That... is an abyss my husband has not experienced. He is a wonderful man, a good hubby and friend to me, but... Well, his family is the sort we think is what we'd want And they still have issues. Much gentler ones.

I have some really good friends, but I also have a trust issue. Except for his yelling sometimes my husband is sweet. I can’t talk to family dynamics. Both my husband and myself come from dysfunctional families and never had children.

I related with a lot that you wrote. I come from extreme dysfunction & abuse. I always wondered what it would be like to come from different or what it’s like to not have PTSD, I wish a lot I could go back in the past & run or somehow/way change things.

Sending support & a gentle hug <3

My missionary kid upbringing meant being raised 5,000 miles away from any kin folk before there was an internet, cell phones, or any contact other than a ham radio call to extended family once a year. So I didn't know my grandparents, aunts and uncles, nor my cousins until I came to the USA as a young adult to go to college.

Meeting them was a shock. The job benefit that missionaries got as an incentive for service abroad was the guarantee of good English language education overseas. That job benefit promise had been kept for me. In South America I graduated from an elite British-run private high school that prepared me for college. It's the reason I'm a community college professor myself now.

When I came to the States to go to college and met my extended family I found I was not only foreign to my kin folk in terms of geography, but also in terms of education. They all lived around the nation's capitol, a place full of some of the best colleges and universities, public and private, of all types and tuition ranges. Yet none of them had ever gone to one, and many of them hadn't even graduated from high school.

In fact, quite a few of them had prison records. I realized my parents had become missionaries not just in response to a calling to service, but also in reaction to a terrible family situation from which they were running. The problem was that my immediate family lived in iron clad denial of that fact. I was on my own.

Denial didn't work out. My own immediate family got in trouble in South America, and was deported back to the US in disgrace by the authorities there. Seeing history repeat itself up close, I delved into my family tree's past. I found that bad behavior went back to 1810. By bad behavior I mean things like murder. During the Civil War my family ambushed some government workers as a clan, and half of them had to go on the lam for it.

That story was typical of how bad behavior occurred in my family: it didn't usually occur individually, it usually was a joint behavior as a clan. In self preservation, then, I isolated from them so I wouldn't be drawn in to criminal activities that could keep me from fulfilling the career goals for which I had come to the USA to attend college. I also got a vasectomy so I wouldn't continue the family tree. I did marry, but obviously my fears about building a family led marriage to fail, and I ended up divorced twice before I realized it.

Family is not the same for everybody. For some belonging to a family is a warm, nurturing experience as depicted in tv shows like The Waltons, a show about mom and apple pie. For others like me, family is more like the tv show The Sopranos, a show in which mom is literally married to the Mob.

I count myself lucky to have been so far away from my own family in my formative years, because it's been hard to deal with as an adult. I can't imagine being able to deal with it as a kid. I'm about to retire from 40 years of teaching next year, and I'm grateful I got free of my family enough to be able to have a career.

I think most of us that have seen trauma growing up can't help but have some big trust issues

How could we not??

I think therapy can help to work through it.... I've not had the therapy and i haven't worked through it

If possible it would be what I would do.... I have great friends... I've no problem with that but intimate relationships I struggle with... I stopped trying several years ago and I'm okay with that

I think if our parents were effected by war often times their PTSD was passed down by their behaviour.

It's nice that you have been talking with your old friend Marah.....xo

I was feeling and expressing many similar thoughts recently. In fact, i think i even told my therapist that I just wanted one day in the future when i didnt see the world as a comparison to my past, when the now was just filled with its possibilities and none of my questions, insecurities, symptoms, or memories.

I discovered something about myself soon after.. I spent so much time trying to accept the past, get over the past, and learn to cope with the residual effects from my past, that it left a look on the now much like unwatered grass in the yard during a hot summer.

After much reading, meditatiing, praying, therapy session, etc etc, you name the tool and can add it to this list, i realized it wasnt what I was doing that would help the now. It was what I wasnt doing.

I was too busy too water the grass.

I wasnt giving the present my presence.

Sure , physically I was here, but in every other way , i was not .

So now, every day, some days longer than others, but no matter how short, still every day, i force myself to be present, totally present.

Some days, so little.

Some days, a lot of time being present

Those are better days

On those days, the grass in my summer yard is green~

Triple hugs of support~