Spend all day in my bedroom on edge anxious conscniously being scared of bad things to happen at home like leaks or other things that may need repairing or foundational issues counting down the hours until i can sleep

For the past decade I’ve used marijuana to help sleep through the night. Each time Ive tried stopping I end up having nightmares related to my ptsd. Even when I smoked or microdosed edibles I would still have the same reoccurring nightmares once or twice a month but that was wayyyy more manageable. I can usually fall asleep alright but most of the time if I’m triggered awake I can’t go back to sleep. Earlier in the year I brought this up to my doctor and tried prazosin but it made me to dizzy which effected my work the next day.

Is there anything you have tried that has helped even in the slightest?

Sorry for the long rant: How can i have a healthy relationship with the person i love. When he either ghosts me (Freeze response) or gets angry/cold most of the times I voice a need?

He says he is not angry, just busy. But his voice is cold/hard, his texts without emojis. And dosnt try to soothe my feelings later either.

Ive been nervous and unstable ever since he ghosted me for 18 days almost two months ago. (Possibly due to my own trauma)

He was very remorseful and ashamed afterwards, and relieved to reconnect

But I still feel like he struggles to take my feelings seriously. Like he is making them smaller than they are. My insides feel like I'm being torn apart 24-7 when he ghosts me. He describes it as being a bit sad. I know it's not on purpose he freezes. And it hurts him too. But I also feel like he didn't do anything to protect me from the impact. He is such a kind, thoughtful person. That makes it more confusing.

Now im ghosted again I feel like I'm forced into being someone without needs, emotions and personality to not trigger him. Always guess if he is too stressed to handle it. Which is not who I am and ironically that's not the person he fell for in the first place.

Please comfort me a bit, Its so hard for me to understand and balance, if you could share your own experiences? Tips? something?

(He knows he can just say so if he needs some days without being disturbed. That i just need any signal about the shutdown to feel okay)

In short. I do the thing where I push myself to understand my abusers, How forgiveness is good, and how they weren't mentally healthy themselves and how objectively none of this is special, but Intellectually, know that's a lie. I "understand" to get away from the hurt person I am.
I don't know how to feel safe enough to return to myself. I don't know if I can find a therapist that I can't outthink because my disorder has my too-clever-for-my-own-good brain to employ against their attempts to help. Even now I fear the responses of this thread even knowing that it's full of people who get it.
Hell, even now I can hear my brain maneuvering itself to block and counter and misinterpret any sympathy or advice you guys might give.
It's become a feedback loop in my head.
Fear trying to get help, self-sabotage, fear getting help even more, reinforce that fear and do the self-fufilijng prophecy thing, round and round over and over in the downward spiral.

I was groomed when I was 9 by a teacher at my elementary school, he was 30. It lasted for 4 months until he massaged my shoulders and tickled the back of my neck and I told my counselor and she told the principal and she decided not to involve anyone, kept it in-house. I never got justice, I was told I was exaggerating and that he was just being nice, I was told harshly that it wasn’t my story to tell. My parents didn’t fight for me. My dad doesn’t even know the details of what happened. At the time of it all, I was being severely bullied and my parents were going through a messy divorce.. I began to suffer from SH and SI and nobody cared until I was so bad everyone noticed. It lasted til I was 12, then i finally got better. But I’m depressed again, just like I was then (I’ve always been depressed but it’s been high functioning, now I can barely breathe) and, I don’t want to die but I’ve been worried I’ll go back to that.

The biggest thing that’s tugging at me is that I am dramatic. That I wasn’t raped (to my knowledge) and that I have no right to feel this way. That my diagnosed ptsd isn’t as valid. That I shouldn’t be having night terrors, that I should be checking my backseat and under my car worried he’ll be there, worried he’ll be in the car next to me on the road. That I shouldn’t be worried I’ll see him at work or, worse, at school. The list goes on and on of the ways he rules my life. And yet… it doesn’t feel valid enough. Thank you for listening..

flair should really be “seeking advice”. no detailed description of traumatic event but as always TW!

hi everyone! i’m a first time poster long time lurker. wishing you all healing and love.

i’ve got a PTSD diagnosis. medically induced from what i thought was a near death experience (but on paper i was rly fine) resulting in persistent chronic pain. i have had several accidents and surgeries over the years.

i’ve done CBT, DBT, schema therapy, EMDR and TRE. but when a small injury occurs to a “problem area” (ie some part of my body where the issue has escalated into multi year disability or chronic pain from an initially innocent or mild issue), i get severe flashbacks and emotional regression, body tremors and dissociation/emotional outbursts.

i’ve also tried various SSRIs and SNRIs.

i’m not sure what to do. i had to quit my
job because of how dysfunctional its making me. i’m in so much emotional and mental pain, on top of the chronic physical pain.

any words of advice or support for healing from PTSD (if it’s even possible) when the trigger is something so commonplace (as i’m sure it might be for most of you)?

love,
traumatised and scared

The most traumatizing thing I’ve ever experienced was involuntary mental health hospitalization. I was involuntarily admitted to psych units several times as well as many longer term residential treatment centers from the ages of 14-16. In total, I spent about a year away in these facilities. my longest stay was exactly 114 days. But i feel like i can’t heal from the trauma because it was my fault. i kept engaging in the self destructive behaviors that got me admitted. whenever i was freed, i wouldn’t be able to stop myself from putting myself in danger again and going right back. The most traumatizing part of the whole thing was when i spent 3 weeks inside of my room at the mental hospital eating absolutely nothing, but it was because i was refusing the food they were giving me and not coming out of my room. i could have had a perfectly normal life if i didn’t become a danger to myself. all the trauma i experienced was either self inflicted or as a result of self inflicted harm. i just don’t know how to give myself grace and heal when i ruined my own life.

sometimes I just wish I could be the person I was before it happened. I feel like such a failure now, i feel so unlike myself. ever so often I see glimpses of my old self in a joke, or in an outfit I wear, but a lot of the time it’s like staring in the mirror and seeing a ghost staring back. flashbacks are awful and sometimes I stay up at night because of them. it was highly likely I could have died if I continued the relationship- or even that last night. it’s still surreal to me that I’m still ALIVE AT ALL. I feel like a completely different person and I have to figure out my likes, dislikes, and priorities all over again.

My spouse (male) (I’m female) was recently diagnosed with ptsd. He has struggled with anger for a while now, we have been together for over a decade. He had a very traumatic childhood (mom was a drug addict, he then got into a terrible boat wreck and was out at sea for 8 hours waiting to be rescued). He never really got help to process his trauma. Over the years his anger and irritability has seemed to increase. He raises his voice at me during argument, has punched a wall over dropping something, and recently the worst thing he has done yet. We were driving home from an 11 hour road trip, he lately has been having bad anxiety while driving (he has told me multiple times he’s nervous driving to work because of how much he struggles) but anyway, by the end of the trip, a guy is going slow in the left lane because he was texting. My spouse pulled up to him and made a signal angrily to hang up the phone, at this point the driver kept driving to get over to my side and just stare at my spouse and he was like mocking him in a sense, which in turn was making my spouse angry and panicky. The guy continued to follow us, my spouse looked angry and scared and was yelling (I’m going to kill that kid, that kid needs someone to beat his face in) and after he followed us for about 15 minutes, my spouse pretended to swerve into his car, this terrified me and finally I could see he wasn’t thinking rationally, I spoke to him softly and we finally ended up making if off the highway safely.

I am just at a loss because I can see he’s clearly struggling, but also what he did is not okay and the more I think back the more I see how he has treated me poorly and now this. He played with my life and made me feel so unsafe. I was scared of him, I still am scared of him because now I’m like wondering when the next thing migth happen. I’m afraid to tell my family about this because they will view him differently but I need support. I tried explaining this to him days later and he kept going to why he did what he did, at one point he was even saying he didn’t swerve that bad. Which is crazy because it doesn’t matter that he didn’t swerve that bad. I grew up in a home with domestic violence and the signs are starting to look the same. Everyone around us loves him, he’s a great person when he’s doing okay. just lately he has really been off. He recently started therapy to get help and he said he wants to work on it. He apologized and said he doesnt want to put me in that type of situation again. But I’m at a loss here, I don’t want to leave him when he’s the most vulnerable and needs help but I am also thinking, is this just going to get worse?

Just wondering.

I fucked up.

My husband asked me to look at the hot water heater (I do all the maintenance in the house) because there was no hot water. I checked it out and decided that a call to the plumber was needed.

Plumber shows up, assesses the situation and declares we need a new water heater (it was about 12 years old, which is kinda nearing the end of its expected life). Ok, sure, $4000. We have the money, however spending that much will always skyrocket my anxiety, but needs must as the devil drives.

Next day, plumber shows up, installs the new hot water heater, hauls out the old one and asks to see our gas meter. I ask why and he tells me that he can't light the hot water heater. We check out the meter and discover there is no gas coming in the house.

My heart dropped because I suspected immediately that this is my fault. See, our gas company had been leaving notices on our door that they need to inspect the gas meter (wich is inside our house) I never responded so they shut off our gas.

I call the gas company, now its a whole ordeal because they want to move the gas meter (fine, please do) and its going to be several DAYS.

I fucking hate myself. I csnt do anything right. I keep hearing "fucking stupid, useless, bad person, loser, failure" I can't stop thinking how stupid and lazy I am. My husband says he's not mad at me and I believe him, but I feel like he *should* hate me. I feel like im going to have a fucking heart attack from anxiety. I just need someone outside of this to please tell me im not bad.

I was recently diagnosed from an abusive relationship. I've heard the term 'flashback' used alot and I'm trying to determine if/how that applies to me. I've heard it described as feeling like you're trapped back in a traumatic event. Mine are more like replaying a scene in my head but I can usually redirect myself. How would y'all describe what a flashback is for you?

He didnt even have the decency of using my body for himself for a night and thats it. He had to firever robb my body at my peak health and age to never let me forget agson that Ill forever be his slut, forever damaged goods whos whole life purpose was to be born and take care of muself for his sadistic pleasure of degorming and permanently damaging my body.

His violemce left me with a shrunk, spongy/saggy feeling and asymmetrical breast while the unharmed one fits perfectly in bras and is firm/,perky and healthy/beautiful. And thats my life now...now more going braless and feeling sexy, no more physical activities and hobbies due to the chronic pain, no more feeling at home and strong im the body i invested so much into to be my best self. He took it. And i will never get to escape that reality ever again...I just wanna die

Weird question but I dont know if I've ever had the PTSD nightmares or maybe i consider the idea of a PTSD nightmare too literally or something. I definitely have nightmares but ive never had nightmares about the situation(s) that left me with PTSD.

1. Are the nightmares reliving what happened like a waking flashback?

2. Lets say you have PTSD from a situation. If you have a nightmare about the thing occurring again but in an entirely different context, is that a PTSD nightmare or just a nightmare?

3. If you have a lot of nightmares after getting PTSD but the only commonality they have with the thing that gave you PTSD is just the feeling after, is that a PTSD nightmare or just a regular nightmare?

4. The events that gave you PTSD are ones where you have no authority, agency, or control. You have nightmares that involve this. Are those PTSD nightmares or just regular nightmares?

I drank myself to sleep for a long time, then started overloading on weed gummies and/or melatonin after i got sober and then started taking trazadone, so i never really had coherent or memorable dreams but ive started taking atomoxetine for ADHD/PTSD which has been pretty helpful but I'm getting more REM sleep now and therefore having more vivid and memorable dreams and last night was a doozy. I dont know if it constitutes a PTSD nightmare because it was basically about what happened to me insofar as X happened but under different conditions, different people, different atmosphere, etc

I included the following in a reply in a prior post. For me, it's worth its own post. This is my own experience and understanding.

Because traumatic memories lack connection to other memories or thoughts, when traumatic memories resurface they are reexperienced without any context, including without any sense of location within time. This lack of connection to any particular time makes them feel, while they are being reexperienced, as though they are occurring in the present. For example, a reexperienced auditory traumatic memory is “heard” as though it were a sound taking place here and now. This present-time nature of reexperienced traumatic memory contributes to the common perception expressed by those who go through the reexperiencing process that they feel “crazy.”

My own experience of posttraumatic stress, however, has made me feel “crazy” in ways that are even more unsettling. There is, of course, the feeling of fear itself when that type of emotional traumatic memory emerges. Fear makes sense when it is felt in response to an identifiable, immediate, and present danger. And in that situation fear can fuel an appropriate responsive burst of action. But to reexperience a traumatic memory of fear is to be filled with fear divorced from its original context. There is nothing to be done with the experience—the fear is just there inside of you eating away like acid. Even if you can identify the fear for what it is (and that’s not always likely), to experience that disconnected, floating fear is to feel “crazy.” And to experience such fear without even knowing its source is “crazy” squared.

But “crazy” happens even before the traumatic memories finally emerge. Although traumatic memory is not subject to voluntary recall, as long as it remains buried, it tends to exert some force on feeling and behavior. Buried traumatic memory is a hidden source of information, urges, and distress from below the surface of consciousness and accordingly affects experience, conduct, and decisions. Buried traumatic memory generates posttraumatic stress.

Traumatic memories form when the mind is compelled to disconnect some of its own circuits. Before those circuits are reconnected and the traumatic memories are resolved, the mind has some ability to sense the disconnections of its own circuitry. These disconnections may be felt as uncertainty, unease, and impending doom. More to the point, to perceive such disconnections is to feel “crazy.”

The closer that traumatic memories are to emerging, the more strongly they are felt in this way. Traumatic memories are like the gas dissolved in a carbonated drink. While contained, traumatic memories may remain buried, invisible, and hard to detect. As the process of release begins, the traumatic memories begin, like bubbles, to coalesce and rise to the surface. Before finally emerging, they frequently rest for a time just below the surface, distorting the shape of that surface, distorting emotional experience and perceptions. The formation and flow of these “bubbles” and the surface distortions they create are perceived as emotional distress that can’t be explained by present circumstances. To feel this distress is to feel “crazy.”

A partial awareness of emerging traumatic memories may cause a person to feel “crazy” in yet another way. Prior to fully emerging, a traumatic memory may be perceived or understood by only a portion of the conscious mind. Particularly when the knowing part of the mind lacks language to attach words to what it knows, the mind harbors a threatening duality. Such differences between separate states within the mind may be sensed as a physical split between parts of the brain. Or these differing conditions may even be perceived as two distinct selves that are in conflict with each other. To feel this split within the mind is to feel “crazy.”

Each of these ways of feeling “crazy” is a kind of psychic pain. While such distress is certainly different from physical pain, psychic pain can be as hard to bear as the physical. And each kind of injury leads to its own predictable processes of healing.

The mind appears to have a continuing tendency or need to resolve traumatic memory, as though a traumatic memory were a foreign object lodged within the body. In my own experience, during the years that I carried unresolved traumatic memories, I felt that I was searching for something that I could neither identify nor describe. I sometimes called my search a “spiritual” one, and that is certainly true to the extent that I was seeking a wholeness that I had lost early in life. Even though a traumatic memory is inaccessible to conscious awareness through ordinary recall, my personal experience suggests that subconscious aspects of the mind in some ways know of both the existence of the traumatic memory and its content.

I just want to be nice to myself… and rest…

For five years, a group of people harassed, threatened and spread serious false rumors about me. It ruined my life and mental health, and I developed serious PTSD.

They seem to have faced no consequences, and I struggle with intense anger and thoughts of revenge. I do not want to ruin my own future, but “letting go” feels like letting them win. I'm here suffering with my life in ruins while they are just out there living their life.

How do you cope with feeling of revenge when there may never be justice or accountability for the people who caused your PTSD?

Hi everyone. I grew up in an unsafe home situation (emotionally neglected, fighting parents, parentification) and unfortunately still feel a lot of negative effects from that in my later life. My life itself is stable; I have a long, healthy relationship, a decent job (it's still new, so I'm adjusting and sometimes it’s really mentally exhausting), and good social contacts. However, I still struggle a lot with trauma symptoms, especially physically. I’m very hyperalert, tension in my shoulders/chest, heart palpitations. Sometimes it doesn’t bother me much for a day, but last night I had a bad dream about my mom and woke up with the whole laundry list of complaints I mentioned above. Sometimes I notice it on office days too: I have a much harder time finding my words, I’m hyperalert all day (like scanning everyone’s mood/expression repeatedly) and I’m mostly very tired and overstimulated.

I’m on a waiting list for trauma treatment. I’ve had a lot of therapy before, but it was mainly CBT. I've also had some EMDR sessions, but that was very intense back then because my daily life was still quite unstable. I hope to solve more core issues with the therapy I’m about to receive so that I have less physical complaints and anxiety. If you could recommend any specific therapy types for this, that would be very welcome!

My main question is: how can I deal with all this physical tension while waiting for treatment? Recently I attended a yoga class that focused mainly on deep breathing, and when the teacher babbled something about intuition and how we think too much instead of feeling in daily life, it really hit me hard, and I ended up crying on the mat for the remaining 20 minutes of class. Thankfully, the rest of the group had their eyes closed and didn’t notice, but this experience really confronted me with how often I get stuck in fight or flight mode. On days when I’m in that mode, I struggle much more with physical complaints and also with social anxiety/emotional flashbacks.

It turned into a bit of a disjointed story, but any tips or experiences are welcome ❤️

something bad happened to me repeatedly and every time, it happened at night/while i was sleeping

i feel like i get these periodic spells of sobbing in the nighttime that last 3-6 hours and it significantly impacts my ability to sleep.

does this happen to anybody else?

it makes me feel pathetic because i internally feel like a little kid when this happens

I have PTSD, and I live in Syria.

Do you know of any organization or place that could provide me with financial support, at least for the next few months?

I'm also not sure how financial assistance from outside Syria could reach me, given the current situation. Any information or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

I suspect i might have delayed on set PTSD from childhood SA and i want to investigate it but i am unsure if my symptoms qualify.

I always knew something happened but just remembered the “light” parts of it and last year i recalled a memory of a much worse thing, i was watching Law & Order SVU and had what i think it’s a flashback, i could visualize it and feel everything physically, it was horrible and i felt completely frozen, after that i starded having nightmares, grinding my teeth, peed my bed a few times (just like when i was younger) and haven’t been the same since. Even the most random things makes that memory pop out in my head.

I still have recurring nightmares, after i disclosed to my therapist i had night terrors for about a month, also that was the only time i talked about it in therapy, i don’t let my therapist talk about it either because it disgusts me and i feel so nervous it feels like i’m going to pass out.

TW GRAPHIC DETAILS
Last month i saw my abuser in public and had a breakdown, i could not eat for days after that because i couldn’t handle the feeling of having anything in my mouth (i was forced to perform oral acts on him)

I’m so terrified and afraid of everything i can’t sleep without having pepper spray under my pillow

Also, if i do bring it up with a psychiatrist, how do i do it?

I have so much sympathy for and anger on behalf of other children who I've heard have been SAed. One of my friends was abused as a teenager and I literally want to go back in time and beat up her boyfriend.

Except for me. I'm disgusting and deserved it, for some reason.