0 comment Saturday, May 17, 2014 | admin
I think I might be experiencing secondary trauma.
I can't go into the living room downstairs that the kids use, even when they're not here. I can't look in their bedrooms. I can't look at the kids themselves. I have isolated myself from the family. I have become cynical. I am refusing to do anything for the kids beyond the absolute necessary. I have told Husband that I am not taking Son out anywhere other than school for the foreseeable future. I am staying up late at night because I can't close my eyes at night for being tormented by nightmarish scenarios involving Son damaging, hurting and killing things. I wake up early with my mind racing. I feel like I am in a state of grief. Like somebody has died.
Thing is about secondary trauma is that everything I've read on the internet repeats that it's about 'listening to the traumatic stories' of our children. My children don't give me stories, they don't verbally communicate a single thing. They communicate through their behaviour. And it's all about professionals who work with traumatised children. There seems little recognition that adoptive parents, whose home has been invaded by trauma, who do not get to clock off from their charges and go home, can suffer from this, other than among the adoptive community themselves.
Maybe it's more post traumatic stress I'm suffering from? Maybe I've got both secondary trauma from absorbing the trauma the kids shed, and also post traumatic stress from being attacked on Friday? Delightful mix. Or maybe it's Acute Stress Reaction on top of burnout? Spoiled for choice.
I am quite glad that I do not appear to be suffering from depression. Depression is like a fog that drains and prevents action, whereas I am fully functional even if I am wired.
Why do events always happen on a Friday so that you have to get through the weekend before you can get anything done?
I can't go into the living room downstairs that the kids use, even when they're not here. I can't look in their bedrooms. I can't look at the kids themselves. I have isolated myself from the family. I have become cynical. I am refusing to do anything for the kids beyond the absolute necessary. I have told Husband that I am not taking Son out anywhere other than school for the foreseeable future. I am staying up late at night because I can't close my eyes at night for being tormented by nightmarish scenarios involving Son damaging, hurting and killing things. I wake up early with my mind racing. I feel like I am in a state of grief. Like somebody has died.
Thing is about secondary trauma is that everything I've read on the internet repeats that it's about 'listening to the traumatic stories' of our children. My children don't give me stories, they don't verbally communicate a single thing. They communicate through their behaviour. And it's all about professionals who work with traumatised children. There seems little recognition that adoptive parents, whose home has been invaded by trauma, who do not get to clock off from their charges and go home, can suffer from this, other than among the adoptive community themselves.
Maybe it's more post traumatic stress I'm suffering from? Maybe I've got both secondary trauma from absorbing the trauma the kids shed, and also post traumatic stress from being attacked on Friday? Delightful mix. Or maybe it's Acute Stress Reaction on top of burnout? Spoiled for choice.
I am quite glad that I do not appear to be suffering from depression. Depression is like a fog that drains and prevents action, whereas I am fully functional even if I am wired.
Why do events always happen on a Friday so that you have to get through the weekend before you can get anything done?
Labels: Adoption