[MotownJohnny]

I want my family to care about me enough to save me. It is a feeling I remember from childhood. They didn't 't care about me, or that I was in such a bad environment. Raised by Wolves.

But it seems like when the chips are down, instead of circling me and protecting me like I think loving families would, it is more like they smell the blood in the water and sense weakness and move in for the kill. Instead of loving support, that is when I get lectured and berated and all of the hurt feelings acts and the martyrdom speeches about how they have it hard being the pillars of the family and community and all I do is **** up all the time.

[JaneC]

Yep, I get this.

I told my sister the other week how I was doing and as you may recall she said that she couldn't do what I needed, which was give me a hug.

Since then......she hasn't really been in touch. No checking in. My mother doesn't call, and doesn't want to know if anything is wrong. Only wants to remind me to not ever think to ask for money should I stuff up and not be able to survive as a fulltime student and part time worker and mother.

There is no loving family caring behaviour raining down on me either. It hurts, it is painful and the hole that has been in my heart since I was an infant feels like it will never ever be filled.

I am sorry you are feeling this too Johnny. It sucks. I'm also sorry that I have no answers today. Today I am just worn down to barely functional.

They say we need some sort of radical acceptance and fill our own emotional voids. Tonight I say **** them! (whoever them is)

[Blitter2014]

Group hugs to you both.

I don't have the answers, but I do know that there is some family you are better off not having than having in your life. Mind you I know that's cold comfort and doesn't fill the hole or take away the pain. I am hoping that perhaps you both have friends you can lean on to ease the pain, and am glad that you can at least find a level of acceptance and compassion here on PC. Please know that others care, really. And to those who dont care.....its their loss. Your great. Give yourself a hug from me. Hugs

[roadless]

I find that I can always get what I need, though not necessarily who I want it from, if I am open to it.

My biological family was unable to be there for me in any healthy way, yet I have received parenting from people who are not my parents, and I have many surrogate brothers and sisters.

I do mourn the loss of not having a healthy loving family but I am grateful for the others put in my path.

Best wishes to you in your journey!

[Open Eyes]

Mowtown, I saw this article and thought of you because your mother really did come from a very different generation and the advice was so very different in her generation too.

Awful '50s Marriage Advice Shows What Our Mothers And Grandmothers Were Up Against

I think it is important to consider the ideals of the generation our parents thrived in because it really was very different than "now".

Wanting one's family to be more "loving" when they don't know "how" is important to understand. When family members are not responsive and caring you really need to understand that your siblings were raised in dysfunction too. Family members need to actually "learn" sensitivity and empathy, if that was not shown to them correctly, they are really not going to understand it or have the skills to do what you are asking of them.

When I really needed my older sister to comfort me in that psych ward, she was so mean to me and even "after" she was not the caring sister I had needed her to be. People really do not understand "post traumatic stress" either, they really do think that the person who is struggling is just being a big baby and they really believe that the best thing to do is "ignore and not reward what they consider childish behaviors". For "years" soldiers who presented with PTSD were treated so badly, and even deemed "cowards" and "weak".

What is important to understand about PTSD is that for a while "yes" it is very confusing and emotionally challenging in a way others with no first hand experience have the ability to understand. However, you really "can" get past that stage and get to a point where you can finally understand things on such a "healthier" level. Eventually, you will get to a level where you understand how others behave badly because they really "are" ignorant. That ignorance you are experiencing has to be grieved too. And "yes" one can get very "angry" about the reality of how hurtful other people can be, that people really do stupid things because they just don't know better too.

You "feel what you feel" and these feelings are actually real to you too. It takes time to understand that memories and emotions are really of a different time too. As you are reviewing these memories, yes, it is very confusing and it really takes time to be able to understand where you really were developmentally at the time, whatever way you reacted or thrived was all based on what you knew as well as the time you were in with how society was set up as well.

When I think of myself for example, I have been married for 34 years, in all that time no one ever told me that I was dealing with a lot more than just my husband being an alcoholic, that I was also dealing with a man that struggled not only with dyslexia, but also compulsive ADHD too. I really did struggle and tried to get help, unfortunately that help that I needed was just not there when I reached out.

Mowtown, when your father was expressing his challenges to his family, the help your mother needed, the help your entire family needed was not there either. You cannot see what we know in the "now" as something known way back when, because our culture was really very, very different back then as you can see by the article I posted.

Skeezy, what you are learning now, what is now being discussed in our society "now" is not anything that was understood in your past either.

It is so important to realize that we are truly "in" the age of understanding so much more that we did in our past. We have learned so much just in the past 5 years alone.

Yesterday I drove through the old neighborhood where way back when my husband and I built a house and how dysfunctional that small yuppie neighborhood really was. Well, when I drive through that small dead end street, it looked so much different than what I remembered, all the trees were big and it was not at all like that neighborhood in my memory where couples were planting these small trees and trying to have lawns because of how everything was all new and baron. It made me realize how my brain was stuck in time and it really was a very different time too. So much I did not really "know" back then compared to "now" too.

What "is" radical acceptance? If you think it means accepting a "worthlessness" you are wrong. What it means instead is to sort through ones emotional past and really realize that whatever is "hurt" or dysfunctional in the now with "family" is all coming from a very different "time" and culture/generation. One cannot truly judge self from what is known in the "now" either.

Mowtown, your mother is 90. She is not going to see what you want her to see and quite honestly, my mother is 90 too and my father is 89 so they are not going to have the capacity to see what I do either. My older sister did not respond to my challenge the way I needed her too, I have had to stay away from her for a few years because she did hurt me at a time I really needed help too. It has been very "hard" for me to get to a point where I can see her in a different light too.

When someone has PTSD, or what is called "complex PTSD" they only see their own pain and profound hurt. For a while the person can't see past their own pain or sense of failure either. Most people who struggle really feel that "talking about it is just as wrong now as when they were told that in the past too". However, once that painstaking task is done and all the cards are on the table, the healing journey can take place to where the person is guided to looking at "all the reasons why" which is why I posted this article because it really "is" important to learn about the "whys" better too.

Jane, you are going back to school and trying to learn more so you can change your lifesyle. There is nothing wrong with that. It is hard to do with PTSD and a family that is "unsupportive" to boot. However, you have the right to "choose" in spite of whatever your family says. While it is hard to do while struggling with PTSD, it is the right thing to do because you are "learning and growing in the now" and that is important. Healing "through" PTSD is about learning to be "in the present" and also learning how to sort through past hurts and finally understand whatever is there better, also realizing, that is not in the "now" and whatever is there is really in the past and whatever is there we did survive it and we did whatever we knew how to do at the time, "not our fault" if we can look back and see whatever we "could have" done differently either.

The ideal of the little house with the white picket fence where boy and girl live happily ever after is not "realistic". The ideal of "I am all grown up now" is not "realistic" either because the reality is we learn and grow and adapt all our lives. Radical acceptance is finally getting to a point where you "accept" life as something we learn and grow through all our lives, one day at a time and we really do that on our own. A family that stays behind and doesn't "know" how to care should not hold one back either. The goal is mourning that part of our life and learning "how" to rise above it with an understanding that it never does or never did mean we were ever "unworthy".

[Teacake]

That's not PTSD. johnny, that's just family! There's no cure except to go away for a while and grow into yourself and then you can come back, but the hardest thing to get over is that yearning for the wolves to become Italian greyhounds to suit you. They never will. They can't, they won't, and no matter how good you are and how deserving the impossible won't happen.

[unaluna]

Boy do i hear that.

My mother was always, dont bring such type a man home! I was like, what are you talking about?? Plus, i think most of the family assumes im gay, which they dont approve of. Thing is, they were worried about it back when i was in high school or before, like before i had any idea what it was about.

So i wonder if part of the problem is, they have all these fears about you, which you unconsciously or even consciously were aware of, but like my family, they werent going to EXPLAIN anything, because if you didnt know, why should they tell you? But in the meantime, they keep looking for "signs". I bet you dollars to donuts your mother was waiting to hear you tell her you had run off to Fire Island, not that you were in a hospital. Or whatever the "worst thing that could possibly happen" is to them, like you met a divorced woman with children. Old country b.s.

[MotownJohnny]

No, they didn't ever think I was gay, that was just my crazy transvestite father projecting. I'm pretty openly heterosexual in that I have always admired certain women and what not, even though my romantic life was limited to a few women in college years through my early-mid 30s. I do admit I'm fairly domestic in that I don't mind, kind of even like, doing housework, cooking, cleaning, etc. But I just look at that as both pragmatic, being a bachelor, and as being a modern man without hang ups about "women's work" and "men's work". My father was also very sexist, he was lazy and demanding, wouldn't boil water or so much as get up and get a spoon for himself, he made my mom do it for him. She was like a slave to him in so many ways, and so beaten down.

I'm on this kick to be a "tough guy", because not being a tough guy brought me to that dock. But, I am not a neandertha. I hate sexists, I hated how my father treated my mom. I worked for a female boss for a number of years and always respected her as the boss. We got along great. I see people as people first. And, I also don't think of my domestic side as "feminine" - that sort of thinking is old and sexist too. What is feminine about cooking and doing the laundry if you're a single guy, or married for that matter. What is masculine about a woman who changes her own oil in her car or goes deer hunting? Nada, I say.

[MotownJohnny]

Yeah, I know, Teacake. I should clarify what I meant by "save me". I know they can't do that literally, you have to save yourself from any of these types of problems. But it would mean so much if they were just understanding, patient, cut me some slack and gave me some room, and weren't judgmental, and maybe just maybe even told me they loved me once in a while.

I also want to say this - you should all know by now, I turn every gray cloud into a hurricane, I always go for the worst case scenario in my mind. I wonder if I have a paranoid personality at times, but my general "me" doesn't fit. My father was what they called paranoid delusional. I don't know if that is just an old name for paranoid personality disorder. It was explained to me as being basically schizophrenia without the actual auditory and visual hallucinations, just the mental ones, such as calling my mom a ***** and believing she had sex with 20 or 30 men every day while he was at work.

I don't want them to be as bad as I make them out to be, and I know at times they aren't, but the past couple of years have been especially difficult with these relationships, because I changed and they didn't, because I don't take as much crap from them as I used to, I stand up to them more.

[MotownJohnny]

Wow, OE, that article was really something. It was the image of my parents, the man's role (yeah, from a man wearing a size DD padded bra, silk panties, and garter belts with sheer hose, and sometimes (oh, God, this is gross, a feminine napkin, since he believed he had a monthly period) and the woman's role. I saw a whole lot of my parents in the bombastic Archie Bunker and the beaten down Edith Bunker from All in the Family.

[MotownJohnny]

PTSD sucks. Mental Illness sucks. It really does.

[unaluna]

I get that. WE grew up being open minded about men and womens roles because we HAD to. Thats what we saw. My dad was the nurturing parent, not my mother. But they wanted ME to be traditional - thats what is nuts.