I took a formal evaluation for my diagnosis, and I scored very highly in both paranoid schizophrenia and trauma. I can’t tell if it’s trauma from my past or trauma from my episodes. I do believe that people often develop acute stress disorder after psychotic episodes, and that each episode traumatizes the psyche. I was bullied, molested once, and nearly drowned in an undertow at the beach as a kid. A perfect storm of stressors (school, financial problems, testicle infection, pot addiction) precluded my onset.
I learned in school that trauma can often trigger schizophrenia in those with a genetic predisposition towards it. I also learned from my psychologists that psychosis can be traumatic.
What do you think? Did you have preexisting trauma before psychosis? Do you feel traumatized by episodes, do they haunt you in any sort of way?
i have multiple traumas rapes, sexual, physical abuse and pot addiction a long time ago. i think my voices and paranoia were triggered, by what is open to question but without the trauma i think i would have been fine. without the trauma i wouldn’t have become addicted so much to pot. it left a gaping hole in my soul and that hole needed to b filled by anything that was better than what i had. that’s what pot gave me, an escape but it also gave the trigger to those that abused me to carry on and now i find myself in this situation. good post
I was heavily traumatized in my youth, which led to a bad adulthood. My older sister had spina bifida. I was very jealous of her for all the extra attention she got, but she was also my best friend. She died when she was nine and I was seven. We then moved from California to Michigan. The kids there didn’t understand my loss, and they bullied me quite severely. I was sexually assaulted by a group of boys in the fourth grade. I tried to never go back to school after that, but instead I was sent to a psychologist who told my parents to get me back into that school no matter what it took. After a month at home, my dad beat me, and put me in the back of his hatchback, and forced me back to that school. Anyway, my childhood was then full of beatings and psychological abuse, and bullying at school. I was also molested by my grandfather.
As an adult, I had financial problems with credit cards, which just came from being too poor. One card was charging me 34%. I couldn’t keep up with it, so I tried to kill myself with pills and booze. That didn’t work. I finally went to a psychiatrist and a psychologist who diagnosed me with major depression. At first I did volunteer work at a religious order–the Missionaries of Charity, but the nuns were too catty and bitchy for me, so I quit after four years. Then I worked on my parents’ house, repainting and reparing minor things, and installing a new tile floor. All of which didn’t give me an income. I only saw homelessness in my future. Then I finally had a psychotic episode. I definitely believe that if I had had a better life that I never would have become schizophrenic. But all the traumas added up.
Now I am going to school, and looking forward to a better future. My parents are now supportive of me rather than abusive. I just hope that they don’t die before my schooling is finished, or else I don’t know what I’ll do.
to mortimermouse and jaynebeal and CarolineC it saddens me that all those things happened to you ,
i’m sending all the healing energy i can to all three of you.
i agree though that trauma brought on my sz rainbow .
take care
I’m sorry you guys!
I also experienced trauma. I was 8 when my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and she died right before my 16th birthday. I then found out it was stage 4. She kept it from a lot of people including my siblings and I. I didn’t see it coming. Worst days of my life. I was the outcast in school until I went from private to public school. They bullied me. Public school was good iade friend’s that I still have today. 7 months after my mom died my dad remarried someone our whole family hates and didn’t even know she went after his money. They rented a dumpster and threw my mother’s things into it out of my brothers window. That was horrible. My siblings and I couldn’t get enough things out of there and they rushed us to get what we wanted and the rest was going into the garbage. I remember having a panic attack trying to see through the tears to grab my mother’s and grandmothers heirlooms and possessions broken and scattered to fit into my car to take with me to a house that had three floors. I was on the bottom it was nice until they put a lock on the outside of the door. They grounded me for over a year leading to heavier smoking and drinking and experimenting with drugs. when I was 17 they tried to make a behavioral contract that was made for children and put it next to a chart with stickers. Which obviously lead to an obscene rebellion. lots of stuff I could go on for a while. Trauma trauma trauma.
Thank you I still suffer from PTSD from the whole affair. Doctors throw it under the sz umbrella though just like my anxiety and depression. Flashbacks are a bitch!
<3
Oh the things I could say, but decline, because of the nature of the beast, is best given it’s freedom from my mind. The more I tally up the damage done, the worse the roots tangle into something bigger than I have the energy to conquer.
I grew up a decent person in spite of it all…just want to bury whats dead and keep it down.
I have trauma from things that happened, and things that didn’t happen…
I’m taking this to mean do I feel traumatized by some of my psychotic episodes? YES.
I haven’t had anywhere near the family and physical abuse or trauma that other people have suffered. I actually come from a really stable home with a few quirks. There was a house fire that put my 3 year old sister and my 14 year old self in the burn unit. (4th of july fire work went through her bedroom window) But other then that, fairly lucky.
I do feel a deep sense of trauma for events that I perceived happened during psychosis. This one happens often and leaves me with a huge sense of self loathing and guilt…
It’s in two parts… My side/her side.
My side… I get mad at my kid sister and I beat her up. I break her little arms, and knock out some of her teeth, I break her nose and she is crying and begging and try to get away. But my rage is too great and in an un-controlled rage I really end up hurting this person who has been so vital to me.
How could I do that? Why would I do that… I hate myself, I’m so close to giving up and deciding to end this existence if I really am that rabid and that violent. I should be put down like the rabid piece of … that I am…
Then the next day… I get a bit lucid. I have to face what did. I have to be punished for what I did… Why would I do this to some one I care about about… My own kid sister… My sis comes in to my range of view and… there’s not a mark on her. No broken arms, has all her teeth. No broken nose… She’s perfectly fine.
Her side… I got a angry, my word salad kicked in with my clang association… I then froze, I gazed off into space and then I walked away and hid in my room or the bath until dawn.
I’m glad you mentioned the whole thing of psychosis it’s self being traumatic because looking back… sometimes it is. There’s the guilt and the gutted feeling and the permanent stain on the brain about what I think happened and then there is the guilt about what I really did during some of my episodes.
I’ve been trying to take a new idea of this to my therapist and try and keep chiselling down the guilt. Thank you for this very valid idea that I didn’t know how to articulate to my therapist.
The disease itself is traumatic because it warps our sense of self. I haven’t had more than brief minor symptoms in the past few years, but when I had episodes it was traumatic to me because I was afraid that I was being controlled. I also did things I would have never done. Like broke something of my mom’s out of anger. That was right before I was hospitalized. I got better though, it took 2 stays before they decided to put me on the right medication. The one that worked in the past, instead of trying new medications on me.
I was bulled throughout junior and high school because they all followed me there to that school. I wish i went to another school but its all over with now no point dwelling over my experiences. But when I had a psychotic break honestly I thought i had a form of PTSD because during my psychosis it felt like all those experiences were happening to me again.
Psychosis can trigger ptsd, and trauma can induce psychosis in some people.
I overcame the only trauma from my original psychosis, which was I wouldn’t sleep in my bedroom due to a demonic voice outside my window. Upon having achieved awareness, I felt shaken, violated. Over the years I’ve maintained awareness of my condition and fought for control. But flare-ups and episodes and loss of control has left alot of trauma in it’s wake. I have flashbacks and panic-triggers from past struggles trying to control hallucinations. I was making progress in November on all the old stuff, then even worse stuff came along. Usually resilient, I’m not sure I’m going to feel safe again for a long time. Now, everything is a panic-trigger.
I’m not too traumatized by being verbally abused and battered by my stepfather, because it was resolved in childhood. It’s the nonreality that traumatizes me most. In April of 2013, I broke down crying about the loss of my innocence, hearing my mother and sisters saying things they never said. I thought I was over it. Guess not!
yes psychosis is very traumatising. i don’t usually cry but i have shed buckets during psychotic episodes. the voices can b so evil that it breaks my heart to have to listen to it. not one ounce of compassion at all. but even in my worst psychoses it was like a part of me knew it wasn’t real because i would do things that the voices commanded me not to. it was unconscious but a little fight back from me. even when i was in hospital and i thought all the other patients were going to rape me and torture me and burn me alive, i still left my room and talked to people just to prove to myself that it wasn’t going to happen but it was very traumatic for me. i think the worst voices were those of my family and friends being nasty. i actually believed for a little while that they were all telepathic and wanted me dead, but then when u’v been hurt as much as i have, u’ll believe anything, if only for a little while. it lasted about 6 months both times i heard them and i fell for it hook line and sinker but not anymore. now the voices of my friends and family speak very rarely because i don’t believe i’m telepathic with them, they’ve kind of given up. now i just have the famous people dead and living blaming me for all the woes in their lives, not that they’ve got any and i don’t believe in them either now. if half the stuff they told me i’d done were true they’d all b dead but funnily enough they’re still there, breathing, living so most of my psychoses have gone. i don’t know quite what else they can come up with that i’d believe anymore. i’m so psychosis weary that nothing sticks these days which is great for me. the voices now r just an irritant. even the erotomania was traumatic. i’m not a sexual person and to b bombarded with sexual imagery is hard for me to deal with because of the abuse i’ve suffered. bring on the next psychosis, that’s what i say coz u can bet ur arse i wont believe in it anymore and i don’t think that that is down to meds, i think it comes from experience and i now have the ability to rationalise what i see in my mind and hear. their latest one is that i’m going to win big on the lottery. ha! i play it but then i always have, but after the next big jackpot ends i’m gonna leave it alone for a while and save my money for something real. ■■■■ the voices and ■■■■ the psychoses! that’s what i say. xxx
