Whoa. I just got a crazy phone call and I was all, like, I have got to share this with SDMB.
This harkens back to this thread from last year: My sister thinks I have post-partum depression...and I totally don't! Right? - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board
I freaked OUT on my family last summer, after I went to visit them with my new baby. It was like, I finally realized that my parents were sucky parents and kinda mean people and I couldn’t believe it took me so long to realize it.
My sister said I had post-partum depression, and then we stopped speaking for more than a year. We’ve recently started exchanging friendly texts, but today I got an actual phone call from her.
She and her husband just started marriage counseling, and the counselor asked them to fill out this 600-item questionaire. She did, and the counselor studied it, and told her he thinks she’s suffering from PTSD.
She was like, huh? And he asked if she’d ever been raped, abused – anything really traumatic. Nope, she said. And then he asked about her (our) dad – not the he had abused her or anything, but how was their relationship?
And it alllll came out. She said it was like this facade she’d (well, we’d) invented about our dad just came tumbling down – he wasn’t a misunderstood genius, he was a kind of crazy jerk. And our mom let him practically raise us himself (since she was a flight attendant and gone much of the time). And then it got her thinking, Is this why smaje freaked out on the family? Dad is crazy and mom let him raise us, knowing he was crazy???
We had a great talk, and she asked me to join her and her therapist for a three-way conversation to talk about the family. I happily accepted.
I honestly never thought I’d get any validation for the way I felt. A little part of me was always wondering, am I blowing this all out of proportion? And I feel awful that my sister is sad and upset now, but at least she can start the healing process.
A lot of you Dopers gave me great advice and words of wisdom when I was dealing with all of this last year, so you definitely deserve an update on the situation! I can’t WAIT to see what we talk about during this therapy session!