I'm concerned that I'm suffering from one of, or a combination of PTSD, depression, or anxiety?

Hello C,

In the first month or so of treatment your therapist will help you to sort out just this....Long term family suffering and struggle can create a complex experience of PTSD where symptoms are more pervasive and do not stem from an easily discernible trauma.  It will look a lot like anxiety and depression but will have triggers. 

It is possible to help you bring to the surface and rework your initial experience of life with your Mom through therapy techniques that connect your visceral sensations of trauma to your conscious awareness so that you can learn to process your feelings and then better manage them in the moments that they come up in your day to day life.  This kind of treatment for trauma is called EMDR. 

This in combination with another kind of talk therapy like psychodynamic work or CBT will allow you space to understand and process your family dynamics.   This is a very hard, challenging family dynamic C, and, I hope that you find a therapist that you connect with who can help you feel much better, soon.

It is however, really important that you yourself are already on a path to recognizing that you are struggling to sleep well, you are isolating, moody and irritable.  You are struggling personally, and you are it seems like, looking to understand if your emotions are the "problem" in your family, or, if your awareness of your family member's struggle and the family not dealing directly with it, is the problem. 

Might it be that both are true?  In fact....both are most likely true!  Quite possibly, as well, your own needs have always been important to focus on and at some point will have needed your conscious attention because you lived with a lot of worry and concern for your Mom for many years.   It would be only natural to need time to process your own feelings about your mother and how her addiction impacted you.  That these feelings are triggered by watching your family not know how to deal directly with addiction again, and, watch this unfold, must be very very hard for you.

Often, families struggle, just like yours, to first recognize and then cope with the pain of dealing head on with addiction.  This is not an unusual struggle.

Confusing "boundaries" are common in families with alcohol or other substance use disorders and this is called a codependency or even, an enmeshed family system.  Other people in the family serve the family cohesion and balance by shoring up the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the person who is struggling.  It then makes it very hard to see the origins of a struggle, who needs what in the family, and even to say a healthy and clear no to boundaries that make no sense to you. 

Please do, reach out and talk to a therapist, because you deserve to be your best self and to work through the issues that are effecting your quality of life.  

In this time with a therapist, you can also clarify for yourself what feels more like a family issue, the issues related to the family member who is suffering with addiction and the impacts to you.  All of this deserves it's own time, focus and understanding so that you can develop more self confidence setting boundaries and discovering what your needs are and how to care for them even when other's in your family don't see things the same way as you do.

All the best on your journey,

Elise Jacobson, LICSW

Social Worker