Can you get PTSD from excessive melts?

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Can having several melts per week for a few months lead to PTSD? I haven't had one in a while, particularly not in such rapid succession, but I'll still get flashbulb refeeds of some of them. The melts were pretty severe, and they usually involved a lot of crying, phantom headaches (a feeling my head was going to explode even if I wasn't actually experiencing physical pain). For a while, I pretty vigilantly avoided any kind of emotion, just wanted the god-forsaken things to leave me alone, stop hurting me. I'm just not entirely sure if melts can actually do that.

Last edited by Griff on 16 Apr 2007, 9:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

what even is PTSD?

post traumatic stress disorder..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-traum ... s_disorder

Oh, it's just post-traumatic stress disorder. Nothing exotic.

Oh! I hope not. Yours sound a lot like mine.

ASD meltdown: Shakes, headaches, inability to think, helplessness.

NT meltdown: Finds an ASD person to beat with fists.

Heck of a concept. I doubt the meltdown would cause PTSd, but the traumatic situ that caused the melt might also cause PTSD! This could go a long way to explain many secondary consequences of AS.

Heck of a concept. I doubt the meltdown would cause PTSd, but the traumatic situ that caused the melt might also cause PTSD! This could go a long way to explain many secondary consequences of AS.

On a much smaller scale (because it's in the past) my son developed anxiety based on prior anxiety that led to hurting others and tantrums. Circle time in preschool was very chaotic to him and he'd get all nervous. Something would lead to another and he'd bother someone, hurt someone or otherwise get "in trouble" and removed from the group. As time went on, he began to anticipate the anxiety, so double anxiety and he'd just make sure that he got in trouble.
We solved it by giving him a break before circle time.
My point is, I wouldn't call it a predisposition for PTSD but a type of conditioning that makes your body ready for its scheduled meltdown.
PTSD is a really serious condition.

Not sure. I tend to have outbursts sometimes and periods of depression, though.

Okay, I wasn't sure about the actual severity of the condition. I did suffer a lot from some of the symptoms I've seen in descriptions of the disorder, but it sounds from your tone like genuine cases of it have more pronounced expression of these symptoms.

Are you saying that your melts hurt you? Did your body react as if it was being attacked? And you felt powerless? That's sounds like a pretty good recipe for trauma. The flashbulb refeeds sound like flashbacks, which can be debilitating.

The thing with trauma is it never goes away. It has to be dealt with. A therapist with experience in PTSD might be good. Even if it didn't become a Disorder, trauma needs help.

In my own life, the best help has been EMDR. www.emdr.com

I'm not saying what you're experiencing isn't serious. Sorry. Just from your description of events, I don't think your meltdowns will lead to PTSD. But I do think whatever leads to your meltdowns is something that definitely needs to be addressed and remedied. When my son had his anxiety fits that led to tantrums, everyone was suggesting anti-anxiety meds. It was that serious and pervasive. We are determined to keep him off meds until at least he hits puberty as we think we are in the window of opportunity to teach him self-coping skills.
His tantrums have almost totally stopped, he doesn't seem to have meltdowns at all. He is able to function in daily activities because he has learned how to destress and self-stim. His allergies aren't as bad either.

** Warning, frank talk and graphic descriptions of PTSD, read at your own risk**

hummm I got my PTSD from being raped repeatedly as a kid, not from my meltdowns. When I lost 6 children over 14 years during my 4th to 6th months of pregnancy is when I really was affected by trauma, not because someone made fun of me at school. When my house burned down, and I lost everything, simply everything and lived out on the street, that contributed, I know it.
When I threw myself off my bike as a definite bid for suicide when going over thirty miles an hour putting a huge gash in my face when I went through the guard rail and fractured my back when fell into the rocks in the creek, that is what added to my PTSD.

of course, if you never had any of these kinds of trauma I guess what ever you think was traumatic could get you Post traumatic stress disorder like from a meltdown. But I always thought PTSD was about people that truly had traumatic stress, like soldiers in combat, holocaust survivors or people that were at Ground Zero when the towers went down and stuff.

Well, they made me pretty sick, actually. And yes, my melts are really pretty severe when they happen. It's been years since I had a serious one, though. I think I just learned to recognize the precursors and prevent them from happening.

I'm not sure if it's vivid enough to really count, though.

Then I never suffered from any such thing. I thought it was a condition that could clear up over time. Apparently no. Learn something new every day.

Sinsboldly, I understand where you're coming from, but a really severe succession of melts can be pretty taxing in itself. I don't know how it would stack up to your experiences, though. I was never severely physically abused. There have been some things of that persuasion over the years that have made me very unhappy on a temporary basis, but, to tell you the truth, I have only actually been struck a scarce few times in my life. Even that was just the usual quarreling between schoolboys, the kind of stuff you just shrug off without really thinking twice more about it.

Last edited by Griff on 17 Apr 2007, 8:18 am, edited 2 times in total.

Actually I have all of the symptoms... I was neglected quite a bit as a child. If I do have PTSD thats what caused it... I never considered it before.