4 ms·

I experienced extreme physical abuse when I was 3 (my babysitter used to shot put me across the living room when I wouldn't take naps.) A lot of what is in thi

by z3c0 5y ago

I experienced extreme physical abuse when I was 3 (my babysitter used to shot put me across the living room when I wouldn't take naps.) A lot of what is in this article, I can attest to firsthand. I didn't realize I had been abused until I was 15, as I had stifled the memory, and though I remembered it, it never "clicked" as abuse before then. I've had a host of mental health problems that have led to me being diagnosed ADHD/bi-polar in my early teens, with the latter being renegged as too hasty of a diagnosis. Today, I can't get a diagnosis, as I don't have enough symptoms in each category to fulfill any one (BPD vs DID vs PTSD). It feels like I have some kind of grab-bag illness of all three. What's more, the medicinal options available to me are awful, and cause me a whole host of different problems, both physical and mental. What I'm trying to say is that - as someone dealing with these problems - it still feels like there's a long way to go before I have any real options towards improving my mental health. I'm very hopeful for the increasing popularity of THC/CBD for the treatment of trauma, as I've found that to work wonders for stopping/avoiding psychosis. I've communicated this too all my doctors, but it's never been taken seriously. I am "prone to drug abuse" after all.

Lammy 5y ago
Apologies if this comes off as trying to e-diagnose you, but may want to look into “Complex PTSD” (ICD-11 F62.0) if you haven’t. “Complex PTSD is a new disorder category describing a symptom profile that can arise after exposure to a single traumatic stressor, but that typically follows severe stressors of a prolonged nature or multiple or repeated adverse events from which separation is not possible (e.g., exposure to genocide campaigns, childhood sexual abuse, child soldiering, severe domestic violence, torture, or slavery).” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3799241/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3799241/
leoh 5y ago
You could probably benefit from a far better care team that has an understanding of trauma and which sees medication not as a means of making the problems go away, but as a useful yet optional tool that may help you bring healing (ie allows you to comfortably explore trauma and your trauma responses in therapy) to deeply troubling events that happened in your life (ie typically with lower but clinically meaningful doses, say, of SSRIs). Ketamine with therapy (optionally with an adjunct like a low dose SSRI) also has also appeared to looks be a platform for doing such work, too.

by z3c0 5y ago

Lammy 5y ago

Apologies if this comes off as trying to e-diagnose you, but may want to look into “Complex PTSD” (ICD-11 F62.0) if you haven’t. “Complex PTSD is a new disorder category describing a symptom profile that can arise after exposure to a single traumatic stressor, but that typically follows severe stressors of a prolonged nature or multiple or repeated adverse events from which separation is not possible (e.g., exposure to genocide campaigns, childhood sexual abuse, child soldiering, severe domestic violence, torture, or slavery).” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3799241/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3799241/

leoh 5y ago

You could probably benefit from a far better care team that has an understanding of trauma and which sees medication not as a means of making the problems go away, but as a useful yet optional tool that may help you bring healing (ie allows you to comfortably explore trauma and your trauma responses in therapy) to deeply troubling events that happened in your life (ie typically with lower but clinically meaningful doses, say, of SSRIs). Ketamine with therapy (optionally with an adjunct like a low dose SSRI) also has also appeared to looks be a platform for doing such work, too.