Fear of abandonment can defintely be a part of Complex PTSD. A deep desire for a rescuer is part of the challenge too. Wanting "justice" is very much a part of that too because when someone is held accountable for "harming or invading" the sense of safety and empowerment is felt.

When an individual struggles with "complex" PTSD what that means is instead of one major trauma that can cause PTSD, an individual has experienced several traumas that began in childhood.

One of the things that human beings do and at a surprisingly young age is "shunning". Even other primates do this. Actually, a good example of this is in the Snow Monkeys where a certain group is considered privilaged and another group is expected to honor that.

Often with Complex PTSD, an individual has faced traumatic shunning and banning. That is a kind of group abandonment.

If I just consider this kind of experience and look back on my own past? I experienced and witnessed a lot of this and from a very early age where it frightened and confused me.

When a child is abandoned at a young age that child is incapable of understanding that and often what "most" children begin to feel is it's "their fault" and that they were not loved enough. Sometimes a child can actually be told that when their basic nurturing needs are not met and a parent expresses anger at that need that the child is not worthy of having these needs met.

babkababy, at 3 you were too young to know your father abandoned you, but what you imprinted from that is how your mother stressed about it. She taught you fear of abandonment. What you struggle with in your own marriage is that same fear that you learned to feel when you were very young.

When you observe your dil, she is actually showing you a lot of the damage she suffered too, and the reason she is saying she wants to leave is what she wants is to avoid the pain of possibly being abandoned. Also, she is rejecting your son's efforts to comfort her because it feels so alien to her and instead of being able to feel "safe" and loved, she feels discomfort on a level she doesn't know how to articulate.

You talk about how she can show compassion to her older brother and not your husband? That is showing you what she does know how to do and her world is about "trauma companionship or trauma bonding". When children grow up in dysfunction they thrive "in dysfunction", it's what they know. You have talked about how her sister rages, how she rages, and the older brother probably raged too and turned to drugs in an effort to gain comfort or to not feel. Well, that is the world she has learned to thrive in, NOT the world your husband wants to give her.

Unfortunately, what often happens is a woman will end up in an abusive relationship because that is what felt "normal/familiar" to the woman. Men can struggle this way as well. If you think about yourself growing up without your father included in your family environment, you did get married but all these years you feared what happened to your mother might happen to you. That deep fear can last a lifetime.

I wonder if part of how your son chose this woman was connected in how you may have unknowingly sent that message of fear to him. Maybe he saw you fearful and saw his father try to help you with that fear and he also grew to recognize that can be a challenge.

My own father was abandoned by his mother when he was around 12. Both him and his sister were abandoned by their mother and they never knew what happened to their mother for many years. When I was growing up what I noticed about my parent's relationship is that my father was often critical towards my mother. At one point my older brother heard my father telling a friend that it's important to marry a woman who loves you more than you love her, that way they don't leave you. I also saw my mother make a big effort to get dressed up and she would look beautiful, yet my father ALWAYS found a way to criticize her or to point out a stain or something wrong. We wondered WHY he never looked at her and said, "wow hun you look great". Honestly? I think what he wanted to do is keep her self esteem low because if he did that she would remain fearful and not think of leaving him. He also demanded she let him know where she was going and when she would be home. And that is most definitely attached to how his mother left one day and never came home. But, that is not something he really recognized himself.

What you are dealing with in your dil is confusing and it's understandable you don't know how to help her. Unfortunately, she is rejecting "normal caring" and even has shown you that she can't even identify the normal cues when it comes to nurturing her own child. Sadly, that is probably the way she was raised herself.

In a situation like this, it's important to understand how this can affect a young child. Think about your own deep void that you have struggled with your entire life. Well, with your dil, it's a lot worse. Often "rage" can come out when normal "love and nurturing" has been deprived. Sadly, her sister is also like this, and her brother probably was too.

Back in the 60's they did an experiment with a baby monkey where the monkey only had a wire thing that was cold as a mother, no fur or anything nurturing. This baby monkey was also isolated so that it had no warm nurturing presence. Then when it got old enough they put it in a cage with a group of normal monkeys and this monkey was terrified and would not go near the other monkeys. This monkey could NOT assimilate into normal and they ended up having to put this monkey back in the cage with it's fake wire mother alone.

I remember watching that like I saw it just yesterday, and watching that did upset me a lot because there is a lot of information to that experiment.

When I got ponies to do what I did with them I made it a point to observe their temperment. It's especially helpful if one can observe them in a group. When I brought them home sometimes I began to see they were very aggressive with their food/hay. I always separated them and they could see each other. Often even when they were separated where no one could steal their food, they still got angry and protected their food as if it was a problem. It would take a very long time, often a couple of years for them to finally overcome that challenge. If they were too aggressive, they would not fit into my program.

Human beings have these behaviors too. Often dysfunctional patterns also revolve around food. Your daughter in law is also exhibiting this problem too. She struggles to make a decision about if it's even ok to eat. The structure she functions best in is lack of structure.

YES, it's very sad too.