Why must I? I have trusted over 100 times without any help or assistance. Why don't YOU trust me for a change.
There is no doubt that I have almost all of these symptoms, but the question that should be asked is WHY I have them when nobody else on the thread does. It is because I have been in combat for the last couple of years and they have not.
The PTSD literature for veterans and sex assault survivors lists conditions that are commonly found among survivors of those types of trauma. Survivors typically have only some of these symptoms, and the severity of a particular symptom may vary from individual to individual. Survivors of different types of traumatic events often have a different range of symptoms. A remarkably large number of these conditions are common among people with long-term histories of suicidal pain:
 Problems with memory. Persistent, intrusive, and vivid memories concerning the traumatic situation. Events of daily life may trigger distressing memories related to the trauma. Memory lapses for parts of the traumatic situation. Many suicidal people are troubled by strong images, such as the feeling that they have bombs inside their bodies or a knife over their heads, and in recovery continue to be bothered by the memory of having had these images.
 Avoidance of things associated with the traumatic experience.
 Denial on the seriousness of the experience.
 Persistent anxiety.
 Fear that the traumatic situation will recur. The trauma is often an event that shatters the survivors’ sense of invulnerability to harm.
 Disturbed by the intrusiveness of violent impulses and thoughts.
 Engagement in risk-taking behavior to produce adrenaline.
 A feeling of being powerless over the traumatic event. Anger and frustration over being powerless.
 A feeling of being helpless about one’s current condition.
 Being dramatically and permanently changed by the experience.
 A sense of unfairness. Why did this happen to me?
 Holding oneself responsible for what happened. Feeling guilty.
 The use of self-blame to provide an illusion of control. Sexual assault survivors often blame themselves: “If I hadn’t been at that location, worn those clothes, behaved in that way, then it wouldn’t have happened.” This pattern is also found in the survivors of a completed suicide. “If I had only done x, the suicide would not have happened,” can be used to try to cope with the fear that suicide will happen again in the family--i.e., it is preventable if I just manage things differently. The suicidal are often full of self-blame. As in the other cases it is partly due to an internalization of social attitudes that blame the victim or family, and also due to the effort to gain mastery over the situation. To imagine we could have done more is more tolerable than total helplessness.
 An inability to experience the joys of life.
 Feelings of being alienated from the other people and society in general. “I am different. I am shameful. If they knew what I was like, they would reject me. I don’t belong in this world. I’m a freak, an outcast.”
 When people with PTSD try to return to normal life, they are plagued by readjustment problems in the basic elements of life. They have difficulties in relationships, in employment, and in having families.
 A lack of caring attachments. A sense of a lack of purpose and meaning.
 Some chronically traumatized people lose the sense that they have a self at all.
 Veterans report the feeling that they never really made it back from the war. Formerly suicidal people feel they never really made it back to normal life.
 One Viet Nam veteran with PTSD said, “I don’t have any friends and I am pretty particular about who I want as a friend.”
 PTSD was aggravated for Viet Nam veterans because they returned to a country that had negative attitudes toward them. For sexual assault survivors, stigmatization is the “second injury”.
 When Viet Nam veterans returned home people were angry at them. They had shamed the country, they had done something wrong, they were potentially harmful to others, it was dangerous to be with them. Sexual assault survivors may receive angry responses--on the grounds that they have done something that shames the family. Suicide attempters often experience great anger from family and care providers.
 A deep distrust of co-workers, employers, authorities.
 Left with unexpressed rage against those who were indifferent to their situation and who failed to help them.
 In personal relationships there are problems of dependency and trust. A fear of being abandoned, betrayed, let down. A belief that people will be hurtful if given a chance. Feelings of self-hatred and humiliation for being needy, weak, and vulnerable. Alternating between isolation and anxious clinging.
 Trauma often causes the victim to view the world as malevolent, rather than benign.
 No sense of having a future, or, the belief that one’s future will be very limited.
 Feel that they belong more to the dead than to the living.
 The feeling of having a negative “Midas touch”--everything I get involved with goes bad.
 Loss of self-confidence, and loss of feelings of mastery and competence.
 A resistance to efforts to change a maladaptive world view that results from the trauma.
 A mistrust of counselors’ ability to listen.
 People who suffered traumatic experiences as children, teenagers, or young adults may simultaneously become prematurely aged and developmentally arrested. A part of them “feels old”. Another part feels stuck at the age they had when the trauma occurred.
 PTSD can be worse if the sufferer experiences the trauma as an individual rather than as a member of a group of people who are suffering the same situation. Unlike earlier wars in which units went overseas together and returned together, in Viet Nam each soldier had an individual DEROS (Date of Expected Return from Overseas). This reduced unit cohesiveness; each soldier experienced the war from an individual point of view. Suicidal people experience their near-death situation with extreme isolation. They see their conditions as being completely unique - “terminal uniqueness”. They have no sense of identification with others.
 The severity of PTSD symptoms tends to increase with the severity and duration of the trauma.
 The use of alcohol or drugs to cope with the PTSD symptoms.
 Attempts to do things to gain a feeling of mastery over the traumatic situation, e.g., become a volunteer on a hotline. |
