Becoming a stepmom gave me PTSD
That first unrelenting half-hour of Saving Private Ryan felt so authentic that many veterans had to leave the theatre. The VA set up a hotline just to help vets whose PTSD was triggered by Spielberg's too-realistic scenes of storming Normandy Beach.
I remember watching the movie in theatres, tense and sweaty, assaulted by every sound and image on the screen, fighting every instinct I had not to stand up and run away myself. My throat closed tighter and tighter; all I wanted to do was get ouuuuut.
There in the dark, a small practical thought from outside my panic pointed out that actual soldiers can't get up and leave. They're subject to unthinkable, unbearable sensory battery for hours or days, topped off by fear for their lives. Which was the whole point of Spielberg's ruthless opening scene going on and on and on: to force an awareness of war's interminability. Every person who's watched that movie now has some idea of the unceasing hell that is war — as much as any of us can who hasn't seen live combat, anyway.
So I stayed in my seat, thinking of every human who has been forced into an insanity-inducing situation that pushes them beyond the point of what anyone should have to endure.
And yet, we endure.
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Mental health challenges as a stepparent
I had anxiety issues long before meeting Dan. But symptoms that were fully manageable pre-Dan soon became the opposite of manageable after I was sucked into his high-conflict co-parenting shitstorm. My increasingly worse anxiety peaked somewhere shortly after our wedding, keeping pace in direct proportion to the intensity of what would become a years-long custody battle with Dan’s ex. I kept thinking I'd wait for everything to calm down and then I'd get my mental health back on track… only nothing ever calmed down. My anxiety kept right on spiraling upwards while depression dragged me ever lower down. I was very nearly completely housebound before I finally dragged myself to see a counselor.
I didn't understand how the everyday stressors related to SD and HCBM and blending a family had flattened me so thoroughly. Surely I'd been through worse: health problems in my college years, an unplanned pregnancy followed by unplanned single motherhood. How was this the challenge that I couldn't seem to beat?
“I don’t get it. I should be able to handle this,” I said to Jen the Counselor, exasperated with myself. “I’m usually great in a crisis.”
"Yeah, I get that from you," Jen said. "You feel like you'd be good in a storm."
"I'm awesome in a storm," I grumbled.
"Your stories remind me of this experiment they did with PTSD," she said. "They took a group of dogs and bombarded them with loud, unpleasant sounds at scheduled times. The dogs learned to anticipate the attacks, and braced themselves in advance. In those dogs, stress levels remained manageable.
“Then they took another group of dogs that underwent varied, unpredictable attacks at random times. And over time, those dogs stopped fighting back. They stopped trying to defend themselves because they never knew which way to face — they could never figure out which direction offered them the most protection. So instead they curled up in the corner, just waiting for it all to be over.”
I cried for the rest of the session. In explaining the effects of PTSD, my counselor had also just described my life since becoming a stepmom: fighting at first, but now curled up in a corner, defeated. Just wanting all the drama to be over. Trying against all odds to carve out a life in the midst of utter chaos, only to feel like I'd failed and all my sacrifices and struggles had been for nothing.
Soooo basically the emotional equivalent to that first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, except lasting about 5 years.
No wonder my sanity finally threw up a big ol' white flag and surrendered.
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The effects of constant stress on stepparents
That’s the day I learned that you can develop diagnosable complex PTSD from non-combat-related life events. From stepparenting, of all things. I never knew when the next attack was coming, or from which direction. I packed school lunches; they came right back home uneaten. I brought home presents, and later found them kicked to the back corner of SD's closet. I’d help with SD's homework, then get an email the next day from HCBM telling me she'd contacted the school, gotten the paper back, and was going to make SD redo it because the work wasn’t good enough.
I couldn’t win. Every olive branch I extended got snatched away, snapped in half, and set on fire.
After years of shit like this and continuing to try my hardest anyway, no wonder my anxiety kicked up to 11. No wonder I looked at attending another one of SD's school plays or piano recitals as yet another battlefield. I was at war with my own beliefs that I should be supporting SD, that showing up is what family is about, yet I also felt like… well, why bother? SD wanted nothing to do with me or the idea that I was her family now. She definitely didn't care that me showing up took every ounce of willpower I had (and at least one Xanax). She’d ignore me completely even if I did go. So why was I doing this to myself?
So many stepparents are reluctant soldiers. We are thrust into conflict that we don't want and never planned for, and most days feel like a battle that no one could ever win. Yet we’re out there. Fighting the good fight. Storming the beaches. Screaming for medics. Wishing the assault would let up for long enough that we could take one good, deep breath, even if it’s only so we could scream long and hard at the unfairness of it all.
Unlike soldiers, though, we can set down our gear and take a break sometimes. We can carve out some kind of comfort in all this chaos so we can live a life that hasn’t been hijacked by someone else’s high conflict. We don't have to charge forward full-time into certain misery; we can step back from an active stepparenting role if or when we need to.
And if we need to, we should. Because the only victory that truly counts is finding peace within ourselves.
