I Have PTSD From Parenting

Complex PTSD to be exact. CPTSD is distinct because it can occur after experiencing long term or recurring trauma rather than a single distressing event, especially if you were harmed by someone close to you and felt hopeless about being unable to escape the situation. Most people experience some kind of trauma throughout their life, and about a quarter of those people will go on to experience PTSD as a result of not being able to process the trauma in a typical way. Symptoms for complex trauma overlap with PTSD, such as re-experiencing the events with flashbacks and physical sensations, avoidance or emotional numbness, and hyperarousal including feeling edgy, irritable, and anxious. In addition to symptoms of PTSD, Complex PTSD can include feelings of worthlessness, guilt, and shame, persistent thoughts about being the one at fault for the ongoing trauma, emotional dysregulation, and complicated relationships. My own experience includes all of the above.

In the spring of 2022, I was explaining to my therapist how my daughter B's toddler tantrums, developmentally appropriate though they were for a two-year-old, made me feel numb and distant. When B was having a hard time about bedtime or having to get a shot or having a hard drop off day at preschool, it was as if I was experiencing not only her tantrum in that moment, but also reliving every one of E's meltdowns in similar situations over the years. I was not only hearing her cries, but also having flashbacks to every time E was dysregulated. Her distress was too raw, too familiar, too hard to witness, it was like my brain shut down for self-preservation; I may have appeared calm as I sat with her through her big feelings and offered soothing cuddles when she was ready, but on the inside I felt as if I was floating away. "It's almost like I have PTSD," I said casually to my therapist. We looked at each other with realization. It was PTSD. My therapist had me complete a diagnostic checklist to confirm our shared intuition and consequently updated my diagnosis and treatment plan.

Through summer 2022, as E was getting better and better, I was getting worse and worse. When B or E became even slightly dysregulated, I began having panic attacks that were even more uncomfortable than the feelings of dissociation I had been having for a few months.

The first time I had a panic attack, we had just finished dinner and B accidentally knocked over a can of Bubly that was on the table. I wasn't even consciously concerned about the mess - she's two, it's water, it was an accident, it's fine. I popped up to grab a cloth and mopped it up, but in the process, my own fight-or-flight response started reacting of its own accord; I suddenly felt extremely hot, I was breathing fast, my heart was racing, my hands were shaking, I felt nauseous, my mind went blank. I told everyone I felt really weird and needed to go lie down.

It was later that I realized I had experienced a panic attack as a symptom of PTSD. My brain and body had experienced a flashback, even if I hadn't consciously perceived the situation as something to be concerned about. When E was in burnout, meal times were often very challenging and the many demands of family dinners would trigger his threat response (we later dropped the demand of family meals at the table, he healed, he now joins us by choice and it's lovely). His activation at the table would result in thrown food, spilled drinks, tears, aggression, refusal to eat anything I had made, etc. My hypervigilant brain perceived the spilled can of Bubly as unsafe because the situation was too similar to E's table meltdowns, which did sometimes become unsafe, so it responded by putting my body into fight-or-flight to protect me. The panic attacks kept happening throughout the summer, fall, and winter.

As I researched panic and parenting and PTSD and PDA, I realized I was not at all alone in experiencing this response to having guided my child through burnout and recovery. Other mothers like Amanda Diekman had braveley shared their own stories and it was amazing to read situations so similar to my own. I learned from Casey Ehrlich that as mothers we are biologically wired to respond physically to our children's nervous system in order to protect our young. When our children's nervous systems become activated, ours do, too, then we co-regulate to return us both to calm. When E was in burnout, I witnessed him in a highly activated state, literally fighting as if his life was in danger, because that's what it felt like to him, almost every day for years. On top of that, my body was physically harmed by his fight response, over and over and over again for years. On top of that, he has a rare circadian rhythm disorder called Non-24 which means he is sometimes nocturnal, he can't be awake alone, and I have been severely sleep deprived for years. On top of that, when we reached out for help, I was told my poor parenting was the cause of his struggles and I should just be more firm; I was told this by no less than 5 different professionals in the medical and therapeutic space while searching for help for years. On top of that, I had a new baby in the midst of a global pandemic, lived far away from everyone in my family, had a husband with a demanding job who was trying to get tenure (which he did, last year!), who at the same time was also realizing his own neurodivergence as we went through the diagnostic process with E, I had very little in-person support, and our house had been left in shambles by a terrible contractor with whom we are still in a legal battle. On top of all that, as I learned more about nervous system activation, I realized that my life-long perfectionism and people pleasing were actually fear responses that had been hiding a sensitive nervous system of my own. No wonder I had hit my breaking point. Everyone's system only has so much capacity and I had certainly maxed out mine, and then some.

Rationally, I understood all of this. I knew none of it was my fault. It was no one's fault, really. This is just how life has happened and it is very, very hard. I had worked on changing my thinking about blaming myself for E's burnout in therapy. I meditated on radical acceptance. I knew I was doing the best I could. And yet, although I knew all this to be true, my body had not processed the trauma, so it started to react in ways that were out of my control.

That is the strangest part - not feeling in control of my body. In many ways, I began to understand how E had felt in burnout. I was breaking down physically, cognitively, and emotionally. My body was not well. I developed tinnitus. I was clenching my jaw so much my dentist suggested I wear my night guard even in the day. I had night sweats and would wake up with my sheets soaked through. I couldn't regulate my body temperature. My brain felt like it was in a fog. I would open a cupboard or walk into a room and have completely forgotten why. I mixed up words when I was speaking. I put the milk away in the pantry. I would snap at E when I saw him using any kind of leveling behaviour against his sister, or against me, even though I knew leveling was the behavioural expression of his disability and not something he could control; I yelled at him anyway, and then I felt guilty. B started preschool again in the fall of 2022, but she had intense separation anxiety so reminiscent of E at that age that we started to think she was likely neurodivergent in some way, too. I was overwhelmed at the thought of raising two ND children with a ND husband, all of whom had different needs. We pulled my daughter out of preschool because it was too difficult for her, so I had both children at home with me all the time. We still had a nanny coming a few hours a day a few days a week, but we really needed someone there all the time. I had let go of all the household responsibilities I could to lower demands for myself, and our nanny helped with housework, too, but even the bare necessities of home care felt like too much. My husband helped as much as he could, but he worked hard at a job he was passionate about, and he had to because he was the sole financial provider for the family. I felt so much shame that I was a full-time stay at home parent who couldn't properly care for my children or my home. I was easily irritated any time my husband even breathed, and then I felt guilty for snapping at him, too. I started dreading E being awake because the times when I was just with B were so much easier, and I felt ashamed about that as well, even though I knew it was a fear response, I wasn't feeling anxious on purpose, and of course I adored my son. When my husband was around and I finally was able to take a break, I often had to nap or rest alone because I became instantly overwhelmed when he came home; it's like my body could sense it was ok to relax now that he was there to take over. But my unavailability was hard for the children to accept, and that was hard for my husband to manage. It's really challenging to meet both children's needs at the same time when you are the only responsible adult, I know that all too well! I felt physically awful most of the time with headaches, muscle and body aches, nausea, fatigue. Once, when E had a rare meltdown, which hadn't happened in months, I felt so ill afterwards that I actually vomited. In fact, I felt ill so often so that I had my PCP check there wasn't something else going on. He ran bloodwork for autoimmune disorders and hormone imbalances and everything else he could think of to rule out, but everything came back normal. I was already on an SSRI and we upped the dosage, eventually also adding a psychiatrist to my support team, too. He added an additional SSRI and later a second generation anti-psychotic to help stabilize my mood.

My original therapist and I decided our work together had gone as far as it could go. I had seen her weekly for a year and a half of cognitive behavioural therapy, but I was ready to find another therapist to specifically help me heal from trauma. An opening with a highly recommended trauma specialist became available just before Christmas 2022 (of course, it was not someone covered by our insurance, but we had to make it work).

Finding a new therapist was good timing because at the beginning of the new year, E had a relapse in his healing, and I did, too. There were several factors involved: my husband went back to work after a long winter break, we had reached the limit we could afford for childcare and decided not to have our nanny come regularly anymore, and my grandmother passed away. In the wake of her death, we considered the options of me and perhaps one or both of the children flying overseas to attend the celebration of life with the rest of my family, a trip that would be generously paid for by my Nana's estate, but the uncertainty while we figured out what to do was too hard for E. We had a family meeting about all the options and together we decided that I would go with both children. E was totally up for the adventure. But after the initial excitement, the impending trip was even harder for him to handle than the uncertainty. The added demands of the trip put him into fight-or-flight, which this time put me there as well. I decided that the level of emotional dysregulation in our home was not worth me being there for my Nana's funeral. We cancelled the trip. I knew it was the right choice for our family, but I was also incredibly disappointed, and angry that everything was so hard and so different from the life I had imagined.

Soon after The Trip That Never Was debacle, I experienced the scariest thing that has happened to my mental health, I started having auditory hallucinations. The first time it happened I brushed it off as a weird dream; I was just starting to wake up and heard what sounded like a muffled newscast or sports cast with multiple male voices giving a play by play. It faded away and I thought I must have been half asleep. A few days later, it happened again. Longer, louder. I sat up in bed and checked my phone to see if it had randomly started playing a video, I looked to see if my husband was on his laptop, I got out of bed to check all the kids' devices, to check the old 1970s radio built in to our living room wall. There was no sound coming from anywhere. It was inside my head.

It unnerved me. I felt like I was losing my mind. The words were quiet, whispery, not talking directly to me, but to each other. It sounded like a radio turned down low and a bit staticky, so I couldn't make out exactly what the voices were saying, only the words "100 heads" were decipherable in amongst it all. (My husband now likes to tease me about that one and sneak up behind me whispering "100 heads" in my ear - I roll my eyes at him, you either need to laugh or cry, right?! He does make me laugh!).

The hallucination lasted a few minutes and then faded away. It freaked me out. I woke my husband, but he was nowhere near as worried about it as I was. It was early morning and he went back to sleep. I texted my close friends here and they were wonderful. I talked to my mom and my sisters. I reached out to my therapist and my psychiatrist and my doctor. My psychiatrist was unfazed - I guess for him these things are commonplace?! He tweaked my medication and that was that. I saw my doctor for a well-check, but he said health-wise everything was fine. My therapist told me that a breakthrough often happens after chaos and to stay steady. The hallucinations happened twice more in the following weeks, but they weren't as loud nor as long each time, and then they went away completely.

E's behaviour relapse combined with the continued decline of my mental health were enough of a reason for us to reopen the discussion of medication with E. Now that he was out of burnout, we could have that discussion without it immediately triggering his threat response. Bringing up medication with him required a delicate balance of reassuring him that his struggles are not his fault, while also setting the expectation for him to begin to take some responsibility for the harm and stress he causes the family, even if he doesn't mean to. We had turned our world upside down to get him well, he needed to now help me. Between his circadian rhythm disorder depriving me of sleep and the recent realization that difficult, unpredictable situations will still occasionally cause him to go into fight-or-flight, I was not doing well. The medicine was supposed to stabilize his nervous system even further and stop his sleep from cycling around the clock. The family needed him to do this. I needed him to do this. This time he said ok. He decided he wanted us to put the transdermal cream on him while he was asleep. It was the lowest demand way possible! Perfect. We got a fresh prescription compounded and started right away.

That was two months ago. The medication did everything we hoped it would. His sleep has stopped cycling, though he seems stuck with a delayed sleep phase, going to bed somewhere between midnight and 4am and sleeping until midday. There have been barely any hints of aggression. I'm so proud of him for taking this step for the well-being of our whole family.

But even this isn't enough. I'm getting better rest and have less daily stress, but as I am able to let down my guard of hypervigilance more and more often, it is clear that what is left behind is a broken, overwhelmed shell of who I was before. There is a reason they call it post traumatic stress. E is fine. The crisis is over. And I am struggling.

I have no other choice but to push myself through each day as much as I can, and I do get through the days. (Actually, my therapist pointed out that I do have a choice - I could just leave. Disappear. Move away. Go back to Canada. But I don't. I hadn't even considered it. That is the agency I have in this situation. I am choosing to still be here and figure it out.) I have so much to be grateful for. My children are happy. My marriage is strong. But the pushing through takes its toll. I'm doing so much to take care of my own needs: finding moments of joy with my family, making time for hobbies that make me feel good, going for walks, going out with close friends, chatting with people back in Canada, trauma-focused therapy, a cocktail of medication. But none of it is enough. How on earth will I ever feel better when I have to live in the very environment that traumatized me?? My new therapist tells me the answer is more rest. More preferred activities. More support. More time for myself to be able to reset.

I'm just not sure yet how to get that time. My husband and I brainstorm creative structural changes for our family that could give me more time to rest and heal, but it's hard to find something that will work logistically and financially. We live in a different country from the rest of our family. We have already stretched our finances as much as we can to pay for our part-time nanny (in fact, my mom is currently helping us by paying for our nanny so we can keep her for longer without anymore financial hardship).

We got E through burnout, I know we will get through this, too. Healing from trauma will probably take longer and be harder than I could have ever imagined life to be. Our life will probably look entirely different again before this is all through. But we will be through it, one day. And in the meantime, I choose to stay.

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