On my post, How to Help Abused Adopted Child Heal from Dissociative Disorder, a reader wrote the following comment:

Now for the post on surviving this and dealing with people who don't understand that your child can't just be "fixed" right now. Thanks for this. This blog is really a lifeline some days.

In my last post, I addressed the question about surviving parenting a traumatized child. In this post, I will address the question of dealing with people who do not understand.

Unfortunately, most people know very little about trauma, so they do not understand that you cannot wave a magic wand and make the past just go away. Several people in my life got frustrated with me on a number of occasions when my Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms did not go away after a few months. One person even said that I could not possibly have endured enough traumas for the healing to take so long. (He was wrong, of course.)

The child must choose to heal. Until he does, there is nothing you can do to speed up the process. Even after he does choose to heal, his efforts are rewiring his brain, which takes a long time. There is an end to the healing process (I am living it!!), but even after a child no longer has PTSD symptoms, he will still have issues arise throughout his life that he will have the tools to process thanks to your hard work as his parent.

You need to be confident at a heart level that you are doing all you can to help your child, and you need to know (again, at a heart level) that only part of the healing process is your responsibility. Educate yourself about the aftereffects of trauma and the healing process. The more confident you are in your knowledge and understanding of the healing process, the better able you will be to withstand the criticism of others.

When others criticize your parenting or express impatience at the pace of your child's healing, you can do one of two things: You can try to educate the person, or you can just choose to ignore the comments. If the other person is truly willing to listen, then you might want to take the time to explain the complexities of healing from trauma. However, if the person just wants to criticize, you do not need to listen to him: Just walk away. All that matters is that you know that you are doing what is best for the child. The opinions of others, particularly those who know little about trauma, really do not matter.

Related Topics:

• Understanding Integration



• The Caused Disorders



• Adopting an Abused Child series

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