My father died over a year ago but when I think back I can't remember celebrating father's day even once. I dreaded the day and did my best to forget it... except for the blasted commercials reminding you to buy their cool gadgets "He'll love it!" Pppffffttt. Even worse if you go to church and they happen to do a sermon on honoring your father and mother, emphasis on fathers. I usually get up and walk out.

Blue, sorry for your loss. A funeral for a dad like ours is a double loss, isn't it? I mean, the loss of the physical forefather before us in the moment, along with sealing the deal on the father figure that never was. At least that's the way it feels to me.

Yeah, those commercials as self-serving propaganda from corporations is bad enough, but the pandering propaganda in church to match is tough to bear. I've noticed that in Christian churches they never, ever quote the actual gospels' words of Jesus on leaving family behind to follow become a Christian. We did read them in seminary when I was in training to become a minister, and they were news to me, too, at the time.

Luke 14:25-27 Easy-to-Read Version (ERV) "Many people were traveling with Jesus. He said to them, 26 “If you come to me but will not leave your family, you cannot be my follower. You must love me more than your father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters—even more than your own life!"

Matthew 10:37 New International Version "Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."

In the Old Testament Deuteronomy 33:9 had said the same thing about putting faith before family rather than conflating them into being one and the same, as is often done in pandering sermons in church that avoid challenging social and cultural norms that way.

It seems that the actual words of Jesus were anti-Establishment, which makes sense in light of the fact that he was crucified by the religious Establishment of his day in collusion with the Roman authorities. The pro-family stance churches tend to take now resonates more with Emperor Constantine 4 centuries later than Jesus. Rather than adopt Jesus the anti-Establishment rebel, he bent Christianity to his will when he made it the state Establishment religion of his Roman Empire.

The big date that Establishes the image of the Holy Family of Jesus, Christmas, was actually not the date of Jesus's birth, but a Roman holiday that Constantine bent to his will as he Established the rebel faith of Christianity to become his state religion. The Encyclopedia Britannica explains it:

"In the 3rd century, the Roman Empire, which at the time had not adopted Christianity, celebrated the rebirth of the Unconquered Sun (Sol Invictus) on December 25th. This holiday not only marked the return of longer days after the winter solstice but also followed the popular Roman festival called the Saturnalia (during which people feasted and exchanged gifts). It was also the birthday of the Indo-European deity Mithra, a god of light and loyalty whose cult was at the time growing popular among Roman soldiers.

The church in Rome began formally celebrating Christmas on December 25 in 336, during the reign of the emperor Constantine. As Constantine had made Christianity the effective religion of the empire, some have speculated that choosing this date had the political motive of weakening the established pagan celebrations. The date was not widely accepted in the Eastern Empire, where January 6 had been favored, for another half-century, and Christmas did not become a major Christian festival until the 9th century."

Christianity.com says the same thing, in case anyone were to argue that secular encyclopedias are not to be believed.
https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/301-600/celebrate-christmas-but-when-and-how-11629663.html

In Latin America where I grew up there's still residue of this dispute over the date between Constantine and the Eastern Empire. Christmas is celebrated on December 25 but in the Hispanic world January 6th is still around as a holiday. Now it's been adapted to be claimed (probably inaccurately) as the date of the Magi, the three Wise Men or Three Kings, "Reyes Magos." It's on that date that Hispanic kids get their gifts, not on Christmas from the fictional Santa Claus, because the Kings are actually in the bible and Santa's not. The Kings were the ones who brought gifts to Jesus.

I mention all of this research not to hijack the thread into some theological discussion, but to support you next time you walk out of one of those sermons if somebody in your church asks you why. Let me know if they look up the bible verses. Ha! :-)

It's the day after Father's Day now, and I just wanted to thank everybody for the support getting through another one this year. I especially want to thank everybody for allowing me to express rueful emotions here on this day, rueful meaning bittersweet.

I never wanted to hurt my dad back the way he hurt me. That's why I left home when I was still in high school 4 months shy of my IB exams. After I left I kept going back trying to overcome his likely bipolar behavior with an adult child's love. When someone refuses meds for bipolar disorder, though, that's like trying to love someone out of their blood sugar ups and downs when they won't take their insulin.

So my anniversaries on family holidays during the year now are more about grief.
Every time I mourn the dad I never got because untreated mental illness incapacitated the man who occupied that role in my life but couldn't exercise it.

That's the lesson in all of this, at least for me anyway: we must keep supporting each other in our own mental health recovery here with our PTSD diagnosis. Not so we can be our best selves for our own sake alone, but for the sake of all of those around us.

Thank you for helping me get through another family holiday. I had surgery so I wouldn't have kids myself. I live alone with no partner now because with age my PTSD startle response has gotten more pronounced and I'm not comfortable sharing my living space with anyone. I had to give up meds for that when Seroquel caused me extensive permanent kidney damage.

Those other than myself for whom I pursue my PTSD recovery, then, are the nursing students I teach in psych classes at my college, parishioners at the churches where I speak regularly about PTSD, and my friends. These family holidays challenge me and tempt me to quit working at coping better and better, with PTSD. However, I don't want to let myself down, or to let any of them down, either. OR YOU.

Showers of healing hugs to all.

Ironically, as I've written about here, Jeane, I was.

My parents fled from getting treatment for their mental illnesses opting for the geographical "cure" instead, and became missionaries to two war zones instead, Uruguay's Tupamaro War first, and then Peru's Shining Path War. They were not known here in the US, but they were quite hot wars locally, I can assure you. I grew up in the 6 years of the Tupamaro War, with most of the fighting centered in my neighborhood, where the rebel Tupamaro headquarters was located.

My car was bombed, bullets flew, neighbors killed, buildings bombed, and my house was occupied by troops in combat. My parents' mental illness was exacerbated, but they refused evacuation for our safety.

Eventually, they were so violent in the home and toward others themselves that their behavior was so extreme that the Peruvian government deported them and put them on a plane for Miami. Their church expelled them, too. During the last years of his life my father was no longer able to function, he couldn't work or even put himself to bed at night. He had to be tucked in like a toddler.

It was another object lesson to me in how not to approach a mental health problem, and to get a diagnosis, treatment, and support and talking about it rather than trying the geographical cure and going it alone. So far it's been a lot better approach for me. Thanks for your support. I hope you get back support here, too.

Dealing with family members who have continued a cycle of abuse because of mental illness is very hard to handle. You’re very strong and inspiring to be able to be so insightful about your father and his mental illness and the trauma it has caused you. My experience with a sibling who was also abused at same time I was by our minister because highly abusive to me, physically, mentally, sexually and verbally for nearly ten years after our abuser was put in prison. I was the only one who knew my sibling was also abused as they refused to admit it. I also knew about the gang rape and assault they suffered, the repeated physical abuse by our foster sister, all which turned a child of 8 into a monster who took it out on me. My sibling has suffered from severe “blackout” rages since I can remember. My father also gets them but it’s very rare and part of his PTSD from a severe motorcycle accident. Still when my sibling abused me, I suffered it in silence until I was 16 and had to go back into therapy. When I revealed it, it was of course denied..., but I was used to that response. By then the sexual abuse had stopped but not the physical & mental abuse. Still part of me knew that my sibling wasn’t there when they abused me. It doesn’t excuse it but I think I always understood there was two minds in one person and that after a day my sibling would not remember. The physical abuse stopped by 18, but it wasn’t until 9 years ago the verbal/mental abuse ended. Every time we were around each other, I was only referred to as the “B***ch” or “C**t”, and never in 20 years did they address me by my name, just as obscenities. It changed after my sibling finally got the psychological care they needed. Hypnosis revealed a lot about our difficult childhood. I wish knowing my sibling’s mental illnesses helped with the PTSD. I have a specific PTSD trauma from my sibling. Recently, they came to visit. Because of new PTSD onset being so severe, I was banned by doctors from seeing or interacting with my sibling unless I was with my husband as the doctor was extremely concerned contact would severely worsen my current symptoms. The week before my sibling arrive, my PTSD went haywire and I was a wreck the entire time.

I can empathize with the struggle to interact with a family member who was the source of PTSD trauma. It hard to balance your fear, anger and resentment towards your abuser and the love and family bonds between you and them.

You truly are amazing and inspirational. I am relieved that you were able to pull through it and that you still refuse to give up.

Stay strong..., Hugs & support to you and admiration for how intuitive and caring you are.

jeane, yeah, when everything in my house and then outside my house went bad all at once, because I was raised in a minister's home, I turned to the bible. There I found the Book of Job, and boy did ever I relate to that guy! I didn't choose as a kid to live in a war zone, my parents did that in the name of a missionary calling--their calling, not mine. I wondered what role that left me in with God, and reading Job I decided this all had to be some test of my faith, just as it was with Job.

So you mentioned being opinionated, and I can relate--I got really stubborn about passing that faith test. As I ate more abuse in my house and survived more dangerous incidents outside my house in the war, I approached each one as another test that I refused to fail. I defied the test declaring "bring it on," and the test obliged, making the test more and more trying year by year. Looking back I was one resilient little guy with his head down plowing forward no matter what, wasn't I?

I was truly glad to get out when I did, then. The aftermath scared me, though, because as you say the scars came with me and the pain was portable. Then came the nightmares, the flashbacks, and the bitter realization that survival and escape didn't end it all. Recovery was just beginning, and seeing that for what it was ahead frightened me.

Dr. Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist who studied under Freud but who tested psychiatry's theories in practice having to survive Hitler's death camps as a Jew, became my guide as a real life Job. He came out of the Holocaust believing the drive to meaning, not the sex drive, was humanity's most basic need, so he wrote Man's Search for Meaning and made it the quest that gave him a fruitful, meaningful life past the age of 90. He said the fact that you and I find comfort in writing was itself therapy, he called it "logotherapy." I'm about to turn 60, so I'm hoping for another 30 years if I continue to follow in Frankl's footsteps by coming here to write day by day for strength for the journey.

Thank you for your support, jeane, truly.

And thank you for braving the traumatic memories of the abuse you survived for so many years, Vitava, to reach out in connection and validation with the traumatic memories of which Father's Day reminded me, too. As I read your account of the abuse and the many difficult steps you took one after another to put a stop to it, to draw safe boundaries for protection from it, and the lengths to which you went to begin healing from it, I recalled my own parallel years along the same lines.

It is indeed, as you say, "hard to balance your fear, anger and resentment towards your abuser and the love and family bonds between you and them." Some may not understand why you would bother to seek that "hard balance," but it's not just for their sake, but one's own "balance" of mind. All facts and feelings have to be sorted through and given their real names, hard as if may be. The way to healing is to persevere through all of the false and abusive name-calling insults that are lobbed like hand grenades at one to defend the untreated mental illness of loved ones against being exposed to the light of day of truth-telling.

I am so glad your sibling finally got the psychological care they needed! Mine did not, as much as that was my wish. I'm so glad your wish was fulfilled. I get, however, that even that wish fulfillment does not take away our own PTSD. As with you, on doctor's orders I don't have contact with my sibling in her current toxic state as untreated for the mental illness that ran through my family. Hearing that even though your sibling got help your doctor's concern for your health still runs along the same lines was validating to me and
the doctor's advice I'm following, too.

PTSD recovery is a long road, and no single turnaround with it cures it all in an instant. That's why we need to support each other through it day by day. Thank you so much for your support today. It's going to uplift me for a long time. I appreciate your applying words to me like "amazing" and "inspirational" and speaking of me with "admiration."

As you know from your own experience you describe, in truth I got to the place where those words describe me by being described first by untreated mentally ill family members sabotaging my recovery describing me as "depressing" to others at some point instead of "amazing," "miserable" instead of "inspirational," and spoken of with "stigma" instead of "admiration." So I embrace those positive words one and all with joy and gratitude as a reward for sticking to recovery in spite of all and reflect them back to you now.

Just thinking of your mention of hypnosis alone and digging deep with it to uncover painful childhood facts so they can be faced returns my "admiration" back from me to you. I admire your getting through the decades of name calling, too; I can relate.

It's a long haul, isn't it? Thanks for being a companion on the healing journey here.

I keep wanting to reply to this. I don't know why it's such a trigger. My dad was the best of a bad childhood. But...the best...was mostly rejection. My efforts to please him...were only proof of how pathetic and unloveable I was.

Thanks for letting me know this is indeed triggering stuff, patti, I thought it would be so that's why I put a TW next to "Father's Day" in this thread's title. There aren't many things that can stick to a person as long as "gas lighting" during childhood by a parents can during brain and personality development. That "proof" of being "pathetic and unloveable" becomes hard wired into our developing brains as a "core" of our every selves.

It takes a lifetime to live a lie like that down, and it takes the support of companions who are on the same journey to have the strength for a lifetime of that. Glad you're here, your very presence as a companion on my journey is reply enough from you, my friend.