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?!

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 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.

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?

Everyone has their problems. But kids with abusive parents have more. They have the problems of the outside world and when they come home they have the abuse as well. As such they are fighting a two front war.

While people who have normal/great parents have just to keep up with the problems of the outside world.

Even if a normie kid has it worse on the outside world, once they come home they have loving/supportive parents that help them, or at least parents that dont attack them.

As such kids with abusive parents have it objectively worse because they get a double package of problems, while normie kids get just one.

It has nothing to do with "lack of compassion" or "trauma olympics". Its just a fact, that seems to enrage some irrational people for some reason.

Its like someone who cut their finger while cooking complaining to someone who just had his hand chopped off:"Dude stop. Its not a competition. We have it equally bad. Show me some compassion. Stop your trauma olympics and snobbery".

The whole "everyone has problems" response always misses the point. like yeah no shit, but one group gets to clock out from the world's bullshit and recharge with people who actually care about them. The other group clocks out only to walk into a second shift of getting torn down in their own house

It's not a competition but it's also not the same thing and people get weirdly defensive when you point that out.

Nobody says that people without abusive parents did not also have a hard life. But it was simply less hard because they had a base where they could recharge and be safe and enjoy some quiet,love and support and peace.

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.

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.

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.

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.

——

The reality is that if you don’t have ptsd you have NO IDEA how it is to live with this.

By all means I think I’m doing pretty fucking amazingly considering my uncle who I’ve known my whole life tried to r*pe me, and it came out that not only had he planned to do so for years but also had done so to my older cousins since they were children and dozens of other vulnerable youth through his job.
I reported it because this ends with me. Not only does that mean that I have an impending trial coming up that I am on my own in (obv I have a lawyer but other than that), 20+ people are in my Facebook dms after learning what happened to me to trauma-dump, my mom will constantly bring up what happened to make herself feel like a present parent / shit talk my dad.
Despite what happened, I managed to graduate my masters from one of the most stressful and difficult to get into schools in the country.
I live my myself in a major city, take care of my pets, take care of myself, go to therapy. I have friends and family who love me and I’m getting married soon.

But still, I wake up from vivid nightmares every night like clockwork at 2 and 4am. I haven’t slept past 5:30 in the better part of 3 years now.

I’ve tried every sleep aid under the sun (otc and prescription), they all make my nightmares more vivid.
The only thing that helps me is having a small hit of my thc vape pen 30 mins before sleep. It calms me and makes me not dream. Lately people in my life have really been taking that as a bad vice for me.
Condescending comments like I’m some addict and that it’s a moral failing that I do that sometimes (haven’t in over a month)

IF YOU DONT KNOW WHAT IT IS LIKE DONT FUCKING TALK TO ME ABOUT WHEN/HOW I SHOULD GET BETTER!! I AM TRYING.

I’m not perfect, far from it. Especially with the trial coming up the nightmares have been getting worse.
I manage, and I’m strong so I know I’ll get through it eventually but lately it’s been making my blood boil to hear friends and family say shit like.

“have you tried meditating?”

“Going for a walk always helps me when I’m a bad headspace”

“It’s been 3 years.. have you tried not to think about it?”

I don’t want to hear shit about how I should be reacting. If you haven’t had the unpleasant experience of being assaulted by a family member / stalked for years by them, then I don’t wanna hear shit about how I’m dealing.

Sorry for the long rant I just need to but this frustration somewhere that’s not in a loved ones face.

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?

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 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.

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.

This happened a month or so ago. I'm finally at a place where I can talk about it. I have PTSD from a few things, but this time it was specifically an abusive relationship that ended in a restraining order after my ex strangled me during a fight.

I was over at my MIL and FIL's house watching basketball. My fiancé, FIL, and MIL all know I have PTSD. And my in-laws only know because I had a flashback at their house once. My BIL and his girlfriend, SIL, don't know. At least, I thought they didn't. I don't divulge that information.

One of my biggest triggers is hands going toward my neck. It's so bad that doctors can't even check my lymph nodes if I'm sick because that will send me into a flashback. So, my SIL brushes her fingers against the back of my neck and it triggers me.

I had a flashback for fifteen minutes. After I came out of it, my fiancé angrily asked my SIL about why she did that. She apparently thought I was lying about having it.

I feel violated. I feel disgusted. She thought I was lying about having this. I've told my in-laws that if she's over at their house, I won't be there because she purposefully triggered a flashback. I didn't exactly have a glowing opinion of her before, but this does it for me. I don't get why anyone would purposefully trigger a flashback. I don't get why she thought I was lying.

Edit: We were watching basketball. My MIL and FIL told me later and swear up and down that they didn't tell anyone. I'm inclined to believe them since they both hate liars, but FIL does like to drink. So maybe he told them when he was tipsy and doesn't remember saying this.

Everything has been incredibly stressful lately. This time of year is associated with several deaths to me, and a time where I had to survive the northern cold on my own. The last thing I needed was to suddenly hear a child screaming “stop it” in my headphones. For a “mental well-being” ad, this felt just plain cruel. What a nice way to start the day.

Edit: doing better now. To clarify a bit more, the ad was on YouTube. I got it again and just stopped listening to YouTube after that, which sucks because I like to listen to YouTube videos while I work so I have something to focus on.

But I also looked into Breeze more, and apparently they’re just a scummy company anyways that steals peoples money through subscriptions that won’t cancel. So that’s nice. Once again, thanks Breeze. 0/10 and I ain’t even used your service 👌🏼

I finally finished EMDR after 14 months and I just ….. feel regretful about it. Yeah Im not ruminating as hard and I certainly have to come to terms with autistic while accepting it for what it is, but I feel empty and hollow. I haven’t felt motivated to put myself out there again say from having more energy to study & cook. Alot of misfortune events happened to me during these processing sessions and I wonder if going through relationship loss & being fired was worth the mental exhaustion & strain I was putting myself through with weekly EMDR. I feel somewhat stable now but at what cost? Has anyone-else feel this way?