PTSD

[justdenise]

When my son was17 he was jumped and assaulted in the parking lot of our apartment complex. 3 grown men took turns standing on him and kicking him in the head, and basicly whooping the s*** out of him. He was a very happy, healthy, church going boy.

Since then, he has been on the Victim's Assistance program provided by the state of Texas..or we would be in deep debt. Anyway, he will not go anywhere alone after dark, mostly stays in his room watching TV. Cannot drive because of the head injuries, so he doesn't interact much. He stays on antidepressants and pain meds. Really no life. Is breaking my heart to watch this all happen to him. God spared him for a reason, just need to find a way to encourage him that there is still a chance at having a family and a good life. There are times he won't leave the house for a week at a time.

My boy is very outgoing and has a big heart..I feel helpless not being able to help him. All the Neurosurgen does is see him once a month to refill lots of meds.His quality of life is basicly gone. Was wondering if anyone out there might have been thru something similar and how they are coping. What can I, as a mom, do for him? He is almost 21 now.


[This message has been edited by justdenise (edited 01-15-2003).]

[ffsmith]

Yes I have been though something kind of similar but not the same; there are also many important differences. So I do not know if my experience will be much help?

My experience was not as severe physically. I do not have any permanent PHYSICAL damage from the beatings I received. Your son sounds like he has some severe and permanent damage if he can no longer drive?

If I can ask, what is his physical condition? Are there scars? Can he walk the same? Can he talk the same? Are his mental abilities the same? Is there a lot of pain? Head aches?
You say he is outgoing, but it does not sound like he is very outgoing right now, could you explain this in a little more detail?

I hate to give advice without a better understanding of the situation.

You want to find a way to encourage your son.
I do not believe that my parents feel this way about me. They like yell at me, put me down, and blame me, and tell me how bad a person I am. The like to tell me my failings as a person over and over and laugh at my dreams and ideas.
They have said that they want to help and encourage me, but when I wanted someone to help me look at a home and support my decision to buy it, no one had time to look at it?

They tell me to take drugs for depression. I do not think that I have depression, but I take their advice and try them. Latter they use that against me, and say that “look to take drugs for your depression you can never live on your own or have an normal life”

My parents suck. My advice to you is to do the opposite as my parents.

You seem very different than my parents, but one thing that you said has me worried.
You said “that there is still a chance at a family and a good life.”
You are right
BUT I am concerned that you are unhappy with your son right now. I am concerned that your approval and love is conditional on him providing you with grandchildren and him having a good life that you can be proud of.
This is how my parents act towards me!
Do you have any other children? Do they have families and good lives? Do you treat them differently?
My parents have given up on me.
Their attention is on my sister who provides them with grandchildren. I know it is stupid to be jealous of my sister but I am a little… it bothers me a little.
I will never have a family or a life that makes my parents proud. That thought doesn’t make me feel well or like I want to go on with life at all.

What can you do?
I do not know but I am going to just say some things…

You have to love and accept your son right now for what he is.
You have to love and accept a son whom may never have a family or may never have a good life.
You need to NOT give-up on your son.
He needs attention and acceptance and your love and trust.
I think you need to spend a lot of time with him and give him a lot of attention.
Go to the doctor with him.
Go to a therapist with him.
Tell him you love him and accept him and that you are proud of him every day or twice a day.
Tell him that you are concerned for his happiness and his quality of life.
Discuss his plans for his life or future with him.
Understand exactly how he feels about things.
Talk about his fears… from the beating… and any other fears.
Help him continue his education or get some kind of job.
Take him to church with you.
Watch TV with him if that is all he is doing.
If he in the house for a week, be in the house with him?
Go to an athletic club, or just exercise with him.
Help him to eat right, teach him to cook or learn together.
Help him build back his confidence in the world. And let him know that he is normal, he can live on his own and he can survive and be happy?

I am sorry my thoughts are not more organized … these are all just Ideas… I am scatter-brained today http://www.healthboards.com/ubb/dizzy.gif

You seem like a very caring mother. I wish you the best.

[NamVet]

Do not know if this will help much but here is an article I wrote some time ago--

PTSD is something that many veteran's have to one degree or another who have been under fire and in combat situations and also one of the most
difficult subject to deal with.

Over the years I have noticed that most being treated or in therapy for PTSD (Post Traumatic Stess Disorder) have a source to blame for all their
problems, things that may have valid reasons for bitterness and resentment or can just be "perceived injury" or abuse but in all of the
cases I have known, very few have been willing to take full responsibility for their own pattern of thinking, i.e., self pity, woe is me, villains they hate and look for, unwillingness to forgive, always an
outward source to blame for the condition and quality of life or lack of it.

I can blame the VA for giving me medication that only multiplied the mental condition that evolved into a mental illness, giving a mixture of
Doxepin and Clonazepam which actually induce hallucinations and cause behavior patterns that are schezophrenic, but years prior to this I was
really the cause of it all in being wreckless and not taking responsibility for my actions and thinking and always blaming some other source for anything that went wrong or why I had a failed marriage and a tortured mind.

What we can not do is make choices for other people and it is a choice to retain bitterness or not, a choice to be fully into oneself or self oriented or not, a choice to forgive or not, a choice to be irresponsible or not, a choice to let God have your life or not, you would think by a lifetime of failure that people would accept what frees us and accept the solutions to it all, but many just not willing to do that since it means getting down and honest with ourself where we really live and what things we are hanging onto that are kicking our brains out and keeping the well dirty that we drink from.

All I can offer is what ended so many years of being in a rut between a rock and a hard place, what ended the nightmares that ate me alive for
almost thrity years, what dumped the trash that was overflowing, what gave life purpose.

The moment I run into the never ending flow of critics who still want to make their own way in spite of seeing no way to go to make things any better, all I can say to them is to keep what you got since it will never get any better but will certainly get worse, will never move forward but just go in circles and end up back in the same place again like chopping
weeds at the surface, not going to get the job done until you kill it at the root and eliminate the sources.

I heard a man talk the other day about how to raise a loser in always telling a child that they are no good, useless, never amount to anything,
deficient, wasted. A child will begin to play out that role if that is what they are convinced about and instilled in their mind, never recognizing any good thing they do but never letting them forget the
failures and blunders in their life, no encouragement or vision for something to aim at and become or work towards and it is the same with many who are crippled with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, convincing ourselves that we are in a rut and no way known to get out of it, just
seeing what is going on and letting these things govern our thinking and direction and feeding on the very things that insure a wasted life without vision and purpose.

I hurt for people who insist on retaining bitterness and resentment and feed on it day and night, hating every moment and yet that is the diet for the brain, never knowing what freedom is there for the asking and what is available that takes effort or a total desire to move forward, but only a fool will sit in one place like a caged animal.

A story related some time ago had to do with a bear in one of the older zoos that only had twenty feet of space to walk in, so the bear would
just pace twenty steps one way and twenty steps the other way and that was his whole life and activity which I would call a rut for sure. A day
came when a whole new environment was made just for this bear to have all kind of space like in the wild, cave, running water places to hunt or dig
for food, abundance of vegetation and other bears to socialize with. The big day came when the bear was moved to his new location with all these
things there for him, but still all people saw was this bear still taking twenty steps one way and twenty steps the other way, conditioned his whole life to do that and it just never settled in that he was free to do almost anything that wild bears do and all the space needed for it.

Does that tell you something about how we can be? Some people just quit as I did, depending on doctors to make me all better again but that never
happened, as they were more like zoo keepers and pumping medicine in me that actually induced schezophrenic behavior and often out of control,
strapped to a table for two days after flipping out, put in a drunk tank and a threat to myself and everyone around me, out of touch with reality and scared to death that this was the end and all I had to look forward to, not wanting to live one more day that way, but just not knowing what to do about it or where to start.

Need to relate the good stuff and where the real healing process began, needful to see it all as a process and not a project since it is a daily thing one step at a time.

In 1995 when first moving to this area near Mount Baldy, I recall standing out on the patio with the mind drifting out there wondering about the future and if I had any that was any better than now, not expecting to hear what sounded exactly like 20mm aircraft fire and instantly the brain was back there remembering how we had been fired on by mistake in 1966 or very early in 1967 prior to moving to Kontum, but think it was just a door gunner who unloaded on us when mistaken for NVA, but some were caught out in the open while others were hit who were so tired that they slept on
top of some sandbags, hearing one man yell "Who slapped me?" but I knew we had been fired on from a chopper or aircraft as a trail of rounds dug
up some dirt between me and another man and missing us by inches as we could see it coming and jumped back, but Leroy Burchette had been shot in the head and didn't know it until I ran over and saw the blood flowing but had to alert the Company Commander Capt. Keuker who was sleeping inside a bunker and trying to yell for a medic at the same time, seeing old Doc Seymore running over to stop the bleeding and telling Leroy that just a hair closer and it would have been fatal.

While the mind was caught up in flashbacks, more of those sounds were heard and I just went berserk, almost yelling for folks in the swimming
pool to hit it, but caught myself just before yelling at them, heart beating like crazy and everything seeming strange in knowing I was not in Nam but still being shot at, but this was actually the sound of the high powered drag racers from the fairgrounds and the sound had just carried a
long way in the night.

It was very strange but some voice way back in the head that I could hear very clear was saying "Forgive Them" forgive the door gunner who fired on us by mistake, forgive everyone else who may have offended throughout an entire lifetime, turn loose of that right to be bitter, forgive them all and let it go. This was not something I had the ability to do but I knew it was right to do it, just against my nature in being someone who always had to square things to make it balance, but I knew I was wrong to have an attitude of a ********* or even a revolutionary needing a justifiable reason to unload the anger, but forgiving just wasn't part of all that and never something offered by the shrinks as a way through all this stuff.

I can recall saying "OK God, if that is You saying that, I sure want to comply, but I don't know one voice from another and had a whole herd of them talking stuff to me in the past when the brain crashed, but I know it is something right to be doing, just need a whole lot of help in doing it, but am willing to go for it."

I will not say it was God who whispered the words, but I do know it was a solid beginning, seeing that forgiveness is not forgiveness unless it is total, which meant that I had no more excuses or reason to be pissed or bitter or holding anyone at fault about anything, forgiveness meant turning that all loose and starting out clean without any of it hanging on to fester and start the ball rolling again.

This did not seem like an answer for PTSD and yet it proved to be the very thing that ended the nightmares and dumping all the trash in the
brain and replacing the inbuilt anger with the kind of things that have enduring qualities, no condemnation of anyone or myself, whole new
beginning which it proved to be for me and being able to look back on it to see what the things were that were kicking my butt all these years and how we can unload it like excess baggage and not have to carry the weight of all the junk, certainly going to be scars but scars say that healing happend and no more open wounds, but healing is a process and don't happen by itself, starts inward and not outward and change starting with me before going anywhere else, had to clean my own front porch before looking at any mess elsewhere that could be just as dirty, but had to start with me and it all starts from the dungpile and goes from there,
stink will wear off along the way.

What I have learned along the way is that any length of time entertaining self pity and we are dead meat, any bitterness or root of bitterness
allowed to settle in we are dead meat, no goal to achieve and we are dead meat, meaning no vision and just wallowing around in the muck of trying
to justify what can not be justified or looking for valid excuses to retain the things killing us day by day or drinking swamp water that is stagnated rather than coming from a pure source.

[ffsmith]

Hi Namvet,

I enjoyed your post.
And I agree with pretty much everything you said.
Forgiveness, and God and are very powerful.

Like you say healing is a process.
And you also said that there was a time when you did not have the ability to forgive.

I think some times a person does get stuck like that bear.
But then how does the person get un-stuck?
I think most of the time the person is like me, and they want to get unstuck
They want to forgive, and live a full life and get rid of the panic and the stress of the past.
The want to get to the point where the past is not blamed and not an issue in their lives.

But people need help getting unstuck
This help can be God or maybe another person or
I guess it can develop from inside like you say.
But it just seems to me that if it is going to come from inside,
That this is probably going to take a lot of time to develop depending on the help and the environment that the suffering person is suffering in.

I just wonder if the self-pity, the terror, the bitterness, the anger, the resentment, and the wallowing in the muck are part of the process and need to be felt and experienced at least for some time. Or are they really sidetracks and things that should be avoided and shunned altogether?
I am not sure at this point?