pretty sh***y background may make it harder to get through life than someone who had a happy background, but in my opinion this does not qualify for "trauma."
Messing you up emotionally does not a psychiatric disorder make.
The diagnostic criteria for things like PTSD includes the traumatic event must be from something outside the normal range of human experience, and something that involved real threat of death or serious injury. I doubt there is anyone alive whose mother never yelled at them, and millions of people every day have to deal with relatives who have substance and mental health problems. This is not so extreme as to cause a disorder like PTSD. Plus all these people who claim to suffer from trauma, they never mention things like flashbacks, psychosomatic symptoms, panic attacks, insomnia/nightmares, intense emotional problems, etc.
It's a tangent but I have been doing a bit of research on this for a tale I am writing, of a character who is a war veteran. Some of the accounts I based my character on of the symptoms of soldiers suffering then termed "shell shock" are horrific, as is some of the video footage of what these men were dealing with when they came out of the trenches. Some had lost the ability to walk or speak, some suffered chronic debilitating pain for no reason, others whose whole bodies shook violently for years into peacetime.
It seems to me the terms "trauma" and therapists trying to diagnose things like PTSD for comparatively mild emotional stresses, like an anxious mother or a bunch of alcoholics for a family, trivializes the disorder for those who really do suffer from it. People who have been through wars, violent attacks, sexual abuse and rape, child abuse, torture. People whose lives are irreparably damaged from those events in real, visceral ways, and who do suffer from the clinical symptoms of PTSD that impact on their lives.
I reject this pathologizing and have for a long time. People did the same with "depression."
I knew a guy once who had dealt with real clinical depression all his life, due to a documented imbalance in his neurochemistry. Off his medication, he could spend days crying hysterically or attempting to kill himself.
He felt that the over-diagnosis of depression trivialized what people like him went through. He would tell people he had been on medical leave for depression, and they would flippantly reply with things like they were sooooo depressed too when a relationship ended, or similar. Heartbreak, he maintained, was not a chronic psychological disorder.
That's a bit of a rant but for some reason, this woman I spoke to claiming a "trauma background" and "a trauma condition" because of her mother's anxious behaviour leading her to yell annoyed me. I want to be compassionate about other people's bad experience, but for some reason, claiming it was trauma made it more difficult for me to be compassionate toward her real difficulties about her mother. It seemed as if she was over-blowing it and taking on a diagnosis that wasn't appropriate.
The article I read proposed that this not not even helpful for the people misdiagnosed with things like PTSD or those who self-diagnose and then identify with "trauma" when it is just emotional damage.
The author claimed that identifying with being broken when one was just upset or emotionally hurt made recovery from these things much harder.
How do people who genuinely suffer from things like PTSD relate to this kind of thing? Do you think "trauma" is an over-used word, especially in the west? Does it bother you if people either self-diagnose or are diagnosed with PTSD for everyday issues, and take on the label of a "trauma background" as the woman I spoke to did?
Do you agree with the expansion of the diagnostic criteria? Do You accept such a diagnosis yourself or do you question it? Do you believe diagnosis of things like PTSD is helpful, or is it misunderstood and creates a stigma instead?


Different people have different levels of sensitivity. Some people are easily traumatized, some are not. So I do believe some very emotionally sensitive people can develop PTSD from what less emotionally sensitive people would consider bad but not traumatic experiences.

I would have a difficult time believing the guy who burned himself with his own chemical bomb though. But I would believe someone who grew up with an overly anxious or neurotic mother because children rely on their parents, and often strongly their mothers, to teach them what it's reasonable to fear and when they shouldn't be afraid, and a mother with an anxiety disorder can make things very scary and stressful for children.



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14 Jul 2017, 7:06 am

What if someone THINKS they're at risk and then only later find out they're not but are still always from then on worrying they're at risk?

Also, I think there's Post Traumatic Stress that's separate from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I was told this on a site for people with PTSD. I went there thinking I had PTSD from major repeated humiliations in school and they told me I didn't seem to have PTSD because according to them "my spirit hadn't broken and there was no chemical imbalance". Mind you, I didn't tell them of all the crap with my parents.