AS and depression, anxiety,or post-traumatic stress disorder

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hi there,

i got rejected several times, and was having many years anxieties that the girl i love would get together with someone else. I always thought of this that its a social anxiety and a depression.

But now i read something about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), that a person is to stressed with one or several events, sounds abit abstract, but I wonder now if i really got this. There were not some kind of special events as described in PTSD, but step by step, there was a development that the person i had a crush on, could be seen less and less over time, over years, and my fear grew more and more that she will get another boyfriend, and i felt more and more bad because of my lack of social skills.

But where are the differences between PTSD and depression, social phobias and so on?

thanks,
anton

Last edited by antonblock on 09 Mar 2011, 10:32 am, edited 2 times in total.

PTSD is caused by trauma, the events inscribed so vividly into memory that they are constantly recalled/relived and cause the same stress over and over again. It is also characterized by hypervigilance and anxiety surrounding the trauma. Events that remind you of the trauma can trigger flashbacks, causing you to reexperience the trauma all over again.

yeah, i know that they are caused by such. i mean, instead of a single or several important events which cause you a trauma, can there be many such little ongoing events, social interactions which cause you such ongoing little traumas? Such that you a stressed permanently and show similartities to a PTSD?

thanks,
anton

They've got different diagnostic criteria, obviously, and different descriptions in the psychiatric diagnostic manuals (ICD-10 and DSM-V).

PTSD isn't limited to, but is quite prevalent amongst emergency workers and survivors of domestic abuse.

Oh, I misunderstood.

Google "complex PTSD"

I don't think what you've been through would be called post-traumatic stress disorder. I think it's just that bad experiences will make anybody anxious that they'll happen again. It's probably nothing more than your brain working normally, the anxiety is there to get you to take steps to avoid a repeat of the bad stuff, but it might do that in quite a crude way, such as completely avoiding the opposite sex, so it's often useful to really look at your experiences and fears in detail, and try to work out a way of getting your desires met without too much risk of your fears getting fulfilled again.

I got rejected a lot when I first started out, and that gave me anxieties about girls, and I took that baggage into the relationships I finally got. And really traumatic experiences with them would also get carried through into the next partnership. The main problem was that I didn't know this was happening, I didn't see flashbacks or understand that when my partner scared me, it was because of my past and not because she didn't give a s**t about my emotional well-being. I don't think I even realised any of them had really loved me until a few years ago. I never looked back once a new one was around, I'd feel so buzzy and confident that thought I had no emotional baggage at all.

So I'd advise you to look in detail at what's been happening to you, and how it might affect you in the future. I usually find that once I'm aware that I might be hypersensitive to this or that, I can actually handle it a lot better when it happens, because I then see that my history is in the mix, and I don't fall into the trap of blaming the dame by default.

But I wouldn't let the focus on emotional baggage blind you to the bigger picture. There are loads of things that affect relations with the opposite sex - upbringing is one, and AS of course has lots ot features that complicate the picture. One of my worst ones has been an amazing blindness to who it is I'm getting involved with.....my selection process seems to be horribly flawed - I can ditch one partner for doing a particular thing, and then get completely enchanted by a woman who is doing exactly the same thing to a greater degree.........I don't seem to anticipate how I'm going to feel after the first few weeks, unless I really use my critical thinking, cut through all the romance, and ask myself some really tough and embarrassing questions. Even then, I can focus so hard on making sure the next partner doesn't do one particular nasty thing to me, that I overlook all the other nasty things she might do.

hi again,

ok i give abit more details here: i keep thinking at the meeting and what i said when i met her the last time before she had the boyfriend, and to the meeting when i finally found out. I always think of the things i said and how i behaved and what i did wrong and why i did it wrong. Besides those thinkings, i keep myself busy by surfing the web and getting input e.g. from wrongplanet, then i drink alot of tea (4-5 cups a day) each day, keep masturbating, and i often eat alot though i am not hungry. I dont look at pictures of her, or dont look at people who are kissing or who are pregnant, if i see a picture of her by accident then i put it away fastly, i also try to avoid friends who are also her friends. It seems as the last ten years are senseless, and there is something in my life which is destroyed and cant be repaired any more.

Its more than half a year ago, but when i remember the situations i still start crying at home, not as much as before but still happens. I stay awake til midnight, so that i am so sleepy that i must sleep at once. I go to work, but mostly i can only work 2 hours instead of 8.

So is this now depression, anxiety, or (complex-)post-traumatic stress disorder?

thanks,
anton

anton,

There's obviously a lot going on here, but it seems to me that your biggest issue is obsession. Your fixation on this girl sounds extraordinarily unhealthy.

What matters is not so much the name you give to your "condition", but figuring out how to end your obsession with this girl. First step would probably be to accept the fact that there was probably nothing you could've done to change the outcome of the situation. Sometimes you just get dealt a losing hand. The healthy response is to take your experience and move on to the next one.

actually i know now that she liked me much, but i didnt respond to her eye contact at that meeting i always remember and to her invitation for going out to cinema for some reason. And she often gave me a chance again and again, so it was not so clear that i would fail with her.

i am not sure if it is obsession, or better said: when is it love and when obsession?

bye,
anton

I wouldn't worry too much about labelling it if I were you, apart from identifying the incidents and the emotions. But talk with a counsellor and/or with us if you're worried you might have got some psychological illness.

It's good that you're looking at what you might have done wrong, but don't forget that she probably made mistakes too.....I've always thought it best to end one relationship and leave a decent interval before starting another, and it looks like she didn't do that very well.

I don't see much wrong with the stuff you've been doing - 5 cups of tea isn't a lot. And I too much prefer to get right away from ex-partners who have hurt me a lot. I don't believe in this "staying good friends" thing, especially if one person wanted the split and the other didn't.

Forget about labels and analyzing the past. Just move on.

There's lots of stuff on the Web about this:
http://www.lovetips.com/love-obsession.shtml
I've also heard that it's love when you're more interested in making the other person happy than you are in getting what you want from them, but I think if a guy goes too far that way then maybe he's just a fall guy. I believe in a balance where you want your girl to be happy but you also want something for yourself out of it, apart from the joy of giving.

It's difficult because it's such a woolly subject, but my test would be to ask myself how much I know about the girl, whether I'm seeing her as a real person with her own hopes and dreams etc., or whether I'm just seeing her as an alternative to my being alone. Even there, it's difficult because quenching loneliness is a very important feature of a relationship. And with AS in the mix, it can be hard to see the difference between autistic obsession and the (possibly) more narcissistic and selfish NT kind of obsession.

But again, I fear the answer might not be a matter of finding labels.

yeah, but labels may be important to find out how to help myself best, or not?

thanks,
anton

"Labels" are desirable when they correlate with reliable, specific "treatments" or therapies. In other words, the "label" of diabetes is "important" because it correlates with a relatively "absolute" treatment--people with diabetes tend to benefit from exactly the same type of treatment.

Neuropsychological "labels" are extremely diffuse. What's effective treatment for one person with a neuropsychological condition might be ineffective, or even counterproductive, for another person who seems to have the same condition.