PTSD, anyone dealing with or have?

[eon]

It seems like aspies could gain their own brand of symptom set with PTSD after experience severe/horrifying trauma or loss/injury. Some aspies have been bullied to extreme degrees.

When I was first going in for talking to a professional about comparing myself to spectrum traits, the things at the top of their response was agreement with adhd symptoms I'd always been labeled with, but also PTSD. for some reason I didn't want to hear it. didn't feel like i was listened to mostly. however, the fact is that i have severe stress, anxiety responses to many things that can be kicked up by specific things or all on their own/ my mind's gears turning. then there are intrusive fearful thoughts, as if extracted straight out of OCD, which create some 'hypervigilant' behavior and thought.


basically I'm wondering if anyone wants to add any thoughts on PTSD from aspie experience perspective. everyone would have a varied experience i'm certain since the traumas and how it impacts us is vastly varied.

it's impacted me so much in my adult life now the past 10 years i'm really astonished looking at it this way now.. and i am looking at how i can better define goals for treatment of this

 

[King_Oni]

I don't want to hijack your thread, but I've been thinking of something similar.

Who says the aspie brain processes "trauma" the same way non-aspies do? For many NT people bullying is just that, perhaps for aspies it's more dramatic.

I always found it a hard to believe that PTSD can only be true if you had a truely horrific event in your life. Some might process that bully in high school, that boss at a previous job or even getting in fights in the street as trauma.

I remember back in my teens I once got in a fistfight with an older guy (about 5 years older). I haven't been to a therapist because of that, but for about 3 months after that incident I was paranoid that pretty much any given time I could be jumped by anyone. And had even more vivid hallucinations that it was him. Including having this perpetual anxiety within my house.

But I don't know a whole lot about PTSD as a therapist would, but I'm quite sure that PTSD be triggered by pretty much anything, and even more so if your neurological wiring is significantly different.

 

[Pella]

I have ptsd from abuse and witnessing abuse.

 

[Mr Faramoose]

I think that non autistics process anxiety and fear a little differently from us, like they can just get over it a lot faster and they can block it if it comes back to go round in their head. That would explain why some aspies seem to lose control completely when things happen to them that a normal person would just get angry about but move on. I do have some trauma from a few years back but time has healed a lot of it. Not like a horrible people being shot trauma, but I was threatened with a knife and broken bottle aged 11 in school, pushed down stair cases, brick thrown through my window. That made me paranoid. Then I got out of school, got into an argument with people I shouldn't have, then for two years was convinced people were after me and were going to lock me in a mental institution [because I got called a loony by these guys when I argued back and that's what they said would happen] I was and still am quite convinced the neighbour at the end of my garden is watching me when I'm in the kitchen. Not just because he wants my chocolate, but our windows are opposite eachother. I have some form of ptsd or high anxiety, I panic and I mean literally panic when letters come for me, because I worry they'll be horrible death threats or something sinister, when they just turn out to be from the electricity people or something. I never panicked over stuff like that before, so I think there's some form of ptsd there, and I also think aspies have more anxiety naturally than other people. Temple grandin proved that with a picture of her brains wiring.

 

[eon]

personally i lost a parent at the worst possible age, young, but not so young that it was unknown... the most horrifying thing a mind that age can imagine---

problem is it changed my entire remaining childhood into turmoil and ended up with abuse from step siblings and step mothers to create some kind of lasting, immense PTSD impact on me. i've just barely begun to explore it and i notice how many of the items that define it diagnostically have been for me prior just items i pulled in from the spectrum but make perfect sense as a set of post trauma anxieties and Withdrawing Inward behaviors that made it very difficult for me to adapt or adjust to life as an adult. I become hyper independent, not even realizing consciously that I avoided anything that would have me need help or rely on anyone else at all. In other words I think my traits as an aspie are a set of talents and my biggest problems are a set of PTSD behaviors and mood patterns.

Thanks to those that shared details so far, and I would welcome more

 

[gailt915]

I think I have PTSD. I was bullied by kids in grade school, nothing too physical really, just, well I became an outcast. Then in High School, had some horrible relationships. At the same time of my life, my parents divorced and my mom hooked up with this psycho monster. My brothers and I were deathly afraid of him, he even "came on to me" when I was 17. He just totally creeped me out, still does. Then, in order to get away from that situation, I married a violent alcoholic when I was 19, he beat the crap out of me on several occasions. Later in life, I married another alcoholic (yes...pattern here) who was very verbally abusive. Other bad stuff happened in between, more psychological than physical, but damaging, none the less.
Does that count as PTSD material?

 

[Pella]

My mother had killed herself and I had found the body, and the doctors said I might have ptsd from that, but I think it started much earlier. I was already terrified of people being upset with me, and was very jumpy. Not sure if I had flashbacks back then but it was so long ago and I never talked about any of it back then so it is hard to remember. I seem to have alot of missing peices from growing up.

 

[gailt915]

My mother had killed herself and I had found the body, and the doctors said I might have ptsd from that, but I think it started much earlier. I was already terrified of people being upset with me, and was very jumpy. Not sure if I had flashbacks back then but it was so long ago and I never talked about any of it back then so it is hard to remember. I seem to have alot of missing peices from growing up.

OMG, Pella, that is the saddest and most horrifying thing I think anyone could go thru. I'd have PTSD after that, for sure.
I, too, have many missing pieces from when I was growing up. Some of them were things that were good (from what family tells me anyway). I remember the bad stuff. My first memory of life is when I was 2 and a half years old, being bullied by the babysitter's son to eat my pea soup! I have no memory of first grade at all, yet can remember pre-school and Kindergarten.
I'm also, still at 53 years old afraid of people being mad at me.....

 

[Arashi222]

I have PTSD from my friends death. I also have a few other things that caused it but won't go into that. I think everyone to some degree has PTSD reponses to things but it only becomes pTSD if it impacts your everyday life to the point of consumption of every moment. Or is specifically triggered by certain events.

 

[HelloDizzy]

I show all the symptoms of PTSD.
I've had a lot of things happen which I suppress.
3 major deaths in my life since I was 16, being bullied prior, being emotionally abused after, being raped, and all of the fun little things that go along with being a drifter.

 

[smith2267]

I've probably been bullied as much as an average aspie (whatever the hell that is). It has made me avoid people, and lash out at times. But I wouldn't call it PTSD. Of course, I am not very connected to my emotions...I have them, but they are diminished and I don't always recognize them.
So maybe I'm the least qualified of anyone to judge my mental state

 

[answeraspergers]

To be honest. I believe Aspies are PTSD infants grown up.

 

[gailt915]

To be honest. I believe Aspies are PTSD infants grown up.

Speaking of infants...........I was 18 months old when my mother got so mad at me, she hit me so hard that I went flying and smashed my forehead on the coffeetable. Still have the scar to prove it..........

 

[eon]

One thing I just wanted to come back here and mention.

In researching around PTSD, I come across a thing called c-PTSD. Complex ptsd--- Which is at this point a proposed set of loose criteria, that essentially defines a PTSD sufferer where the main feature is an impact to self more than any of the other usual features of the current criteria. Your identity, broken down or made completely frail, or dissociated. Most often found as the result of a prolonged helpless or inability to be free of the trauma source. Grief is a huge one found there.

The sort of items in cPTSD criteria were downright spooky to me in familiarity, just looking through the first thing I found wikipedia

The glorification of the perpetrator (for me, death itself... became a still standing obsession, at times leading me down "depression attack" episodes of high suicidal special interest activity), and associated feeling of being absolutely unable to ever escape the trauma/loss of control of your life/oppressor.

I could have sudden moments of depersonalization in which it is like a Death strike on my consciousness, a sink, most often when I am on my way to going to sleep and having a hard time of it. Just this shrill prodding... Your life amounts to nothing. You will expire and leave behind the ones that love you, with nothing but bitter grief. None of this is physically verbal. It's just a freefall that hits me in a single instant and blasts me out of myself, then the sudden moment thereafter I feel that adrenaline flight response and nothing I can do about it.

It then calls out..... explosive intermittent / anger. Covert anger, from procrastination to literal behaviors that perpetuate hostility toward others by passive means.
Freezing up, completely unable to move when under a startle or conflict stress. this one appears under possible item to look for in a child.

A lot of fear of a reappearance of the oppressor/cause. Hypervigilant mindset referencing specifically to the prevention/response to such possibility.

The feeling that your identity doesn't exist, that you are absolutely and completely alien to all humans and will never be like them.

Dissociative defense mechanisms--- essentially escapism at full force. I have special interest patterns that go into fantasy world--- in gaming a particular game that can hold for months on end consuming any free time and spare moments that i may be able spend writing or reading about it as well. My interests have very rarely deviated from something I can become completely lost in this way.

To me the idea of complex PTSD makes absolute sense as a broken self, whose behaviors create distance, escapism, and simply coping with the altered state of living that exists in that mindframe where every single day you imagine again the possibility and impact of that thing that Ruined you, and cannot help doing so.

 

[Bay]

When I was diagnosed as an Aspie, my psychiatrist actually seemed more interested in my concurrent diagnosis as someone with PTSD. I guess I already knew about the PTSD on some level, and had suspected it for years. I was certainly bullied and ostracized as a child. My mother died a couple of months after I turned 11. My father remarried about a year later and sent me away to boarding school. I never returned home again, except at the holidays and summer break. I felt utterly alone in the world. My stepmother was an alcoholic, with all of the baggage and ******** that comes along with it, and my father never stepped in to protect me. I was raped at 22, and was too frightened to tell a soul until last year (I am 55, and have been carrying it with me all these years). I have been an outsider, rejected, misunderstood all of my life, and it has taken a toll. I went through a phase of drug abuse which, in retrospect, seems like an effort to self-medicate. So yes, I understand about PTSD.

 

[Pella]

One thing I just wanted to come back here and mention.

In researching around PTSD, I come across a thing called c-PTSD. Complex ptsd--- Which is at this point a proposed set of loose criteria, that essentially defines a PTSD sufferer where the main feature is an impact to self more than any of the other usual features of the current criteria. Your identity, broken down or made completely frail, or dissociated. Most often found as the result of a prolonged helpless or inability to be free of the trauma source. Grief is a huge one found there.

The sort of items in cPTSD criteria were downright spooky to me in familiarity, just looking through the first thing I found wikipedia

The glorification of the perpetrator (for me, death itself... became a still standing obsession, at times leading me down "depression attack" episodes of high suicidal special interest activity), and associated feeling of being absolutely unable to ever escape the trauma/loss of control of your life/oppressor.

I could have sudden moments of depersonalization in which it is like a Death strike on my consciousness, a sink, most often when I am on my way to going to sleep and having a hard time of it. Just this shrill prodding... Your life amounts to nothing. You will expire and leave behind the ones that love you, with nothing but bitter grief. None of this is physically verbal. It's just a freefall that hits me in a single instant and blasts me out of myself, then the sudden moment thereafter I feel that adrenaline flight response and nothing I can do about it.

It then calls out..... explosive intermittent / anger. Covert anger, from procrastination to literal behaviors that perpetuate hostility toward others by passive means.
Freezing up, completely unable to move when under a startle or conflict stress. this one appears under possible item to look for in a child.

A lot of fear of a reappearance of the oppressor/cause. Hypervigilant mindset referencing specifically to the prevention/response to such possibility.

The feeling that your identity doesn't exist, that you are absolutely and completely alien to all humans and will never be like them.

Dissociative defense mechanisms--- essentially escapism at full force. I have special interest patterns that go into fantasy world--- in gaming a particular game that can hold for months on end consuming any free time and spare moments that i may be able spend writing or reading about it as well. My interests have very rarely deviated from something I can become completely lost in this way.

To me the idea of complex PTSD makes absolute sense as a broken self, whose behaviors create distance, escapism, and simply coping with the altered state of living that exists in that mindframe where every single day you imagine again the possibility and impact of that thing that Ruined you, and cannot help doing so.

yeah I did read about that, and it did seem to make alot of sense for me.

 

[ShatteredUniverse]

One thing I just wanted to come back here and mention.

In researching around PTSD, I come across a thing called c-PTSD. Complex ptsd--- Which is at this point a proposed set of loose criteria, that essentially defines a PTSD sufferer where the main feature is an impact to self more than any of the other usual features of the current criteria. Your identity, broken down or made completely frail, or dissociated. Most often found as the result of a prolonged helpless or inability to be free of the trauma source. Grief is a huge one found there.

The sort of items in cPTSD criteria were downright spooky to me in familiarity, just looking through the first thing I found wikipedia

The glorification of the perpetrator (for me, death itself... became a still standing obsession, at times leading me down "depression attack" episodes of high suicidal special interest activity), and associated feeling of being absolutely unable to ever escape the trauma/loss of control of your life/oppressor.

I could have sudden moments of depersonalization in which it is like a Death strike on my consciousness, a sink, most often when I am on my way to going to sleep and having a hard time of it. Just this shrill prodding... Your life amounts to nothing. You will expire and leave behind the ones that love you, with nothing but bitter grief. None of this is physically verbal. It's just a freefall that hits me in a single instant and blasts me out of myself, then the sudden moment thereafter I feel that adrenaline flight response and nothing I can do about it.

It then calls out..... explosive intermittent / anger. Covert anger, from procrastination to literal behaviors that perpetuate hostility toward others by passive means.
Freezing up, completely unable to move when under a startle or conflict stress. this one appears under possible item to look for in a child.

A lot of fear of a reappearance of the oppressor/cause. Hypervigilant mindset referencing specifically to the prevention/response to such possibility.

The feeling that your identity doesn't exist, that you are absolutely and completely alien to all humans and will never be like them.

Dissociative defense mechanisms--- essentially escapism at full force. I have special interest patterns that go into fantasy world--- in gaming a particular game that can hold for months on end consuming any free time and spare moments that i may be able spend writing or reading about it as well. My interests have very rarely deviated from something I can become completely lost in this way.

To me the idea of complex PTSD makes absolute sense as a broken self, whose behaviors create distance, escapism, and simply coping with the altered state of living that exists in that mindframe where every single day you imagine again the possibility and impact of that thing that Ruined you, and cannot help doing so.

Yep. This is definitely me.

 

[gailt915]

To me the idea of complex PTSD makes absolute sense as a broken self, whose behaviors create distance, escapism, and simply coping with the altered state of living that exists in that mindframe where every single day you imagine again the possibility and impact of that thing that Ruined you, and cannot help doing so.

This is exactly how I feel...........I have felt this way for a long, long time. It affects every decision I make, and thus, causing me to only make the wrong one. I feel like a broken glass that has shattered so comletely that most of it/me is more crushed, or pulverized, so that I can never be whole again. Each 'crushing' event has caused further damage along the years of my life......I am ruined. Sometimes I feel like I am already dead, yet no one has found my body to give it a proper burial.
I tend to obsess over things like the Holocost, mass murders, events where lots of death has happened and the victims had no control of what was happening to them. They had no right to 'self' or life, they were worthless and disposable.
A very interesting post. I will have to research cPTSD further. Thank you for your post and the info you provided.

 

[gailt915]

When I was diagnosed as an Aspie, my psychiatrist actually seemed more interested in my concurrent diagnosis as someone with PTSD. I guess I already knew about the PTSD on some level, and had suspected it for years. I was certainly bullied and ostracized as a child. My mother died a couple of months after I turned 11. My father remarried about a year later and sent me away to boarding school. I never returned home again, except at the holidays and summer break. I felt utterly alone in the world. My stepmother was an alcoholic, with all of the baggage and ******** that comes along with it, and my father never stepped in to protect me. I was raped at 22, and was too frightened to tell a soul until last year (I am 55, and have been carrying it with me all these years). I have been an outsider, rejected, misunderstood all of my life, and it has taken a toll. I went through a phase of drug abuse which, in retrospect, seems like an effort to self-medicate. So yes, I understand about PTSD.

Bay, you and I have very similar horror stories. My mother is still alive, but didn't want children, especially not a daughter. It was more like I was dead to her at birth. I too was into drugs, mostly high school years. I was raped too, in my early 20's, but no one would ever consider it as rape, since it was my alcoholic husband that did it. I never told anyone about it. Life really sucks and I've never known it any differently.

 

[eon]

gailt, this info is just the scratch of the surface i have barely come across. despite that the root feeling i have is this overwhelming sudden feeling of not being alone / the only person to feel like i do, same as i felt when i began to look at myself within aspie discovery and the spectrum 2.5 years ago.

this is like the 2nd degree of the same self realization, my complex ptsd and attention differential brain as the vital components of understanding and accessing my true self (which, when described in the constructs of PTSD... has been locked away for presumably safe keeping during the grief and oppression experienced)

i definitely hope to encourage any of you that have responded.... with the same brightness that this discovery has brought me. my assignment has been to use mindfulness to just study myself and gain as much info as I can on what I do, what automatic responses are happening that are likely results of the self defense that was necessary but no longer helps me.

i have recognized that it can be a life long effort but i feel a lot more equipped to handle any challenge just by the recognition that my self is in there, just locked in stone avoidant/withdrawn/self-disconnecting auto responses to internal and external triggers