Oh ((Trace)), what happened with your grandfather was horrible, OMG, and for a 7 year old to see that is enough to struggle with PTSD. Ofcourse that would also be very hard for your father and yes he probably developed PTSD from experiencing that. I am so sorry your family experienced that and often a parent can get stuck in a trauma like that and not realize their child needs help and comfort too and not develop yet another fear from the parent that has been traumatized and begins not only exhibiting scarey behaviors but these behaviors only add to the trauma and confusion of the original trauma. From what you have described, both of you began to self medicate with alcohol. Actually, from what I have learned over the years about alcoholism is that a lot of individuals that became alcoholics experienced major traumas and were suffering from PTSD but did not know it and never got help.

What I did in my post to you is take what I did learn about what you experienced as a child and put that into how you developed around your experiences according to how human beings are designed to figure out how to survive and thrive in spite of being in environments where they experience constant threats of somekind.

Actually, I was watching a movie called "Hope Floats" where Sandra Bullock played the mother who was dealing with figuring out how to deal with suddenly facing how her husband was cheating on her and how that was leading to her fairy tale marriage ending. Her daughter wanted her to "fix" what was broken and the mother simply could not fix it. That movie was actually a good movie because of how it showed how the mother grew up and seemed to have "it all" and how she thought she was all set in living the "ideal" until that "ideal" fell apart. At one point Sandra Bullock told her daughter that our adulthood is all about getting over our childhood, and honestly if you sit and think about it, there is a lot of truth in that statement.

When I was suffering so badly with PTSD and did not get the right help, but instead was only further traumatized by the help I did reach out for, I almost did not make it tbh, I became dangerously suicidal. Two things "saved me", one was that in my effort to find some kind of PTSD support group so I could be around others who struggled like me, I happened across this site. Second, my husband got some names from an individual he met in his AA meetings that knew of a couple of therapists that specialized in helping patients with PTSD and understood "trauma treatment".

This site presented me with a different way to tap onto who I had been IRL. Who I had been in real life was so badly destroyed and unfortunately all that trauma took place right where I live and completely destroyed all that I had created that was a huge part of who I was as a person and that "who I was" developed out of the trauma and dysfunction "I" grew up in. I was experiencing very dangerous cycles where I was experiencing very strong suicidal impulses. What really saved me was coming across an individual who happened to be a vet who explained what that meant to me and told me to pay attention to the fact that these strong impulses come in like a wave get very strong, BUT THEY GO AWAY. So, I made it a point to pay attention and recognized what he had said to me was true. With that, I had "something" to hang on to and I fought very hard EVERY SINGLE DAY, I think it was the hardest thing in my entire life that I fought through, and I have experienced some significant challenges in my life that did traumatize me. The other thing that saved me is having this new therapist who was EXPERIENCED with treating trauma patients. The reason why that was so significant is because when I finally got to the point where I could "trust" him and tell him just how bad things really were for me, he did not send me to a psych ward, I had been there, done that and that experience only traumatized me more so that is one place I would NEVER go through again. Instead, this therapist worked "with" me and helped me make "gains" not only on this very difficult stage of PTSD, but he also made it a point to talk to my husband and let him know how important it was for him to respect just how bad it was for me and more importantly, remove the loaded gun he had been keeping in the night stand next to our bed.

The one thing that kept motivating me was that what I was living through was horrific, but, how could I learn to fight through it so I could help others do the same? My core has always been "OMG this is horrible, how can I find a way to help others with this challenge?". I was lucky in that the therapist that was helping me had himself "broke down" and had gotten the right help, so he was able to interact with me on a very significant level. I did not learn that for a while, but once he finally told me when he chose to tell me, it helped me to even further recognize that "yes" first hand experience can become something that can make a significant difference in being able to "help" another person.