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General Adult Child Of Ptsd Sufferer

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Notenough

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Hello. I don't really know where to start. This is very long so I will give a Tl;dr at the bottom.

My mother has PTSD from her childhood home. Her father was an alcoholic and her mother worked long hours as a nurse to support the family. As a small child growing up my mother often told me of her childhood experiences- her father never physically hurt her but she developed severe anxiety as a child due to the home life not being stable. She also told me that she and her older brother would fight a lot growing up. I felt like this was normal as I have two brothers myself, but it seemed to really bother my mom.

Once my mother got older (she married my father at 17) she began to have her own children. Once her first child was born she gave her father an ultimatum- quit drinking or don't be in your grandson's life. He quit drinking, found God, and completely turned his life around.

I honestly can't think of a single bad memory involving my mothers side of the family and really feel the most connected to them. They were the ideal grandparents- took us to church, to parks, on vacations, picked us up after school, etc. They played such a huge part in raising us.

Flash forward to about 8 years ago- my mother hates her parents and brother with a passion. She has sent hate mail, angry emails, texts, hateful phone calls to my grandparents and uncle. She even targeted my uncle's teen daughters through Facebook to tell them how awful their father used to treat my mother as children. It caused great pain and confusion for those girls who didn't understand why their aunt would say such things. Any family member that does not go along with my mothers views gets cut off. I have even been disowned several years back for continuing to have a relationship with my grandparents and uncle.

My mother is very hateful and controlling and manipulative. She does not want me to be in their lives. I have a small child of my own now and I make an effort to visit with that side of my family so he may have a relationship with them as well. I informed my mother we were going for a visit (we go every July 4th) to give her a heads up. I had a wonderful visit and while there posted a picture on my social media of my son playing with his grandparents. My mother messaged me that it upset her to see it. I decided against messaging her right away as I was still visiting family. The next day my mother posted a hateful message on the picture of my son insinuating that I was a bad mother and was putting my child in harms way by seeing my grandparents.

I was livid. I immediately deleted the comment and private messaged her that if I had hurt her it was unintentional and I apologized. However, I did express that I felt she had crossed a line by involving my child.

We have not spoken much at all since. We got together to try to talk it out because she is my mother and I love her, but she uses her PTSD as a shield and justification for her nasty behavior. I don't want to sound insensitive to PTSD sufferers but I don't agree that it gives my mother carte blanch to be hurtful and lash out. She refused to apologize and instead yells at me, "I'm sick! It's the way I am. It's not my fault!"

Is she using this as an excuse for her bad behavior or is this normal and to be expected? I have been rug sweeping her past bad behaviors but I can't do it anymore. I don't trust her not to say nasty things to my small child about his grandparents whom he loves. I don't know what to do. I don't want to be insensitive but I feel like she has never truly been there for me because she is so stuck in the past. I feel like I am mourning the loss of a loved one because I don't think I can allow her in our lives in her current state. Is this normal and is there hope?

Tl;dr
My mother has PTSD from having an unstable childhood home. My grandparents helped raise me but my mother hates them now and doesn't want anyone to have contact with them. She is excusing her bad behavior by blaming PTSD. Is this normal?
 
You can't get PTSD from living in an unstable home. You get PTSD from the worst of the worst of trauma.

Criterion A. Exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence in one (or more) of the following ways:
  1. Directly experiencing the traumatic event(s),
  2. Witnessing, in person, the event(s) as it occurred to others,
  3. Learning that the traumatic event(s) occurred to a close family member or close friend. In cases of actual or threatened death of a family member or friend, the event(s) must have been violent and accidental.
  4. Experiencing repeated or extreme exposure to aversive details of the traumatic event(s) (e.g., first responders collecting human remains; police officers repeatedly exposed to details of child abuse).

If your mom has PTSD from her childhood? Then she was severely neglected &/or abused, not just growing up in alcoholic turmoil.... To the point of it being life threatening enough to alter the way her brain works.

As far as it being normal for PTSD sufferers to mix up the past & present? Yep. That's normal. If your grandfather beat her, raped her, passed her around to his friends, starved her, etc.? She very well may be mixing up now & your children, with herself & him back then. And be screaming from the rooftops for it to stop. For someone to do something. Back then superimposed on right now. Possibly double imposed, for bringing her own children around her abuser(s). Whether or not you were abused, wracked with guilt for risking her children suffering what she went through.

As far as "not being able to control herself"? Snort. Yes. We can control ourselves. Your mother may not have learned to control herself, yet... But PTSD is never an excuse for bad behavior. It's a reason to learn to control bad behavior.
 
The parents your mother grew up and experienced are not the same as the grandparents you are experiencing. Her experience of them is valid. So is yours.

My brother had a much better upbringing than myself. His experience of my parents is just as valid as mine.

Our parents had their act together a lot more with him and didn't regularly endanger his life. His relationship with them and the extended family is very different than mine. Honestly, I am jealous of him at times for it. It's something I work hard on managing. I do my best to respect his experiences and relationship with them, and he actually works hard on validating that I did go through a lot of trauma with them, the very same people. It's tough for us both.

PTSD is never an excuse for bad behavior. She is clearly hurt by you spending time with people who traumatized her. She is clearly not handling her hurt well. PTSD and trauma is never ever an excuse to act like a jerk. She not be able to control feeling anger and hurt and even feel betrayed, and it's ok for her to feel those feelings. The thing is, she absolutely can control what she chooses to do with those feelings. It may take time, therapy, and lots of support to do it, but PTSD is not an excuse to be a jerk.

I think both of you need to find a way to respect each other's very different experiences and histories with the same people. If she has PTSD from her childhood, that means her parents put her life in danger, as a child.

You can't change her, but you can set up boundaries around her unacceptable behaviors that are hurtful to you, as PTSD and trauma is not an excuse or reason to be a jerk to anyone. Period. My own brother told me (and my parents) that in order to be in HIS life, we had to be polite to each other. It was a very good boundary that was helpful to me to tell me to be polite or I couldn't be in his life. Politeness doesn't mean saying trauma is ok. It means handling it in a way that doesn't mean being a jerk to other people about it.

It also might help both of you if you can also validate her in any way that you can. She may feel not only hurt, but jealous. You do get to experience these family members, even her parents, as being reasonably safe people. She didn't get to have that for her own childhood and adulthood. The pain of her situation is big, and while you set up boundaries around the bad behavior, validate the pain as being real, in what ways you can, and you might find that she fights you less on the time you spend with them. Maybe.
 
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Thank you. I definitely know she has been jealous of my relationship with that side of her family and I completely understand that. I imagine I would feel the same if it were me in her shoes.

The thing I'm currently struggling with is the fact that I have been apologizing for her childhood seemingly my whole life. It is exhausting! I have cried with my mother and read articles to try to gain a better understanding. But I feel like I'm running out of patience.

She is always being ugly and nasty and to her she is doing nothing wrong because she has PTSD. With this last incident she refuses to apologize or see that she hurt me. In fact, after her nasty outburst regarding my child she sent me a text blaming me for what she did. She said because of me she had to get new medication and had to see more doctors. I just can't take the blame and responsibility for her actions.

I agree her feelings are valid- even if I disagree due to different life experiences but to her no one else's feelings matter.

I don't want to cut her out of my life but I feel I have no choice. I can't risk my son to her behaviors.
 
How confident are you that the PTSD diagnosis is accurate? There are lots of stories on this site from people who had a hard time getting an accurate diagnosis. It seems like, if professionals can look at "PTSD" and see something else, maybe they also look at "something else" and see PTSD. Or, maybe she has an additional issue. Is she in therapy or getting some kind of treatment now? Has she ever?

All of this is complicated. My biological brother sees the family situation much differently than I do. But, my therapist thinks he as narcissistic personality disorder, and that our mother did too. BOTH of them had a road map of reality that differed wildly from mine. (And they both are/were a lot more inclined to tell their side of the story than I am......)

Have you talked about this with your grandparents and your uncle? A lot of the time when an alcoholic "quits drinking and gets religion" they do the 12 step thing, which involves things like owning what you've done and trying to make amends. I'm wondering how your grandfather's version squares with your mom's. It would be hard to know who's "right" and the truth is probably some combination of the stories.

Bottom line, you have to look out for yourself and your son. Regardless of her issues, you mom sounds like she'd be hard to deal with.
 
How confident are you that the PTSD diagnosis is accurate? There are lots of stories on this site from p...

Wow- I'm a little shocked that you mentioned your brother possibly having NPD because I also believe my mother suffers from NPD or BPD...

I believe she self diagnoses a lot. Her reality is also vastly different from so many others. That is part of the problem. She sees things her way and if you don't agree she cuts you out of her life or lashes out to hurt you.

My grandfather was not a good dad. But he has changed and has apologized to her over and over throughout the years. He is sincere and has tried to reach out to her even though she spreads stories about him to anyone that will listen. I honestly wonder if it is attention and sympathy she seeks but I hate to sound so callous. Her stories of her childhood have changed so much over the years but no one else seems to share those memories with her.

She is currently not doing anything for treatment besides taking medication. In the past, several of her doctors have advised an inpatient stay at a facility with intense therapy but she never goes.

I try to validate her as much as I can but I have resentment towards her. I am tired of coddling her. I feel almost like I'm enabling her. Does that make sense? I swear I'm not a heartless person. I'm just at the end of my rope.

She thinks everyone is out to get her and everyone is ml so mean to her in her mind. That's not the reality. My dad enables her by rug sweeping everything.
 
It sounds like you are doing a lot of things right, and like she is working hard to avoid her pain and dump her anger on you, rather than face the fact that the real perp is her parents. Not you.

The way she is blame shifting sounds like it could be a personality disorder. Reading a book like "Stop Walking On Eggshells" might really help in figuring out how to set boundaries.

Before you completely cut her out of your life, there is a way to set responsibilities that will give her the responsibility to make it work or not. Such as, if you continue to get upset about my facebook posts, and try to tell me what I can and can not do on facebook or with extended family, then I will block you on facebook. That's could be a first step.

Then it will be in her hands to choose to act appropriately about things in order to keep facebook contact with you.

Same with your son. You could tell her, until you can stop giving me a hard time about spending time with your family, and go work on the triggers in therapy and with your doctors instead of dumping on me, you can not spend time with my son. Then she gets to make the choice to change, or lose contact with her grandson.

Then other boundaries can be set about others things. If she repeatedly busts the boundaries, then you can cut down the contact more and more, and then she will have a chance to finally face her stuff in an appropriate manner, or lose you. She will essentially make the choice to keep you in her life by acting better or not.

If the behaviors get worse, then your boundaries get more severe. If she is NPD or BPD and also refuses to look at her own behaviors and work on changing herself, then it will become really clear really fast that it's time to cut off contact for now.
 
Thank you so much. I guess I really needed to hear from someone else who has gone through this before. I will get the book you suggested.

I will start with setting those boundaries and go from there. Thanks again for the advice :)
 
Wow- I'm a little shocked that you mentioned your brother possibly having NPD because I also believe my mother suffers from NPD or BPD...
I'm not at all qualified to guess what your mother's problem is, but, if I WAS going to guess, I'd be thinking kind of like you are. My mother absolutely never thought she had a problem. (Or WAS a problem, for that matter.) Apparently they rarely get an official diagnosis because they don't see a problem so they don't seek help. Most people who probably have NPD get a second hand diagnosis when someone like my T says "I think your brother probably has NPD." When I read your post, I was trying to imagine what would happen if a narcissist was raised by an alcoholic. (No idea!) My T says he thinks there's a hereditary aspect to it. Environment can have an impact, I'm sure, but apparently it's not the whole answer.

Good luck with the boundaries!
 
This thread was really helpful. I have known I've had PTSD my entire adult life, but only started getting proper treatment in the past three years. I've completely turned my life around, but I still struggle!

I have a 1.5 year old now, and he is everything to me. He's inspired me to do so much with my life, including opening my own business to build us a future with instead of struggling with minimum wage as a single mom. In the past few weeks I came to the shocking acceptance that my parents were the cause of my original PTSD. I always knew they were 'disciplinary', but with a therapist's help I acknowledged that it had been extremely excessive and random. I'm still coming to terms with it, BUT my parents have always been great grandparents to my son, and my biggest supports with raising him.

Normally we go there every Sunday, and the Sunday after my therapy session, where I acknowledged childhood abuse, I called my mom in tears telling her I needed some space for awhile so I could come to terms with my emotions. She hung up on me. I had started blogging so wrote up a post, and made it public. When she saw it and called me she completely denied the trauma ever happened. Anyhow, so I don't make this too long I will fast forward to today. I still want my son to see my parents, because he loves them. I don't want to see them yet, but they have agreed to do family counselling.

Hopefully your mother seeks the help she needs, but, while acknowledgement of the trauma is extremely important, healthy coping mechanism are even more so. My absolute terror is that I will negatively impact my son's life, and this thread helps me see what I need to work on to be a good mother.

I hope everything works/worked out for you! <3
 
My mom has ptsd too. She was diagnosed within the past year but she’s had this since my father died unexpectedly. My mom was always a good mom and did her best... but I always knew something wasn’t right. She is very manipulative and controlling. She plays the victim role in any situation and also says “I’m sick it’s not my fault” to justify any of her actions. It drives me insane that she just can’t apologize! I’ve spent my life since my father passed being told I’m basically wrong for anything in my life. She creates situations in order to put herself into a victim role. She turned my entire family against me by manipulating situations. For example, she will say horrible things to me to get me to react. Most times I can bite my tongue but she knows how to dig deep. ( like telling me my father would be so disappointed in me if he were alive) as soon as I react, she gets hysterical and tells the whole family I lash out at her for no reason. She never tells them what she did. Then I get angry phone calls from my whole family telling me how awful I am and that I need help. She has them so convinced I’m awful. I’ve lost my entire family just so she can pull all the puppet strings. I feel so worthless and alone. I feel very strongly she uses the PTSD (and her fibro) as a shield to act however she pleases with no repercussions. So I feel for you. It’s tough.
 
You can't get PTSD from living in an unstable home. You get PTSD from the worst of the worst of trauma....


This is absolutely untrue. Everyone deals with trauma in a different way. What may not be traumatic for you, could change someone else’s entire life. Growing up in an alcholics house can be very traumatic, even when no violence is involved. Do not discredit someone’s experiences simply because you do not understand how it affected them.
 
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