PTSD

Littleboylost

Long road but the path ahead holds hope.
I consider myself a very strong and stable person. I have been through a lot in my life and have always had broad shoulders and weathered the stomas life has brought me.

Dealing with my Difficult Child AS has triggered severe depression and PTSD in me. I am trying to focus on keeping me well and staying out of the Rabbit Hole but man this is tough, tough, tough.

Is it because we are dealing with our children and living their pain vicariously through our own hearts?

Battle Weary is right.

This is tough stuff.
 

recoveringenabler

Well-Known Member
Staff member
I think we get PTSD or high anxiety because we stay stuck in flight or fight, adrenals blown out of fear of what might happen to our children if we let go.....add a little guilt, some resentment and anger, some sorrow and disappointment, plus the battle raging within us in how to help and accept and let go.....
......this is an outrageously stressful experience for parents.....many of us here likely have or have had some form of PTSD.
 

Sam3

Active Member
No doubt about it. I had trauma therapy for some FOO stuff but I realize I need to reup. I have a friend doing it for years of heartache worry and abuse from her D.C./umnedicated bipolar, and her therapist said exactly what RE said. That it's constant prolonged fight or flight (and also that it takes normal loving off line).

I think we're all trying to self soothe on the boards but the extremes we
face seem to get written onto the hard drive and need a deeper scan to clean. Our deepest instinct is to protect our children and they are playing Russian roulette while they gaslight you. It's such a desperate situation.

I know I feel like a bag of triggers and it's so hard to will myself into the calm core place or remember my AlAnon etc.

Ive found some good sleep meditations re anxiety and trauma. Jason Stephenson and Michael sealy I think are the names on YouTube.

And for a much needed humorous perspective if it you can stand some swearing,

:censored2: it & Let That :censored2: Go | Emotional Relief Meditation

Oops I didn't realize the URL would turn into that massive picture. Sorry if that offends any sensibilities
 

Sam3

Active Member
And not to hijack, but I think this relates. After days of madness, which left me feeling like I had been dragged behind a truck, he's staying elsewhere and the physical sensation went back to achy pit of the stomach from worry, when I should be in jaw clenched anger. My body is betraying me!
 

susiestar

Roll With It
PTSD is the worst. I was NEVER any good with conflict and grew up in a house with a dad and bro that loved to fight. Add in some bad experiences and it took serious therapy to deal with it all. I did some things I am ashamed of to pay for it all. Then I had a difficult child, who really might have been fine if we had not had a second child or if he had not had a very traumatic surgical experience as a toddler. His own PTSD inducing experience. I got to have more PTSD from dealing with him when he would rage or attack.

It all plays havoc with your body. Emotional stress and physical pain are VERY closely linked. I have several physical problems and many of them are far worse when my PTSD or other emotional issues are triggered.

Please, get therapy. It truly helps. Most universities that have a psychology department offer therapy on a sliding scale. Many therapists will also do therapy on a sliding scale. You can always sit down with the phone book or a listing of the therapists from your area and call each one to ask if they offer sliding scale therapy.

One thing NONE of us ever really think about is that dealing with many of our violent children is actually dealing with domestic violence. Even if it is just verbal/emotional abuse, it is still abuse. More of us NEED to start asking Domestic Violence (DV) centers to provide counseling for parents of violent children. There are more of us than anyone thinks. And it darn well qualifies.

My local DV center created a program for me when I asked them for help. I got six months of weekly individual therapy. I could have had as much more as I needed but I was in a far better place by then and had reached my goals. Normally they would have had me take group therapy first for several months and then given me individual therapy if I stuck out the group therapy. They couldn't because they had never had a mom who had been abused by her child come in and ask for help. But I was an abused woman harmed by someone in her house, and that is their mandate, not just someone hurt by a partner or parent. They were surprised that within a few months they had more parents who needed help with similar situations. I only found out by talking to my counselor when I saw her in public.

More of us need to go and ask for this help from DV centers. So what if they look at you like you have a 3rd eyeball at first? So it is hard to admit that your child is attacking you physically or verbally or emotionally? The shame is not on you. The shame is only on you if you don't get whatever help you can find or figure out. Or if your child is an adult and is harming you, the shame is on the child. Yes, they did look at me a little funny at first, and it was hard to take. Yes, it was hard to admit that Wiz was violent. It was even harder to tell them that I had to move my child out of my home because I feared he would kill his sister and/or myself and then end up in prison or dead by his own hand. Or by mine if I survived.

I knew that hard as admitting it was, not getting help would make living with everything even harder. So I bit the bullet and admitted it. The first person I talked to scoffed at the idea that a child could even abuse a parent. So I insisted on talking to a supervisor and told them. I knew I had to keep talking until someone helped me. That is what I did until someone helped Wiz. Now I had to help myself.

We do so much to help our kids. Most of the time we are far more invested and involved in their progress and recovery from their problems than they are. Most of us Warrior Parents have PTSD to some degree, in my humble opinion. Isn't it time that we invest some of that determination in our child's parents? How will our children ever become fully healthy and happy if they have parents stuck in the muck and mire of PTSD? Isn't it time to do whatever it takes to help ourselves so that we are able to help our kids? That old thing about being in the airplane and putting the oxygen mask on yourself before your child is true. Your child cannot put it on you if you pass out. You can put it on yoru child if he passes out. The same is true for so many things.

Why not make this school year the year we all go to therapists, our local DV center, or wherever we can to get some help with our PTSD? We deserve it, and our kids deserve healthy parents.
 

Littleboylost

Long road but the path ahead holds hope.
No doubt about it. I had trauma therapy for some FOO stuff but I realize I need to reup. I have a friend doing it for years of heartache worry and abuse from her D.C./umnedicated bipolar, and her therapist said exactly what RE said. That it's constant prolonged fight or flight (and also that it takes normal loving off line).

I think we're all trying to self soothe on the boards but the extremes we
face seem to get written onto the hard drive and need a deeper scan to clean. Our deepest instinct is to protect our children and they are playing Russian roulette while they gaslight you. It's such a desperate situation.

I know I feel like a bag of triggers and it's so hard to will myself into the calm core place or remember my AlAnon etc.

Ive found some good sleep meditations re anxiety and trauma. Jason Stephenson and Michael sealy I think are the names on YouTube.

And for a much needed humorous perspective if it you can stand some swearing,

:censored2: it & Let That :censored2: Go | Emotional Relief Meditation

Oops I didn't realize the URL would turn into that massive picture. Sorry if that offends any sensibilities
Apparently I have totally lost my :censored2:. I shall try to reset the barrier.
 

Tanya M

Living with an attitude of gratitude
Staff member
I don't see how we as parents cannot go through some PTSD. I know I did. I would be coming home from work and would be 2 blocks from my house when my heart would start racing and I would feel sick to my stomach. I never knew what I would be walking into when I got home. I lost count of how many times I would come home to find the whole house ransacked because my son was looking for money to steal. The time I came home and found he had taken a hammer to beat a huge hole in our locked bedroom door. The time he ran away and cut the screen and broke a window to get back in the house while we were at work. The time I came home to find he took a butcher knife and hacked away at my kitchen counters.

Every morning I open the curtains to our sliding door and there was a time, probably a year that I was always afraid my son would be standing there. That is PTSD for sure.

For me, having strong boundaries in place keep me safe. They keep me from falling down the rabbit hole.
We each have to do what will make us feel safe and for me, detaching was a huge part of that.
 

RN0441

100% better than I was but not at 100% yet
Yes yes I have PTSD also. I self diagnosed but my therapist agrees. Worst symptoms are anxiety and IBS.

I had anxiety from childhood when my mother would get drunk and my father would get violent with her (can you say strangulation) and then the police would come, neighbors would stare. Wash, rinse, repeat.

That's why I feel so cheated that I am dealing with THIS crap with our son now. I felt I paid my dues....

Tanya you described what it was like for me going home after work every day too.

Oh and Sam as IF we could be offended here? We love an addict remember??

We do what we have to do to get by.

Self compassion is very important. Therapy, detachment, you name it. If it helps DO IT.
 

Littleboylost

Long road but the path ahead holds hope.
I am going to therapy and I am trying my best not to request any medication for my symptoms.

Today very physical. Sick to my stomach. Angry, startle reflex is so so sensitive. Heart papitrtions anxiety attacks. Great. And yet still I mange to get through my day. Where D.C. Has been and still is in bed.
I knew 100% that this school year would be as big a wash as last year. Why even Bother.
I am not engaging him. It's not my problem.

Every fiber of my being just wants him gone.
 
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