I don't understand this: As my posts show I was recently diagnosed with PTSD and have spent time learning from this forum, therapy and reading. But I just keep getting bloody worse-my nightmares are worse, I'm not talking with my wife, we're not even sleeping together, I can't do my funking job right, I'm getting more depressed. Memories/images are jumping into my mind at a relentless rate. I just went for a hair cut and everyone I passed on the street seemed to be looking at me as though I am pathetic. I look away and have my mp3 player going but the anxiety when people pass me is too much. Even my wife said "you were fine until you were told you have PTSD," which isn't true.

I realize from what I have read that I'm beginning to look at what has been ignored, but I just feel I'm still present with past abuse. And when the people around me don't care enough to want to understand, it feels even worse. The other thing is that I have been treated so bad from basically birth (I was a neglected infant) till well into adulthood, that I don't feel I'm anything but how others have treated me. I try to tell myself this is not true, but emotionally it is true. If today someone physically, emotionally, or sexually abused me, then, to me, they would see me as I really am---I know no other sense of my-self. What I understand and feel are incongruent.

Sorry, I'm just very confused and angry --I don't know who the real me is and I hate the one that I am.

Hi Cec,

Please give it some time...this forum, or anything else for that matter, is not a quick fix...there is no quick fix with ptsd. For a long time I htought I could handle the symptoms on my own, without therapy etc...And then I got worse and worse...Hang around the forum some more...people here understand...Nobody else really can unless they have ptsd. I know confusion and lack of self identity suck...but hang in there.
Oh...and, welcome to the forum.

Unfortunately with PTSD you have to get worse before you can get better. It's the nature of this particular beast.

What you're describing sounds normal for someone who has begun to deal with trauma(s) from their past. It's hard, it's scary and it's normal for us with PTSD. Finding a therapist (who specializes in trauma) is a good way to deal with all of the overwhelming 'stuff' that happens at first. It can and does get better. Like RD said, there's no quick fix. It takes time and it takes as long as it takes. There's tons of information here about the different aspects of PTSD. Some things work for some people and not for others. There's no 'one size fits all' recovery program. Each one has to be tailor made and the person with the PTSD has to be the biggest contributor to the recovery. It just doesn't work any other way.

My husband said the same line to me about not being bad until someone told me that I had PTSD. Like you I knew he was wrong. What your wife is talking out of is fear because her husband has changed and change is scary. There's a whole section for carers here. Maybe she could just read about other care givers who deal with a loved one with PTSD and she wouldn't feel quite so alone. Just like the other sections help those of us with PTSD not feel quite so alone. Please remember that you're both in this. It's not just your disorder, it doesn't just affect you. It affects everyone and everything in your life to different degrees. The closer the person is, the more it affects.

I know this feeling way too well. I worked so hard to get back to 'the person I was before'. I got back a whole lot of myself through recovery, but it took me butting my head against the same wall for a while to realize that I'm not the same person I was before. I've been changed and changed for good. PTSD changes a person for life. Change is not in and of itself good or bad. It simply is. It's what we do with it that makes it good or bad.

I know what I've written probably sounds like a load of rubbish. And when I was were you are now it would have sounded like it to me, too. But the more hard work you do on yourself and the more you accept this new thing in your life the less it will sound like rubbish. I don't claim to have all of the answers (nor do I want them), but not too long ago I was where you are now and a lot of folks here told me that I could get better and get my life back. I believed them and it did happen.

Lisa

I can so empathize. I was mistreated as a child and feel that because of that, who I am now is simply a manifestation of how I was treated and therefore was never able to "develop" a sense of real self. Everything that I've done in my life is simply an "arm" of that abuse since the abuse was the body of my foundation.

It is something that I struggle with and something that I've told my therapist about and he and I are going to work on it. I'm not sure how I will get past this thinking and so I have very little to offer on the topic, but I did want you to know that I understand how you are feeling.

Best,
Rachel

Reallydown. Lise. and Rachel,

Thanks you so much. It is hard to grasp all this, but reading that you have been through this and seeing that you understand helps--god I'm 46 years old and I'm crying as I write this--it's just feels so good that someone understands.

Reallydown, you said "Nobody else really can (underatnd PTSD) unless they have ptsd" I'm beginning to see this-it must be fearful for my wife as yo said Lisa. Today I lost my house keys locking myself and my dog out of the house while my wife was at work. I'm doing more things like this these days. But I hear what your saying it will take time and committment on my part. I do worry though as you Identifed Rachel, having been abused from so young an age, is it even possible to develop a sense of self--it doesn't feel like there is anything there to recover.

Thanks so much this means a lot to me.
Paul

Religious cults cause ptsd. I got a lot of abuse from the navigators, and prior to that maranatha campus ministries, and a lot of other people.

The Navs really beat me up emotionally, until I started to cut off my feelings, since I couldn't handle them. Way back the first time thru religion, I got back to my real self back then the first time by forcing myself to re-watch movies from a time prior to when everything happened, as well as books and visiting places that I associated with good feelings. It's also good to isolate and concentrate, like in meditation, on good things of any type that happened in the past, no matter how small. Keep focusing on them as in meditation, and look for volume over quality.