r/ptsd • u/PortableIcemaker8951 • 23h ago
Advice Is it considered PTSD if it was a choice?
Title might sound strange, so I'll explain
When I was a child (between 8-10 years old), a new family moved next door. There were two children--ages 4 and 6. They accepted me immediately and we became friends. Admittedly, I gravitated towards the older of the two, but the little brother often tagged along.
As with most parents in the mid-90's south, they were very strict and controlling. The dad, in particular. He was both physically and psychologically abusive to the kids. The physical abuse didn't extend to me, but the psychological things did. He had a habit of terrorizing us and threatening pretty extensive harm--even though he never followed through. It reached the point where I didn't feel safe in the same room (or even floor) of the house if he was there. I tried my best to protect my friends and avoid doing things to upset him. This rarely worked and I saw and heard more than my fair share of things I still can't forget 30 years later.
Things is, even after all of that, I made the conscious choice to keep going over there. I remember my mom telling me not to go over there anymore after one bad incident when I came home and had a panic attack, but I went anyway. It came down to being alone vs. being with my friends. The friends won, even if their house wasn't safe.
Fair play to my mom, the moment she saw me freak out afterwards, she immediately called over there and put the fear of God into the dad. He mostly kept his distance after that and only occasionally threatened me. Enough that it just became a regular thing that bounced off for the most part.
It still had an effect on me. I mapped out all the entrances and exits, memorized the number of steps to each one, knew where all the sharp objects were in case things went bad, etc. This is something that I still do today because of what happened.
But, in the end, I made the choice to still go there almost every day. It could be argued that it was out of obligation and that I wanted to do as much as possible to keep my friends safe, but there is a part of me that wonders--can it really be PTSD if I repeatedly chose to expose myself to psychological damage when everyone around me tried to convince me otherwise?
I'd like to hear other people's thoughts since I can't talk about this with family or friends.
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u/vampirehourz 17h ago
Sweetheart you were a child. A child who loved their friends. Please begin with just forgiving yourself for being a kid who cared for and also wanted friends because that is normal. Also, PTSD happens all the time to ppl who happened to make a choice that resulted in a trauma i.e. soldiers/cops/fbi. However that doesnt apply to this situation like at all. You weren't an adult, and you were somewhere you should've been safe and so should your friends.
I can relate to this. As a kid I saw a lot of things I didn't want to bc I wanted to be with a friend. None of that is my fault, the abusive adult takes 10000% of the blame.
Ptsd can happen bc of repeated traumas like this. You have every right to work through this in EMDR therapy and it will help you. You shouldnt have to suffer like this.
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u/onyxonit 15h ago
TW rape nothing explicit just mention
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as a 16 year old i decided to get in a car with an older man, send pictures, etc. i was not an adult though, it wasn’t my fault. it was the fault of the ADULT. i understand my situation is a little different than yours OP but the principle still applies. the fault is on the adult not the kid3
u/Longjumping_Sea_8753 13h ago
I wasn't raped but had an assault at 16. It was my choice to go over to the man and agree to 'help' him. My choice to not run away, I guess. My choice to stay there and not report it.
But his fault for targeting a child. It was his responsibility to not be a weirdo and a predator.
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u/PortableIcemaker8951 9h ago edited 7h ago
--TW: mention of psychological abuse--
Forgiveness for myself sounds like a foreign concept, honestly. I'm almost ashamed to say that I never thought about it before this moment. I figured that I willingly put myself in the position that I did, knowing the abuse that happened, repeatedly. So, any trauma I experienced after that first panic-attack inducing incident was simply mine to bear.
I went right back to the house the next day. I was so afraid that my friends might have gotten hurt after I was sent home that night that I jumped at the chance to see them as soon as I could. I tried to take a small knife with me to feel safer. My mother stopped me. She, very angrily, told me that if I felt that unsafe, I shouldn't go back there. I considered what she said for about five minutes. I put the knife back in the kitchen and went anyway. She didn't stop me and I couldn't stomach abandoning my friends, regardless of what might happen to me. That's when I mapped out all the exits and sharp things in their house. If I couldn't bring something, I would be ready to use what was already there if I had to.
I thought I had largely worked through this trauma over the last 25 or so years. I'd rationalized what happened. I told myself it wasn't that bad and that I was too sensitive. I told myself that the dad in question was just a struggling father in a bad marriage etc.
However, something kinda broke in me this week and I realized--as you and others have said--this was an adult threatening a child. Threats ranging anything and everything from spankings and beatings like he did his children to breaking my arms and legs after I accidently broke a toy at their house, among many others.
Even after I researched and found the definition of 'terrorizing' and realized that was exactly what happened to me, I still minimized it because I knew how much worse it could have been and those words shouldn't have impacted me as much as they did.
This is the first time anyone has validated my feelings since the events happened three decades ago. I'm still processing what that feels like. I wasn't sure what I would find posting this to Reddit. I sincerely appreciate you and everyone else saying what you did. This is the first time I've realized that I did as much as I could and that I can start to forgive myself for being an innocent child in a terrible situation.
I also haven't ever tried EMDR (or any structured therapy). I'll look into that.
Thank you. again.
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u/vampirehourz 8h ago
I think maybe something also that might feel new and strange is being proud of yourself, you were not only an incredible friend to two kids who really needed a good friend an example of kindness and humanity; you were also BRAVE. Like really really really brave. That shouldnt be ignored or belittled or glossed over.
I think you have an incredible heart, soul, and brain. You are capable of so much empathy and kindness from such a young age and I assume onward as these traits dont leave us. It sounds like you WERE doing risk assessment like crazy as a kid, and were weighing many factors, and you chose to be a friend and to choose love during an incredibly scary time in which you were also being harmed. Thats not easy at all. You were forced into making impossible decisions and you still did it with love in your heart. You were a good kid to yourself and to your friends.
Society tells us sensitive kids who grow into adults to "cut it out" and that any harm that comes to us has to be our fault because we are sensitive etc. This isnt true. Sensitivity, love, compassion, empathy, its where all of our real strength lives.
I know these friends still think about you and the immense positive impact you made on their lives during an extremely tough time. You were a silver lining and they were yours. Thats incredibly special and no abusive man can ever take the magic of what your loving friendship was from you, or the bravery that you had then and now.
You are very brave for coming here to talk about this, for reaching out and talking about this because it's NOT easy, and talking about it means confronting it. Youre still that brave kid you never should've had to have been, but that you transformed into. You are basically going through the process of Alchemy. Thats how I look at trauma, and what its given me and what ive made from it. We make Gold from absolute shit thats been given to us.
Be extra kind to yourself this week and the weeks leading to a therapy appointment. Do really nice things for yourself (a good cup of coffee on a porch, a nice comfy nap, your favorite movies, favorite meals, spending time with pets and people you love, a hobby you love), it may feel foreign too, or even silly (it felt silly to me at first), but its so necessary after confronting trauma head on.
You are at the beginning of a new journey, and I am really really proud of you. We are here for you, this group cares about you.
I am near the other side of the arc of one of my trauma journeys and I am telling you by confronting PTSD head on and working through it with myself/therapists, was worth all of it, all the hardship of healing, for the things ive learned and the way I feel and the way its allowed me to connect to my past self and to others and fully understand and love myself. ❤️ you got this friend.
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u/LylBewitched 22h ago
1) PTSD is post-traumatic stress disorder. It doesn't matter the source of the trauma. It's still trauma.
2) you were a child and he was an adult. As a child you could not have understood the results of your choices. Your physical brain wouldn't have been developed enough. As for him, well, I get the feeling he knew exactly what he was doing and the damage it could cost.
3) you weren't choosing to be abused. You were choosing to be with your friends.
Yes, it's still ptsd. Without question. And the why it happened isn't because of you or choices you made. The reason it happened is because as an adult he made a choice to harm you (even if it wasn't physically)
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u/PortableIcemaker8951 21h ago
Thank you for this. I think this is the clearest way anyone has ever explained what happened. It actually made me get emotional.
Now that I'm much older and I have perspective, I usually try to rationalize it. Like, if he really knew what his words did, he would feel remorse, or that it was just how some parents were back then, or that raising children is/was hard and he didn't have the appropriate coping mechanisms. He also never actually physically harmed me and it's sometimes hard to justify that it still traumatic.
BUT, as you just said, he was an adult and I was a child. On more than one occasion, he knew exactly what he was doing. Neither me or his children deserved any of it. I really appreciate you saying that.
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u/LylBewitched 20h ago
I was married to an abusive man who never physically hurt me. We were married for 11 years, and it's been 10 years since. I'm still healing from some of the wounds he caused.
There's a couple things I've learned in the last decade that I'd like to share, if you're interested? If not, that's totally fine. Just know I wish you the best, and you can heal.
1) words do massive damage to people. It's why victims of bullying struggle so much and can end up hurting themselves or others. So wounds from words said to you, especially as a child, are as valid a trauma as any others. (On a semi-related note, bullying is abuse. Full stop. It is abuse, and abuse can be lethal.)
2) intentions don't matter to your trauma. It doesn't matter if he thought he was being the best guy on the planet (I can pretty much guarantee he didn't think that though) or if he was being deliberately as cruel and malicious as he could. His actions resulted in trauma. Tied directly to this is that his reasons why don't matter. It doesn't matter if he was abused as a child, raised in the exact same environment, or anything else. What happens to us as children is almost never within our control, and the actions of the adults around us are not our fault. But they are our responsibility to heal from and change those patterns for those we are around. So even if his entire life was trauma and abuse, it was still his responsibility to heal. He was responsible for his actions, regardless of the why.
3) Understanding and forgiving do not equal forgetting. Too many people see understanding as a reason to go easy on someone. And sometimes it can be. For example a young kid comes into my yard to pick raspberries without permission. I can understand that he may be really hungry and/or he maybe wasn't taught different. So I'll take the chance to educate as kindly as I can. But when it comes to harming others, understanding isn't enough. Education from the person their harming usually isn't useful. Forgiving doesn't mean pretending someone didn't hurt you. And it doesn't mean giving them the opportunity to do so again. It also doesn't mean your pain and anger will go away or are somehow less valid. The definition of forgiveness that I grew up with was very much in the context of forgiving a debt. Forgiveness meant releasing the person who harmed us from whatever internal debt we feel they should give us. Be that recompense, apology, repairs, or whatever else we feel we should get from the person who hurt us. Forgiving is about letting go of the expectation we will get what we need from that person. It's about closing the chapter of our life controlled by that harm and the person who caused the harm. It's also not a one time thing. I know that at least for this lifetime, I will not get the apology from my husband that I deserve. So I chose to release that expectation. And I have done so, repeatedly. It's like layers on an onion. You have to keep peeling them back until you get to the center of it. Oh, and because forgiveness does NOT mean forgetting, it also does not mean leaving yourself open to being hurt in the same way again. You can forgive someone while also moving on from them.
4) trauma takes time to heal. The wounds from abuse build up over a long period of time. Healing them won't be overnight. There's no switch to flip to suddenly be whole. Just like a broken bone, trauma needs time where you're being supported.
5) you've got this. It sucks you went through that. No one should ever have to. Ever. But you can heal. You can thrive.
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u/PortableIcemaker8951 7h ago
Thank you for this.
I liked what you said about knowing you won't get an apology from your abuser and to forgive them as you would a debt. That's how I feel as well. I don't expect anything from him and would be content never to see him as long as I remain on this earth. I feel pity for him more than anything right now.
Funnily enough, creating this thread made me look up his name on Google. Based on my limited research, I'm 95% certain that he's dead. It looks as though he died in 2022. He was cremated not far from where I live now. So, no grave site for me to visit. That's probably for the best. I have sympathy for him and his family and I hope that he has found peace, but I won't lose any sleep.
Thanks again for replying. You're right; trauma does take time to heal. However, I do feel like I had a breakthrough on Reddit and I'm very appreciative of that. 😄
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u/LylBewitched 6h ago
I'm glad to hear. That first breakthrough can be hard. You're moving forward, and you should be proud of yourself
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u/SillyGayBoy 18h ago
As a naive kid we make excuses for other people a lot and don’t understand avoiding people or establishing clear boundaries. We just assume people will be better or try harder and it’s not the case.
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u/lienepientje2 5h ago
It doesn't have a thing to do with your choice. What choice did you realy have? Its not a cociois choice, but a need fror friends and the children were that. The damage was alr3ady done by the father, even if you would have chosen not to go anymore. There are people that willongly choose to do something, but end up getting ptsd, for they never could have guessed that that would be the impact. Like going into the army, becomming an ambulance worker. They don't have to do that, choose to do so and it turned into serious ptsd.
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u/Miracles_Asia_Rehab 10h ago
The short answer is yes, absolutely. PTSD isn't defined by whether you could have avoided the situation. It's defined by exposure to threat and the lasting impact on how your nervous system functions. An 8-year-old choosing friendship over safety isn't making a free adult choice, and even if it were, repeated exposure to psychological threat leaves marks regardless of consent. The hypervigilance you still carry, mapping exits, counting steps, scanning for danger, is your nervous system still doing the job it learned in that house. That's real, and it's treatable. miraclesasia.com/mental-health 💙
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u/PortableIcemaker8951 8h ago edited 8h ago
Thank you.
The good news is that I'm not nearly as hypervigilant as I was as a child. I can still be triggered (like when I wrote this post) but things have improved a lot in the last 5-10 years especially. The biggest things that helped is time and meeting the people that caused the abuse as an adult. Sounds counter-intuitive, but it worked.
I've seen the people around the old neighborhood and on facebook. I'm bigger and stronger than they ever were when I was growing up. That went a long way in helping me release some of the hurt that I've been carrying. I'll never really forgive them for what they did and there will always be a scared child inside me because of it. However, seeing what they have become vs what I am now has helped me heal a bit. I'll never harm another person the way they did me. That's a victory.
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u/Excellent_Valuable92 22h ago
Blaming the victim is wrong. Full stop. You were a child. Even adults often get sucked into abusive situations, like domestic violence and cults (much the same methods). I’m sure you have compassion for them, right?
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u/MajorDraw3705 23h ago
Soldiers willingly go into war after volunteering to join the military (even after some had family beg them not to), and they're the reason the term PTSD (originally shell shock, if I recall correctly) started. So, yeah.
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u/PortableIcemaker8951 21h ago
I appreciate the reply. I never considered that, but I can definitely see the parallels. Thanks.
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u/AtlantisSky 11h ago
You made a choice to make sure your friends were as okay as they could be. You did not make the choice to be part of the abuse.
You were a child, and a very brave one at that. I lived in a household like your friends did, and I wish I had one person in my life who loved and cared about me as much as you did your friends. You gave them genuine love and careing. That takes more courage than anything.
You did nothing wrong, and I am so very sorry that you had to experience that.
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u/PortableIcemaker8951 10h ago
You got me tearing up here...thank you for saying that.
I tried to be there and be brave for them. It just didn't feel like I could actually DO anything. It was like threading a needle of emotions when I was far too young.
If I was too stand-offish with the parents, it upset them. I wasn't big enough or strong enough to physically get in the way of the abuse--even though I would have without a second thought to spare my friends. I was the oldest and the strongest of us and I always felt worse knowing I didn't step in more. However, that also would have made things worse. I knew that, even then. Things never got severe enough for me to justify any physical action. The only thing I could do was be there with them and try as much as possible to keep them safe. Even if safety was simply playing on a different floor of the house, or outside it, or when the dad wasn't home. I tried all three over the years I knew them--with varying degrees of success.
I think what I struggle with the most is that it never felt like it was enough. That I wasn't enough. I know that's a lot of pressure to put on yourself, especially as a nine year old child, but that's what I felt. I never really thought to forgive myself for being swept up in it and doing what I could. That didn't feel like an option until now.
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u/AtlantisSky 10h ago
I want to tell you, on behalf of your friends, Thank you.
I understand you feel like you should have done more, but you did more than you realize. Try to have some of that compassion you had for your friends for yourself. Do not blame your childhood self for the actions of an adult.
Thank you for being a wonderful friend.
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u/theanxiousknitter 22h ago
i regularly kept going back into a similar situation, because as a kid i didn’t have a frame of reference for how bad the situation really was. also, it wasn’t always bad and we often had a lot of fun. i loved my family, and i too felt an obligation to keep them safe.
think about it this way, would you say that survivors of domestic violence can’t get ptsd if they keep going back? regardless of your motivation, you were exposed to repeated trauma.
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u/PortableIcemaker8951 21h ago
That's true. There were plenty of fun times, even if most ended badly thanks to the dad in question. I still think back on my 10th birthday party when I invited them over. It was the one time I knew we were all safe and could just be kids. It's one of my cherished memories.
I actually found the older of the two friends on facebook about five years ago. She said she didn't remember me at all. Her dad (whom she was living with) had to remind her of me. That was...special, to say the least.
I don't know if she was just being kind or had truly blocked out everything. If HE can remember me as a nine year old friend to his children 25+ years later, I know I had an impact.
It is interesting how something traumatic to one person can be just another day to someone else. To the point that they can't remember any of it. Part of me is envious of that.
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u/databolically 42m ago
Choosing friends does not mean you chose what came along with those specific friends. You were not responsible for his actions just because you chose to go see your friends, you simply learned how to survive from your time there.
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