Finding this site caused me to weep from relief, and I haven't even read much yet. I didn't even know there was an effort to describe the effects of being in a consistently traumatic environment until this morning...I need help and whenever I build up the courage to reach out there is nothing for me to grasp. The psych and medical professionals I've gone to only ever see in me their particular speciality or world veiw, and ignore all evidence to the contrary. The experience has been at best disheartening and sometimes dangerous.
I want to share a particular experience because of how egregious it was, and how it demonstrates my utter inability to protect myself even when I recognize a situation isn't right, something that I discovered today was stereotypical of C-PTSD. Hopefully, my experience can help someone. It's a long story, sorry for that.
A psychiatrist insisted that ADHD was my core problem, and that the stress of my childhood hid the ADHD, I believed him. Certain "emotional events" were symptoms of particular concern to me, and he assured me they were typical of ADHD. Through medication and mindfulness (I only had to learn that everything I was experiencing was entirely in my controll) they would go away, if I was willing to work hard enough.
I expressed concern about the medication, since I had a strange reaction to prescription pseudoephedrine which I described to him, he told me I worried to much "worrying was killing me. " Unfortunately for me the medication either aggravated temporal lobe epilepsy that had gone previously undiagnosed, or simply brought on the seizures because I have a lower threshold. Whatever the reason for my original susceptibility, as my treatment progressed the seizures increased in both their frequency and severity.
The worse I got the more he insisted I just needed a higher dosage...I believed him, not just because of my desperate need to fix what was wrong with me but because I was no longer cognizant of the state I was in. I couldn't hold on to a memory long enough to realize there was anything wrong. I seemed dopey but happy to those around me.
My husband was concerned, but was told that people with anxiety issues often have memory problems as they get better. Eventually,as I got progressively worse, it became apparent that I wasn't just a little dopey. I was confused not just about the time or the day, but that I thought it was a different week, month, or year. I'd ask a question, walk down the hall, turn around walk back and ask it again, towards the end I slept nearly 20 hours a day. My husband intervened immediately, and asked the psychiatrist what the check was going on. He told my husband I was having seizures, took me off the meds, and then diagnosed me with narcolepsy.
I never wanted to step into another doctor's office, but I had go to a neurologist, whatever was happening to me had gotten better after stopping the medication but I was so much worse then I was before I began treatment. The neurologist after questioning me about those "emotional events", the symptoms that I had most wanted to be rid of, told me that they were stereotypical of temporal lobe seizures not anxiety or panic attacks. I should have never been given that medication to begin with, and now I'm stuck with the damage it. A great big cherry on top of the half melted sundae that is my brain, but I'm being treated for the seizures now and things are getting better.
Thanks for listening,
A Fuzzy Duckling
I want to share a particular experience because of how egregious it was, and how it demonstrates my utter inability to protect myself even when I recognize a situation isn't right, something that I discovered today was stereotypical of C-PTSD. Hopefully, my experience can help someone. It's a long story, sorry for that.
A psychiatrist insisted that ADHD was my core problem, and that the stress of my childhood hid the ADHD, I believed him. Certain "emotional events" were symptoms of particular concern to me, and he assured me they were typical of ADHD. Through medication and mindfulness (I only had to learn that everything I was experiencing was entirely in my controll) they would go away, if I was willing to work hard enough.
I expressed concern about the medication, since I had a strange reaction to prescription pseudoephedrine which I described to him, he told me I worried to much "worrying was killing me. " Unfortunately for me the medication either aggravated temporal lobe epilepsy that had gone previously undiagnosed, or simply brought on the seizures because I have a lower threshold. Whatever the reason for my original susceptibility, as my treatment progressed the seizures increased in both their frequency and severity.
The worse I got the more he insisted I just needed a higher dosage...I believed him, not just because of my desperate need to fix what was wrong with me but because I was no longer cognizant of the state I was in. I couldn't hold on to a memory long enough to realize there was anything wrong. I seemed dopey but happy to those around me.
My husband was concerned, but was told that people with anxiety issues often have memory problems as they get better. Eventually,as I got progressively worse, it became apparent that I wasn't just a little dopey. I was confused not just about the time or the day, but that I thought it was a different week, month, or year. I'd ask a question, walk down the hall, turn around walk back and ask it again, towards the end I slept nearly 20 hours a day. My husband intervened immediately, and asked the psychiatrist what the check was going on. He told my husband I was having seizures, took me off the meds, and then diagnosed me with narcolepsy.
I never wanted to step into another doctor's office, but I had go to a neurologist, whatever was happening to me had gotten better after stopping the medication but I was so much worse then I was before I began treatment. The neurologist after questioning me about those "emotional events", the symptoms that I had most wanted to be rid of, told me that they were stereotypical of temporal lobe seizures not anxiety or panic attacks. I should have never been given that medication to begin with, and now I'm stuck with the damage it. A great big cherry on top of the half melted sundae that is my brain, but I'm being treated for the seizures now and things are getting better.
Thanks for listening,
A Fuzzy Duckling