Thanks everyone. This is helpful.
She's definitely been in therapy-- and while her therapist was a trauma specialist, DD is... well, she's apparently still not exactly neurotypical, and the therapist was not really someone who established a good therapeutic relationship with DD. She eventually refused to go any more-- she has seen a non-specialist psychiatrist who has established a good working relationship with her, however, and that she continues to do. She also sees a trauma-specialist psychologist occasionally. They all think that she's doing pretty well, considering-- but that her ptsd is stabilizing, and that it is probably going to be chronic for another decade or so, and will always be a vulnerability to stress/trauma now that she's developed it. For this reason, we remain unconvinced that having her take a year off is a good idea. We have no idea what she'd do with herself, and she would lose the social support network that she has with her friends.
She is far better than a year ago-- let me say that up front. Her trauma was nearly two years ago at this point, incidentally. Suffice it to say that it was severe.
Our natural next step
would be anxiolytics at this point, but that's a no-go for other (medical) reasons. So here we are.
She has panic attacks, and the more (general) stress she's under, the more prone to them she becomes. It's sort of like stress fills up a cup-- she can
sometimes tolerate the volume of stress promoted by an exam... if she's not otherwise stressed, if she's well-rested, knows the material well, etc. etc.
Under ideal conditions, she still doesn't test
well, by any means-- because she does have ptsd. She has major problems with hypervigilance, and therefore almost any environment can be a distracting one, by definition. Her working memory is not great, retrieval and encoding are definitely impaired relative to what she used to be capable of, and she "drops" things when relying upon her working memory. Her executive skills are also not as good as they once were.
In her experience, ptsd means that stress and her function (including cognitively) are roughly inversely linearly related, at least up to some critical point-- at which time her response to stressors becomes non-linear, as she basically enters fight-or-flight mode.
At that point, she is basically incapable of anything but survival based thinking. She isn't even laying down memories, if it happens in class. She has a recording device for lecture settings, though that was not especially helpful in math and physics.
This
is an improvement from where she was a year ago. Then, she had trouble even reading at a college level, her processing was so impaired. She cried and cried at having to read and re-read the same paragraph four times, read it out loud, underline it... just to gain basic comprehension that used to be effortless-- automatic. It was horrifying. I spent a lot of time helping her re-learn things like study skills and organizational strategies that went missing from her brain as a result of the trauma. She took a couple of community college classes over that summer to help her with studying for and taking exams. We were hoping that relearning the skills would defuse some of her anxiety.
It's as though she has a brain injury. Truly.
Leaving the institution isn't a decision to make lightly-- she does have two years remaining of her full merit scholarship, which means that she graduates debt-free. That's also a not-insignificant resume item. On the other hand, it also means a lot of stress on her in terms of maintaining a 3.25+ GPA. Her assailant and his family also live in the town she attends university, so that is also a consideration.... but she also has friends at the institution, has invested 2y there already, has excellent (and complex) medical care already in place, and we are close. We have certainly considered it, however.
In a college course, a grade may depend upon only a midterm and a final exam-- if she doesn't do well on the midterm... that greatly increases her stress.
Just knowing that it
could happen often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
She spent a term avoiding coursework that was heavily exam based, and earned straight A's. (Of course). The trouble is that she has to take some classes that are exam-heavy to earn her degree.
She also has to earn all A's and B's in those courses.
Sorry about the full message box-- I've cleared some space now.
