Haunted By My Past My Story

[Jomin]

Hi everyone,

I have recently been diagnosed with PTSD, although I am sure I have had it for at least 15 years undiagnosed, primarily due to misdiagnosis and a lack of support from my family who due to their own reasons do not believe in mental illness. The last ten years have been particularly bad for me, I lost my closest relationship in my sister, had a major family breakdown, endured an emotionally abusive marriage to escape the pain of the family breakdown, moved countries, got the courage and left my husband, although he left and abandoned me first and the made it difficult for me to get a divorce and was severely bullied at work at the same time. To cope with all this I isolated myself and in the process my family abandoned me so I lived alone for a period of 1 year with no family or friends to care for me, during this time I adopted various coping strategies which in hindsight were very self destructive. I hate myself now and I long for the person I once was, I rarely smile or am happy, I have since remarried and have a beautiful daughter, who I love more than life itself, but I worry about how I can be a good mother and forget all about the past as it do painful, is it possible?

 

[Nemone]

I am afraid of that too sometimes, about if I can be a good mother. I have a lot of trouble doing "normal" things like house work or cooking and I am still pretty paranoid about whether my kids feel loved enough or not because I am always worried about acting like my mom did (I'm sure she had ptsd). I would say that you can definitely do it. I have a few rules that I kind of follow when dealing with my kids and the first is that I should apologize when I am wrong. If I yell at them and think later it was too harsh, I will apologize. I also try not to get irritated by little things. I used to be very easily upset before and when my kids would ask me for things all the time I had to try not to give in to the temptation to tell them to wait till later or brush them off. I would think about how much work it really was to get up at that very moment and stop what I was doing to get them what they wanted and how much easier it is to make them happy than to get upset and yell at them because they wouldn't stop bothering me about it. I had to always think about things like, if I was thirsty I wouldn't want to wait for it either. It sounds obvious but it was really hard for me because that's how my mother was. I was always scared to ask her for things because she would suddenly snap sometimes. If I wasn't so determined to not be like her I wouldn't have been able to do it for sure. But yeah my other rule is that no matter how upset I am, I try not to let my kids see my crying fits and if they have to see me be upset I tell them that it's not their fault and that I just don't feel good or something. I try to smile at them even if I'm crying or feel like crying. Also I never deny them hugs even when I'm mad or upset or if I don't want anybody close. They will never understand why their parent would turn their back on them. I also try to explain things to them so they can understand when I make rules, even when they were so young they only knew how to talk a little. Saying "when you do that it scares me because you might get hurt and I don't want that because I love you" goes a long way toward making them understand that you do things because you love them.

Most of these things I won't do are things that my mom did do. I've found that surprisingly, having my children hug me or just be close when I'm sad often makes me feel better. I think it's because, even if you makes mistakes, if you do all that you can for your child you can gain confidence from your relationship with them. I've found that all the affection that I pour into my relationship with my children and all my effort to always make them feel loved is returned to me a million times over. If I seem even a little bit sad my children will hug me right away. When I'm feeling sick my 5 year old son will tuck blankets around me and bring me things to my bed. My daughter always scolds him for bugging me and gives me hugs. She acts like the little lady of the house and is so proud of it. It's hard not to be scared but on the positive side, it's a chance to have a healthy relationship with someone you can give all your love to.