Justmehere
Sponsor
Has anyone here struggled with having a dissociative mother? I have. I still struggle with it. She isn't in treatment (and I'm not holding my breath hoping she will ever get help) but has been diagnosed. She has struggled with it since before I was born, stemming from trauma from her own childhood, and almost never talks about it. She has very little self awareness that she communicates to anyone.
What's really hard is when she is blank. Numb. In a fog. It can really throw me for a loop and trigger my own PTSD symptoms as an adult. I'm trying to approach it differently, and I do have therapy of my own. My old trauma therapist met with her once, about my PTSD, at my request, and came out of the session more concerned about my mother's mental state than my own.
I dissociate at times too, and this thread isn't a judgement or criticism on anyone with PTSD who also have children. This is simply about me as someone with PTSD who struggles to be in relationship with a parent who is mostly "gone" most of the time, even when she is physically present.
My therapists keep telling me that having a primary caregiver who is so "gone" is probably why I had failure to thrive as a kid, and still struggle as an adult. She couldn't be present enough to respond to my own emotional needs as a kid, and thus I suffered from emotional neglect and learned to react very strongly to try to get a response from her. I'm not sure it's that simple, but it is probably a part of the picture. Even now, I struggle with a huge desire to get a response from her. Any response.
What's really hard is when she is blank. Numb. In a fog. It can really throw me for a loop and trigger my own PTSD symptoms as an adult. I'm trying to approach it differently, and I do have therapy of my own. My old trauma therapist met with her once, about my PTSD, at my request, and came out of the session more concerned about my mother's mental state than my own.
I dissociate at times too, and this thread isn't a judgement or criticism on anyone with PTSD who also have children. This is simply about me as someone with PTSD who struggles to be in relationship with a parent who is mostly "gone" most of the time, even when she is physically present.
My therapists keep telling me that having a primary caregiver who is so "gone" is probably why I had failure to thrive as a kid, and still struggle as an adult. She couldn't be present enough to respond to my own emotional needs as a kid, and thus I suffered from emotional neglect and learned to react very strongly to try to get a response from her. I'm not sure it's that simple, but it is probably a part of the picture. Even now, I struggle with a huge desire to get a response from her. Any response.