They Just Don't Want To Know...

[katz]

I'm with you all on this feeling. When I was diagnosed with my PTSD, all my friends but one just vanished. These were friends that I had since grade school. It hurts so much to lose the people that you were sure that you could count on the most.
Now, I'm having problems with my husband. He just doesn't want to deal with it. I was not remembering much of "it" when we married, so he thinks that this is not his problem, and just leaves me to deal with it all alone. I tried to reach to the family and they also just abandoned me. No one wants to help me or even be there for me. I would love to have someone who would stand by me. I have enough problem just convincing myself that it is not my fault. Now it's like being traumatized all over again.

 

[Milo's papa]

I'm with you all on this feeling. When I was diagnosed with my PTSD, all my friends but one just vanished....

Hey katz, I'll stand by you and be there for you. I know it's not the same as having someone physically there, but it's the best I can offer. I know how hard it was for my wife when her friends started going away. She has managed to build a new network of friends that are very supportive. It was really tough the first few years, people she thought she could count on turned their backs and walked away. That really sucks.

 

[angrypanda]

This is me tonight! I desperately needed help the last couple days and finally had the courage to ask my husband and best friend for help. My husband struggles with my ptsd because he's a fixer and can't fix this. So he avoids. Not helpful today. My best friend needs a break from the ptsd part of me. We argued about it, she sees it as healthy boundaries but I feel abandoned and so alone. Makes me never want to ask for help again. I think this pain might be worse then dealing with it in silence. Clearly, I have attachment issues that I'm working on but today was a big setback.
Thank you so much for sharing this, I'm so grateful to know I'm not alone in this!

 

[Tinyflame]

I'm sorry @angrypanda . :( Hugs if you need. :hug:

I think it's very lonely & disheartening (for me, anyway), to realize I'm struggling & not 'computing' as I should, that I'm not able, but can't fix it. :(

 

[Milo's papa]

@angrypanda, I feel your pain all he way to my house. I haven't hit the point where I feel burnout yet. I go to therapy myself so I can get help processing all that my wife goes through. I know that I she doesn't tell me the details, and I don't feel I need to know.

I do my best to be there 100% for her, but sometimes I just can't. What I can so is make sure she doesn't fell like she is alone with her battles. I took on that job the day we married, and I take it very seriously.

Like I told Katz, I'm willing to be there for you. All you have to do is reach out.

 

[angrypanda]

@angrypanda, I feel your pain all he way to my house. I haven't hit the point whe...

Thank you, I'm sure if my supporters read this they would give you a huge amen! It helps me to know this is a loving struggle of balance not because they despise me. They assure me they love me deeply but sometimes they struggle to cope too. Never thought of it that way.

 

[AEW]

Does anyone else feel like people in their life just don't want to know about their PTSD?

I've been diagno...

OMG YES! I was about to post something asking the same thing! Current boyfriend of 6 months seems to confuse me talking about trauma from ya know, years of violence as being hung up on my ex.... although I rarely mention it. Friends and family only seemed concerned when they first found out like it was a tabloid about the misery of some famous person... that morbid curiosity... but never real concern.
Although knowing I escaped myself and been surviving myself makes me feel more in control/not a helpless victim.

But yeah... what gives? Are people so emotionally and mentally exhausted by their lives that empathy is a chore.... What hurts most is my mother's not even rejection of it... she just pretends nothings wrong like she can wish it into being. When she found out after 4 years of it happening and she had no idea... she wanted more details like a gossip and then seems like she couldn't give two shits. Grrrr.... sorry... not much help am I? Cynical day.

 

[katz]

OMG YES! I was about to post something asking the same thing! Current boyfriend of 6 months seems to confuse...

Digz--You are so right! When I mention it to my mom--all she did is ask if I had found a councelor yet. She doesn't even want to be a mom. How sad :(
It's hurt so much, considering that this is the person who should be taking care of us--right from the start.

 

[katz]

@angrypanda, I feel your pain all he way to my house. I haven't hit the point whe...

Thank you Milo's Panda for your kind words. I wish that my husband would want to go to therapy, if not anything else, then to learn how to cope with all this. I think he could get some questions answered and be better prepared to handle life with me and my situation. I think he still believes that this will end and just go away--in other words, I will be cured. Then life will go back to the way it was before all this mess started. How sad.

 

[Milo's papa]

@angrypanda, you're right, it is sad. Some people just don't know how to deal with a loved one when they're ill ad they can't see the illness or do anything about it.

 

[Sideways]

With people you love, I periodically talk about talking about it.

It's hard stuff to listen to. When I was going through Denial phase, I kept thinking "this is too awful to process". If someone cares about you, hearing about it, and being helpless, can be almost as awful.

Recently I mentioned my 'issues' in a conversation with my sister, and she got angry! I beat myself up about it for a while, then finally asked her flat out - "it seemed like you got angry at me for mentioning it, is that right?"

It was a defining moment in our relationship. Without talking about the detail of the abuse, she told me all about the conversations that go on in my family when I'm not around. The way they struggle to cope with what I was put through, having to watch me suffer and being helpless, wanting desperately to see the offender brought to justice and having to accept that I will never do that. She said that sometimes it's like a knife in her gut, how much of a failure she's been as a sister that she didn't see it and couldn't protect me and how she's watching it destroy the life of someone she loves dearly. And yes, there's anger - how dare he!

There's a lot of reasons people react the way they do. I tend to assume they don't care, or don't want to know. But, putting the detail of the abuse aside, talking to her about talking about it has been huge - for our relationship, for my self esteem, and for my courage to keep striving for recovery. She's with me, it hurts her like crazy too, so I need to get better for both of us:)

 

[Milo's papa]

@Ragdoll Circus,

As a suppporter I wholeheartedly and completely agree with your sister here. It breaks my heart that there is nothing I can do to "fix" what happened to my wife. There are times, when she is having a really bad day, that we just sit together on the sofa in each others arms and cry. Thats all we can do at that moment. But after a good cry and alot of profanity towards her abusers, my wife redirects those feelings into actions.

Even though her abusers threatened to kill her and everyone she loved if she ever talked about what happened to her, she decided she to stay silent just gave them more power. She writes in her jourrnals, she wrote a book about what happened to her and how she survived, she even started a blog and facebook page and she does public speaking engadgements, including 2 International Conferences on PTSD.

She's fighting hard to take back her life, and even though she knows it will be many years from now, she will have it back. She wants this not only for herself but for our future grandchildren. She doesn't want them to know the horror that was her life.