Meds for PTSD sympts ?

[Boatsetsailrose]

Hi
My cptsd symptoms really ramped up 3 yrs ago with the stress of leaving my career . At first they were to do with an original trauma event fr teen yrs and then the thoughts turned in on me .
When I experience high stress they come back which is a lot of the time .
They are v distressing .
I've been having EMDR and feel the original event was processed . However the thoughts continue in the daily as I have high stress situations in my life . I spoke with the psychologist today and with my current chronic physical health she wonders if I have the resources to continue EMDR with the current mental symptoms ... I tend to agree with her .
I've been thinking about medication for a long time and am at the place where I'm like ' just give me something , I just need it to stop' . I'm awaiting a review with the consultant .

I'm already on reasonable dose of SSRI citalopram ( called something else in the states .
When I read about medications for PTSD it often mentions SSRI . Thing is I've tried many for depression and couldn't get on with them .

I'd be interested to hear what medications are helping people with flashback / obsessive intrusive thoughts .
Mine are along the SH line ( although I'm not a self harmer in that way and don't intend to be .

Many thanks

[Kizzie]

Hi Boats, nice to see you back although I'm sorry to hear you're struggling with flashbacks/obsessive intrusive thoughts about SH.

I'm in the middle of trying a different med to see if it's better and it's both hopeful and anxiety provoking like most things related to trauma and CPTSD.  We're all different when it comes to meds so I don't have any concrete suggestions, I just hope you're able to find something that works for you.

[Boatsetsailrose]

Hi kizzie
Good to hear you 
Thank u for connecting
God it's a long road isn't it ..stress such a factor for us .
I just had a really good conversation with a friend who is an ex therapist .
It's an interesting one as they aren't self harm thoughts per se ( absolutely no desire / intent . She just helped me to connect that it really is from the original incident . Often they can morph and not be totally true to the incident details . It's the feelings and when I get triggered I'm so focused on the images / feeling of it that I don't connect it's the original freeze and that I need to rescue her . She was talking about processing the feelings with the teenager . Which feels really right .
I'm gonna take it to the psychologist . Maybe we can use that with the EMDR . I Def don't feel I need to go back to the original event per se as I didn't process that . It's more in the here and now .
Will still speak to the consultant about meds ...
I feel done with this 3.5 yrs ...

How are u doing ?

[Kizzie]

I've been struggling too Boats, it really is or can be a long road for some of us. I am noticing the new med (switched from Celexa to Lexapro) is helping though.  Apparently Celexa can actually increase anxiety including racing/intrusive thoughts whilst Lexapro has a fair amount of data demonstrating it is better for both anxiety and depression.  Hope that's the case.

I really like the idea of talking a lot with your teenager and giving her what she didn't have then and still needs 

[CactusFlower]

Hi Boats-

I can't say I've noticed a change in the three different things I've been on. I started with Sertraline and the side effect of insomnia made it pointless. Then I went to Escitalopram (generic Lexapro), another side effect outweighed the help. Currently, I'm on Nortriptyline with another thing for a side effect. This seems to work in that it reduces my anxiety a little bit, so we're seeing how it does over several months. I don't think it necessarily affects my flashbacks and such, though.  I'm also trying Prazosin for nightmares and it has definitely reduced them in quantity, at least the really bad ones.  Sometimes it's a big trial and error to see what works for you.  I hope you find relief with something usable.

[Armee]

Boats, I get those same thoughts...like intrusive images, but thoughts instead. They can come in a torrent and totally shock me because I'm not thinking them and don't believe them. Things like "you deserve to die" or "I should die" or urges to grab a knife and do something to myself with it. I don't want to die, I'm not suicidal, I definitely don't want to cut myself because I grew up with my mother cutting gruesomely. And yet there they are.

They've actually almost completely gone away now. I've never taken medication so I don't have advice on that. But what I noticed was they were a mental distraction. If I started to get upset about something my mom was doing that was very difficult for me and threatened to make me angry, all the sudden instead I'd be feeling this way about myself like a magic unintentional substitute. Oddly my brain decided that urges to SH were safer than being angry at my mom. Because deep down I do trust myself to not do that.

I did own up to my therapist about this and he kindly shrugged it off and just said "they're just intrusive thoughts. Ignore them." He did that knowing me well enough to know there was no danger to me. The thoughts would also be exceptionally persistent and aggressive if I was told or tried to tell myself to be kind to myself or to love myself. That too was a threat.

Since my mom died, I haven't had those urges or thoughts. I know you don't want to revisit and process what happened, likely for very very good reason. But having the trauma resolved (by my mom passing away) is what ended those thoughts and urges for me at least. But before that, just ignoring them or telling them "no, I don't deserve to die" or even a sarcastic "nnnoooo" helped them be more of a murmur than a shout.

Good luck. It's distressing to have thoughts that you don't ask for want or believe. And I'm sorry for what happened to you to cause those thoughts to be there in the first place. It's not fair.

[Chaos rains]

I've been on Wellbutrin (Bupropion) for years and it seems to keep my anxiety at bay and does not make me tired. That's when things are normal. I had lung surgery two years ago, on the eve of the pandemic, and had a small episode while in the hospital that *seemed* traumatic at the time (I was horribly sleep deprived). After I got home the trauma-pandemic anxiety and perseveration ramped up pretty quickly. My doc was fine with giving me Lorazepam for a while because I had a therapist. [irrelevant side note: In spite of having a less-than-optimal hospital stay, nurses and techs were really nice to me and worried about how I was going to cope when I got home. I would mention that I had a therapist and they would always be sooooo relieved! They were nice kids.] Anyways, just a touch of lorazepam does help when it gets bad.

I have also tried Pristique (Desvenlafaxine) but it did nothing for me. But I know now that it is very hard to get off of - withdrawal sympoms are come on quickly, linger for a long time, and most unpleasant. I've been doing a very gradual reduction of doses for over a year now. Don't recommend. 

[Boatsetsailrose]

Thank you for sharing
Kizzie
Cactus
Chaos
And
Armee
Really helps me to not feel so alone with this 🌺

[Boatsetsailrose]

Hi cactus
The consultant mentioned
Prazosin as a possible ...do u experience any side effects with it ?

[Boatsetsailrose]

Armee
I'm so grateful you have shared your experience with me . Thank you .
Really helps me not feel so unstable .
It's good to hear they have gone away for you ! Hopeful .
Yes , that's been my realisation  this wk .
To stay with and process what ever feelings I'm going through with the current event , person etc . The thoughts are a distraction . It however is a cycle when the feelings are causing anxiety and then the thoughts ramp up and get more anxiety ..that's when the real distress comes in total overwhelm almost panic attack and the '  I want out thoughts ' .

Tonight I was having feelings of loneliness and failure leading to turning in on myself . I stayed with the feelings and really allowed whatever wanted to come up come up. There was a barrage of ' your useless, worthless waste of space etc and an image of hitting my head ' . I stayed with it felt it all and then it all stopped and the original ' thoughts went to ....

I feel pleased with this new ability to stay with ...

[dollyvee]

Hi Boats,

My road has been a bit different and have been working through other health issues to get to the root of my anxiety - maybe it would be helpful for you, maybe not. When going through my genetics, I learned that we can have triggers for inflammation which then cross-react and cause anxiety and/or depression. I am genetically susceptible to IL-6 and TNF Alpha inflammation (homozygous for several mutations) and I think it hits me harder when there is chronic inflammation in the body. Chronic inflammation can come from stress but also other factors like gluten (have some celiac markers as well and it affects me horribly - feeling bad/down after eating), chronic gut infections like SIBO and/or viral infections like EBV, lyme, strep etc.

I've been slowly fixing my diet and gut, and adding supplements to support methylation and neurotransmitter production. I'm finding a benefit from it and can notice changes over time. Once these other sources of inflammation are treated, I think my body responds better to stress.

If you're interested:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/anxiety-and-inflammation-is-there-a-link#The-evidence

dolly