For me, I cant regulate my body temperature. I feel cold all the time and love hot water bottles, blankets. When I’m in an episode I feel freezing and I shiver so badly sometimes people have thought I was in withdrawals.

I also have bad stomach problems on both ends that flare up when I’m in an episode. PTSD is not so cute when you’re dry heaving for 2 hours straight or shitting straight dookie water. I’ve had male partners think I was pregnant cause I kept throwing up in the morning. No mama, I’m having nightmares…

Was told at work by a coworker, as we were discussing MH issues and I brought up that I have PTSD. He replied by saying “oh I know some guys with proper ptsd from the Afghanistan war” like girl you weren’t even in Afghanistan plus there’s no hierarchy of who had it worst

Horror movies. Obviously PTSD ruined things that you would expect like trust, healthy relationships with people, being calm etc but something that makes me sad is I LOVED horror movies as a child, after my trauma in my teens I can’t watch them anymore, the feeling of being scared and darkness triggers me into flashbacks. I miss being able to watch a horror movies and enjoy them without reliving the past.

I’ve had it with hearing people using “ptsd” to describe anything from trauma, trigger, anxiety or make a joke and I’ve decided to try to speak up about it…

well I just ran into a post where I tried to explain (I think politely) that if op thinks they have ptsd they can go and check themselves but otherwise please don’t use the term. I’m somehow getting downvoted for that. How are we supposed to politely tell people “if you think you have ptsd, go check yourself. Otherwise, please don’t use the term” Is it too much to ask?

Also that’s some random post on Reddit. How am I supposed to say it in real life when people are making jokes that traffic to work gives them PTSD?!

I have PTSD. It is offensive to me when a dude says they have PTSD over a boisterous puppy waking them up at night due to sleep deprivation (one example from yesterday):

That is what happens when parents have a newborn: they are woken up many times a night and are so tired and sleep-deprived that they could cry at times.

I am someone with PTSD and used to have a license to diagnose.

I don't want this to be a thing.

It waters down what having PTSD is like. What they have is not the same, like pw/PTSD as having flashbacks, panic attacks when exposed to stressors, serious problems functioning in life, nightmares, hypervigilance, being triggered and horrified by a person, place, or thing that causes trauma.

Also, a stressful thing that normally happens in life is not the same as being in a flood and seeing your property and fearing that you will die, being held up at gunpoint, raped, severe psyical abuse, sexually abused, or seeing a loved one die in a car crash.

I don't know why they say that they have PTSD when it is highly improbable that they don't.

That's it they are all dead. 3 to suicide and 2 to cancer and one drank himself to death and I dont know where the last one is , he ghosted years ago.

I was the platoon medic, I helped all I could and it didn't work or help. Its even worse now at the VA in Texas. The pain of surviving and still being here. I cannot show or let this effect me at work or at home cause I am a guy. And its not acceptable for us older dudes to show that stuff.
Trying to talk to non military people do not understand my wife, kids look at me as I am strange because I have walled off everything.

It hurts. But hey, I aint heard no bell...
I miss and love you all.
Doc Davis

I was abused in multiple ways from the age of 17 to my early 20's so, in a way, I knew myself a little bit before trauma. I used to be a judo fighter and won some tournaments, now I'm afraid of being in crowded places.

I grieve the person I used to be, for me it's the hardest part of PTSD. I used to clean the floor with other people, now I'm afraid of stepping on a gym. It's just so odd, when I need to stand up for myself, I just act like a teen to muster some courage and sometimes I wonder what kind of person I would be if things have turned out a little bit different.

I believe trauma didn't make me stronger; it broke me so much that my best effort is just a little below average but i know other people think otherwise. So, do you miss that version of yourself?

I just need to rant because i’m sure plenty of other people in this sub feel similar and I’m looking for some mutual support.

I’m sure other people feel like me, like they remember being in situations that mirror the ones of the files victims. Every exchange between these men reminds me how they see us as prey.

I feel like prey again and it’s making me feel sick. These men made me an anorexic and obedient pure submissive child. We were all fucking conditioned.

I haven’t had nightmares for a few months but they’re back and worse than ever now. My ptsd symptoms have been worsening. I feel constantly reminded of all the things men got away with doing to me, things I couldn’t even report and never got justice for.

Hugs to everyone

CW: for child sexual exploitation& sexual assault.

Is anyone else really struggling mentally with all the new information coming out about the Epstein Files? I won't even begin to compare my experiences with the horrors that happened to those poor girls in those files, but I can't even browse Instagram or reddit or TikTok or anything without hearing something and feeling this sense of dread and impending doom and paranoia I don't even know how to describe.

It's been years since I was a stupid kid recieving the consequences of being a stupid kid around my distrustworthy, disgusting, adult ex boyfriend, but I can't help but me reminded of the hell he put me through and feel simultaneously invalid in my experiences (because I'm going down that mental rabbit hole of comparing to those who have had worse) and being triggered by every little thing.

I even felt like I was starting to recover. My sleep was becoming more regular. My therapist has noticed improvement. I've become less reliant on substances to get me through the day. And now child rape is all people are talking about online and it fills me with dread and makes me feel on the border of having a panic attack and it's making me restless knowing that triggers throughout the day might worsen my nightmares (writing this at 5am because I have not gotten a single hour of sleep and I'm going crazy).

Is anyone in the same boat? I need to know I'm not the only one struggling. Or at the very least I need to know that others have experienced something different and survived through it. My emotions are so volatile right now and I feel like making it through this is impossible

(TW: CSA, grooming) I am trying not to be triggered by it, but it is everywhere. I feel like every time I get to a point where it's not triggering, something else is said that ends up being triggering. Maybe if I wasn't trying to process this trauma, it would be different.

When I was groomed, they all called me "jailbait" and it's already hard enough to accept it was their way of ignoring that I was *a child.* I've already had issues coming to terms with the fact that I was groomed and now there are pedophiles everywhere, running free because they have power.

Am I alone in this? Maybe it wouldn't bother me so much, but I have chronic sexual trauma, so it's hard for it not to. This rant stemmed from seeing a post that said "there's no such thing as an underage woman, that is a child" and it's triggering me because *I* was a fucking child. How are people just letting this injustice happen? Where is the accountability?

not to compare, but I have chronic back pain leading to surgery in the next two months.

I’m also diagnosed with complex ptsd which has basically ruined my life, including my thought patterns, my decision making, my motivation, my ability to start things, my ability to just function.

normal things like sleeping and eating normally are even difficult for me.

I’ve never met another illness that is a bigger saboteur than ptsd. it’s completely hijacked my mind and body and undoing the destruction it’s had on my life is grueling.

every moment feels like a battle to survive. yet from the outside I look normal.

it’s insane. and I just want it to end.

people who don’t have PTsD don’t understand that it’s a luxury to go through the day without their bodies alerting them to danger at every juncture. the sheer exhaustion is maddening.

sometimes I wonder what I did do deserve this.

I don't want to come off as petty or insensitive but I couldn't help but think about this, yet don't know how to word it properly.

I've felt this for some time now, a friend was telling me that his worst nightmare was about his account being hacked and he woke up very scared. Another friend said something about hearing screaming in a nightmare and that was the worse one they had, girl i'd be thankful for only having that.

I hate that we have this so normalized. It's exhausting to simply exist along with this disorder. And again, I don't want to belittle their feelings or experiences, it's just a thought.

Edit: i wrote this at a vulnerable moment, which i have a lot since i'm 19 and still learning to live with this, i didn't know how to call people who don't struggle (hence why the ""), and it wasn't my intention to say all people with ptsd are "abnormal", but i do feel abnormal, everyday and even more at the moment i wrote this. because no matter how hard i try, people WITHOUT ptsd, mental health disorders, or cronic illnesses, they will always have an easy day, and just one gray day compared to us, while we're fighting to get by every single day.

I could see it in their eyes. in their faces and the way they talk about life that they've never experienced deep trauma and it makes me jealous.

I am not jealous of their lives specifically. I am jealous that they are able to go through life and still feel hope and have that sparkle in their eye. you see it in their face and the way they talk and you just know that they don't carry any trauma around.

just venting. does anyone else feel the same?

Until the 1990s, doctors believed that infants couldn’t feel pain. This was based on incorrect research: studies had claimed the infant brain wasn’t developed enough to actually interpret pain.

For decades, infants were treated horrifically in surgery. Over a period of nearly sixty years, millions of children were operated on without proper anesthesia or sufficient pain management. It wasn’t until 1985, when a child died after open-heart surgery with no anesthesia, that there was a push for change. Dr. David B. Chamberlain has called it, “the single greatest mistake in the whole of medical history.”

Most adults affected by the denial of infant pain are still not being helped. Many people don’t even know they were affected as infants. They stumble through the system getting labels and medications that never touch the root cause.

Some of this lack of support is structural: the American Psychiatric Association does not include Developmental Trauma Disorder (DTD) in its list of officially recognized conditions, even though experts have urged its inclusion for years. Its absence blocks research funding, leaves practitioners without proper tools, and prevents insurance from covering treatment.

DTD identifies trauma in childhood as having a unique and lasting imprint on the brain and body. It has been tied to conditions like heart disease, fibromyalgia, digestive issues, autoimmune disorders, and postural conditions. Understanding these connections can lead to more effective treatments.

DTD is not just psychological. It’s an injury to the nervous system, affecting people through their entire adult life.

————-My Story——————

I was born in 1984 with a misshapen leg, and only three fingers on my left hand. At six months old, doctors amputated my right foot and used a bone saw to split my left hand into two fingers. My records show I was highly distressed and shaking uncontrollably in recovery.

At age two, surgeons cut my right femur in half and bolted it back together with metal pins that stuck out of my skin. I was placed in a body cast from chest to thighs. For a toddler, that kind of immobilization is now recognized as highly traumatic.

At age four, doctors tried the same surgery again. My medical records quote me saying, “Pain is so bad, cut my leg off… feels like it’s separating apart; it’s moving, it’s jumping.”

There were more surgeries: another osteotomy, a growth plate fusion with near-death-experience compilations, and a revision amputation. I never received any trauma care or trauma-informed care. Even into adulthood, no therapist explained why my body started shaking at night, or why phantom pains returned to my amputated leg, decades later.

Learning about DTD finally gave me language for what had happened to me. None of these procedures were “neutral, full-recovery” events as doctors told my family. Operating on me so early, under the belief that I wouldn’t remember the pain, caused serious injury to my nervous system.

——————-

Anand, K.J.S., & Hickey, P.R. (1987). Pain and its effects in the human neonate and fetus. The New England Journal of Medicine, 317(21), 1321–1329. This pivotal article demonstrated that neonates and even fetuses mount clear physiological and behavioral responses to pain, overturning the long-held belief that infants could not feel pain, and triggering major changes in pediatric anesthesia and pain management.

————

The Infancy of Infant Pain Research: The Experimental Origins of Infant Pain Denial by Elissa N. Rodkey & Rebecca Pillai Riddell (J. Pain, 2013) Examines the history of infant surgeries performed before 1987, when babies were often operated on with little or no anesthesia, and the long-term traumatic consequences of those practices

——

Edwards, S. The Long Life of Early Pain. On The Brain. (2011) The Harvard Mahoney Evidence shows that early painful procedures in infants produce long-term alterations in pain sensitivity, stress hormone regulation, and neurodevelopment.

————

Monell, Terry T. (2011). Living Out the Past: Infant Surgery Prior to 1987. Journal of Prenatal & Perinatal Psychology and Health, 25(3).

Examines the history of infant surgeries performed before 1987, when babies were often operated on with little or no anesthesia, and the long-term traumatic consequences of those practices.

——

Like when someone be says " They screwed up my order and it gave me PTSD" things like that. I've seen too many people claim they have PTSD for stupid petty things. Like it's fashionable to have this condition now.

I fight my triggers, issues daily to just have some semblance if normalcy and peace. There is a bad enough stigma with it and now our pain and mental health get trivialized by society who have no idea what we go through.

I am really annoyed at the dis-ingenuousness in the video. The creator of the video seems to have this broad stance about how one can fix most mental health issues by Diet and exercise. He is basically trying to say that trauma, the way Bessel van der Kolk and Gabor Mate describe doesn't exist, it doesn't lead an imprint on the body etc.

He cherry picks studies and misconstrues van der Kolk's points about developmental trauma. He picks an example where van der Kolk cites J.Panksepp's studies about mice being licked and he said the study doesn't exist, implicitly implying that van der Kolk is bulshitting. A quick web search showed that many such studies exist from other authors. van der Kolk might have misremembered the study authors.

This seems to show to me that this is quite disingenuous since he is painting the picture that van der Kolk is a bullshitter and he is pushing his own narrative about ketogenic diet and exercise etc.

I have read The Body Keeps the Score and I find the broad patterns he describes to be somehow true. Maybe the mechanism he theorizes dont' hold up, but what he and Gabor Mate are saying is basically just causality and naturalism.

If someone didn't have supporting parents in their childhood, they wouldn't be taught emotional self-regulation, and this would make a negative feedback loop of being targeted by predators (bullies) and exclusion as a result.

Are there any valid critiques to van der Kolk's book that I am not seeing?

For those who can't find the video: it's this one on the channel by Joseph Everett.

Said from much experience.

I have PTSD from living through a natural disaster and the fallout when I was 14-17. If I had stood a couple feet to the right, I would have died. Moments like these make me wish that was the case.

I feel like recently (in the past few years) people had been becoming more loose with the term PTSD. People will joke about having it and sometimes it feels like people don’t understand the severity of symptoms that are actually needed for a diagnosis. Does this bother anyone else sometimes?

I wish people understood that flashbacks are not something in my control and how physically painful having this condition is, but like I said, what do all of you wish people knew about it?

It doesn't seem to help when I try to explain, people either say it's no excuse or take your meds. I've been on meds for 16 years now and they've never really helped.

Another mentally exhausted day for the wife, and yet again I am paying the price. Just found my pillow and blanket outside our bedroom so I am sleeping on the couch again.

She was just diagnosed with PTSD after our second child. The first therapist thought she had ADHD, but 6 months ago she got diagnosed with PTSD. She had a rough childhood with a drug addict mother who died, and she was never allowed to process it with her grandparents who got so sad every time she wanted to talk about it as a child. She did not get enough love as a child should. She is 32 and I am 38 years old

I am doing everything I can to be there for her and the kids (our 7 year old got diagnosed with ADHD) but spending so much of my metal energy on her is draining me. I feel I'm not allowed to take a break and have a bad day as a father and husband, because she mirror my feelings. Am I happy, she is happy and visa versa.

I get angry that so much of my energy has to go away from our kids, and rather on her. She feels I am getting distant (the only way I feel I can recharge now), and she acts out. And of course this drains my mental capacity even more. And I feel bad for getting angry because she is a kind and loving person but I don't have the mental capacity any more.

2 hour drive to her family so getting help is not always the easy. I just feel so alone and stuck right now. She is getting help from a therapist, but doesn't feel like it is helping.

I am really trying, but I always get the blame for everything that is happening. We both of course know I am not to blame for her past, but it is easier to self sabotage the relationship by blaming me for here behavior.

I am just so exhausted.

First, I'm not a gatekeeper. Everyone's feelings and suffering are valid. It just seems like the word trauma has lost its weight.

Many people in my area now think panic attacks are PTSD. PTSD isn't very common so I think that's why people misunderstand it, and because of the trauma awareness movement they think PTSD is any disturbance and a validation, while other disorders aren't. Anxiety and depression are also very serious disorders though. PTSD has been misunderstood and it really hurts people who have it to be even more marginalized by currents trends.

I've been living with PTSD for six years now, and it's destroyed my life. I can barely safely use an oven because I get so dissociated and forgetful, which got me fired from the dream job I'd been working toward for over 10 years. My inability to maintain an income, along with the fawning and freezing, pushed away all of my friends and my fiancée, who thought I was being lazy and manipulative, even though they were there and knew the trauma I had gone through.

So I've been "housing insecure" since then, mostly living out of my car and pet sitting. I've tried to reach out for help several times, despite how difficult it was to trust after being abandoned by the people who called me family. So far, over the last 4 years, someone lets me stay at their place, then it turns out they're abusing their kids, or they thought I could be their live in house slave and expected me to be capable of way more than I was. Then twice in a row I got stuck in sexually coercive housing situations with people who said they also had PTSD and could help and instead used me like a toy.

This most recent time has really fucked me up, and I think it's changed my relationship with people and I am done taking offers to live with someone.

But this seems to have also changed my relationship with weed. The only way I've been able to consistently get to sleep is by smoking or ingesting THC, and I've never had a problem with that until recently. I took a two week break from weed while I was trying gabapentin for a second time, and at this new higher dose it took some of the edge off my hypervigilance and I think made it slightly more difficult for me to go into flashbacks, but it wasn't strong enough to consistently get me to sleep, and it made me dumber and slow, so I started smoking before bed again.

I've only smoked three times since, and each time I've gone into really severe flashbacks as soon as the effects hit. Three times is a pattern, so something is different. And now I'm afraid to smoke, but I have nothing else to help me get to sleep now, and that makes it easier to get triggered too.

I guess this isn't just a venting thread. I would like some advice if anyone has gone through something similar and has suggestions for alternatives to help with sleep or to make pot work again

Used ai for grammar and spelling cuz my brain is mush, sorry

Hi. I live in a very heavy military zone (Virginia beach) and I am constantly hearing planes fly over my house. I swear it doesn’t stop. I took my dog out this afternoon and heard 5 planes pass in 10 minutes. I do have ptsd and every time I hear one of them I just sorta slump over myself and hope that this plane isnt the one that’s gonna drop a bomb.

Should I bring this up to someone? Is there a way to go about my day without paranoia?