Believing

I had an intense therapy session today with my psychologist, Sally. Basically I told her about an incident following watching part of a family home video on Thanksgiving. A day later I started getting severely depressed when I spoke of it, on the verge of tears, but I was at my boyfriend's house and didn't want to cry there. I ended up crying in therapy today and when I went into why it upset me I pretty much started sobbing and could not stop.

For the first time ever, a clinician told me I have PTSD. Post traumatic stress disorder. Nine years ago my boyfriend at the time tried to convince my psychiatrist (who happens to be my psych doc now) that I had it and she would not hear it. She has never believed that I was abused; she even wrote on my psych eval : 'No history of abuse'. I switched psychiatrists but ended up back under her care when there were not much other options with my insurance.

I've known all along that I have suffered from PTSD, but no one would believe me. My therapists all believed that I was abused, one thought I had MPD/DID, another thought I had DDNOS (Dissociative disorder not otherwise specified). I have experienced psychosis but I have discovered that psychotic symptoms can occur with PTSD. I found this information from the website: http://ptsd.about.com/od/relatedconditions/a/Psychosis.htm. I have copied and pasted an excerpt below:

"Psychotic Symptoms in PTSD

Researchers at the University of Manitoba, Columbia University, and the University of Regina examined the data on 5,877 people from across the United States in order to determine the rates with which people with PTSD experience different psychotic symptoms.

They found that, among people with PTSD, the experience of positive psychotic symptoms was most common. Approximately 52% of people who reported having PTSD at some point in their lifetime also reported experiencing a positive psychotic symptom.

The most common positive symptoms were:

• Believing that other people were spying on or following them (27.5%)
  
  
• Seeing something that others could not see (19.8%)
  
  
• Having unusual feelings inside or outside of their bodies, such as feeling as though they were being touched when no one was really there (16.8%)
  
  
• Believing that they could hear what someone else was thinking (12.4%)
  
  
• Being bothered by strange smells that no one else could smell (10.3%)
  
  
• Believing that their behaviors and thoughts were bring controlled by some power or force (10%)

The researchers also found evidence that the more PTSD symptoms a person was experiencing, the greater the likelihood that they would also experience positive psychotic symptoms."