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Help a broken relationship between an anhedonic son and PTSD mother

ptsd anhedonia broken relationship

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#1 Deaden

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Posted 17 October 2017 - 07:10 PM


Okay so this is going to be a long story, I’ll appreciate any advice...

 

About a year ago, I lost my capacity to feel pleasure and emotions. I’m pretty confident my anhedonia set in because of biological reasons and not so much psychological ones. The route cause being inflammation that disrupted my glutamate pathways. Well… I guess you could connect them both since chronic stress (and pain) was my downfall. So it’s been a month since I figured that out, and I’m working on fixing that. It makes much more sense than the basic dopamine chemical imbalance a few still believe in (not saying it can’t be the issue in some cases). The more I read on the abnormality of brain circuits connectivity in anhedonics, the more convinced I’m getting that drugs are most often times a big hope scam for individuals suffering from anhedonia/apathy as a primary symptom. Which is pretty consistent to all the testimonials I’ve read on my condition, and thankfully there’s other (and better) ways to truly get out of this. 

 

Anyway, so here’s the subject of this post. My condition completely destroyed my relation with my mom overtime… I’m going to start with some explanation that lead to it first. 

The first months of my anhedonia, I was hopeless and could not stop ruminating about how my life was ruined. All I’d read was defeatists unproductive comments on forums when looking for a solution (“I’ve been numb for years, SSRIs are not working” blabla…). On top of that, I used to think my weird awful memory deprived of time narrative was the result of brain damage in the cerebellum that would ultimately lead to dementia (from a wikipedia quote). At the time it was the answer that made the most sense, and it was crushing. All this was devastating for me, as I was always very goal driven as a person… believing that anything can be achievable in life as long as you put the mind and effort to it. There it felt like this was just over me and that I was, well… fucked. My anhedonia made me prone to irritability/frustration. It gets pretty bad when I feel like crap and with a sentiment of hopelessness when nothing seems to be going well. Needless to say my negative states were much more frequent during the first months of my emotional numbness and if you want a preview of how I was, you can go check my very first posts when I joined Longecity in the NSI forum where I got 90% of my negative ratings. More recently, I became more accepting of going trough days while being numb, and figured out that my broke time narrative/dissociated memory was linked to my anhedonia and not the result of brain damage. My DP symptoms should more than likely go away when my numbness goes away and so don’t feel on a death row anymore. Also am starting to get the science behind my condition so with all this my susceptibility to frustration has lessen. I mean it’s still there, sometimes I really cannot handle my mother’s behavior around me. The problem is it’s kind of too late, all the intense arguments throughout this year with my mom already happened and It’s almost like she considers me as her enemy now. I just couldn’t stand her lack of understanding at the time. It felt like she was always off in her reasoning, and I’d lose my chill easily because it added to the hope negativity I had. I can’t say that she didn’t care because she did, doing what she thought was best to help me… but not how I wanted/needed it.

 

Another problem is my mom has had PTSD for about three years. It’s really impairing her emotionally, but also cognitively and her working situation is just adding to her stress. If we want to have a true bond again, the only solution I think is that we both fix, or at least improve our conditions. My mental health is making it so that I’m not here to help her in a psychological way, and same for her. I am working on  my anhedonia, but really doesn’t seem like my mother is with her PTSD. Kind of believing she can just go trough life like this, but obviously not, she needs to get on effective treatment. Her therapist sessions aren’t helping her much. Reading about PTSD symptoms from this link: https://adaa.org/und...r-ptsd/symptoms - I definitely recognize my mom in most of it, apart from the emotional numbness, reckless behavior, nightmares, and dissociative amnesia. All the other symptoms listed are very real, it’s controlling her life she can't think straight anymore honestly. One thing that they forgot to list that can be part of PTSD are mood swings… On top of that, she’s a long term heavy smoker, which I’m confident is worsening her PTSD symptoms. Thing is in her state, she’ll never be able to quit from simple will power alone. I know quite a few treatments to quit nicotine addiction, but she doesn’t even want to try anything because “I’m not a doctor”. I mean maybe I need to shove all the clinical studies in her face… even still like I said it’s like she doesn’t want to get better. A big problem with mental health issues is that most of the time people will focus more on how it affects them, than actively looking to get better. Which well isn’t productive and makes quality of life worse than it already is. At the same time, I’m not sure if it’s her PTSD, personality, or combination of both, but when I talk to her about treatments all she’ll pay attention to is the stress with doing any effort to get better. If we compare how that strategy benefits her short term, to long term, there’s a big gap.

 

Hmmm so what should I do and anyone knows any PTSD treatments? How can I convince her to change her train of thoughts. Even when I will return to normal, at this point our relation will never go back to how it was if she doesn't get better either. Ideally I’m thinking she should do MDMA assisted psychotherapy: “83% of the subjects receiving MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in a pilot study no longer met the criteria for PTSD” - http://www.mdmaptsd....h-category.html - Those are miracle stats… notice the difference in effectiveness between therapy alone; and with MDMA. Benefits are also long term, talk about a cure. It’s not some random article either, it is everywhere. The problem is legality, and it might not be until five years. If you ask me, who cares if it’s illegal, first off the police is not stalking her house, second do we live for ourselves or? Is the fact that it’s illegal going to make it so that okay, I rather be completely unhappy and mentally unstable than have a good life? Well apparently yes, PTSD causes her to stress much more intensively about anything. I could easily get my hands on ecstasy, then if she accepts, should I be with her to talk? (I can be calm and understanding if she doesn’t act in an overly obnoxious manner) or maybe she takes it before her appointment with the therapist and tell him (maybe not) so that they can work with it. I don’t think he’d have the legal rights to tell the authorities would he?  I mean I haven’t talked to her about ecstasy before, but only mushrooms for her nicotine addiction (although I just learned it can also help with PTSD) and she completely freaked out. Or for psychiatric drugs… she might be on an SSRI but I’m not sure, if she is though she should probably get on a tricyclic or MAOI no? Because she needs effective treatment and I’m set on this, she doesn’t even think she can appreciate life anymore and that it’s her faith and that she has to deal with it. She is single and living a completely unhealthy lifestyle bounded to her PTSD, consisting of smoking, working, smoking. She doesn’t go out and almost doing no activities that could bring her positive emotions which of course is harder for her now, but she still needs to do it. I completely disagree with her mindset and will not let my mom live like this. I guess it’s a bit hypocritical for me to say that considering I haven’t been aiding so much psychologically. But honestly with how she is, and with my anhedonia, I really can’t help it at times. I need her true self back.

 

I will ask the mods to delete this post in the future.


Edited by Deaden, 17 October 2017 - 07:28 PM.


#2 jaiho

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Posted 18 October 2017 - 11:02 AM

MDMA has extremely promising results for PTSD.

A good place for information on it is maps.org or https://www.reddit.com/r/mdmatherapy

 

Just taking the MDMA won't do the trick. She needs to do it with someone she can completely open up to, someone who wont judge the drug use and just let her pour out her emotions & memories. That can be a close friend or an underground therapist.

 



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#3 Deaden

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Posted 18 October 2017 - 07:40 PM

I think it might be hard to find an underground therapist. I'd be willing to help and do my best to guide her trough processing her traumatic past after informing myself as best I can on what I should do until I got a pretty good idea, but I think trust is lacking at this point. Ibogaine also sounds promising, and legality wouldn't be an issue if we go in Mexico where certain clinics offer those type of services so she might be more open to that...



#4 jack black

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Posted 26 October 2017 - 10:26 PM

I didn't read the whole story, but I thought propranolol helps in PTSD?



#5 Deaden

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Posted 27 October 2017 - 10:48 AM

Yeah I really don't think you're the only one. In longecity if you don't straight up talk meds only you don't get many that make the effort to read your post it seems. I'll read about propranolol though thanks.



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#6 Mind_Paralysis

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Posted 31 October 2017 - 08:07 PM

Yeah I really don't think you're the only one. In longecity if you don't straight up talk meds only you don't get many that make the effort to read your post it seems. I'll read about propranolol though thanks.

 

I read it, but SCT made it so I couldn't reply, and then I forgot about it.

 

If you're looking into Propranolol, you might want to look into Guanfacine as well - it was also researched as treatment of PTSD - both drugs have in common that they modulate Norepinephrinergic activity, lowers blood-pressure, and decreases activity in the amygdala.

 

 

And, as always, the treatment with the best evidence for PTSD is CBT - if she doesn't want to do it, then that is very, very unfortunate - it's the best shot she has at the moment.

 

 

BTW - forget about MDMA - for the foreseeable future it's an illegal drug, which makes ALL sources of it disreputable - when it comes to purity, it's very possible that it would be contaminated with OTHER phenetylamine drugs, or perhaps other empathogens, and those do NOT have the same kind of evidence of affecting PTSD in the right way, under guidance - as such, MDMA from illegal sources could end up HURTING your mother on an unbelievable level.

 

There's also the fact that it could take you years to train yourself to be certain that you would be capable enough as a therapist to actually walk your mother through the traumatic memories, under MDMA-entoxication.

 

Finally, there's also the fact that MDMA is proven to be neurotoxic, in a similar way to Methamphetamine, and it's not entirely clear just where this toxicity starts... Research on MDMA is not as extensive on say, Amphetamine.

 

 

No, Guanfacine or Propranolol while undergoing CBT is a far more viable path at the moment.







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