I was in an armed robbery at the bank where I worked six months ago. I was already on dex and then I got put on Luvox and Solian (antipsychotic). I've just been taken off the antipsychotic and I'm finding it hard to cope. I'm having chest pains and nausea and headaches and I'm so stressed. How long is PTSD supposed to take to go away? I'm trying so hard but nothing seems to work.

If, when you were on Solian, you were managing better; I would suggest going back to your doctor who stopped the medication and letting them know how you are going now. It is quite possible you are not yet ready to stop the medication.

As for the amount of time; it is person dependant. Again, talk to the doctor and see if the two of you can investigate some options to try. Below is a link to a an Australian site with info on trauma management with some contact phone numbers that might help.

http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Trauma_reacting_and_recovering?OpenDocument

Hope this helps.

Sleepz.

Tudorose: I'm sorry that happened to you. Must have been very scarey....and I'm glad you yourself were not physically hurt.....Six months ago is not that long ago.

As someone with my own PTSD from my own circumstances, I can say it goes away slowly, over time......but it does take time......The healing process from this is not easy.....for many.....

In addition to the meds, do you have supportive people to talk to about this? A counselor, therapist, priest/minister whatever.....Your symptoms do sound quite pronounced...especially the chest pains.....If those don't go away, I would suggest seeing your M.D. about them.

I also have been on Luvox by the way. I was given it for my OCD....and then was told it could be used for ADD as well.....It worked somewhat for me.....

Let us know how you're doing.....

Well, I was abused for many years as a young child. I have been dealing with an extremely altered nervous system. I have been in therapy for about 10 years and I'm still working on it. My everything is soooo affected by my PTSD. I have social phobia and of course AD/HD mostly quiet, innatentive. You can just imagine how sensitive that makes me. It's absolutely anything but funny and helpful. I'm still learning though. I struggle with chronic severe depression and paralyzing crippling anxiety pretty regularly. I don't work at all right now, I'm just studying in the present. Although some times I feel bad becasue I am not able to do more as other "normal " people do, this is all I can handle right now. For many years I was only able to work with accomodations doing a very boring, not challenging job. I resisted to my PTSD more than to the other two conditions. I did not want to know nor accept I was sooooooooooo affected by what was done to me. I wanted to be normal, loved and cared for. So I used very sophisticated ways to erase experiences and feelings from my memory. My body always carries them though. I resent people who cause us so much harm and change our lives in such unecessary ways. I have had chest pains, panick attacks, left arm and left leg aches, I suffered amnesia and I'm still working on recovering and processing parts of childhood memory so that I can function like a more integrate person. I abuse myself a lot mentally and by overeating. I don't hurt myself in the ways I did for a few years when I was in my twenties. I use dissociation and avoidance a lot yet. I have trouble sleeping. I started using sleeping pills recently. I have nightmares too often. I have head aches, horrible back aches, my entire face aches and I develop sinus infections frequently for about two years now. My entire body hurts often because of muscle tension. I have horrible flashbacks and I fall into crisis when my feelings come up to be processed. I have developed asthma and irritable bowel syndrome. I have very low tolerance to activities that require a lot of effort, mentally and physically. I tend to hypervigilate my surroundings and I have had some serious problems with motivation and initiative. I tend to get paralyzed which makes me look like a resistant, irresposible, immature person. I'd like to say "but really I'm not", it's hard not to feel bad about it and not to be resentful at myself for how I resist or cannot function some times. I tend to be horribly obscessive and compulsive. It's a very trapping way of being. It makes me feel even more desperate, frustrated and out of control. To all of you here. I am so sorry you have to deal with so much pain. I wish it was so much easier. I do thank God my "abnormalities" are normal, within our conditions themselves. I hope I can help you at least by sharing some of my story with you. We are such good people, so strong. We are not all alone in this. Let's take it one day at a time. Just one day at a time even if it's very scary some times. One day at a time. CELIA

well I'm back in counseling again, I was told that the reason i felt "better" last time was because i was in a new relationship and everything seems better at that time in my life. can anyone comment on the use of treatment plans in counseling with PTSD? my last counselor several years ago gave me 3 goals to work towards, one of them worked itself out, by my being out of the situation, the second was with my 5 year old daughter who i just couldnt bathe due to the abuse when i was 7, i was terrified that she was going to be abused and i got the point where i was mad at her for being a typically curious child(with her body). the third was that i could get over the very damaging divorce with my first husband-he was emotionally abusive to someone that was just looking for someone to love her. that counseling got me to a healing point with all 3 of my issues, but now i have new issues that i have to deal with. I keep crying into my hands asking "when is it going to go away" well my counselor told me that the only way for me to get through the healing process is to be patient and deal with situations as they come. so now with the issues i have we dig deap and dredge up all the old junk that hurt to begin with because she is able to see the connections to my past and the present. I'm getting there.wish me luck.

My husband has ptsd from the military . He will never get rid of it that I know.
My 8yr son has ptsd from watching me be abused by his bio father for years. I believe in time he will over come it.
I have ptsd from a child custody battle . I honestly don't think I will over come it until my kids are adults.

I talk to my husband alot about his military experanices to help him with his ptsd . So far it has worked .. he rarely gets flash backs or dreams about it. He loves war movies so something those do effect him and in the middle of the night I have to wake him up .

Now my 8yr son I have no clue what to do for him . He is in counsling and that has helped out alot but he also has adhd,odd, and slight dyslexic so he has alot of things going on in his head.

I was held up two years ago Nov. I am so much better than I was then. I think for everyone it is different, plus it depends on other stress that's in your life. I didn't sleep good for about a year. Infact I couldn't sleep more than a couple hours sometimes. Also I could not sleep at night. The sad thing is it changed me for the rest of my life. However, I can live a normal life now with few problems from it. I hope that you heal.

Sorry to hear about what you have been through Eve and I am glad you are doing better now.

I was in an armed robbery at the bank where I worked six months ago. I was already on dex and then I got put on Luvox and Solian (antipsychotic). I've just been taken off the antipsychotic and I'm finding it hard to cope. I'm having chest pains and nausea and headaches and I'm so stressed. How long is PTSD supposed to take to go away? I'm trying so hard but nothing seems to work.
Hi Tudorose, your question is a difficult one, and one that I think only your Doctor should answer. All cases of PTSD are different. Your PTSD may last for a long time, or it may only last a short time. I hope it is the latter. But, having said all that, I was told mine was probably to be a permanent part of my life. I accepted that, but it has diminished over time in frequency of flashbaks and nightmares. Nightmares were the first thing to ease a little, flashbacks secondary.....but like has already been mentioned, sometimes the flashbacks happen without an identifiable trigger for me, and other times it can be as simple as a movie.

I am so sorry to hear what you went through, but from reading this forum, and personal experience, it's nice to know we aren't all alone.

Hugs,
~Viktoria

Hi,

It's been 18 months now and things are improving. I finally have a group of people helping me that I can trust (it only took 14 months for that to happen in the workers comp system). Now I can concentrate on getting better without being bullied. I'm a lot more sociable now but I'm still very fragile and get stressed/shut down easily. What I've learned now is to take it one step at a time. It might take years to get over but I realise now that I can't control it and that I have to try and take it as it comes.

Hiya I am a sufferer of ptsd that comiserates with your condition but may be able to contribute something to the debate. Unfortunately there is no right answer to how long it until your psyche recovers from the injury suffered. Staring down the barrel of a gun is a life changing experience, particularly in terms of the impact it can have on your psyche. Hell I have awful reactions to some movies and tv programs; I cannot go to certain places without having massive reactions. Sure I have learned to hide it, but the signs are there.
Do little checklists and see whether different muscle groups are tight when you experience pain etc. I find i set my jaw, my neck and shoulders, and feel like my rib-cage closes up so there is little or no space between the ribs. This in itself can lead to ribs twisting and jamming into your vertebrae etc and while painful, can also be the cause of referred pain in the chest. I get pain I think my heart is gonna explode, but it aint where my heart is, its just above my sternum, and feels like a spike is trying to break through my breast plate with excruciating pain.
Quite aside from solian being an anti-schizophrenic in particular which I found to be quite terrifying, insulting, untrue, negligent, and showing little understanding for what I was experiencing, acute hypervigilance. Mention recreational drugs and this immediately put you in the camp for drug induced schizophrenia, psychiatry's new social experiment, I did find it useful in coping with my hyperarousal. I described it as like adding gelatine to the full cup o stress overflowing in my skull. Perhaps, t-pot, and t-cup analogies are a little dangerous in this Oh so procrustean labarynth.
OKay here is my point. PTSD has as a major symptom hyperarousal, so what in gods name are you doing on the dex, or any stimulant type drug at all? Okay i may have jumped the gun here but you may not be continuing with the adhd drugs like dex and ritalin. My only concern was that the adhd drugs could in fact cause the same or similar chemical events in the brain, practically mirroring ptsd's hypervigilance. Dangerous ground here I know, but I suggest that any use of drugs which causes the same symptoms as ptsd is only increasing your chances of suffering the worst effects of the injury. I was on tramal which can have a similar impact on seratonin and dopamine recptors in the brain, and I would have to say that from the moment I started using Tramal in 2002, in Alice Springs, elements of my previously supressed injury to my psyche, the demons started coming out of the box. Chuck in a combination of medically prescribed anti-convulsants, anti-spazmodic, anti-congenial, anti-fit, and anti-depressent and the effect was bordering on madness. I say this because I think it is important to recognise that some cocombinant medications can be terrifying in consequences. One anti-depressant made me so wired in combination with the tramal that I couldn't sleep, wired, hypervigilant, but what came first the chicken or the egg?
I noticed the effect of pseudo-ephedrine on my symptoms. Sure maybe I am different? But please consider getting off the dex. Maybe a program designed to help you switch and withdraw gradually may be the answer.
After traumatic events they say that the body actually can store every single memory, not just in their minds but in their bodies as well the body has its own reflexes finely-tuned. It would be a shame to find that you are experiencing the harrowing insomnia drained life from the combination of triggers, both actual and chemical/pharmaceutical.
I only say this because my life has already taken a turn for the better since changing drugs. Still that isn't an answer to how long it lasts. Til your body stops its autonomic responses taking you back into that moment in time, consciously or not, maybe some indication. It sure opens a can o worms into your past.
And hey, the journey down the rabbit hole is also part of it, how long you spend there and how far you go, is up to you entirely, and the sooner you are done the better, providing your journey down there was fruitful.
It is different for everyone. I spent an hour wi a pistol pushed in my ear, so i do I have some idea of what you are experiencing. All I can say is
"May It Pass Quickly"



Cocacolocao

btw: ADHD forum bosses, please do not dump email because I suggest that on an individual level the experiences between adhd chemicals and the bodies response to stress post trauma may seemingly mirror one another. I just think if you can eliminate any unnecessary triggering of those particular receptors, dopamine/seritonin then you reduce the frequency.

Hiya,

I did a PTSD day hospital program in 2006. It really helped me a lot.

http://www.womenscollegehospital.ca/programs/program126.html


It sounds like you are having a lot of bodily symptoms... chest pains, nausea, headaches.

Trauma can get "trapped in the body" that way.

I suggest reading WAKING THE TIGER by Peter Levine and TRAUMA AND THE BODY by Pat Ogden.




The treatment (2nd book) that I took at the Day Hospital was called Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. It is the best treatment I have found so far. (EMDR actually made me worse.)

(Both books are written psychologists who study how 'trapped trauma', often stored non-verbally, affects the body/mind systems.)

Article #1:
http://tmt.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/3/149

Article #2:
http://www.fsu.edu/~trauma/v6i3/v6i3a3.html


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In Australia, these folks seem to know about it:

http://www.pathoutofpain.com.au/contact/html/contact.html