Question:
From what I have read here and from other online sites about sp, I think I have it. I am feeling really down about it. OTOH, I have lived in an abusive marriage for many years and wonder if it might be PTSD. As a child though, I did have problems with shyness and fitting in. I avoided school sometimes pretending to be sick when I wasn’t. I remember my kindergarten teacher who smacked us on the hand with a ruler if we didn’t hold our pencil right. I was so scared of going to school then I would hide behind the chair in my house. There were some years where I was bullied and picked on and we moved a lot so it was hard to make friends anyway. I used to play an instrument in school and we moved and I was no longer first chair. I had to play a solo and it turned out so badly that I quit band by the end of the week, I never played again. I recall a speech I had to give in high school and I started and froze and ran out of the room crying and when another student came to the bathroom to see if I was ok, I lied and said I was upset because my boyfriend broke up with me. In college, I had a speech course and did well with it even though I was scared. Now I have a hard time finishing anything. I can psych myself up to get employment sometimes but frankly the longest I have stayed at any job is about a year and a half. Some jobs, if they are too stressful, I will quit after a few weeks. I can’t live like this forever as it means I would have to stay with my abusive spouse. It took me many years to get a degree and I still feel inadequate. For a couple years I had panic attacks where I couldn’t go to work or school. Finally they went away by themselves. The last job I had I was under so much pressure from my boss, I started having them again and so I just up and quit. I had worked there about 7 months. I am supposed to be looking for work now but I look at the ads and think I am not qualified for this. I don’t think this is a realistic assessment of my skills. I have been lying about my job search as I afraid of getting a job and then after a few weeks, starting to complain about it and get stressed out and then quit. I think I am mostly afraid of getting a horrible demanding boss, having to talk to a lot of people, and not being able to do my job right. I feel so trapped and I want out. I would go to a therapist but we have no medical insurance.
Response:
Hello Brain Interrupted, My advice to you is to find out some more about PTSD on the web to try to decide what might be going on. My gut feeling is you are just starting out on the road to figure out what is wrong. One thing is for sure is to get a solid diagnosis rather than going round thinking about this and that like I did till I was 45 when in December of 1998 I heard about Social Phobia on the radio by accident and knew instantly when the two words Social and Phobia were tied together that this was my problem. Because psychology and psychiatry are so primitive today there is the awful possibilty that they haven’t identified the condition you have. I guess in this respect I got very lucky. Still just like when you go to a medical doctor who is trained to listen to your symptoms and reach a diagnosis even if it’s only a throat infection I advise you to prompt anyone you might contact to think in terms of reaching a diagnosis just exactly like a medical doctor would do. You say you do not have medical insurance and I feel very sorry for you but it just now occurred to me there are many newsgroups covering all kinds of disorders and while I know this is a huge task to complete to root around in some newsgroups you might get some benefit from checking out say groups for shyness or anxiety or panic. We have a welfare system here in Ireland and I can get help for free. I’m so sorry you do not have something like this in the States(I’m guessing you are from the US where 40 million Americans do not have heath insurance. Something must be done about this. Don’t get me wrong I love the USA and it’s people.) Byasking yourself and us if you have PSTD you are already thinking in terms of getting a diagnosis and like I said this is a key step. No ne can be helped till a diagnosis is reached. Your Friend in Cyberspace,alt.support.social-phobia. Peter Nolan. Dublin.
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