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Abandonment by friends

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anthony

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When friends abandon PTSD victims because it's too much for them to handle. Feeling abandoned?

There are many variables in answering this question, each dependent upon individual situations. If I were to name my top two variables that need be factored into a discussion about being abandoned by friends, they would be:
  1. Do you have a history of abandonment?
  2. Are you looking for the moral high ground?
History of Abandonment
A history of abandonment gives you a predisposition towards pushing others from your life, allowing you to maintain a victim mentality. If you assume the victim mentality, which is evident within the phrasing of your question, then you enter into a self-defeating vicious cycle of negativity that will only perpetuate further negative outcomes in your life.

The Moral High Ground
This comes back to the victim mentality, aiming for the moral high ground in order to play the victim when friends abandon you. Did your friends abandon you? Or did your friends remove themselves from your toxicity, shown in a pattern of sucking the life from them?

Those with mental health concerns often have people abandon them, but in essence, they haven't abandoned you at all. They've simply left the relationship to look after themselves first and foremost, just as you would if within any toxic relationship where you felt others dragging you downwards when in their presence.

Finding Middle Ground
This is the ultimate solution, so that friends aren't leaving you with the feeling of abandonment.

You have to be honest with yourself, about yourself, and about your needs and wants. Sounds simple, right? It's more complex than you think; it is the totality of holding friendships together.

A friendship is just that: a friendship. It is expected to be mutually beneficial to both parties, in that both parties make each other happy being in that friendship.

All relationships have limits, which depend on the seriousness and longevity of the relationship. If you have mental health issues, but your friends don't, and if they want positive times from the relationship, but you want support, both parties will not be able to get what they want. Thus, the relationship will fold.

Professionals exist to cater to mental health needs. Partners and families are stronger relationships than most friendships. If you want to maintain friendships while navigating your mental health, you need to be honest with yourself about your part of that relationship. Friends are not your 24/7 crisis counselors, there for you to dump all your negative issues upon, rely upon to cheer you up or any such thing.

Friendships are like any relationship. They have mutual boundaries, defined limits, and agreed purpose. If you have a gym buddy, then your relationship with them is as gym buddy. You may have another friend with whom you have coffee. Another, you may holiday with, and so forth.

Honestly, though, if you want to maintain friendships, you should work to keep mental health out of the equation. Sure, your friend can know about your past and present problems, but for the most part, you want to leave those aspects to your professional sessions, your family, and your partners. Those relationships are stronger and have far more solid foundations.

The above works best to keep and maintain long and short standing friendships. I say this from personal experience. Let them know about your mental health concerns if you want, or don't, but do not use friends to prop you up and support you, because any more than the occasional requests for support will quickly send your friend running for the hills. You will be severely crossing over the relationship boundaries by expecting them to emotionally support you on an ongoing basis.

Remember that friendships are typically positive experiences. If you feel good when leaving your friend, and they feel emotionally worn out due to boosting you up, then they're not having a positive friendship, are they?

For the most part, individuals control their own abandonment by friends--not always, but a good amount of control is present based on your respect for those relationships' boundaries.

Conclusion
As a PTSD sufferer, it's easy to blame another for what may be our own problem. It takes a lot of practice to look inwards--to self assess, evaluate, and provide accurate conclusions. Remember, don't jump to internal self-blaming first; that is counter intuitive. PTSD or not, anyone looking inwards to determine one's culpability is biased. To remove self-bias from self-assessment is a skill itself. Try to be as honest as you can about your part in the relationship, listen to their reason for leaving the relationship, then determine whether you have been abandoned or if you have perhaps pushed your friend away. Friendships are not created equal. They will not all stand the test of time.
 
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There is also the flip side of being too needy that I know I experience as well as other PTSD sufferers. We don’t like to talk about our own issues and so we become the listener to other’s problems. The relationship becomes very unbalanced and soon you make friends that are constantly calling you fro emotional support. One thing that I noticed is that they start dumping on you as soon as you answer the phone and never once ask how you are doing. They ask for your advice over and over but every time you try to respond they cut you off or say negative things like that will never work and soon you don’t answer the phone when that person calls. I have had such friend leave nasty messages when she was obviously very intoxicated telling me that I am not a good friend. I’m a good friend to her as long as it all one way.
I got into a relationship a couple years ago. The man didn’t have a job, his wife had left him and he lost his house. He was very charming and an elder at his church and that was exactly what I wanted was someone to share my faith so I married him. I had made mistakes by marrying abusive men before and thought that because this man was supposedly a man of God that this was the one to last forever. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I divorced him six months later. He never moved into my house and whenever I was in emotional distress he wouldn’t even let me cry. One example is when my beloved sixteen year old dog had to be put down and was crying and he screamed at me that the dog was old and to stop crying.
Long story short, I did get help from police and a women’s group in my area that supported victims of domestic abuse. I knew he had a temper but try as hard as I could I could not get this man out of my life until recently when he borrowed money from me and after being patient and seeing him spending money foolishly asked him to repay it. I got a text message to never contact him again and that I was “greedy” to ask him to repay the money. Shortly afterward I found out that he stolen my credit cards and gold jewelry and ran up credit cards bills. Since he was physically violent I was advised (and I agree) that it wouldn’t get my money back because he hadn’t worked in five years and the only thing it would do is enrage him if I pressed charges. I now might have to file bankruptcy because it was a lot of money. The point I’m trying to make is that I have low self esteem and this man never visited me when I was sick in the hospital or sick at home. It was all one way and people who fear abandonment will do anything not to be abandoned again. I did stay in the relationship thinking that he would never leave me but he did after he got everything he could from me and there was nothing left (financially). The good news is that it’s been over a month since I got the text, I have changed my phone numbers and gotten new bank accounts and credit cards. It cost me a lot of money but this time abandonment was a good thing as the man was verbally, physically and spiritually abusive. I think PTSD sufferers can get into abusive relationships very easily because they have this fear that they are not okay and afraid that people don’t want to be with someone who has PTSD nightmares and flashbacks.
All I can say is that I am so grateful for this forum because only from reading and understanding others with PTSD can I understand that I’m okay. I have PTSD but I’m not crazy. I joined a very loving church and that is healing me spiritually as I feel I am important and I am loved.
 
I am aged and the loss of friends takes more forms with older people. They die, or they get iphones and don’t use email any more or they just can’t handle email. I leave them because they are awful people to know, like narcissists. It is good to know that friends are not to be used like Kleenex for emotional problems. But I had two at one time who helped save me from insanity when there was no one else.
 
I identify quite well with this article. For many years I was a victim – played the victim. I pushed many people away. I may not have a history of abandonment, but I felt abandoned very early on in my life. It took many mistakes, many burned bridges and lost friends before I realised I had to stop playing the victim. Simply because I was becoming more and more isolated. Fault became irrelevant. I chose to live the rest of my life not just exist and to do so meant I had to face myself. I started to see how my actions had pushed many people away; people I cared about. I had to accept that while I will never feel the same as many others can and do, I can at least find ways to feel some of the same joy. I cannot change the past but I can live in the moment and work on a brighter future. I stopped dwelling on what could have been and focused on what I can have.
 
This article made me cry and really hit home.
Abandonment is a massive issue for me and I’ve lost so many friends due to my PTSD. I don’t think I am a toxic person and rely heavily on others for support but I definately push people away and find it so hard to trust. I have been hurt so badly in the past.
 
I don’t believe you can eliminate self-bias even when practiced and consciously trying to do so when examining an aspect of your life. You can certainly minimise it. I have found it to take a lot of practice and therapy to be able to do this. I can see now more clearly when I distance myself for fear of being abandoned and hurt. Still, I can’t quite always manage to push myself into stopping doing that completely. I still find it hard to put myself out there – although I do it much more often and I think the more you do it the more you realise it’s not so bad. Most people won’t abandon you like a PTSD brain tells you it will. Still, sometimes it’s tricky to get past that anxiety surrounding the idea.
 
If someone is physically starving for food/nutrition we do not blame them however when starved psychologically our culture tend to tell people to keep it to themselves and get over it. Without communal social support to help then individuals in need and their “friends” are going to be overwhelmed AND in many cases you cannot effectively just tell the needy to not be needy. There needs to be social support that is compensatory, healing and sometimes just plain ole palliative particularly for long-term child hood abuse victims (yes there are victims)who never had opportunities to practice social skills and have productive behaviors modeled and moreover must also unlearn many ingrained behaviors, reactions etc. – lectures are not going to help except those who are least damaged and even they must have or have had other protective factors in order for a simple lecture to be a tipping point; what is needed is a safe haven community with housing and coaching and support just like successful people received yet often take for granted (rather natural to do so); These resources are needed in every single community if we want healthy communities and public spaces.
 
My husband would push me away when his triggers were activated by grabbing a drink and another (woman). I could see it and eventually we learned to talk through it but not one of my or his friends were prepared to help us navigate this.
 
Hi Anthony

I am a former army nurse and I have PTSD. My father was a veteran and he had it too. He was the gentlest man I have ever known. He was not violent and like him, my PTSD manifests as extreme, overwhelming anxiety.

An emerging body of research is revealing multi-generational trauma reaching back to WWI. I work with a Vietnam vet whose two sons committed suicide. I see the effect that the PTSD of a current serving soldier has on the behaviour of his little girl in a family struggling to hold it together and hide the truth in order to save dad’s career and their income. Society can no longer afford to afford to ‘stick its head in the sand’ and say this has nothing to do with them. The military and emergency services exist for the welfare of society and although those who suffer from PTSD are not exclusive to their ranks, society DOES have a responsibility to deal with ramifications of those that ensure its welfare and safety.

I agree totally with you in that the sufferer needs to accept responsibility. I am blessed in that I have a loving and supportive veteran husband who has worked hard to prevent me from assuming a victim identity. And it hasn’t always been easy. But he succeeded and it was a light-bulb moment for me when I used words very similar to those that you wrote. “How could you possibly know what I’m going through, you don’t have it” I screamed at him during one of my terror-fueled rages. “Of course I can’t bloody well understand it’ he shouted back, “but I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand by and watch you turn yourself into a victim.” It took a good week of self-reflection but it sank in.

Abandonment is multi-faceted. It is not always about burning friends out and I recognise that you acknowledged that. But PTSD gives people a chance to be bigoted and opportunistic. My condition was exacerbated to the point of self-harm when the husband of my closest friend (of 25 yrs) saw me as ‘fair game’ during her deployment to Afghanistan. A senior ranking officer, he knew about my condition and threatened to destroy my relationship with his wife if ‘I upset him’ following a failed attempt at seduction. He persisted in his attempts and I got worse . My husband didn’t believe me at first cos we’d all served together and it was ‘out of character for him.’ It was only when my girlfriend’s husband physically escalated his attempts and I finally found the strength to confront him that he did what he threatened: he destroyed my relationship with his wife. Then the ‘anonymous’ emails started. It was only when my husband alerted both of them to my subsequent attempt at self-harm it finally stopped. By then the episode of PTSD was so entrenched it has taken nearly four years to emerge from.

Anthony, discrimination is not right no matter who it is directed against or for what reason. Historically, many illnesses and conditions were stigmatized and those who suffered from them were marginalized by society until social reform and public awareness educated the majority to their plight. Reality is no reason to accept our position and fit in. Social support underpins every aspect of illness in our community and just as most would not exclude a friend who is a diabetic from their Christmas party, neither should they sever relationships because of mental illness. Things will only change if we – the sufferers – make the effort to stand up and demand society listen because you are right, no one else is going to do it for us.

I am now in the position, because of my husband and a wonderful psychiatrist, that I am able to start making a difference again. I went to the senior HR division of the organization I work for (ironically a faculty of a university of health and behavioral sciences) and had the discrimination I was being subjected to dealt with.

I confronted the colleague I work with ( another nurse) who was bullying me to make her feel good about herself: she won’t be doing that again in a hurry and, if she does, I’ll address her behaviour again.

But most importantly, I joined the national veterans organization here in Australia. My experience has taught me a lot. PTSD is bloody horrific and I am not about to waste a moment of it if I can help support someone else going through what I did.

You are right: “Unless you have experienced it, you can’t know what it’s like.” Rather than using that to divide us from the community, let’s use it as the jumping off point to educate them. Rather than those endless articles in magazines discussing causes, signs and symptoms of PTSD, let’s petition the media to get realistic advice on supporting someone with PTSD: setting boundaries; discussing how it affects a sufferer individually; what a friend can do to best help. Let’s start a public narrative that demystifies the mystery: “how do I talk to someone with PTSD without triggering them” because that appears to be at the big fear that the public hold.

We CAN change societal attitudes. There will always be bigots and opportunists. I recognise that not all of us with PTSD are in the position to affect change. But if those of us who can don’t start making a difference, nothing will ever change and another century of multi-generational trauma will evolve.
 
Hi Chrissie,

You’re making some rather large assumptions based on your interpretation of words. The wording of the piece is quite specific, being that is does not blame anyone, yet highlights common issues we PTSD sufferers endure. Denial is not helpful for us. We need the truth, and as a majority, due to our illness we push people out of our lives for various reasons.

Claiming non-understanding is nonsense, to be honest. Yes, we don’t understand PTSD when we get it, before we become educated upon it. Beyond that point though, the entire purpose of healing and moving forward is to stop making excuses, know what we do, why we do it, does that fit us, or do we fit something else, then action the issue to fix problems in our lives.

You can educate the public all you want — but don’t say that someone with HIV isn’t discriminated against broadly, still today, when they say they have it. People are still afraid to touch them, in case of infection, even though touch is not infectious.

People are in denial if they think stigma of mental illness is going to get a whole lot better. Some people will understand it, others will not, simple as that. You cannot force people to understand something they don’t understand. When I got PTSD I had no idea what it was. There were a few in the military who supported me because they had Vietnam parents with PTSD and had to know it, understand it. They could empathise. The majority others… said one thing to my face, another behind my back. Basically, thought I was malingering because they didn’t understand PTSD. How could this tough Army Sgt suddenly be incapable of working? Deployment? Doing his job?

Unless you have experienced it, you do not understand it. This leaves us sufferers with the direct, honest, we have to fix our problems and fit in with society. Society are not going to fit in with us… and they don’t — hence people abandon sufferers because we have extreme neediness at times, depression, and require support. You can’t support someone who is sucking the life out of you.

We need to be realistic, live in reality, the present — not what we would like the world to be, or the situations. Read this community, and read the discrimination every sufferer endures from the healthcare industry trained to treat mental illness, all the way through to family, friends and employment. Discrimination is rife — we have to fix our problems, nobody else is going to do it for us. Those willing to help is obviously extremely appreciated — beyond that — the buck stops with us, the sufferer.
 
Abandoned as a child left me traumatised, needy and mentally ill, it has taken a very long time to be diagnosed with PTSD caused by complex trauma, also personality disorder, after years of fighting, raising a family alone but successfully, I tried to end my life about 6 months ago, since this episode I have been totally abandoned by my children and their extended families, no contact with my grand children just nothing at all, I know that I scared them and they are trying to protect themselves, and I am working so hard to put my life in order (mentally), but to have lost every bit of support and the love of my children is a punishment and I wish now that I had been successful 6 months ago.
 
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