When I became a new mother, I was prepared for a lot—but nobody told me that parenting when you have experienced childhood abuse can feel like walking back into a war zone as a soldier with PTSD.
Before becoming a mother, I could physically re-shift focus away from what was triggering me—take a walk, journal, call a friend, distract myself with music. Once a parent, I could no longer rely on old methods, no matter how effective. I couldn’t run away from, drown out, or excuse myself from the trigger.
You can’t eliminate or avoid the trigger, when the trigger is your child.
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I purposely waited to have children until I felt like I had “dealt with” being sexually abused. By the age of 28, I had undergone countless hours of therapy, convinced myself to take my antidepressant even when I “felt fine,” and acquired a toolbox full of coping skills. I also hoped that becoming a mother would move me even further along in my recovery, by providing me the chance to end the dysfunctional and abusive cycles that had diseased my family tree.
Instead, once I became a mother, I was thrown into mental and physical chaos marked by a near constant state of anxiety. And as I started paying more attention to what exactly was triggering me, I came to the realization that it was the most basic acts of parenting—nurturing and protecting—that were causing my pain.
[For more of this story, written by Dawn Daum, go to http://www.theestablishment.co...s-your-ptsd-trigger/]
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