Situational and or Lasting.

Hi!
If you have not received a diagnosis for anxiety has the PTSD been diagnosed? Anxiety is helped best with Psychotherapy and medications. Anxiety is anxiety regardless of the cause, please seek help. Other options for treating anxiety is meditation, changing your (negative) thoughts to something more pleasant or positive, exercise. doing things you enjoy. Through different (positive) coping skills it's very possible to completely resolve anxiety or minimize an anxiety/panic attack. If you have been diagnosed with PTSD Psychotherapy and possibly medication is needed for the best results.

Thanks. The story is difficult.
My folks and brother and I were close.
They lived on the family farm I lived in my house next to them.
My brother and I cared for our folks until they both passed with cancer. Then just when we were beginning to find a new normal, I lost my brother in an accident.
It will not be helpful for anyone to share the details with you.
Just know, He came to me in my soul that night and told me he needed my help. I searched for him.
Somehow I found him that night on the farm.
I remember him telling me in my heart without speaking a word that I was strong enough, and that everything would be okay. I remember I was frustrated at him for that. He wasn’t alright so I could NEVER possibly be alright.
I remember allot of lights, from ambulance, fire, paramedics, very bright blue and red and white. The rescue took many hours.
Finally, he was safe, to go to heaven, while I had to stay behind and just cry and wonder how I would go on now.

So it wasn’t until months later the nightmares began. The triggers of that night came anytime of day in the oddest ways. Mostly upon seeming those bright lights on the highways.
They were triggers, I could not sleep and then eventually was too scared to try and sleep for fear of the nightmares.
I finally went to the ER where a fabulous dr sat in the floor beside me and we talked and talked.
He told me I was very strong.
He told me that the brain had been protecting me. That during these times in our lives it is too much for the body and soul (I guess) to handle so our brain protects us by not letting us acknowledge everything we have seen, heard or experienced all at once. A coping mechanism.
So after some time the brain slowly allows experience to begin to unfold.
Sometimes in the way of nightmares.

He told me that he felt I will be okay but that he felt that the nightmares would continue for a long time. He gave me some medication to help me sleep.
I don’t know if he told me about counselling but I called the next day anyway. I had PTSD.
This is where I heard the words Post Tramatic Stress Disorder for the first time.
The therapist helped me face the nightmares with the help of my partner. Games in the middle of the night with a soaking wet with sweat, crying, can’t breath, heart racing wife.
It took some time and the nightmares didn’t really stop but I wasn’t so afraid of them anymore.
She had also told me that even though it felt very real and terrifying, that my brother was free and not hurting anymore. That it was no longer an emergency situation and I had no job to do.
Eventually the situatuations became old news, then old hat.

I also spoke with my rheumatologist at that time who I made and appointment to see as I knew that this kind of stress would definitely play on my physical health ie Lupus etc.
She also used the words PTSD.

So eventually I remembered it all, the what if’s subsided a bit, the acceptance that my brother was okay now.
There can still be triggers, and lots of crying some days, but now it’s not the horror it’s the loss of such a really great guy. I miss him. I don’t think that will ever change. I’m okay with that. I has something special and I lost it it hurts. I’m very, very lucky to have had it alt all, some don’t.

Now I work on how it has changed my life. We loved our home. We loved our family next door.
Now they are gone, we saved the farm and We have had to say good bye to the wonderful life of our own in our own beautiful home. We moved to the farm and are currently readying to sell the home we loved. It has been real hard. Our lives were really flipped upside down that miserable night.

I expect selling our beautiful home, the one we built together to live our life in, is where the anxiety is coming from. How couldn’t it be? It too was and is a loss.

But I spoke to my rheumatologist of this kind of anxiety (which is nowhere near the PTSD) if she feels it necessary she will have me see someone about it.
I do believe I am morning the loss of a beautiful life with my husband and our home, our parents and brother as our little family unit. There is going to be anxiety, I am normal.
But nobody ever told me it would be easy or as fast as I wanted it to be.
I will miss him everyday of my life, he will make me smile in my soul everyday of my life and I will live on for him and love him every day of my life. Just not by my side but in my heart and soul.
Thanks