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Sony dad and I were talking about the signs of ptsd and how he has suffered some traumatic experiences with explosions going off when he was a child. He says he keeps himself together and he doesn't have flashbacks but he remembers every single detail of it. He says being he never went to counseling for that he doesn't understand my need to talk about things that have happened to me, like being sexually abused and raped, how I'm just supposed to move on with life and it should be easy cause it was for him and his traumatic experience. He doesn't understand why counseling would be helpful for me or why being able to open up and talk about it or why I need to talk about it. He thinks I can just deal with it on my own and with God's help. He also thinks I should go to confession at his church. How can I get him to understand me and what I need to cope with this or to help me recover or heal as much as I can from my traumatic experiences in my life? Anyone have advice?
If you think confession would help you I'd say go for it. Your dad may never fully understand and I am sorry about that. It might be that after so long it just doesn't affect him as bad anymore too.
If you look at the research into PTSD, the extent of PTSD has *nothing* to do with the extent of the trauma. It is believed to be more to do with brain biology and about 1 in 5 people who experience trauma will suffer PTSD, pretty well irrespective of the gravity of the trauma.
Also, not all people who have PTSD have what they would term flashbacks. The fact he "remembers every single detail of it" suggests these memories are stuck in the amygdala, which would indicate tauma.
As for your comment about clergy, im assuming this is because some clergy have abused? That's exactly like saying don't trust any pilots to fly a Boing 737 because some pilots crashed them. You can't (reasonably) tar all of one (massive, in the case of clergy) group with the actions of a small minority. Some doctors, police officers, counsellors and even rape support workers have abused too.So have some rape survivors.
In fact, there isn't group in which SOME people will have abused. Does that mean "never never never" trust ANYONE? What a sad world we'd live in taking that attitude.
You can't "get someone to understand" if they wont. It's the old saying, "there are none so blind as those that will not see".
What you may be able to do is show him articles or books about people who have been trough similar or ask him to read articles on PTSD. However, my gut feeling from what you've said is you're flogging a dead horse with this one, at least at the moment.
As I pointed out to OldRolly, if your dad is remembered what he experience as " he remembers every single detail of it", then this is *not* normal memory. Think about the happiest week of your life. Can you remember every single detail of it? Of course not, normal memory does not work that way. Trauma memory (which is stored in a totally different part of the brain and works in a totally different way) DOES remember every single detail of it. Even though he may not be having flashbacks, he was traumatised.
But. only about 1 in 5 of those who experience trauma get PTS. It's not a weakness or the "fault" of the individual who does. At the moment we don't know why some do and some don't. We do know that it's about 1-in-5 and that if the same person is exposed to multiple trauma, the 1-in-5 ratio remains. So, someone may not have PTS following one trauma but may following another. In a nutshell, it's not your fault you did (and nothing your dad did that means he didn't).
As for confession, what have you to confess? You did no wrong here. I agree talking about it would help, but not "confession".