What does this mean!!

[potor]

Hi

Just wondering if anyone can help, I have been diagnosed with automatic negative response syndrome and an acute stress disorder, but I’ve never really understood what either of these mean! Could anyone shed some light or offer some information that may make things a little clearer for me?

[mablisaki]

The anxiety and behavioral disturbances that develop within a month of exposure to extreme trauma. The symptoms of an acute stress disorder usually begin during or shortly following the trauma. Such extreme traumatic events include rape or other severe physical assault, near-death experiences in accidents, witnessing a murder, and combat.

The symptom of dissociation, which reflects a perceived detachment of the mind from the emotional state or even the body, is a critical feature. Dissociation also is characterized by a sense of the world as a dreamlike or unreal place and may be accompanied by poor memory of the specific events, which in severe form is known as dissociate amnesia.

Other features of acute stress disorder include symptoms of generalized anxiety and hyper arousal, avoidance of situations or stimuli that elicit memories of the trauma, and persistent, intrusive recollections of the event via flashbacks, dreams, or recurrent thoughts or visual images.

If the symptoms and behavioral disturbances of the acute stress disorder persist for more than a month, and if these features are associated with functional impairment or significant distress to the sufferer, the diagnosis is changed to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

I don't know about automatic negative response syndrome I've never heard of it... even looking it up shows nothing, is there another word? Does it go with the acute stress?

[potor]

THANKS! this forum is helping me so much already, I’m a firm believer that if you can understand something then you can make steps to change it and your responses have certainly cleared a few things up for me. Interestingly though, I was diagnosed with the acute stress a long time back and symptoms have never really improved: no-one has ever changed that diagnosis to PTSD though...huuummm!