Ptsd Parent Of Teens, Struggling

[amarie333]

Hi everyone, new here.

I'm 39 and I have two sons ages 14 and 17. They stay with me (and their stepdad) on the weekends, school vacations, and every other week in the summer.

I'm having a really hard time parenting. My constant, unrelenting anxiety isn't very fun to be around, neither is my constant crying. I feel the need for a lot of solitary time and I get very easily nervous and agitated from the "teen boy energy" of my sons and their friends.

If there's the slightest conflict, I fall apart. I grieve and suffer for days, weeks at a time over a single incident. My oldest has started driving, which scares me so much.

And, my husband and I disagree on parenting strategies. He is way, way stricter than I am and has no problem with conflict. I hate saying "no" and just want to hide. I feel like I shouldn't even be a parent but I don't exactly have a choice. He and I argue A LOT because he thinks I'm not strict enough.

I love my sons, and I feel like it seems like I don't because I have such a hard time with parenting and being around people. I cry when I think about when they were babies. I cry when I think about them being grown men. I cry all the time. I worry constantly. I get so nervous when I know they're coming.

What kind of mother is afraid of parenting her own sons? Now I'm crying again. Thanks everyone for being here, I feel like I can only talk to other people with PTSD about this because my husband doesn't understand. I want to stop feeling the sickening worry and dread, I want to enjoy motherhood but I don't know how.

 

[Freedomfighter]

Hi everyone, new here.

I'm 39 and I have two sons ages 14 and 17. They stay with me (and their step...

Oh boy, I know exactly how you feel. When I was first thrown into the throngs of PTSD my parenting suffered tremendously. Fear of not treating my son how he deserved to be treated was crushing. I know due to my PTSD the parenting suffered.

I was so ill I could not even explain to my son what was happening to me, because during those days I had no idea myself how sick I was, also was unaware of the danger that emanated from stalkers and my own ex.

Now I am balancing all of this better, want to give my son the love of a mother without smothering him, despite the fact that I missed 4 or 5 years of his life growing up, because I was forced to escape the residence in which I was abused.

It is so very tough to balance PTSD and parenting.

Try to give yourself breaks during the day. You might want to collect literature about what PTSD is all about and leave it around at your residence, perhaps your children can study up on that.

Hoping that things will get easier for you, I sympathize for every parent that wants to do be a good parent and that gets side lined with PTSD.

 

[Beemo3780]

I feel ya! I have a 15 year old daughter now, and she's going through all the hormonal changes and it's been pretty tough. I have days where all her teenage drama is mentally exhausting. Or she has teenage mood swings and takes her anger out on me. Having PTSD doesn't help that situation.

We've had a tough go of it; her biological father abused me for years until I got up enough strength to get my daughter and myself out of that situation. Something I still think I should have done much sooner, and constantly beat myself up over. She never should have been in that situation.

Being a parent is a really rough thing, and the best thing you can do is be strong for your kids. Display to them what you want them to become. Even if you have to muster it up for a weekend, and then go pamper yourself afterwards.

I've learned that my daughter is just as equally scared of growing up as I am of messing things up. I'm all my daughter has really, aside from her stepdad, so she relies on me to keep her safe and taken care of.

 

[amarie333]

Thanks so much everyone! I really haven't shared much about my PTSD with them, perhaps it's time to do so. I really appreciate your support!

 

[ForgotToLive]

I have not been a member of this site for all that long but I often think about how utterly SHOCKING it is to me that there are so few posts about parenting on this forum.

It is SO HARD to parent when you don't have normal responses to NORMAL stress MUCH LESS the type of stress that parenting brings.

I actually had developed the theory that maybe women with PTSD know better than to have children...

 

[Beemo3780]

I personally wasn't diagnosed with PTSD until my daughter was 10. Mine came about after I was involved in a few tragic circumstances. Kids don't need to be involved in their parents' problems. I grew up with a mother who was bipolar and it was awful, it always turned into her excuse for being a really horrible mother. She's passed now, but I did not have a relationship with her when she was alive, and to this day I view her as being selfish for not protecting her kids.

My daughter does not know that I have PTSD, and I will never tell her. It's not her problem. She relies on me to have my shit together, and I have to make sacrifices every single day for her. I am the adult, and I'm her only parent. She never sees me cry, or get upset, because that's not fair to her. She's a kid, she already has normal kid issues to deal with.

I don't like to talk about parenting on here, because it's a separate issue from my personal PTSD issues. Parenting is a tough job. I have a teenage daughter myself, and it's something new everyday. But I never let my PTSD issues get involved. Believe me, it's not easy, I once felt a panic attack coming on while taking her to the dentist. I've learned to fake feeling ok around people, especially her.

 

[Cypress]

I know very well how everyone feels. I have two daughters age 17 and 19 and always thought I did a good job of hiding my PTSD. Wrong!

My younger one has a mild anxiety disorder and tells me that my constant worrying about their safety and responding aggressively when I felt threatened in public made her not feel safe. She said she didn't want to tell me about her problems growing up because she knew I would get upset and she wanted to protect my feelings. My older daughter in college has an eating disorder and depression. She also says that my tendency to see danger around every corner made her not trust people and that my discomfort with being touched (hugs are still hard for me) made her feel lonely. I feel terribly guilty that my denial for so many years affected them so strongly. I love them so much and was so afraid of harm coming to them that I inadvertently hurt them in the process.

My older daughter's illness forced me out of denial and after decades I am going back into therapy for PTSD. My girls are supportive and say they are proud of me so I have hope we will repair the relationship. I make myself hug them everyday now.

My only advice is to get treatment - even if you think you are fine. My children became my trigger.

 

[Agatha]

My son is 16 and I've tried to treat telling him about C-PTSD in the same way I'd tell him I had a headache or i was tired. He doesnt know any details but as he's grown older he's known that there are reasons why i behave in the way i do. Children seem to plug into your emotions especially if you're trying to hide something from them, i figured if he was old enough to know that if had fallen over he'd have an 'ouch' feeling then he couldn't understand that there are other things that can cause you to feel 'ouch' in other ways. He's developed into a very empathetic young man (much more sensitive than my husband). However my son has now development anxiety if his own, I'm now feeling guilty. Is it normal teenage stuff, exams etc? Or has he struggled too much with me?

 

[ForgotToLive]

constant worrying about their safety

Oh boy, @Melissa10 I soooo get you... On so many levels.

The only thing I have told my daughters is "I had a bad childhood" and other vague things like that. I just don't have any idea what is beneficial (for them) to know. Since I had zero childhood... zero innocence... My natural inclination is to share zero details with them. I do not want to rob them of their sense of security or innocence. But the thing is apparently I have anyway... just by being me. I feel like a toxic person who tried to fly under the radar by checking all the "perfect mom" boxes. It is crushing.

And it makes me so angry because I tried SO HARD and made unending sacrifices to break the cycle... to make sure they had an entirely opposite childhood experience and could eventually go on to give their kids "normal" childhoods without even working at it. But I guess you just cannot be an "unbroken" mom if you aren't an unbroken person no matter how many of the right boxes you check and no matter how convincing you think you are.

I am so confused. My therapist says genes play a big role too and it's not just parenting that determines how emotionally balanced they turn out. I can't tell if this makes me feel better or worse. I guess kind of worse because my genes are bad plus it isn't necessarily going to be something she can work through, maybe it's a lifelong thing.

My daughter was just diagnosed with PTSD, generalized anxiety, and depression stemming from the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting. We live in CA mind you... it's not like she was personally involved. And I didn't even watch it on TV after the first day because it bothered me too much. But I did react in other ways which I guess did signal my ever-present fear and need to protect them (to protect myself from the guilt I knew I would have if I ever found out I HADN'T protected them...)

Plus other things happened that seemed incidental at the time but apparently weren't in her eyes. (like I installed a house alarm - like normal people do!) But she is such a sensitive and empathetic personality type.

I just found out she has been cutting and has been suicidal and feels overwhelming guilt "about everything that happens no matter what it is". And she was hearing voices talk to her and seeing images of people with guns that she knew weren't there during her panic attacks and night terrors. How is this even possible??? I cannot even begin to imagine if she had to go through ANY OF the ABSOLUTE HORRORS I had to SUSTAIN for YEARS ON END as a child, if this affected her so much! I am beside myself sick and confused about it. And she said she didn't tell me because she didn't think I could handle it. Really??? I can't handle it??? If she only knew what I have overcome!!! I am freakin superwoman!!!! But at the same time when it comes to my kids I can barely handle it. It is my worst nightmare... So maybe she was onto something after all. But of course now I am being calm and handling it even when I feel destroyed about it.

To say "parenting is hard" is true for unbroken parents. But I think it's a crushing understatement for adult survivors of sustained childhood trauma. It seems like no matter how much therapy you get and how far you've come, some kind of toxic goop just keeps seeping out of the cracks regardless of how much putty you invest in to fill the holes and no matter how much duct tape you wrap up in to hold it all together.

 

[Deleted member 37474]

I don't want to tell my kids until I
Have a handle on it. They are teenage girls. I am afraid that if I tell people they will want to know more. I have a bad enough time sharing it with my therapist. My friend told me that by going to therapy it is a gift to my whole family. I hope so, because right now therapy really sucks.