ginagirl

Yep, I would also suggest addressing the bigger issue of how to effectively communicate with your advisor, beyond this one situation. I won't repeat the good advice that you've already been given, which I agree with. One other thing I didn't see above but I've found to be useful is not to send new emails each time but to forward/reply to the same email again and again. This way you create a record of your prior attempts to get in touch with her, and it'd be harder for her to claim that you sprung it on her last minute (though not impossible, I've seen it all). Then when you send the follow up email, instead of saying "I sent you an email last week, I haven't heard back so I am just checking in to see if you got it" you actually refer to the content that's quoted in your current email and just repeat the highlights. It also helps her because then everything is in one place and she doesn't have to go fishing in her inbox for another email that's a week old. 

This is a tricky situation and I know it's a common topic of debate at my school and other schools too. I'll just present my opinions:
1. If you are uncomfortable about something, you should certainly express your discomfort. However, simply doing so doesn't mean that other people are obligated to change their actions. Also, I would ask you to first seriously reflect on exactly what is making you uncomfortable. If it's because you're being left out, then present it that way, instead of saying "I don't want you to speak your language around me"
2. I agree with PoliticalOrder---I don't know why you say it's "rude" to speak another language around someone who doesn't understand it. It's not rude. It's everyone's right to speak whatever language they want. 
3. I do think that not including you is not very nice though. But I don't think you should think of this as a language issue. Because even if they were all speaking English, a group of people can still bully and exclude another person. 
4. This is becoming a big debate in my hometown too---about 80% of people living there do not speak English as their first language (this is not to say that they don't speak English, but instead to say that they all know another language well). In some areas of town, there are store signs and businesses operating almost solely in another language. Some people who only speak English are getting upset because they don't understand the store signs. But I don't agree with them. I don't think a person has a right to always be in a place where they understand everything around them. I think it's a very privileged position to have, and I don't think it's right for an English speaking person to always be able to understand everything they see and everyone they interact with.
5. Some labs/groups here have "language rules" where you can only speak English in the lab. I disagree with these rules strongly but I have no power to do anything about it. I think it is important, for things like safety and science communication that all scientific conversations (or e.g. while doing an experiment) is in a language where everyone who needs know what's going can understand. But if you're in the lab, just joking around with a friend, or having a casual conversation, I don't think there should be language rules.
6. Finally, I think it's really important to think about it from the other person's point of view. In my department, there is a large group of international students that primarily speak Mandarin (there's also a sizable French speaking group too). I don't speak Mandarin. For most department socials, all language groups mix relatively well. When there was a lot of debate on campus recently about language issues like this, I asked some of my Mandarin speaking friends what they think. 
Their answer was profound (to me anyways). They say that they feel stunted or limited when speaking English. To them, they learned it growing up because it was the language of science, the language of work. So, they are fluent and gladly speak English for scientific communication, but they cannot properly express themselves in English. They say it's a lot more difficult for them to express sympathy for their friends, express their emotions, make jokes, and basically all of the other things people use language for other than strict communication. When I realised this was when I realised that it is wrong to require someone to only speak a certain language. In my opinion, doing so limits their ability to be themselves, and I would never want to do that. It's not right for me to ask someone to do this just because I want to know what they are saying.

I am honest in my evaluations. However, the actual questions they on evaluations usually don't capture the issue, and usually warrant positive answers. Even for a professor I thought was truly terrible, I gave 3's or higher on pretty much everything, because that was what was honest. For example, the questions ask if the professor is prepared for class, if they are available to provide help as needed, etc. Those weren't the problems, so I wouldn't lie and give a 1 or 2 for those things. However, I will leave critical comments (and suggestions), and that's really where you can see my opinion of them. Maybe that is the case here.

You are right that academia is a place where things are blurry. This is because your experience depends a lot on your advisor. Two students who are performing exactly the same might be deemed "satisfactory" by one professor and "unsatisfactory" by another professor. I don't think this is entirely fair, because having inconsistent expectations does lead to inequalities across students in the department. And, for small schools like mine, there is usually only 1 professor doing exactly one topic, so it's not just a matter of "If you don't like the professor, work with someone else" because it really means "if you don't like this professor, you have to work in a different subfield". In addition, my field is also really small, so if many professor in a subfield are this way (it's possible for a subfield in my field to be almost entirely dominated by alumni of one or two faculty at a top 10 school), the entire subfield is now pushing away people. To this end, we're working on more standardized expectations of both professors and students. However, academia has very strong feelings about keeping autonomy of researchers and faculty, and to some extent, there is always going to be some room for interpretation by each professor.
While I hope that information makes you feel better that things may change in the future, the reality is that right now, that stuff won't help you. To answer some of the questions that you raised in this thread (either directly or indirectly):
1. How often would a professor compare a new student to old student? All the time. In fact, I think this is one of the main metrics that faculty member use to evaluate graduate students. On the LOR forms, faculty are often asked to rank this student compared to all of their other students. This is also a topic of discussion when a faculty member is presenting their student for acceptance to candidacy or other graduate school milestone. Since it is very hard to set absolute guidelines for performance in grad school (where everyone is doing different things), the standard criteria is "How does this student compare to other students?" Are they progressing as expected? Are they taking more courses? More TAships? etc. I agree with you that it's not very fair for the professor to compare you with his former students only, but that may or may not be a "kick in the pants" type comment rather than a formal evaluation. I think you can at least rest assured that when it comes time for the department to formally evaluate all of their students for funding, they will do so by comparing you to all students in the department, not just the small sample size of your prof's old students only.
2. When will your advisor deem you worthy/not worthy? I agree with you that one semester is too short to kick someone out. But your advisor is not saying "Based on your performance this semester, I am kicking you out". Your advisor is saying "So far, your work this semester is sub-par and I want you to improve". This is not a final evaluation of you---you can think of it as a mid-term review or just giving you some very important feedback. After all, it would also be unfair to wait an entire year, then make a final evaluation "You're kicked out because of poor performance this past year", when you had no warning or indication at all that you were underperforming.
In my program, during Year 1, we take 30 hours of courses per week (including time for reading and homework etc.) and are expected to work about 20 hours on research per week, plus a few hours for department seminars etc. During this time, we must come up (with help from our advisors) with two research ideas and carry them out. We don't have to fully complete them, just a proof of concept that it is a viable research idea and that we have encountered most, if not all, of the unexpected nuances and problems that would arise. At the end of Year 1, we defend both projects in front of a committee of 5 professors (including our project advisors) in a 3 hour oral exam. After this exam, the committee deliberates and determines whether or not you get to continue in the program or you leave with a Masters (or leave immediately with nothing). One very very important aspect is whether or not your advisors recommends you to continue onto a PhD with them. Your advisors being happy with your progress is the most important part---the other committee members are just there to make sure your advisors aren't being overly lenient or overly harsh and that the quality of student that continues is in line with department norms.
So, in my program, the direct answer to your question is after 1 year (or 3 semesters). However, your program is not making the same determination! Again, we get feedback from people at all points during the year so that we are able to do the best we can on the end of year exam. I think your advisor is following good feedback pedagogy by providing you with early feedback now, when you can still take action on it. It would be utterly useless if the only feedback you got was the final evaluation. I'm sorry that you don't like the content of the feedback and perhaps the advisor could have presented it in a better way (I wasn't there so I don't know), but I highly recommend that you reframe this information as constructive feedback designed to help you succeed, instead of a damning evaluation of your performance. 
3. When do people write papers? This depends a lot on the field. Most people in my program will be working on stuff that will eventually go into a paper almost immediately. There is no "transition period" where you only do classes and TA work. From the first day, we are doing work that will lead to a paper. I know this varies a lot from field to field though. Depending on the nature of the work, students in my program typically publish their first paper in year 2 or year 3. For people working on theory/mathematical modeling, a paper can be finished as early in year 2. For those running experiments or working with large amounts of data, the first paper may take longer to complete. 
In summary, here is my advice to you moving forward:
A. As others said, talk to other students in your program about normal progress and expectations. Talking to other students here is a good idea, but remember that things vary a lot from program to program and even advisor to advisor. So, while you will still benefit from hearing more perspectives, it's important to not apply something from another program or advisor to your situation without careful review.
B. Remove your own perceptions and ideas of what is "fair" so that you can properly hear the advice behind the feedback. I agree with you that your advisor may be unfair in determining your performance as sub-par. However, don't focus on that part. There is obviously something they are unhappy about if they are saying this. Find out what it is. You might have to talk to them more about a performance review and ask for specific areas to improve. As Eigen said, this may be a sign of lack of clear communication.
C. Still be yourself though. In step B, I suggest that you remove your own perceptions so that you can hear the "other side" but this doesn't mean that everything you think and feel is wrong. You are still you and you may be right that the advisor is acting unfairly. But you have to first distance yourself in order to understand what the other side is saying. Once you comprehend their point of view, then you can re-insert yourself and decide whether or not you want to do the things they are asking of  you. Sometimes professors ask for unreasonable things---e.g. they might ask you to work 60 hours per week and you may decide that this is not what you want to do. 
D. After B and C, think about where you want to be in the future. Maybe you want to first try out doing everything the professor wants you to do in B and see how you feel about it. Eventually, you will have to decide if working with this advisor is the right fit for you. Finding this out sooner is better than later! This is why I think doing "B" is really important---the longer you just think your advisor is being unfair and ignoring what they say, the longer before you are really able to decide what you would want. If you want to work with another advisor in the department, once you decide that, start talking to other professors. If you want to quit and start again at another place, get those steps in place.
E. Finally, I want to just disagree with VentureIntoNothingness's comment about academia being a cut-throat place and not for the weak. Sometimes, people accompany this with "needing thick skin". I really hate it when advisors and academics present it this way because it suggests that it's okay to bully or harass others in academia because we're "so cutthroat" and "weak students need not apply". This does not create a good atmosphere for our work. I agree that it is important for students and academics to be mature and aware enough to properly self-evalaute, handle constructive criticism and determine their own weaknesses (e.g. Step B above). But this is a far cry from calling those who cannot do this "weak". Also, I think the attitude that "academia is cutthroat, not for the weak" is a fatalist point of view that reinforces negative behaviour (such as bullying and harassment) rather than work on both improving students' ability to self-evaluate and handle critique as well as creating an inclusive work environment where bullying and harassment has no place.
(Note: I know that maybe VentureIntoNothingness did not mean their comment to condone bullying and harassment but instead meant it in the positive ways I wrote above. I don't mean to pick on you, VentureIntoNothingness! It's just that I see many academics defend bullying or other nasty attitudes with the cutthroat/not for the weak/needing thick skin phrases and maybe you are using them without meaning them in the same way!)

Finish your finals, DO NOT LOOK AT YOUR SUBMITTED DOCUMENTS EVER AGAIN, and drink until February. 

My parents did not get to have the college experience, and neither of them knew what graduate programs entail, so they've always liked looking at university websites and professors' research pages (my mom especially). And I certainly appreciate that they like to explore these things. But they've always done so by following my lead; that is, they'd read about programs and professors because I was interested in them and had already researched them on my own.
So while I think it's great that you want to learn about grad programs, and you should feel free to explore this site as well, I think your research ought to be for your own information and enjoyment. Certainly you can discuss with your daughter when it comes time to narrow down program options, but I would advise against making any sort of packet for her, even if it's just general information. As others have said, it is important that your daughter be self-motivated and self-sufficient.  She also needs to be able to handle several tasks at once in addition to keeping up with coursework. Let her come to you when she has done her own legwork and is looking for feedback on her thoughts/impressions. 

I'm sure other people will have lots of valuable advice so I'm just going to pick what I think was the most important. I tend not to have a very good memory when I'm stressed out, so it was really useful for me to write down my reactions/thoughts throughout the visit-- between meetings, at the end of the day in the hotel, on the plane. Especially if you're visiting multiple campuses, it may start to blur together who said what thing, or which program recommended that you do such-and-such. Being able to recall your visits well will help you make any important decisions down the line, and also might help you draft any follow-up emails you might want to send (ie you are able to reference specific topics that you had discussed, etc).

As an afterthought, I will add one more: SMILE. Genuinely smiling and being engaged non-verbally (at minimum) in meetings/presentations/discussions is an underrated part of these visits, I think. It helps convey the excitement you should feel/are feeling, and it also helps me feel more relaxed

My husband, originally a math major, also "hated stats" the first time he took statistics and probability. He decided to give it another go and changed his major to stats after that. The major reason, according to him, is he loved the varied applications of statistics. He wasn't a huge fan of the sort of abstract nature of his math major before that; he really wanted to do more applied, practical work, and stats was the way for him.
However, there are many other areas of math that can be applied besides statistics. I think statistics is probably important for most applied mathematicians to know in some sense, but there are applied mathematicians that don't use much if any statistics on a regular basis.
Also, let's walk it back a bit. If you don't know what you want to do, why are you hoping to get a PhD in math? Math is a pretty abstract/theoretical field - there are more applied portions of it, of course, but the kind of math people study in graduate school generally isn't. Even in applied fields, a PhD is often not the degree you want if you really want to "do" something. My PhD is in public health - which sounds very applied, until I realized into the program that it mostly encourages doing research, and not the on-the-ground kind of public health work people think of when they think of public health. A PhD is a research degree; if you don't want a career as a researcher (or aren't sure that you do), then you shouldn't get a PhD in math. Most of what you want to do can probably be achieved with a BA or MA in math, applied math, statistics, or some related field.
Here are some applied areas you can enter:
Epidemiology (math + public health)
Biostatistics (statistics + health/medicine)
Bioinformatics (statistics/math + health/medicine/biomedical science + computer science)
Meteorology/atmospheric science (math + atmospheric science)
Quantitative psychology (math/statistics + psychology)
Mathematician position in the federal government (do a search for "mathematician" on USAJOBS)
Medical physics (more physics than math, but still)
Check out this website on careers in math.
Also, "making the world a better place" is a broadly interpreted statement and a lot of traditional jobs (including in big corporations in finance and accounting) involve work that makes the world a better place or at least some necessary function for humanity. For example, some finance jobs may involve helping to improve the economies of developing nations, or developing a microfinance program for low-income laborers, or providing support and financing to nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits, NGOs, governments, hospitals and clinics need people in their finance and accounting departments just like large corporations do. And pharmaceutical companies (where many biostatisticians work) create drugs that help millions; there are some non-profit pharmaceutical companies, and even many of the for-profit ones do pro bono work.
On the flip side, make sure that you avoid romanticizing nonprofit or helping professions kind of work, because a lot of it is very different from what you might expect. For example, in medicine, a lot of healthcare provision and research organizations these days are very large corporations, and their primary goal might be to make money. A lot of academic and nonprofit medical research is directed by the winds of NIH funding, which is competitive and makes the atmosphere different from what you might otherwise expect. Some non-profits are poorly run and their employees not well compensated for their work (and I don't mean "I can't buy a yacht" well-compensated; I mean "I'm struggling to pay my rent this month").

I second this- as a science undergrad I wouldn't have thought I would end up going to graduate school for statistics, but while doing medical research post-grad, I realized how cool and useful it is. Part of the draw of applied fields is that often it isn't the classes that inspire you, but the research, and actually doing the work. So, not to discount your feelings about statistics, OP, but since you're fairly early on in your academic career, it might be a good idea to not entirely exclude a field at this point!  

I hated stats when I studied it at school, and through my first years at University. However, when I got to my final year and realised exactly how much the stats can be applied, made sense of and brought my research to life I loved them! As ginagirl said an Applied Math PhD sounds like a good fit as you're not completely sure. In my field for example we have a lot of researchers who come from math backgrounds, who do analysis on our volunteers data, genome analysis, helping us out with our own stats, and many other applications. I know for a fact that I couldn't have completed my research on injury risk factors for athletes across a variety of sports without help from the resident departmental math genius. Most of my professors are either applied maths, statistics or mech eng backgrounds who have made the transition into sport and health research. There's a lot of applied math there.

It's true that the pay is better for statistician/analysts in government or pharma, compared to hospitals, academia, or non-profits. But statistics is a very in-demand field right now and so the job market overall is very good.

I used to start with "Dr. X" or "Prof. X" in graduate school until otherwise corrected. However, that got weird real fast, since it was an institutional and field-wide norm for grad students on up to call professors by their first names, and we were treated like junior colleagues. I felt like running around calling my professors "Dr. X" beyond my first year infantilized me somewhat, and set me apart as a graduate student instead of someone thinking of herself as a junior colleague and a working professional in the field. So I just switched to addressing everyone by their first name unless there was some kind of cue indicating otherwise. I especially do it now that I'm finished with the PhD and have a full-time job. These people are my colleagues; they call me by my first name, so they will also get called by their first names.
I always feel weird when people call me Dr. (or Ms.) anything, so I just asked my students to call me by my first name.

I agree- I didn't buy an undergrad class ring. Instead I bought a necklace from the school bookstore with a school-related charm on it that is distinctive enough that a fellow collegian would notice it but anyone outside of that community would think it is a normal necklace. It's my small way of feeling connected.
 
However you decide to commemorate your time there is your choice and as long as you wouldn't regret the money spent on a ring (I'm not sure how much they go for, but am sure they're probably not cheap), then go for it!

i'm glad i could help
 
well, i honestly always try to believe that people don't make mistakes like this on purpose  **cough Diederik Stapel cough Michael LaCour** but sometimes it's just the lack of awareness about methodological issues combined with the lack of interest that a lot of people have when it comes to data analysis. Denny Borsboom has an awesome article with the even awesomer title The Attack of the Psychometricians (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2779444/)where he comments on the fact that, more often than not, methodologists within the social sciences and applied social scientists exist in somewhat parallel worlds and we don't really talk to each other very much. so our developments in data analysis do not inform your practice and your data analysis concerns do not always manage to make it to our computers/desks because there's just too many of them. that leaves a good chunk of what i would consider to be good, honest and bright scientists doing some pretty horrible data analysis jobs because they don't even know enough to question whether what they're doing is right. and then this goes on to be reviewed by people who are not intimately familiar with quantitative methodology/statistics and the cycle repeats itself over and over again until a few years down the line people start wondering why so many results fail to replicate
 
but, ultimately, you're the only one who can judge whether this leap is worthwhile for your or not. like if you were to tell me something like "i'm unsure about my job prospects once i graduate, i need a back-up plan that will get me a job, any job that pays more than waiting tables" then sure, absolutely, soldier on through your MSc and you'll be thankful that you have that as a back-up plan. but if you've already established a career route for you that maybe involves more research in psychology, maybe a tenure-track position, etc. then i would devote my time to get more pubs out and getting my name known as opposed to getting an MSc.
 
the good thing about the internet today is that you can maybe enroll in a MOOC or watch Khan Academy or something like that and get a feel of how things are. if you see yourself getting interested then maybe you can progress more into taking Statistics but if you don't like it then at least you're not in a program wasting years of your life for something that's eating away your soul. 

If you want a undergrad class ring and if it will make you happy, then do it Don't worry about what other people do or do not buy

Relevant:

One thing I do right off the bat to help these situations is always signing my emails with "Thanks," and then my name (instead of Best, or other closings that people like to use). Not only do I think it is the best multi-purpose email closer, it often removes the need to send an additional "Thanks" email after.

In terms of more specific examples, I would say if it was just a simple question that they responded to, I tend not to send a reply. For example, asking if I can come by their office at a certain time or if I'm asking something else pretty straightforward. If it's maybe a more technical question where I am asking for lengthy feedback or a more detailed response on their part, I usually respond with a reaction of my own and an additional Thank You type response. So in general, if their email is short, you don't really need to respond, but if they spent some time thinking about something you've asked or it's a lengthier response, I usually try to find something to say in return and show appreciation.

 

I really dislike when I hear people way that 'it's not that tough.' There are many of us out there that follow systematic and thorough study plans, take and retake the test, and still end up below the 160 mark. Not for lack of intelligence, just for some reason it does not click. In that case, personalized tutoring (upward of a grand) can be best solution.. I'm not saying that lwalker is in that boat, but it's actually disheartening to hear people say "it's not tough, come on, give it a try." That being said, if you can figure out your weakpoints and find a way to productively study for them, do so. Unless the school says otherwise, consider them finite cut offs. 
 
 
I suggest calling schools to find out how flexible they are, or adding in schools that say something along the lines :" Applicants with GRE scores below these minima, but who can provide other evidence of strong academic credentials, will be seriously considered."  Temple University has a 1150 minimum, but for great GPA and experience they're flexible. 
 
Also consider, why does it have to be clinical psychology? Does your interest span other research fields: counseling, social, health, developmental, etc.? Could a PsyD also get you the credentials you need? You may have more options than you think for school choices.

I remember seeing this same question. The "trick" (not really a trick) here is to understand that when they refer to a "percentage of the population", they are talking about percentages of subsets of the population. This bar graph shows the population broken down by age. The percentages refer to the percent of people within that age group. As explained in the solution, comparing the percentages of these subsets is not going to give you the correct answer since the subsets have different (and unknown) absolute totals. Another key here is to notice that these are not percentages of the same number (total US population)-- if it was, your total sum of percentages across each of the years would be 100%.

To give a simpler example, say in a graduating class of 600 students, 80% of the history majors are female and 50% of the chemistry majors are female. Notice that this mirrors the question above, but the subgroups are academic majors instead of age groups. Here, it would be incorrect (with this being the only information given) to say that there are more female history majors than female chemistry majors. It is easy to see that you might have a case where there are 70 chemistry majors (35 of which are female), but only 10 history majors (8 of which would be female)--there are actually more female chemistry majors. So it is incorrect to simply compare the percentages to each other because this is not capturing the full picture of the data.

If anyone cares, I just noticed that these coasters are back in stock right now 

*Disclaimer: I'm not familiar with admissions in your particular field.
 
I doubt these scores will get your application thrown out. I'm not sure where exactly you obtained those schools' ranges of scores and if they are cut-offs or simply a summary of recent admits' scores. I doubt they're harsh cut-offs.

If money isn't a limiting factor and if you could use the peace of mind, I would say just do your best to improve on areas you might have been weak in and retake it. You would likely want to just focus on the verbal section since it seems that the quantitative is overall less heavily weighted by the schools (ie you just need to perform around the same on quant as you did the first time). Otherwise I think the rest of your application package sounds strong enough that it might not be an issue, although you don't mention LORs which are also a very important part of the package. 

Generally, I think the decision is up to you whether you would feel better retaking it or not. Only you know what you are capable of regarding how well you can perform on standardized tests.

I am so sorry to read about the troubles that you are facing. I think that the way you have been dealing with them is admirable, and I am glad to hear you have someone to support you through it and that you are receiving professional help. I have never had to face anything like this myself, so this post is not based on personal experience but on general knowledge and familiarity with (somewhat) similar situations.  
 
I think there is a question here of what it is that you want. Really, that is the only thing that matters and that should dictate what you choose to do. My guess from reading this post is that you want to continue the PhD now, but you are afraid of failing. I understand. However, I don't think that's a good enough reason not to try. This post will have two parts, one contemplating what you'll want to think about if you come back now, and one contemplating taking a job and returning later. 
 
 
In case you come back now, there are two issues you bring up in your questions. One is a technical question of "can I do this?," which is one you should clear with your department. It sounds like they have been nothing but supportive so far. If you make your intentions clear, I can only assume that they will continue to be supportive. The question on their minds will be whether you really want to be there and whether you can make it. You can assure them that you definitely want to be there, and that once you are recovered, there is no reason why you can't make it. The only reason you have been forced to slow down is your health, not that your interests or priorities have changed. I think they will understand, and I hope that they can bend the rules for you, since this is clearly an exceptional case. 
 
The other, I think more anxiety-inducing question is "what will they think?" and by that there is a faculty question and a students question. The faculty question can be addressed by having a DGS-type person or your advisor email discreetly to explain that there was a health issue holding you back, but you are recovered and intend to fully participate now. (I understand there may be a concern about recovery times and relapses, but you kind of have to assume it'll be alright, or you'll never get started with anything and I don't think that' a good way to live your life). The students question will probably have a similar solution, but it'll have to be you who spreads the word that you were slowed down because of a medical condition. You don't need to give any details. In case this is helpful, I know of someone who has been taking leaves of absence over the last maybe three years, on and off, and I don't really know what the problem is. My own impression, and I don't think it's unique, is that aside from the curiosity about what happened, my main interactions with this person are on a professional level, and if they are doing interesting work then that's all I care about. I think everyone kind of half-expects that this person will drop out and not graduate, certainly not at the same time as their peers who didn't take time off, but we would all be very happy for them if they do succeed. 
 
If you do come back now, I think you need to decide to think of yourself as an incoming second-year student and make friends with the younger students who you may not know right now. It's not fair to compare yourself to your former colleagues who've been working on their research for the two years where you have been dealing with your health. You could never win that kind of comparison, with good reason. You only had one year of grad school. You might even be slow to start as a second-year, given the long break between your first and second year, so I think it's important to have realistic expectations of yourself and the situation. 
 
 
This all said, there is a question whether coming back now is the right choice, as opposed to later. This is something only you can answer, together with your therapist. If trying again right now induces too much anxiety, maybe getting a job for a couple of years as a way to introduce some structure and peace into your life is the right move. There are several advantages to this approach, in my opinion. The main one is the option of starting over with a clean slate. If you come back 5 or more years after you initially started, it may just make sense to start over completely, instead of starting as a second-year. This way you could make friends with a new cohort, and not carry around this past (at least as far as the students are concerned). The second time around should be easier academically, which may also help with preparation for your comp exams. Even if you have to reapply, I think this is doable, especially if you still have the support of your program. I would suggest talking to your advisor and asking about your options, at least as far as having a spot and funding down the line goes.
 
And finally -- and this is very important -- if after working for a few years you decide you no longer want to go back to school, or you want to study a bit in an unofficial capacity and not for a PhD, that is perfectly fine and IS NOT FAILURE. I cannot stress this enough. If you can get yourself out of severe PTSD and build a life for yourself where you are happy and productive, I think there is NOTHING wrong with not going back to the PhD. If you learn that it causes anxiety and affects your health, and you choose to stop and find a good job to improve your health, I think that is a success story if I ever heard one. 

The moderators are human. They give the best advice they can. They're not professional therapists (as far as I'm aware). When you post on the internet you open yourself up to good, bad, and ugly advice. If you knew what you wanted to hear, then why post it on a public forum?

Is it weird that my imposter syndrome seems to be coming from people saying positive things about me? The program I'm attending was very flattering in their recruitment of me, and it makes me feel like I must have been oversold, or they must have misunderstood my application package in some way, etc. Even my current professors' encouragement just makes these feelings more intense. It's making me pretty anxious, feeling like I have to live up to this inflated expectation of me.