Insight over PTSD symptoms

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Yesterday was a terrible day regarding PTSD symptoms. As I’m stable of sz and mood symptoms I found it very weird that I was having so many disturbing intrusive thoughts, then it hit me that it should be the PTSD so I started searching about it and I hit a kind of duh! moment, of course it was. I found a cool website, with a miriad of very helpful articles for those with PTSD:

At first, all this time since my hospitalization, I thought intrusive thoughts were connected to my psychosis and meds just didn’t do anything about them, (and there is a connection, but I think it’s deeper than that) I was kind of resigned to having them and tried to cope with them by dismissing them at once, without giving them much importance because well, they’re there but they’re not mine.

One thing that bothers me about the intrusive thoughts and psychosis dynamics is that is very easy to question where they come from, since they don’t feel like my own. Maybe subconscious fears, irrational animalistic residues, I don’t know. But I don’t think they’re from demons, spirits or whatever so please don’t reply with those notions, such things do not exist for me.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about it, identified my triggers, realized that I become very avoidant to try not to get triggered by others, I get triggered just by walking down the street sometimes, or listening to a certain song, or just talking about some subject that reminds me of something.

I know this will get better with time, and I intend to give it a lot more thought and concern from now on in therapy, since I’ve been so worried about psychosis and moods that I overlooked this so important issue.

I intend on developing coping mechanisms and techniques to deal with this, since I feel really nude and vulnerable with PTSD.

Sorry for the long post, thank you if you read this far.

Have a good day!

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Just out of curiosity, how do you differentiate intrusive thoughts from PTSD from those from SZ?

I still get them occasionally, but no longer in the form of whole continuous streams of intrusive thinking lasting for minutes. More like a single word or small phrase popping up. I never got to identify my triggers for these leftover intrusive thoughts, but I kinda got used to them.

As for the avoidence issue. Did you mean that as something you want to work on, did you feel like you became too careful to avoid being triggered by others?

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The content, the PTSD ones are usually violent or of sexual nature, and the sz ones were religious, but I don’t have those any more.

This sounds more like a pseudohallucination.

Both :slight_smile: It’s something I need to work on, for not to become too isolated, but at the same time some people just trigger me and I need my distance.

I never had any compulsion to act on these thoughts, not even when I was psychotic and out of my mind. I always saw them as something not mine, so I never thought on acting on them.

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With our symptoms it is a bit of a balancing act between dealing with them before they occur, like prevention, or dealing with them once they do occur. Prevention sounds good but yeah you don’t want that to amount to a whole lifestyle that has other negative components.

I thought those were just hallucinations recognized as such?

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Prevention of PTSD symptoms would be awesome, but aside from isolating myself in my apartment and avoid stuff I have no idea how to do that.

Sz sometimes seems easier to deal with, to be honest. Just sometimes :slight_smile:

I don’t know, my doctor called my voices, voices, but also agreed they were pseudohallucinations. I used to believe they were real, nowadays not anymore.

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Hm I don’t know either :smiley:
Always thought of intrusive thoughts as a cogitative phenomenon, as the notion of thought already suggests, whereas hallucinations as a perceptual phenomenon. Pseudohallucination then would be like watching an optical illusion - you know the lines are the same length but you see them differently.

Anyway, the latest work I read on it makes sense of such disagreement/confusion/difficulties among us patients about how to call it. It suggests those categories of percpetion/thought/imagination/whatever are sort of broken down and mixed up together in sz. Such that there are all kinds of hybrid modes of experience that may differ among patients - making it hard to agree upon how to call them.

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Yeah, me too. The thing is, my voices can be cogitative but influence perception, if I’m in a crowd, for example. So, I fall in both categories?

:slight_smile: Yeah, I agree it can be difficult. We try to categorize and name everything we experience, but our experiences are so vast that it’s difficult for neurotypicals to comprehend and research about it. That’s why I think sz is more than a strict set of symptoms, but much more flexible.

But still, a lot of things already have names.

The insight of yesterday was exactly that, understanding what is from sz and what is from PTSD. Still, a lot of things, like thought processes for example, I can attribute to the bipolar part of sza.
It’s all very confusing, I wouldn’t bore you with those processes :slight_smile:

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Emdr therapy is used for ptsd. Not sure it’s a long therapy either. Seems it’s also safe for use on schizophrenia as well.

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I have always been thinking PTSD is the abbreviation for postpartum depression. It is actually post-traumatic stress disorder. Thanks for the link, Minnii.

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Wait up a second

Not to be rude, just to clarify; the intrusive sexual and violent thoughts are more like OCD type intrusive thoughts, unless they are experiences you are remembering.

But yeah I have PTSD triggers too…they’re intense, I have to avoid some of them. Like driving on the highway, nope, I hire a cab or uber or whatever. The tx is basically variants of CBT (you speak this lingo, @Minnii) so I am using the quack language you have insight into, imaginal exposure, exposures of sorts, processing (falls under CBT variants) and then HEAVY meds like antidepressants and then antipsychotics, just anesthesia basically.

I have friggin appetitive aggression, which is some crap, because it helps me cope by attacking things (I learned not to attack people, thank god). I mean I am known for ■■■■■■■ obliterating things that get in my way. I get off on it, and more so than anything else. It’s not okay, there is no really good treatment for it, so I want to do my dissertation on a treatment, like how I formulated and tested a treatment for my last project.

PTSD sucks. I hate it. I hate how I came out with both PTSD and schizophrenia when I entered young adulthood as a deviant psychotic. I’m no longer Pd (uh…mean and misbehaving) but now I have serious PTSD, and the schizophrenia is still a big problem. My coping strategy with the trauma is “attack the trauma!” That is so bad that I myself am going to have to do a project on it. I mean I have it.

See I am like “doing really well” and I struggle, the thing that really helps, like REALLY helps, is having a community of people you struggle with.

The trick is managing it to where it doesn’t outright stop you, although it can hold you back a bit even when you are doing well with it.

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I’m not sure I don’t have OCD, but I have those intrusive thoughts. Isn’t it possible to have that content and not have OCD? Don’t get me wrong, nothing I would like more than to add a component to my miriad of illnesses :smile:

Edit: I just did a small search and found a link to an anxiety article that says it’s possible it’s connected to anxiety. Anxiety I do have.

http://www.drmartinseif.com/resources/intrusive-thoughts.html

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EMDR Therapy is the scientific name for the Tetris therapy I keep talking about. It works great.

Minnii, I think you and I are in the same place with intrusive thoughts now. PTSD and OCD are both anxiety disorders, so I’m sure there is a lot of overlap. I happen to have both! Go me! My doctor said recently that schizophrenia is no longer an active problem in my life. My main problem now is anxiety. It is harder to tackle, since I can’t just take a pill for it. My intrusive thoughts have more power over me when I feel like they’re a shameful secret, so I just tell a trusted friend about it. Usually, I just tell Mr. CJ or my sister. Then the person I tell can reassure me that they too have these weird thoughts and I feel more normal. Then I can let the thought drift through my skull without being upset by it.

When it’s a terrible memory, I like to talk about it while playing a puzzle game, because I’m a big fan of EMDR therapy. It takes away the emotions attached to the memory. I also like to make jokes about it, when I’m able to do so. Humor is a big coping skill for me.

But I’m a talker. I need to verbalize things.

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:slight_smile: Thanks Cj, as always very helpful. I’m going to look into EMDR for real, I wanted to but kinda forgot.

I’m a talker too, yesterday it helped talking to my mom about it.

Humor is good, but I think it’s still too soon for me, but I’ll get there :slight_smile:

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Well it gets caught in the labels web different ways. One says its schizophrenia, one says OCD, one says generalized or specific anxiety, one says it’s from that one time you took mescaline a year ago, the other says to cure it with more weed.

I would just tell a doctor the symptoms and let them provide the treatment. Just making sure you aren’t left with no treatment is the idea- it takes a little bit of…initiative on your part as the patient to let them know what is going on.

For example I had to clarify that my presenting symptoms are exacerbated by an identity crisis in what I am doing with my life, I just saw the pdoc. I have worn lots of hats…now I don’t really wear any…they’re all resting in the study room as souvenirs.

Just letting the people who are going to do something about it know what it is…that is the task of the patient. It takes some courage sometimes. Also takes persistence.

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