New here

[phoebe22]

:hello:

i'm really not good at self-intro, usually being the kind of person to enter through a side door and try to remain invisible, :hide: but will do my best.

several years ago i was dx'd with complex PTSD and DDNOS, the latter of which has undergone many adjustments over time. i'm not sure what the current label is, but my guess is somewhere between depersonalization and a kind of generic/random dissociation.

because this has been going on a really long time, i could ramble on indefinitely about how confusing things can get, but i guess the main thing i'd want to say regarding why i've joined this forum is to get a better understanding of what happens during those episodes of ... well, i'm really at a loss what to call them.

because i live in a realllllllly isolated area where the "flying shrink" only visits once every few months and has time only to see the most severe cases, i rarely see him, and there's no one else who has been able to help me understand much about my condition(s). i "get" the PTSD, but the other is almost as confusing to identify as it is to live with. :wacko:

so i hope i can learn a bit more here.

and, um, well ... i guess that's me.

thanks

eek:

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Welcome to Psychlinks, Phoebe!

 

[Retired]

Welcome to Psychlinks Phoebe!

Living in a place where access to medical services is limited can very difficult. Do you have access to a general practitioner to care for your routine medical needs? Have you ever received any form of therapy and are you currently taking any medications to help deal with your diagnoses?

 

[Andy]

Welcome to Psychlinks Phoebe22:2thumbs:

 

[Cat Dancer]

Welcome to Psychlinks!

 

[phoebe22]

Welcome to Psychlinks Phoebe!
Living in a place where access to medical services is limited can very difficult. Do you have access to a general practitioner to care for your routine medical needs? Have you ever received any form of therapy and are you currently taking any medications to help deal with your diagnoses?

Hi, and thank you for the welcome. I have just gone over the rules (will no doubt need to re-visit as my memory is the pits) so while I remember, please forgive if I sometimes fail to use caps; I have quite advanced arthritis and sometimes reaching for those extra keys gets really difficult. As a result, i've fallen into bad habits

Regarding med care and therapy, my basic needs are seen to. Because i was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia prior to the diagnosis of c-PTSD and DDNOS (or whatever they're calling it this week :lol, my GP - who doesn't "believe in" such conditions as FM - tends to write a lot of things off as attention-seeking, which is unfortunate because it means i don't feel safe talking to him about so many things, but he does follow the psychiatrist's recommendations, more or less, in terms of medication. For some reason, perhaps due in part to Fibro and in part to many years of being given so many different medications, i have a very low tolerance, so at this point the focus is on pain management and sleep. I don't seem any the worse for it, and while it would be wonderful to be able to relax a bit more and not have to remain quite so vigilant (on the alert for signals of disconnection), it also makes it a lot easier to identify which symptoms are physical and which symptoms are emotional. I'd be very happy if it would all just go away, but I dont' think that happens too often, if ever

i do have what they call a clinician ... I'm not sure exactly what that is, except she's employed by provincial Mental Health ... and she is a wonderful listener, but most of the time she doesn't have anything new to add to previous discussion or advice. I also know that I often mis-communicate, which leaves her no more enlightened and me frustrated at not having said what I was trying to say.
:bonk:

Well, I have survived this long - in the case of PTSD essentially my entire life - and I think that's partly because I'm not afraid to ask questions. From a very early age I have had to be my own mother (yikes! :yuck: I apologize for that because it sounds like a great big Poor Me :dramaqueen: ) and I'm grateful for that now because it's taught me there's no shame in Asking Questions ... or standing up for myself. I'm also very grateful for those people who do their best to help me in whatever ways they can. I really hope they know how much I appreciate them.

I'm very brain-foggy today, but I hope I'll be able to absorb at least some of the really interesting-looking information here, and will no doubt have an awful lot of questions along the way.

:thankyou:

 

[CarlaMarie]

Glad you are here.

 

[phoebe22]

Welcome to Psychlinks, Phoebe!

Thank you.

eek:

---------- Post added February 6th, 2011 at 06:44 AM ---------- Previous post was February 5th, 2011 at 07:20 PM ----------

Welcome to Psychlinks Phoebe22:2thumbs:

:thankyou2:

:hide:

---------- Post added at 06:50 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:44 AM ----------

Glad you are here.

:thankyou:

eek:

 

[phoebe22]

Welcome to Psychlinks!

urr: (thank you)

eek:

 

[Retired]

i do have what they call a clinician

I wonder if this might be a nurse practitioner..I am not familiar with health services in B.C.

Your best strategy might be to continue informing yourself from reliable medical resources, and I stress reliable because, as you know the internet is rampant with quackery and self serving interests. By being informed, you can form a partnership with your health care providers, to be able to ask the right questions and provide the necessary input for them to select the right options for your treatment.

You need to become an empowered patient, and advocate on your own behalf in your situation.

 

[phoebe22]

I wonder if this might be a nurse practitioner..I am not familiar with health services in B.C.

Your best strategy might be to continue informing yourself from reliable medical resources, and I stress reliable because, as you know the internet is rampant with quackery and self serving interests. By being informed, you can form a partnership with your health care providers, to be able to ask the right questions and provide the necessary input for them to select the right options for your treatment.

You need to become an empowered patient, and advocate on your own behalf in your situation.

There are people who have worked as nurses or in other professions before training as clinicians, but I don't think there are any nurse practitioners per se; at least, not locally. Their job appears, basically, to be keeping tabs on clients, to listen, to offer practical help (e.g. finding information), and so on. They're also trained to recognize signs of trouble, when to contact a person's GP or the psych.

I know what you mean about reliable information :2thumbs: The "web" is a fantastic resource, especially when alternatives are limited, but it does call for a degree of skepticism (and in my case, I suspect, a hearty helping of cynicism :think

I have had to educate myself (or try to educate myself) mostly out of self-preservation; I have yet to find a GP or psych who seems interested in my input. They strongly indicate that we are not in a collaborative relationship, demonstrating no patience for my questions, no matter how educated those questions may be. Some have been very triggering in that they often seem to be telling me that what I say I think and feel are not, in fact, what I think and feel. Regarding medications, it was years before I was finally believed when I reported bad reactions, allergic reactions and/or paradoxical reactions, and then only because they were witnessed.

I wish I were making this up, but I'm not I'm starting to think that I must be exceptionally inept at communicating those things which I want/need to communicate because it doesn't seem possible that so many people could consistently not hear what I'm saying.

I often feel as if, along with my health and my ability to cope with certain issues/triggers, I've lost my status as an adult human being. I expect some social stigmatization, but I don't expect it from my health care providers. Perhaps I'm hypersensitive, but it's often so overt it can't be mistaken for anything else.

This doesn't stop me from continuing to operate on the assumption that if I persist, I'll make headway, but thus far I feel very much on my own most of the time. As such, I really do have to be my own advocate. It's exhausting and often very discouraging, but there doesn't seem to be a viable alternative. I have times when I'm so exhausted on every level that I almost wish I'd just "disconnect" and never come back, but my survival instincts are apparently too strong to allow that or any other form of "escape".

This feels terribly garbled; I hope it's not as awful as it looks from here

Thanks,

:hide:

---------- Post added at 10:23 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:57 AM ----------

An afterthought re: Drs and Psych ...

In any situation or conversation which feels at all threatening, my automatic reaction is to freeze up mentally and physically. This makes communication difficult at best and most often impossible. I understand a lot of the "why", but I'm not making much headway in terms of what do do about it.

 

[Dragonfly]

In any situation or conversation which feels at all threatening, my automatic reaction is to freeze up mentally and physically. This makes communication difficult at best and most often impossible. I understand a lot of the "why", but I'm not making much headway in terms of what do do about it.

Welcome phoebe22. yeah - its that "fight .... flight .... or freeze" response. At many levels, I believe that I can understand how the freeze-response probably helped you in the past. But maybe not so much now. Sometimes people find it helpful to learn anti-anxiety skills (like visualization, deep breathing, ways to ground self), then practice, practice, practice until they become as familiar as the freeze response. Is there someone who could help you with this? Or maybe the Mood Disorders Association of BC (they are a general support resource for people in BC - you don't have to have a mood disorder for them to help) might be able to help you find someone accessible to you. Best wishes.

 

[phoebe22]

Freezing literally saved my life when I was younger, as well as reducing the hours of torture. It's still a valuable reflex at times, but a royal pain at other times. So I practice, and sometimes I'm really good at it, especially if not pushed into having to justify my words/actions/existence on command. Confrontation is still hard. Really hard, sometimes impossible. Have only so much control , especially when the dragons are prowling the ground is sliding out from under my feet.

Thanks for the suggestion; soon as my head clears a bit I'll look into it. I have a direct source to organizations and info, so basically I'd just have to make a phone call and hope it doesn't somehow boomerang on me. (These things sometimes do ... I go looking for help and end up neck deep in a whole lot of stuff that just makes things worse.)

Life: Approach With Caution ...

:hide: