Trauma in the Family: How to Live with a Sufferer of P.T.S.D

By W. John Roberts

“TRAUMA IN THE FAMILY“ is written as a self-help book to assist Families and close relatives to try and understand how their family member or close loved one can be affected by being exposed to a traumatic event, which can change their lives and future behavior and normal reactions. A couple of second’s exposure can change your life forever. As a personal sufferer of Twenty years before help from this disorder called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or P.T.S.D. for short, this book represented what I required to be available to help my own family learn about the disorder in a simple way and understand my problems better.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Feb 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781504942249

W. John Roberts

Ex Serviceman and sufferer from P.T.S.D. for 40 years. Trained and qualified as therapist and also Trainer on subject of P.T.S.D. Worked as Trauma Therapist for 20 years in private practice. see my web stite for more information at http://www.familytraumacentreuk.org.uk/ reviews are available on web site Written as a easy to understand with minimum of explainations to help you understand the condition better as knowledge is power.

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© 2016 W. John Roberts. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   07/15/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4225-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4224-9 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Introduction

1   What is Trauma?

2   P.T.S.D. – How it Affects People’s Lives

3   Family Trauma Support Group

4   Common Indicators of PTSD Problems

5   The Dysfunctional Family

6   The Holistic Approach

7   Family Trauma and Addictions

8   Bullying and its Traumatic Effects on a Family

Introduction

TRAUMA IN THE FAMILY is written as a self-help book to assist Families and close relatives to try and understand how their family member or close loved one can be affected by being exposed to a traumatic event, which can change their lives and future behavior and normal reactions. A couple of second’s exposure can change your life forever. As a personal sufferer of Twenty years before help from this disorder called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or P.T.S.D. for short, this book represented what I required to be available to help my own family learn about the disorder in a simple way and understand my problems better.

The long terms effects of living with this disorder has been a very neglected area in a individuals treatment. It has not always being seen, as a most important support tool in a clients recovery. What has tended to happen in the past is that the professional therapists in this field tended to concentrate on the sufferer and fail to see the bigger picture, as clients don’t live with their therapists. Unless the therapist engages with the rest of the family, this disorder will effect other members of the family who live and interact with the suffer and in fact in extreme circumstances can traumatize other family members., by their behavior. It is not uncommon for previously well functioning marriages and relationship’s to breakdown and for family members to become increasingly alienated from each other. It is common for these.

Breakup/breakdowns to lead to secondary traumatization.

The Trauma suffer can therefore end up in a continuous downward spiral that seems to make the prospect of a full recovery more and more remote, Therefore this book is intended to try and break this cycle by giving important information to lessen the traumatic and destructive effects of this ripple effect on the intimate personal and individual family relationships of the suffer. Experience has shown that families with the right support and guidance can both lessen the traumatic impact of the stuffer’s experience and its impact on the family and its relationships. Closeness and intimacy are key requirements for any well functioning human relationship, unfortunately survivors of a traumatic event often lose their capacity for such closeness after their traumatic experience. Having been a personal suffer for over 30 years, I have seen firsthand how it almost destroy my own family and my children. Therefore I knew from personal experience only too well how powerful and destructive this problem is.

Therefore I consider how fortunate to that I managed to get the help that I needed to help me to recognize the problem and through reading about it I realized it for what it was and could get some help. As I have said I was fortunate to get some help, my younger brother was not so fortunate and ended up taking his own life. He suffered a very traumatic personal attack over ten years ago and a direct result of not getting any kind of help for his P.T.S.D. type of problems (he was misdiagnosed as suffering from depression a common misdiagnose and given anti-depression drug therapy) he then used the same drugs to commit suicide. It was as a result of this action that I decided to dedicate the rest of my life to working as a therapist and educator on this subject.

Even more important is the impact this disorder has on the children both as primary and secondary suffers. The children are the silent suffers both as unseen victims who most often do not have a voice to be heard. Everybody seems to think they will bounce back unharmed from their traumatic experiences that they have undergone, so I have chosen to highlight their special needs in this book to try and educate their other family members.

1

What is Trauma?

Trauma is deeply distressing experience (Oxford Dictionary on the internet)

We are all individuals and we all experience life differently. It is therefore not surprising that when we encounter difficult and sometimes dangerous situations we all react differently.

This is because each of us see’s or perceives the events that happen to us differently and very much individually. Hence not all horrendous events are seen as traumatic.

So trauma is very much seen in the eyes of the beholder -one person’s trauma is just another event to someone else.

One question frequently asked is Why do some people get P.T.S.D. And other people do not?

There are lots of theories in answer to this question and to date not yet a definite answer has been accepted. The many theories that are cited are complicated and are of no help to the person who has the experience of the disorder.

However a current theory is that at time of the traumatic event the suffer is unable to confront and handle the entire experience, so the mind pushes or locks it away from his or her’s current awareness. So the events are locked away from the current thoughts so that they can mange on a day to day basis.

The same