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General Tough Road When Family Continues To Remain Ignorant.......

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Amack

Learning
Sometimes I think the hardest part is the lonely part. I understand why friends and acquaintances do not "get it" as to where my sufferer went, who is this guy, we don't recognize him...But family (HIS) family continuing to remain lazy? Baffling. To continue to say in front of and behind his back "We don't believe in PTSD..." inexcusable. The worst part is T knows this but continues to be around them. It leaves me in such a conundrum. I am very vocal and not afraid to have confrontation when a loved one is involved, civil and gently of course. But he has asked me to say nothing. So we tiptoe:O_o: around the fake jungle:lurking: (that looks jungleish) with the HUGE elephant tripping us up every year at holiday!!! And anyone on this board knows how close we are to Holiday again........:nailbiting:........I am so sick of it. They have never asked once what they could do other than ship him off to treatment, and after treatment NO CALLS.. I have no one but a therapist and 2 people I talk to about all that goes on in our lives....Both my parents have passed and the rest live states drive away...I get so tired and lonely. T is at an "OK" place at this time but he battles daily and it seems his family is always right there to set us back 20 steps at any given moment. I want to scream....They are an alcoholic family w/narcisstic mom (who justifies it by the alcoholic father being the problem). It's a mess. It is so unhealthy I wish he was to the point of separating himself from them but :banghead::banghead::banghead: aye he is not.

So, its lonely even though we have made much progress in our new cPTSD life as sufferer and supporter its just dang LONELY!

VERY thankful for this site!! And the many blogs and articles I have come across on this site!!
BraVo:tup:;)
 
My partner was deployed on 10 different occasions - 2 to "areas of conflict" and 8 to 3 different "theaters of war".

His family's attitude? "He can't use that excuse forever!" "Oh, that's rubbish - he was like that before his last deployment." (Well, yes. If you'd bother to ask you would know that he had been diagnosed with PTSD but assessed as "only" 20% impaired so he was re-deployed.) :banghead:

W. T. in the actual F.:rolleyes::cry::banghead::poop:

Hugs @Amack if you accept them.
 
How do you not support and learn about PTSD if your kid has it?? I don't get it.

But he has asked me to say nothing.

I deliberately keep it from my family. Have for nearly 20 years.

One of my greatest fears has always been being outed by whom I'm dating to them. I've gone to some pretty extreme lengths to protect my family from that entire time period of my life, including straight up disappearing for a few years when things were really bad, and breaking up with blokes I really f*cking loved who would not toe the line and leave my family out of it... Because I would far rather have my family think me an incapable self centered unreliable asshole than to know even part of the truth. I'm okay with their having a bad opinion of me. I'm not okay with hurting them. And that's all the truth would do, in my case, hurt them. There is no scenario in which knowing makes their lives better, and in every scenario it would make their lives worse. It's a non-starter, in my book.

Which is a bit of a pain in the ass as far as dating people goes, because they do need to know XYZ about me. It's one of the reasons I married my asshole exHusband. He couldn't give 2 shits about my past, my present, or my relationship with my family. It made things easy in that regard. Not good. But easy.

Dating someone who respects me enough to abide by my wishes about my family? Is a hard standard to meet. When push comes to shove, most people believe they know best. It's a difficult thing.
 
How do you not support and learn about PTSD if your kid has it?? I don't get it.

How do you post an Aussie flag on your public Facebook page on Anzac Day but not pick up the phone and call your decorated war veteran father on that day? I don't get it either.

(My vet's parents are in their late 80s in a nursing home. I cut them plenty of slack. His children - not so much!)

@Friday - I learnt very early in my relationship with my vet not to attempt to forge any relationships with his family members. He sees it as an invasion of his privacy. I do wonder how it might pan out if we stay together - he's ten years older than me. He may leave me dealing with virtual strangers fighting over his estate. Not that there is much in the way of money but I bet my last dollar they will want his medals. Early on I would have told you they should have them. Now I figure they can wait til I die to get them. I'm the one who is supporting him. Not them.

@Amack - if his PTSD stems from his childhood and his family - then they are unlikely to ever want to talk about that elephant in the room.
 
Everybody loves a vet on Veterans Day... The rest of the time they forget.

What irritates me about my vet's parents and siblings is that they KNOW he has severe PTSD and physical disabilities (you can see he is disabled by sight). They know he's been hospitalized for both, and they have all taken turns being his caretaker for the check, but none of them did much care taking.

Some family dynamics just suck.
 
Best wishes to you @Amack I know how you feel. My own family tell me it is time for my wife to 'draw a line' under her PTSD. I have tried explaining how the condition works so many times. If someone suffered a physical head trauma they couldn't drawn a line under it could they! They don't get it though. I know it is so frustrating though. My wife's dad is all 'you shouldn't hold on to things that happened in the past' URGH!

I get quite defensive so just try to avoid them or the topic now. Not much use I know but hopefully it helps to know you are not alone.
 
I can relate on both sides of the family fence...With mine, the only PTSD they care about is my father's and it's only in the sense of....yeah, he's an a$$ because he has combat PTSD and he has 100% disability between the PTSD and physical injuries from being "blown up" as he puts it. So the fact that my s/o is an isolating PTSD person, they don't get that and call him weak and me an idiot for "putting up with" his "running away" bull$hit. So....yeah, zero support, for my own PTSD either. So....moving on.

His family isn't around much. They live hours away from us. They are a super polite picture perfect Christian family. Nothing out of place, so to speak. So they basically don't even try to understand. His mother is very sweet and loving. His parents are quite a bit older as well as are his siblings. He was an "oops" baby. Needless to say, his mother spoils him rotten and coddles him because he can absolutely do no wrong. They know he was getting treatment for PTSD, but have done absolutely nothing to find out what it means or what it is, etc. Everything is just, oh he's just a little depressed right now because of what the big bad world has done to him this time.

But, there is nothing I can do about it....and it makes me feel like I have absolutely no one. That's one of the hardest parts to deal with during this whole thing.
 
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