i hope the new diagnosis will help bring you relief.

good luck to you

... or the EKG says I have a heart arrhythmia, then barring some serious mix-up, I can be certain my arm is broken or I have a heart arrhythmia. Mental health diagnoses can be a little looser than that.

If the new information in my possession is useful to me, I use it, if it's not I file it away for the moment and try not to disturb it. Sometimes it's not easy. I've got an OCD diagnosis too, but with me it's always been pretty obvious. I've had it so bad that it does interfere with my life. I'm prone to wake up at night grinding along the same circular paths in my mind that lead nowhere. I've been trapped by my OCD in places where I stop eating or sleeping because those activities would interfere with whatever I was obsessing about.

The useless obsessions don't go entirely away with the right meds, but they don't interfere so much with my life. Most nights I can sleep well enough. But sometimes I worry I'm missing out on the very rare sorts of obsessions (I can count the times on my fingers) that were useful, that allowed me to solve the problem that no one else could solve. But I've also solved these same sorts of problems without having them stuck in my head, in gentle restful sleep, wake up refreshed and excited by a new approach to a problem. So maybe my perception that the OCD was ever beneficial in this way is faulty. But I also know the OCD keeps me going when everything else has gone dark. If I don't exist then I can't do the useless things I have to do. Therefore I continue to exist no matter how dark my world has become.

I got a surprising PTSD diagnosis and the therapist suggested EMDR. I've always felt pretty solid here, I had a very secure early childhood, a foundation strong enough that not even the severe bullying I experienced in middle and high school can't haunt me, it's simply part of who I am, the story of me. The worst traumas, the PTSD stuff, came after I quit high school.

I've never done anything about it, no EMDR or other sorts of therapy. My "triggers," the sorts of situations that set off a panic attack, are rare and usually easy for me to avoid.

Good luck to you!

Unless you count them listing my occupation as a homemaker, which was news to me.

I wouldn't take it to heart. All these diagnosis's are just so they can figure out what helps you get through the day. That's the most important part to see, after looking past all the gibberish.

I've been talking to a long-time friend who has PTSD, and she is not surprised by the dx. I am not currently seeing a therapist, but have been considering finding a new one. I've been putting off because I hate starting over from scratch with someone new.

I'm not sure I've ever had an official diagnosis. It's always just been major depression and some mixture of other anxiety disorders. I've come to realize in the past few years that a MAJOR component of my problems has been sever social anxiety. But again I've never received an official diagnosis on paper that I know of. I probably have come to think of it as I was prescribed a number of different SSRIs over the course of about a year with my last psychiatrist but he never officially came out and told me 'you suffer from X Y and Z'.

Sometimes I would like to have such an official list of diagnoses but at other times I wonder if it would make any real difference. I think what I need more than anything is some serious talk therapy, which I've never had much of. If you manage to receive targeted therapy for your specific diagnosis that helps then I think it's more than worth it. But I think too often we are just dealing with more and more labels and less and less actual help. It's all fine and good to say I suffer from major depress, OCD, PTSD, social anxiety, etc etc... and it DOES help one to feel better when they can identify with a group of other like sufferers, but ultimately we need more than just labels and I think too often we don't get it.

A few years ago PTSD was the new phrase for war veterans and it caught on because we have all gone thru some traumatic experience
that could trigger stuff to get hung up about. The term Hung UP was used during the 50s and 60s then stopped because it sounded corny
but it's meaning is valid =we get hung up on memories and it can stop us from being in the " now" which is another over used bull shit term. So the solution to all our troubles is to not be hung up and to be here now which sounds like a bad script .

It's hard being around the lingo when it's there not for us but for the convenience of others to diagnose sometimes with no intention of treatment but just to make them feel superior .We aren't stats ,sometimes we are test subjects but we aren't stats.

What do we know about ourselves ? what if we make ourselves up and don't really exist ? Why do we have to pay someone to listen to us ? I think it's because we are complex , sensitive and " hung up " but fuck em if they can't take a joke .

Some people are much more susceptible to it than others, and it's often just an accident of genetics.

Some people burn easily, some people get freckles, some people get a deep dark tan, others have darker sun resistant skin to begin with.

Childhood exposure to too much sun can increase the odds of getting skin cancer later.

PTSD is the same sort of process, but with brain structure and chemistry.

I think we all have it to some degree plus it can surface years later if and when it gets put into our play back machine somehow.

those of us who have been bullied ,physically , sexually or mentally abused ---the flash can come back then Boom out of control
for however long and that's the mystery I hope that gets solved .