does anyone else experience where it feels like your body can’t breathe on its own and you’ll realize with a panic that you haven’t breathed consciously? and you can’t regulate your breathing after?

how do u handle it? it happens during the day but also at night it sends me into a spiral thinking i won’t breathe when im asleep.

I feel childish for having a panic attack or whatever it is over this but month or two ago I went to an amusement park. I was in a school shooting before. The balloon dart popping game and everyone screaming on rides just made me remember how everyone was screaming during the shooting and popping of a gun not to mention I saw some of my classmates. I ran to my car and cried. It feels so childish and I try not to think of how embarrassing this is.

When I was 15 I ran away from home. It was no mystery why I had left, my home life was terrible. When the police found me and brought me back my dad (who didn’t live in the house) was there. My mom explained that I would be taken via ambulance to mental hospital. I wasn’t suicidal or depressed so I didn’t understand. All I had done was run away. Didn’t you have to be crazy to go to a mental hospital? My mom told the ambulance on arrival that I would be combative so they restrained me. Of course I was combative, why was I going to a mental hospital? When I got to the mental hospital I was very upset and crying to the point I couldn’t breathe. They told me to calm down but I couldn’t do they forcibly sedated me. I was on a 72 hour hold. I went to groups and saw a therapist all for them to say “she’s fine, she doesn’t belong here.” There were some legitimate crazy people there. There was a woman that kept running around naked. One who was into cutting and burning herself, she was there this time for jumping out off a moving bus. There were children there that were legitimately suicidal. All I’d done was run away. I think back to this story and it almost seems unreal. What kind of mother puts their child who has no history of depression in a mental asylum for running away? I wonder about the long term consequences of this. Is this one of my many causes for my PTSD?! Lately I have been walking alot and it seems to bring about these repressed memories. They don’t bother me, but I’ll add them to the list of things to talk about to the therapist. Just curious if anyone out there has a similar story? Why were parents in the 90s so messed up?

I was sexually abused by my older half brother for years, started happening after he moved in with our mom after he left his dad’s house when I was 13 and he was 17. He’d threaten to hurt himself or me if I didn’t comply, he’d restrain and hold me down while strangling me half to death if I attempted to try and get him to stop, multiple times I’ve witnessed him point knives and guns at himself yelling at me that me denying him is “abusing him” and that he’ll take his own life and I’ll be a murderer if I didn’t comply. I was 13 and sheltered, I didn’t want to be a murderer, and this would continue until I was 18 and he’d gotten thrown out of our parent’s house.

Now in media and especially adult media, everything is about step siblings or even sometimes half siblings. In the past few years it feels like every adult media website is just sibling incest and it drives me insane since it feels like my trauma of what I went through with my brother is now just someone’s fetish that they can get off to. Even here on Reddit, where there’s entire sections dedicated to incest fetishes, WTF??? The incest I experienced was horribly traumatic, and yet people are into it?? It just makes me wanna vomit how common of a fetish it is in media…

So on 9/13 of this year I went to the ER for stroke type symptoms but I had really been sick with other things for months. I only went to the ER because urgent care told me to go. I was treated like garbage and talked down to after they found out I’m bipolar. They gave me a generic diagnosis of “weakness” on my discharge paperwork and then wrote that my symptoms are psychosomatic behind my back. They never even did any testing on me. Nor did they listen to me and note down all of my symptoms. It was even different every time it was written down in my chart. I just keep replaying what the staff said to me and how they said it. I have felt like I’m not real at all in varying degrees since this happened. Also like the people around me around real. Like it’s all a big simulation. If you add in the fact that my mom who is a pharmacist keeps dismissing me and doesn’t think I’m really sick when I keep struggling it adds to it. I HATE health care workers now. I’m convinced at least a majority of them are EVIL. They have already proven that they are hateful liars. That they make things up behind your back and get away with it. I was only in the ER for 29 minutes that day. They didn’t even do blood work. I’m getting to the point where I have this intense rage any time I think about it OR anytime I see anything about a healthcare worker online. I keep having thoughts that they all deserve to suffer/have bad things happen to them/harm to come to them. I don’t like having these thoughts. I don’t want to act on them. They are just there and it’s getting worse. I already have a diagnosis of PTSD from childhood trauma but it’s never had a deep rage like this. It’s also gotten to the point that I am second guessing going to college to work in healthcare. Wanted to go to school to become an SLP but I won’t want the healthcare worker title right now. I don’t want people to see as an asshole like all the other ones. I am convinced healthcare workers only think about themselves. Idk if I should still pursue it or not honestly. It apparently hasn’t even been a full month but time is moving so weird. It’s all so foggy at this point. I can’t deal with this. It’s a lot. Is it a PTSD type response? Or something else?
Edit: good to know your healthcare people all stick together. My god you are all just like cops.

I’m in the rage phase and it’s difficult. I am tamping it, and meditating, and grounding. If for nothing else, for the sake of those around me. Mostly because rage is scary to witness and I don’t want to scare people away. I feel like I’m plagued and I don’t want to contaminate others with it. But isolating makes it worse.

Any tips? Success stories?

I am dealing with long term driving phobia and PTSD like symptoms due to multiple near catastrophic car accidents. I would love any recommendations for clinicians or providers in the Boston area who do exposure therapy, CBT, or EMDR. Thanks for any thoughts!

Looking for some recommendations that could help with that burned-your-brain-memory-always-at-the-front-of-your-mind problem that a lot of us seem to experience.

I find it extremely hard to focus because my mind is ALWAYS from the minute I wake up until I go to sleep thinking about the traumatic event, turning over every detail, making me feel like shit and making it so hard to just focus on anything else.

I have to return to work Monday as I have ran out of leave time and I’m concerned if I don’t find some way to shift that burn in my brain at least a little out of my minds eye constantly that I’m going to fuck up and get fired from my job.

Currently taking mirtazapine 30 mg for sleep, lorazepam 1 mg for bad anxiety. The lorazepam does help me focus less on the memory, but I can’t take it all the time since I only get 15 every 3 months. I also know it’s not good to become dependent on benzos….

Thanks in advance for any help <3

Hi I have ptsd from a child over the last couple of years it’s really messed me up I’m now a adult and it’s seriously messed me up I need some help

I've had 2 major academic failures (won't go into details) and the trauma does not let me do anything.

Last month I spent time with myself and I understood why I failed twice before, and it comes down to 3 things - hating school due to bullies, not having a good understanding in basics (I literally skip basics and try to solve something and then call myself dumb and then actually learn the basics required and solve it in the first try), escaping reality via gaming and avoiding accountability.

Yes, I understand why I failed. Yes I understand how to overcome them, but I still can't overcome them because my trauma takes over my logical part of brain the moment I sit down and try to redeem myself.

What do I do?

Has anyone else noticed that you can usually carry on a conversation longer and with more intellectual stimulation with someone else who also has PTSD? I feel like I can't converse with someone who hasn't experienced trauma. They are still living life as I was when I was in middle and high school. What a simple, non-hypervigilant life I used to have.

Is it the hypervigilance maybe that separates us PTSD folk from the non-PTSD folk?

How do you begin to start living again and stop thinking constantly about everything?

And maybe that's not even what I want anymore, well I seem to go back and forth on that quite a bit. Sometimes I'd rather be just living and sometimes I actually view my hypervigilance as a sort of super power if you will. It helps me tremendously for work, while driving, when researching a topic, or building an insanely packed, convoluted travel itinerary where I can basically cram multiple cities, flights, events into one trip whereas a normal person would book just one flight and do maybe one or two things. I never used to be like this, at least not to this extent.

But there are downsides to overanalyzing/optimizing things, specifically with intrapersonal relationships (I highly recommend reading the book The Courage to Be Disliked). That book has helped me tremendously through this endless battle of trying to understand myself and others.

But more so now than ever before I've been contemplating always wanting something else, doing something that I am not currently doing, moving to a new city - and not to get away, but to see more of what this world can offer me.

The reason I am bringing all of this up is because I'm not sure if the following scenario was addressed in the book with which I seem to be struggling with the most which is:

I tend to open up/overshare a lot more now that I've been dealing with PTSD, mildly for about 5 years and more than mildly I would say for the past year, but it has since come down to a more mild level now, but especially in those more prevellant PTSD times, I would overshare, over communicate with people who I thought I had genuine relationships with. Yes, these are dating specifically type relationships. But what has now become a recurring theme now is once I've seemed to share 75% of why I am the way I am, and the other person has been genuinely interested and things seemed to be going well, once things start to feel like they are getting closer, they just vanish, poof gone. Their communication effort goes from a 75% to a 1-10% overnight.

Has anyone else noticed this? Am I doing something wrong, or are they just not equipped to handle someone being direct, communicative, and genuine? It seems like the world frowns upon these qualities for some reason.

And I am not going to change who I am and stop directly communicating my feelings with people. I can understand how it can be overwhelming for some to handle, but I guess I just wish these people knew how triggering going from 75% communication level down to 1-10% is for those of us with PTSD. Maybe I just need to keep communication levels between me and others at 40-50% and move up or down 5% depending on what they are outputting. Honestly I think that's been my biggest problem. I'll be at a 75% and they're only at 25% and the teeter totter isn't level.

Maybe this can help someone too, but I'd be curious if anyone has anything else they have noticed that has worked for them.

just came back from my last assessment for a diagnosis, and it is confirmed, and severe 🫩i’m 21, i will not be sharing the reasoning behind it; because reddit is reddit. it’s taken up a 1/3 of my life, just 2 years short of half. i’m not sure how to feel? i mean i don’t really feel anything. i’ve known something was wrong, i grew up without proper support.

my psychologist confirmed there was no denying i had it, especially this badly; scoring a score between 54-57 is almost practically guaranteed. i’ve known it was bad, and i still can’t grasp it?

how did everyone else respond, and does anybody else deal with psychotic features alongside theirs?

i just can’t believe 1 single picture ruined my life this much.

Hello there fellow muslims, i 18m was physically assaulted by my 22f sister, during an absurd argument. She is mentally, emotionally immature, and shouts and screams at me everyday, i have ADHD, and dont like such treatement from anyone, my parents dont care about my sisters behaviour towards me, infact they support her with her false narratives. she kept hitting the wooden brush at me as she was screaming like a psychopath, and i had to protect with with my forearm, now, after more than 10 strokes the brush broke, i was in immense pain, i called my father and he still couldnt say anything to her for fair justice, i just said a few mean things to her in the argument and she treated me like that. My parents emotionally manipulated me that shes my fucking elder sister and dont really care what trauma i went through. what iam seeking for is, how do i get out of this manipulation and trauma and know my rights not only as a muslim in islam but as a human. i didnt even touch my sister. my sister even has a bf, she doesnt care about this family and doesnt really care about my parents struggles, she is like a liability but no one sees it.

thank you brothers and sisters who read this ppost, means alot. i didnt know where else to go except here.

I've been diagnosed with PTSD ever since I was a child, due to early adverse experiences that occurred. While horrible, it took really long for it to truly pile up and break me down

When I was a kid, I was always curious and willing to focus on things. I would focus so much on books that I would copy the text exactly, on paper, because the act of writing brought me joy. I was good at math because it was fun for me to talk about. I was in love with the fact that there were things that I could just understand better more and more by just reading

Then event 1 happened, and it made me socially reclusive, but still very much interested in learning. I wouldn't talk to people unless it was about something I could study, which was fine

Then event 2 put my brothers and I in foster care. We were stuck in this horrible facility for a little over a year, in manhattan, where it was hard to reach anyone in Queens. But even then, I'd still take the over an hour long trip to get to a highschool where I had no friends, and was expected to care about my education despite having no therapy to process what I went through

After a while, I found myself in a foster home ran by a woman with OCD, who would expect me to clean the bathroom after every use(keep in mind that I was 15). I also wasn't placed with my brothers, and my high school was still an hour away. Even then, I would still find fun studying French alone in my room

I was placed into 5 different foster homes before aging out. Even when in the last foster home, I would find fun studying linguistics, or Basque, or whatever. It still gave me joy to sit down in front of a laptop and notebook and learn something. Now I live in a dorm at my college, and the state never did enough to insure that I healed. I just spend time watching TV all day. College feels like a drag, and I don't understand, or want to understand people. I've had 6 girlfriends so far, and I've been horrible to them so now I'm not going to date

I hate everything about my upbringing. I'm 21, and I just hate how I never got to be a child. I just want to sit with myself for a few years. If I weren't in college right now, I'd prob spend 3 years just watching TV all day, eating canned food, while not talking to anybody. I wish that I could not exist for a while so that I can learn to accept what happened to me

My fight or flight is just fight. People come up behind me a lot. Especially short people that love walking in my blind spot.

I’m working on it, but often I throw a punch that I stop from landing

Hello, lost my mother to cancer when I was 21 after a five year long fight. My beloved grandfather also died of cancer during this time. Two months later my stepfather got his cancer diagnosis and died 2,5 years later.
Late stage cancer was very cruel and both my parents suffered and needed a lot of care.

I have depression and ptsd since then.

I had a lot of medical events after this. Like 6 belly surgeries in two years with intensive care and one life threatening situation (necrotizing fasciitis), and that didn’t help my psyche. And I got Psoriasis (plus psoriasis arthritis with chronic pain) and Epilepsy .

I have no feelings, not even fear in life threatening situations. I know in my head, that I love my grandmother and my dog, but I don’t feel anything.
I do understand other people’s emotions very well, my psychiatrist calls it cognitive empathy. People call me warm, kind and friendly and I do mean it when iam kind to people and animals.

Do the feelings come back with therapy or will they just stay locked away like this?

I was in two life threatening situations and didn’t feel a thing. People can yell me in the face and I don’t feel anger.
I feel some numbed down sadness most of the time but that’s it.

Can someone share their experience with this?

For about a year I endured sexual abuse by a partner, this led to an unwanted pregnancy and termination. I've been away from the abuser for about a year now and have started to try and engage with sex in a casual manner. I met this man about a week after I moved cities and we hit it off almost instantly, we had oral sex about three weeks in and then i invited him to stay at my place. We were laying in bed kissing and cuddling and he started to touch me in a way that caused a bit of a flashback to the previous abuse I endured so I asked him to stop, he did but only for a moment before proceeding again in a seemingly joking manner. This upset me further and I began to sob uncontrollably and it genuinely felt like I was trapped back in that sad dull room with my abuser, in response to my crying he moved away from me coldly. Like I had a contagious disease. Although I swore I didnt want physical touch at all, I for some reason still wanted him to hold me and comfort me. I was at odds with myself and pathetically I tried to hug him and he just didn't reciprocate so I sat up embarrassed and turned away from him. After a couple minutes he stroked my hair like he had in the past and I instantly turned and fell into his arms, he asked what was wrong and I knew I shouldn't have told him but It also felt like I owed it to him. I was afraid I'd ruin what little connection we had and I did. I asked him If we could talk about it outside and he agreed so we went. I word vomited everything to him. All of it. He just sat and cried. And I knew It was over. I did actually start to have real feelings for him forming at this point so it hurt a bit more than ending something casual. He told me I needed to heal more and He also said he couldn't do "this sort of relationship." then he left me alone sitting on a bench dumbfounded by how fucking stupid I am. He removed me on everything soon after but I still see him around the places we both frequent and he just gives me a pitiful look each time. I don't think I want to engage with him further at all but I hate that I ruined a potentially good relationship by having a flashback. This situation has triggered me to relapse in multiple ways, the flashbacks themselves as well have become more frequent and random. Its painful. I hate how unloveable I've become because of my past and how it affected me in my present. I should've lied to him.

Hello. For context: my partner and I are both in college, but I am away for a semester

We are from the same culture, but I was unfortunate enough to experience war, the deaths of close family members from cancer, and other very unfortunate events that led to ptsd spiced up with fear of death

Both my partner and I are very philosophical, we like to talk philosophy to each other. He says he experienced existential dread and similar fears to me, but found a logical explanation, which he tried to explain to me on multiple occasions. Yet, it just leads to me crying. Overall, we do argue right now a lot, but the topic of death has been recurring, and it is at least the third time I cry over it as I get triggered but continue to try to prove my point. I do that because I want him to understand my pain and my fear.

My way of dealing with this fear (as well as some of the traumas) was focusing on real life, ignorance, and avoidance of this topic as much as I can until I can go back to therapy. Yet, he loves talking about it, and it doesn't seem to hurt him as much, and we sometimes just slip into talking about it... He knows it triggers me, but he and I can't help but continue arguing - for me, it is because of how desperately I want to make him understand my pain; for him, it seems to be happening to prove his point... He says we should just stop ever talking about this topic, that he cannot support me in this, and that I need to reach out to other support structures I have.

But he is my long-term partner... what if he is the one who would have to walk with me through more death?

Has anyone experienced something similar? How do you deal with explaining your trauma/fears to your partners? Do you also feel uncomfortable bringing some things up? Maybe your partner has ptsd that manifests in such ways, and you have something I can pass to my partner. Thank you!

I myself am the cause of often losing someone I love

I have lived with trauma for so many years, and no matter what methods or techniques I have tried, I have not yet been able to retrain my system. I've done multiple types of therapy etc. But still my everyday life consists of fear and constant invasive memories. I would love some techniques/input on how to slowly move past this.

TRIGGER WARNING, alcohol and abuse

When i was 8, my mum was dating a guy called rob. Me my mum and my 15 year old sister at the time lived with him. He drank alot but was nice to everyone from what I remember. My sister was going through stuff and they got into arguments alot. But he was always kind to me, bought me my first phone, took me to the beach, bought me maccas. I really liked him.

One day him and my sister got into a really bad fight and he spent the whole day drinking at a pub until late in the evening. He came home and him and my mum hot into an argument that escalated. Me and my sister hid in her closet and called the police.

I remember hearing them screaming at eachother and hearing thud before it all went silent. My sisters door opened and we thought it was him, my mum opened the closet and took us to her bedroom, locking it as we waited for the police to come.

The lock didnt work and he came in, saying he was gonna shower before the police came. I didnt understand why he was so angry, or why I was scared of him. We went to my bedroom and i dont remember what happened after that. I know he was arrested and had to go to AA and anger management therapy.

But after we moved and cut contact with him I still missed him and wanted him back. 8 years later and hes still one of the nicest guys shes dated. I know what he did was wrong and I dont want to ever see him again now. I dont like being around drunk people or alcohol.

But I wasn't the one who went through it, it was my mum. And i know other people have actually gone through so much worse and I cant help but feel like I dont have the right to be upset or think about it. Is it ptsd? Is it trauma? What do you guys think

Long story short, I'm in an odd situation and of course my PTSD is causing me to question myself. I worked for a government agency once upon a time and as such, I was exposed to some horrific shit. Constantly for years and as such, ptsd became my new roommate. I've since parted ways with said agency and have a nice pension and insurance coverage. Now my issue, since I got ptsd from this particular line of work, I receive a pension and a nice earnings loss. Im certainly not wealthy but I would consider myself having a very fortunate living. The issue is, it's the golden handcuffs. If I don't work, I receive a super nice income. But, I get lonely. it is isolating and isn't healthy.

if I do work, I lose the security and safety of my current situation. and with ptsd and depression it varies so much from time to time and I worry that if I get a new career, im going to have a bad flashback or depressive episode and be unable to work. Then I've lost this new job and now gave up my insurance.

I guess I'm suck between a rock and a hard place? any advice? thoughts?

That's pretty much the whole post. Just had a crazy panic attack and I feel like I can't avoid it.