Diabetic post-traumatic stress disorders VS Diabetic Anxiety
Post-traumatic stress disorder is defined as an anxiety disorder caused by very stressful, frightening or distressing events. The person often relives the event in thoughts or in dreams. PTSD can lead to changes in behaviours to avoid such situations where a risk of the event repeating itself is possible. In T1D terms, PTSD can be caused by a traumatic hypoglycaemic attack where the T1D felt vulnerable and was unable to treat themselves, maybe causing a hospitalisation.
PTSD can be connected to any of the anxieties I will go on to list below. The difference would be:
- PTSD is the fear caused by suffering from an event and the fear of it reoccurring, whereas
- Anxiety is the fear of our perception of what the event would be like if it did occur.
In my case, it was never PTSD as I never suffered an adverse incident, my anxiety was always caused by trying to avoid what i perceived the fear to be.