Difference between AS and C-PTSD?

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I find that I have an issue with flashbacks too...I winder if they are self perpetuating though...

PTSD (well i suppose C-PTSD, really) has been a problem for me for a long time now. i can relate to so much in the responses to this post. not sure exactly what caused mine either, or rather don't think it had one specific cause more than any other (abusive home life, bullying in school, sexual assault, emotional trauma, etc etc). i have very few memories left to me from the first 18 years of my life. mostly large gaps, blanks of time. i also have a mood disorder (bipolar II), so it's hard to say sometimes what is an emotional flashback and what is an episode. one thing i can't mistake as a symptom of anything else but PTSD is the nightmares. they are the worst. it was bad enough to have had to experience some of the things i've experienced once in real life, but to have to live them over and over again in my sleep is torture. the feelings come back and are just as strong, sometimes stronger, as they were with the original incident, and they stay with me after i wake up, and follow me around all day. nothing touches the nightmares. i am obviously on medication for the bipolar disorder (a stabiliser, an anti-depressant and a mild antipsychotic), and also occasionally take a hypnotic sedative to keep my sleep regular, but none of those medications have any effect on the dreams whatsoever. i could take 5 of my sedatives and pass out and sleep for 14 hours and still have nightmares. the only thing that prevents them that i have found is marijuana. i can deal with just about anything else that the other disorders throw at me, but the PTSD nightmares i would give anything to live without. they are hell.

I remember everything that ever happened to me, which is an immense amount of data at this point. There was constant movement from one place/one school system/one environment to the next with trauma and abuse of all kinds, in the most extreme or severe, and the worst forms of neglect and abandonments as well, all of which is still very horrible to carry around to this day. My autistic brain recorded everything, which is an extremely unfortunate correlate in this type of situation. I wish I didn't have to remember. I think those who are able to block out traumatic memories are very lucky.

I have wondered about this. I recently recovered some memories of severe trauma where I had an out of body experience and I find myself wondering if I was 'normal' before this happened. I must have been around three or four. Because I don't think that when I 'came down' from the out of body experience, things were the same for me. I was around very bad people from infancy so this probably wasn't the first thing that happened, but I know I was in a life-threatening situation and the fear was unbelievable. So I'm not sure I ever allowed myself to 'feel' at that level again. I believe I shut down whole sections of my personality and cognition, which I am trying right now to allow myself to re-experience.

Alana, I have felt the same way and had the same experience. I have not yet recovered the memory of what happened, I just remember the feeling that everything changed. I have not been the same since and have experienced near constant traumatic events throughout my childhood. I have also wondered if I was "normal" before then. I remember a period of time in kindergarten and preschool where I was happy, well adjusted, and making friends. By first grade I was suffering in school, had no friends, couldn't communicate well, and had started self harming. I still think it was a combination of AS and CPTSD.

I understand some people wishing they could forget, but I wish I could remember! It's impossible to deal with the emotions that accompany PTSD without being able to understand and process them. I feel that I have been so close to recovering countless times, but I am constantly being thrown back by emotional flashbacks to an event/events that I cannot remember.

I believe the trauma was sexual in nature as I had strange ideas about sexuality throughout my childhood and huge issues with being touched. I also harmed myself from a very early age (around 5) until my mid teens, some of which was sexual in nature.

Good luck to everyone trying to work through CPTSD and AS.

I never had a period where I had any social skills and at this point is clear I never will. In kindergarten I had trouble following instructions and wondered why everyone else did what they were told or asked to do while I was clearly unable to. I didn't appear to have any power over it and would sort of beg myself to comply before I was physically yanked but was never able to before I was physically hurt that way for my misbehavior. My siblings grew up in the exact same environment that I did regarding the trauma but they never had any of the problems that I had, and still have socially.

Good God, this is the wrong planet.

What a mean thing to say to people who are struggling with AS and autism, among other things. What is your point exactly? There were enough bullies in the school yard. Do we have to deal with it here too?

That's mean? It's what's the title of the site itsself means! We're all on the wrong planet. None of this should happen. All the stories of stolen and traumatic childhoods... It's all wrong.

Thanks for explaining. I'm glad to know that because it was hard to tell.

Thanks for listening. Anyway, on with the thread, if you want.

thank you...

Nothing wrong with the planet though. All of this is able to happen cause too many on this planet turn a blind eye to it. And the one thing I have learnt in life is that there are too many in the caring professions only capable of caring if it is on their terms.
As a 45-year old I was told by a shrink there would be nobody in the country prepared to diagnose me with an attachment disorder. So I ask him if that was because then it would be an admittance of the failure of the system. For all the official interference, including 2 residential observation no one seemed able to figure out they were dealing with a severely traumatised child? He told me I was too smart for my own good. Still not figured out wether to take it as an insult or a compliment. Next time I saw the same shrink I was told it was his prerogative not to see me again...
I'm a few years down the line now and being tested for AS at the moment and the question that plays through my mind is wether I will turn out to be on the spectrum and in how far did that actually protected and enabled me to get as far as I did. My final app. is on 20th dec. See what it brings.

I know I have signs of C-PTSD/PTSD, especially since I'm trained to identify it in others. However, there is still no doubt I have an ASD because my issues have been there since as early as I can remember (age 3) and I did not suffer any trauma until I got to Junior High. Yes, I was teased and bullied but nothing too serious and nothing more than 10-20% of kids are in elementary school.

I think I have PTSD BECAUSE of having an ASD. Like many on the spectrum, I have a photographic long term memory and am still haunted by those horrific teenage memories. I recently saw a Jail documentary, and when I saw 6-8 guards jump one inmate because they misinterpreted a sudden move as an attack it brought back all those horrible memories of what was done to me. The only difference is that inmate had the guards explain themselves after it was over while I still to this day don't know what provoked 8-10 kids (most not the least bit violent and from good homes) to attack me.

Unfortunately, it's a nightmare trying to get a diagnosis of ASD or PTSD as an adult, and even the local Autism society has told me how it is almost impossible in my area and most of the 30+ members they have were diagnosed in a big city like Toronto. I'll keep plugging along but it seems I'm too 'normal' to get any help.

I'm pretty damn sure I have both of them. It makes everything make sense-- and when it makes all the pieces fall together and make a picture that makes perfect sense, it's probably right.

The difference is that C-PTSD requires a sustained series of traumatic events, while ASD is organic. Hardwired, part of your brain, there from the word GO.

In theory, you can get over C-PTSD, but you will always be an Aspie.

In practice?? My uncle did two combat tours in Vietnam over 30 years ago-- he came home, got married, had a pack of kids who love him dearly and stayed close, retired after 30 years in the coal mines, and has half a dozen grandchildren who adore him and four great-nieces and -nephews who don't quite realize that he's not their actual grandfather. He copes pretty darn well-- as long as nothing massive happens to push his buttons. But you DON'T sneak up behind him-- if you have to approach from the back or the sides, you start talking while you're still three or four feet away. You DON'T tell him "no" unless you really have to-- and then you accept that he's going to be pissed at you for WEEKS. You DON'T leave the door open for people to threaten or harass him-- no ifs, ands, or buts, because it's going to make life hell for him and everyone around him.

In practice, C-PTSD hangs around just like ASD. You can learn to cope with it, to deal with it, to live with it and even to live well. But something that rewires your understanding of the world that massively IS NOT GOING TO GO AWAY.

Is growing up with undiagnosed or improperly treated ASD enough to give you C-PTSD??

YES. If you don't get extremely lucky in finding some friends, some teachers who know how to cope with you (or can at least have a kindly sense of humor in tolerating you), and a family that has some concept of how to deal with you and teach you to navigate the world WITHOUT teaching you that you're broken, growing up with undiagnosed or mistreated ASD is ABSOLUTELY enough to give you C-PTSD.

If I'd grown up in my husband's family, I would have had it by the time I was an adolescent.

As it turned out, I was wounded by the time I became an adult, but I was LUCKY. I had friends. I had family. I had Aspies who had gone before me and broke the ground in my family. I had BAP relatives who at least half-assin' "got" me and had enough self-esteem to tell me I wasn't completely and totally and irredeemably f****d up. I had teachers who taught me, if not to compensate for my weaknesses, at least to capitalize on my strengths.

I had Saint Alan-- an Aspie, with ASD very similar to my own, who miraculously managed to get through life with remarkably few scars. He should've been a case study-- therapy for ASD could be a decade or two ahead of where it is now if people who write books had had Saint Alan to learn from.

I firmly believe that God was having a good design day when He, in His wisdom, made Saint Alan my father.

I ended up with (according to the MMPI) "symptoms of PTSD sufficient for diagnosis despite the lack of an adequately traumatizing event" anyway...

...and I have, frankly, no one but myself to blame. I can be mad at a lot of people who contributed to it-- and they probably deserve my wrath, because their behavior was ignorant at best and reprehensible at worst-- but I have no one but myself to blame.

I am the one who chose to accept their views and build my life around them.

I am the one who chose to believe that having Asperger's meant I deserved the bad things that happened.

I am the one who chose to believe that I was a monster with no redeeming qualities.

I am the one who chose to destroy my own voice.

I am the one who chose to force myself to think and behave like a battered woman.

I am the one who made those choices, even though my common sense and (most of) my upbringing told me to do something else-- something more difficult, but saner.

I put me here. There was no war, no prolonged domestic violence, no catastrophic injury or illness that I could not help. There was prolonged captivity-- but the person who put me in that cage, and the person who dangled the key in front of my face but would not let me out was ME.

Now I have to clean up the mess. If I can.