Other therapy options?

[Catlady4]

My boyfriend suffers from undiagnosed/untreated PTSD caused by both his parents abusing him.


He lives with his mom overseas and before either of us realized he had PTSD, he’s been trying to save up to move here, and I’ve been saving up to move out on my own as well.

When we started having relationship issues because of him having anger outbursts, I recommended he see a therapist and he said he couldn’t afford it. He finally went to a dr about it once but the dr told him he was just selfish and didn’t diagnose him with anything.

He seems to be working on his anger issues and things have noticeably improved, but his mom is a really bad trigger for his PTSD and things have been getting worse with her.


He gets physically ill from stress at work and has lost a lot of jobs, but he found a job he really liked and he was doing really well and then his mom kept demanding he help around the house and made him miss work several times and lose his job. She then preceded to demand he work and call him lazy, and tried to hit him, causing him to have a severe mental breakdown (and seems like flashbacks) and threw him out of the house twice making him sleep outside.

Now she’s somehow forced him into a construction job working
6 days a week but he went to dr about ongoing pain in his hands from work and was told the work is causing arthritis in his hands.


I am more desperate than ever to get him over here because I know this mess with his mom isn’t a healthy living condition for him and he can’t get better like this. He doesn’t have any options for counseling at this point with him only having Sunday’s off work. His mom doesn’t know he has PTSD and I don’t think she would care. I tried to get advice from his older sister and she was no help, telling me “that’s great that you want to help him but it doesn’t help if our mom doesn’t understand.” And when I texted and asked if she thought their mom would care if told about the Ptsd, she didn’t even respond.

I plan on moving him in with me as soon as I’m able to, and then getting “couples counseling” on my insurance so he can at least have some counseling, but I can’t do anything right now and it’s so hard to see all of this happening to him. I’ve been researching almost constantly recently and only got 2 hours of sleep over it. I am worried that I’ll move him over here and that it will backfire since we were only together for 3 months in person and 2 years Long distance so I’m scared he might have worse issues than what I saw in those 3 months because things got worse since we’ve been long distance... I don’t want to put myself in a potentially dangerous situation but I want to find a way to help him.

 

[Justmehere]

I plan on moving him in with me as soon as I’m able to, and then getting “couples counseling” on my insurance so he can at least have some counseling, but I can’t do anything right now and it’s so hard to see all of this happening to him.

Has he met with an immigration attorney yet? Is he looking for a job in your country or making any other efforts of his own to plan to make this huge and stressful move across borders?

You are really focused on diagnosing and arranging treatment for what you believe to be his pathological mental health condition, and you are failing to think through the bigger picture.

International moves generally lead to PTSD getting worse and couples counseling is not a means to treat PTSD.

You can’t move him, he has to do that himself. He also has to be the one to work out treatment.

 

[Suzetig]

I mean this really kindly, he is not your responsibility. You’ve only spent 3 months together and have had some weird online on/off/on relationship - you’re making life changing decisions in order to have him treated for an illness he’s never been diagnosed with and you both still live with your parents.

Setting aside the cross cultural issues - which are huge here. From a legal and practical point of view you are not remotely his nearest support nor do you have the resources to financially support you both living independently.

If you do want a long term relationship you need to find time and money to physically spent time together before he moves to you. If you can’t afford to travel to see each other, you’ll not be able to afford to live together. He, as an adult, is responsible for sourcing his own diagnosis and treatment before getting into an international move, long term partner relationship with all that that entails.

 

[EveHarrington]

This screams of being a white knight rescuer!

Please stop trying to rescue him! He needs to do the heavy lifting himself.

It’s really concerning that you have this international boyfriend who doesn’t speak English and you want to bring him to an English speaking country where he will be essentially isolated from all support except for you.

Both of you are still living with parents and dare I say haven’t lived on your own yet?

I think you have a lot of fantasy thinking. The chances of this relationship working out for the long run are quite slim (international LDR+ untreated mental disorder + inexperience with relationships in general + etc). I’m not trying to be a Debbie downer, but the odds are stacked against you.

And I know how much a white knight can/will f*ck up someone with PTSD.

 

[Nessa7]

In addition to what has already been said, I think it is concerning that you are worried that it would be dangerous to move him. If that is even a thought, it is a sign that things might not be stable.