I think I might have PTSD on top of the SZ. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I even mentioned it to one of my psychiatrists. He said with PTSD, sufferers keep re-living traumatic experiences. I didn’t say anything else, because I didn’t want to get into where my trauma comes from. To go into detail is very hard. It’s such a long story, and I never know where to start.
I just recently took a PTSD symptom test, and scored in the “several symptoms of PTSD” range.
But one of the problems is that some of my traumatic experiences would fall in the “Hallucination” or “Delusion” category. I’m afraid my doctors are going to believe my traumas don’t exist in the real world.
Anybody out there dealing with something like this, or with PTSD, or just have any advice?
I think we all are. Having this seeing what we see with psychotic and then seeing the tole it takes on our loved ones when we come out of it, and seeing our life and mind scrambled is very traumatic.
Yes, I do believe we all have some PTSD either as a result of or a cause of this.
i have it from childhood trauma , and get jolts through my whole body or just my head shooting back when certain things hit my mind like a sledge hammer…i think it is normal in sz…sorry you have it.
trauma whether percieved in the real world or not is still trauma.
a person can have trauma from watching a scary or not so scary movie, if trauma comes from the mind, a delusion or otherwise it is still trauma real or otherwise.
the mind after all is a t.v of sorts.
take care
I have complex PTSD and schizophrenia. It is possible to have both. I have a psychiatrist and a therapist that deals specifically with trauma survivors. She has been a godsend to me. We never talk about my traumatic past unless I bring up something. She helps me deal with present day issues. She has helped me tell the difference between what is schizophrenic symptoms and what is symptoms of PTSD.
That’s good for you, Joyful. I’m still unsure about my current therapist and psychiatrist.
I’m worried that they won’t understand, or that they’ll brush me off. I haven’t done a very good job of explaining my situation to them, and they don’t know me that well. I have trouble opening up, and there’s never enough time to tell the whole story, so it’s like, “Why bother?” Plus, I have “trust issues”, so I feel like I have to be guarded all the time with them.
I just don’t want to be shot down because I “hallucinated” my trauma.
I am not diagnosed although I am aware of PTSD. Hallucination or not the resulting trauma is still the same and real. Could you maybe write down what you would like to tell your pdoc? That way you can take your time and not feel like you don’t have enough time to say what you want. This may help with your trust issue as well since you don’t have to say it all out loud yet you are still getting the opportunity to write it out.
It took me about 3 years to finally take my pdocs advice and see the therapist she was suggesting. Fear of my exhusband’s response to me having two doctor bills, fear of talking to someone new and just how tiring and overwhelming it is to talk about my past stopped me. I was in such an abusive relationship with my ex we focused on just daily survival. I would not have been able to get away from my ex if my pdoc and therapist hadn’t been there the whole way. We don’t get in to much of my trauma from childhood because it is too upsetting for me. My therapist says she doesn’t need to know the details. She helps me with daily issues. There are a lot to things that I’m not certain if they really happened or if I’m making it up. She says that normal and it doesn’t matter. Sometimes she tells me that what happened during the past week might be a hallucination. They have saved my life. Both of them have been with me during hospital procedures and my therapist was with me during my divorce mediation. I am so thankful to them both.
That was well said, James. I tested highly for trauma on the MMPI-2 and I am not sure if it’s from childhood and teenage years (traumatic events happened) or from the year of living in a waking nightmare I had experienced when I was evaluated. Who knows?
But PTSD is a little more extreme than pathological trauma. You can be very traumatized but not have PTSD. I am a psych major and I just took abnormal psychology, and they made us learn the fine points of PTSD because it is having a big scene in the psychological community, in fact the latest DSM (manual of psychology) gave PTSD its own category.
I met a veteran who has PTSD the other day at school, and I found his story very interesting, and he thought my story about having schizophrenia was interesting too. He said that he is hypervigilant, stuck in the same way of thinking that he was when he was in combat. I didn’t probe him too much, I didnt want to make him uncomfortable, but he most likely has vivid flashbacks as well. He pointed out that he learned not to make friends with his fellow soldiers because they most often died the next day.
PTSD requires flashbacks to specific distressing, most often life-threatening events.
I guess I just need to talk to my doctor about it. The point is that I need to have my trauma addressed, even if I don’t have PTSD. It’s going to be hard though. My head is so messy that I don’t feel like I’ll do a good job explaining how I feel. There’s no easy way to explain what happened (and is still happening) to me.
Writing some things down could help, @BarbieBF, but there again I run into the trouble of the difficult subject matter.
It helps to hear that the trauma, regardless of its origin, is real.
I think I can understand where you are coming from. My daughter recently talked to her doctor about PTSD. There are several reasons why she is dealing with this but one reason is too sensitive for her to talk about. I wanted her to be open with the doctor so that he could help so I suggested she use one of the lesser reasons for the PTSD. Me abandoning her when she was a child due to my own drug addiction. I can imagine how difficult some subjects can be to address with a perfect stranger. The affects of such traumas are long lasting. Write what you feel comfortable with and go from there. The doctor may not need to know all the details to offer some help.
