So I made a throwaway to respond to this, but it won't let me post that way for some reason. Guess I'll just have to suck it up and do this under my main acct. Feels weird being this openly honest with a stranger. Don't even know why I'm doing it, other than I weirdly sort of fit the bill of what we're talking about here.
I was bullied incessantly throughout grade school, middle school and the beginning of high school. I switched schools in the 10th grade and got away from all those fucks. After that, I actually made friends and had a decent time in school.
My home life during this period was... well, less than desirable. My dad was absent, my mother was abusive. So, when I made real friends for the first time, people that actually gave a shit about me, that was something of a new experience. When I look back, I'm pretty sure it's what kept me from killing myself.
See, due to the circumstances of my upbringing, it wasn't so much that I hated myself, I mean I did and all, but it was more the fact that I knew I was a complete piece of shit, a waste of space, not worthy of the air I was breathing, that really had the most negative impact on me. Not thought, knew, without question. Had that lesson been beaten into my psyche for much longer, I'm not sure I could have withstood it. Even after I got out of that situation (in school at least, I still had to go home to same abusive mother), the impact it had on me stayed. While I was infinitely more happy in my new school, with my new friends, I still had serious problems with developing close or intimate relationships with people, and I continued to have these problems up until my mid twenties.
After high school, at the suggestion of my mother (along with her new husband), whom I'm fairly certain just wanted me out of the house I joined the Army. I was deployed twice to the middle east. I'd go into more detail about that, but I'm really not trying to give too much information about myself here than I have to. I'll say that I was in one of the two major war zones we've all heard about (Iraq/Afghanistan), not some cake walk theatre like Qatar or Kuwait. I was a support soldier, and I saw my fair share of combat. Fortunately, I had the sense not to go infantry or anything like that, and be one of the guys who actually went out of the wire looking for trouble. That would have been something I also believe I could not have withstood, and I have all the respect in the world for the ones who can and do.
So, a few years ago, I was diagnosed with PTSD stemming from my combat experiences. Amongst other symptoms, I get fight or flight reactions from doing simple shit, like just being in a crowded mall, going to the grocery store, being stuck in traffic, etc. I used to drink and use drugs to cover up what I was feeling, but eventually I started to just come to the conclusion that if the decision was between going out and having to drink/get fucked up to do so, and just staying in, I would rather just stay in. That is, for the most part, how I've been living life since I got out. Yeah, I saw VA doctors for a time too, but that wasn't the best experience in the world. I was able to see a doctor once, every three months, for 20 minutes at a time. They put me on an entire pharmacy of medications, including 3mg of klonipin daily, which, if you don't know, may as well be a metric fuckton. I got addicted, hardcore, and then one day they just decided to take me off of it, pretty much completely unsupervised. That was another period of time in which suicide wasn't looking like too bad of an option.
ANYWAY, to get to your questions you were asking about comparing PTSD to the scars left behind by bullies, YES, in my experience the trauma has been somewhat similar, in that both sets of experiences left me with memories painful to look back upon. Honestly, the bullying memories are more painful to think about, but they did, by far, less... damage. My pulse doesn't go up when I think about middle school, or the broken home I grew up in, I just feel as worthless as I did back then. While I'll feel despondent remembering my childhood, I don't feel the need to get the hell out of wherever it is that I am, or that I need to go down a couple glasses of bourbon to get over it. I just kind of bury that shit down and move on, while the combat related PTSD doesn't really give me the same option.
So, I hope that sheds a little light on the subject for you, and that maybe you can feel a little more empathy for people who may not have had as easy a road to go down as you have had.