Adjustment Disorder VS C-PTSD

Hi,

I don't technically have the C-PTSD label but I have been given adjustment disorder in a way that doesn't make a lot of sense unless it is because I have a lot of coping skills and resilience. I honestly have no idea where I belong. I also have multiple disabilities and am considered both gifted and neurodiverse.

I have never felt like the world is stable, no solid ground and if I let myself relax, be happy, think I am safe in any interaction with society something will soon arrive to blow up my life. It has happened so many times that I just expect it and live off tiny victories, crumbs of happiness.

I know better then to ever leave myself just one anchor. I just have to make sure that at least one of my many things to hold onto survive every "storm" and get as many new lifelines out as I can fast when there are few left.

A friend described my life as the "death of a thousand cuts" because it is. Individually most of the wounds are small but some weeks I run out of bandages or get hit harder then usual on top of all the small injuries inflicted by just trying to live my life - and those are the times when I really struggle.

I identify as a child abuse survivor and know I went through a lot of gas lighting. Gas lighting that is so insidious because there is just enough truth to it.

I have a disability that can and has led to me making mistakes - bad ones far to easily. I lose pieces of physical sequences is the easiest way to explain it.

I have to be so careful, so vigilant all the time. I have to pretty much deliberately embrace anxiety both for really really critical things and to do things society just expects

For example - take key out if ignition and put car in park BEFORE getting out of car. Is the key in your hand, is it IS IT. Is the stove off IS THE STOVE off. I try so hard and beat myself up when I make a mistake but um I have managed to get out of a car and be standing next to it when it starts rolling away - that is terrifying and really bad. Another thing I fear is trying to accidentally drive through a garage door (I hope I never do).

I am also so afraid that when I get old enough I will end up labelled with dementia when I've been dealing with this crap my entire life or that I will actually lose all the incredibly hard fought progress I've made and that terrifies me to. I couldn't deal with actually losing my mind and being locked up and controled-just no.

It is much harder when society also expects me to manage "easy, responsible, adult" things like being on time when I also lack a sense of time and am already dealing with so much stress around situations where a mistake just can not happen.

My life is very very stressful and making mistakes of any kind is also very stressful because I need to be so careful for the big ones and then even on less big ones - my disability uses up every drop of societial tolerance for ordinary mistakes. So when I just do human screw ups it feels like the sword of damocles hanging over my head

The school was abusive toward me growing up and I have iron self-control and did learn to "pass" as normal but the price was so high and its so hard to silence the programing that says I am a worthless screw up who can never do anything right and deserves to be stressed and miserable all the time that should feel nothing but constant guilt and fear. And thats just the tip of the iceberg on the awful stuff that was said

I am very resiliant but I also find so many things traumatic. Authority figures, being judged, making mistakes, filling out forms, interacting with society. Even mental health care was weaponized agaibst me with constant threats of being thrown in an institution.

And of course any time anything major happens its time for another time of recurrent adjustment disorder because I am already living my entire life with subclinical C-PTSD. I know rejection sensitive PTSD is fairly common with ADHD, which I also am , but it feels like more then social rejection that triggers me.

I am dealing with a near phobia of all the things I was threatened with over and over and over. I am still dealing with all the predictions that I'd turn into a monster - the terrible things the school, my parents, the other kids and even people today say to me that hurt and just bring it all back.

The big thing I can say for sure is that my issue is being triggered by things that bring back the trauma and situations that just take me above the limit of my ability to cope with the continious trauma that is my life.

I hope that makes sense.

Yes I've joined support plus also - I don't know where I belong. I am used to never belonging anywhere (sigh) and just confusing people/being told I'm just making all of this up.

So hard to trust or even explain.