Do I need to be medicated to feel normal? Or do I just need therapy?

Before I attempt to answer your question, let me explain to you how I conceptualize trauma and its effects on a person.  When a person experiences a traumatic event, it is like the person has put on a pair of glasses.  Let's call these the "trauma glasses."  The person sees everything through the lenses of the trauma glasses, and those perceptions are often distorted.  Images may be misshapen, and colors may be off.  In other words, the world can look very different to a trauma survivor than it does to a person who might be standing right next to the survivor.  This is because the other person is not wearing the same pair of trauma glasses.

Further complicating the issue of going through life wearing trauma glasses is the fact that the lenses do not distort EVERYTHING.  Some of the perceptions will be similar - if not exactly the same - as the person who is not wearing the trauma glasses.  When this happens, it becomes really hard to trust your perceptions.  Is what you are seeing a distortion of reality?  Or are you experiencing reality as most other people do?  Being unsure of oneself in this way can certainly lead a person to wonder, "Am I crazy?" 

In other cases, people don't wonder if they are going crazy.  Instead, they might hallucinate, which is to perceive through one of their five senses something that is not happening, and/or become delusional, which is to assert their beliefs are true and accurate when they are neither.  

The fact that you acknowledge that you have an active imagination suggests that you are neither hallucinating nor delusional.  Instead, it sounds to me like you recognize that you have been affected by your trauma and are questioning whether you see the world as "normal" people do. 

(Side note:  No one gets out of this life unscathed.  I believe everyone wears a pair of their own trauma glasses, so categorizing anyone's perceptions as "normal" doesn't really fit my conceptualization.  But I digress....)

So what do you do about your perceptions?  In my view, the goal of any trauma treatment is to help you take off the trauma glasses (or at least slide the glasses down your nose and peer over the top of them!) so that you can see the world without the lenses' distortions. 

So going back to your original question about the type of treatment you need:  Do you need medication?  Or do you just need therapy?  My answer is "I don't know."  In all honesty, I don't think it matters much, either.  If therapy alone helps you to feel better, that's cool.  If therapy + meds does the trick, then that's cool, too.  A good mental health provider will discuss all of your options with you and help you develop a treatment plan that you are comfortable with.  The most important thing is that you know that there is help out there for you - as long as you seek it out.

I hope this helps.  Wishing you good mental health!

--Christine