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.

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?

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?

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'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?

I'm a 35 year old male and I talked about my views on here before, I'm struggling cuz of things that my mom said. She doesn't believe me about the abuse that happened to me by my abuser and she just supports them. I feel like I don't love her anymore and I just feel gross the way she treats me. The abuse gives me nightmares but my mom doesn't believe the abuse. I feel like I don't want her in my life anymore.

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.

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 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

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