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Hi Guys
When I go through an anxiety /depression episode I have problems with association.
My brain immediately reverts back to previous anxiety attacks which take about a month to fully get over. It is if I am right back to previous times and it makes it harder to recover quickly.
Could this be a form of PTSD?
Jackie xx
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is caused by very stressful, frightening or distressing events.
The type of events that can cause PTSD include:
military combat
serious road accidents
terrorist attacks
natural disasters, such as severe floods, earthquakes or tsunamis
being held hostage
witnessing violent deaths
violent personal assaults, such as sexual assault, mugging or robbery.
My Psychologist thinks that I may have PTSD. It is linked to a traumatic event. I wouldn't say that remembering a previous panic attack would be classed as PTSD.
PTSD is a very specific cluster of symptoms which develop in response to a traumatic experience, in which your life or physical safety is threatened, or you witness events of this nature.
PTSD is a very over used term. Association is common in anxiety and depressive episodes and feeds our fears and anxieties. CBT may help you break some of these negative thought patterns.
The strict definition of PTSD is recurrent episodes of anxiety caused by earlier incidents when you were (or someone close to you was) in a life-threatening situation.
This definition excludes a lot of people who were threatened in some way (eg emotional or sexual abuse) in a situation which was not life-threatening, but threatened their sense of self in a very real way.
My own feeling is that those cases are also PTSD, even if they do not fit the official definition.